Rosé, the perfect picnic wine

<p>A loaf of bread, a jug of wine ...</p><p>What's the best wine to accompany a fun summer picnic?</p><p>“Rosés are the wine of choice to enjoy a boozy lunch with friends because you can drink more than one bottle,” according to Susan Graf of Healdsburg. </p><p>“This is what makes rosé the perfect picnic wine. Picnics are usually a two-hour affair.”</p><p>Graf said alcohol levels of 9 or 11 percent for rosés make uncorking that second bottle feasible, while alcohol levels of 14 to 16 percent for other wines would likely prevent it.</p><p>“I love rosés because they're lower in alcohol, they're dry and not too sweet,” she said.</p><p>Graf's favorite rosé labels include Toad Hollow, Lynmar and Le Clos Du Caillou.</p><p>The recent Rosé Avengers & Producers Tasting in San Francisco offered a wide range of styles. </p><p>For the uninitiated, rosé is not a varietal and it's technically not a style. Rosé is made from “bleeding off” or extracting juice from other varietals such as pinot noir, Grenache or Mourvedre.</p><p>Steven Canter, the winemaker at Healdsburg's Quivira Vineyards, produces a Grenache rosé. He's dogmatic about using Grenache that is dedicated for the purpose, because the grapes need to be picked earlier for the best acidity.</p><p>He said he doesn't have a specific house style but rather waits to see what evolves. That said, he does pick grapes when they have good acid and ferments in stainless steel to keep the freshness.</p><p>“The best wines are the ones we haven't had to tinker with in the cellar,” he said.</p><p>Canter said a rosé is an anomaly.</p><p>“People will sometimes say ‘This is a serious rose,' and a rosé can be good,” he said. “Yet while it's not frivolous or simple, it inherently has a carefree nature to it.”</p><p>Here are some great carefree picnic rosés:</p><p>Quivira, 2009 Wine Creek Ranch, Dry Creek Valley, Grenache Rosé, $15.</p><p>Bedrock, 2009 Ode to LuLu, Sonoma County Rosé of Mourvedre, $20.</p><p>Saintsbury, 2009 Carneros Vin Gris of Pinot Noir, $15.</p><p>Unti, 2009 Dry Creek Valley, Sonoma County Rosé, $19.</p><p>Le Clos Du Caillou, 2009 Cote du Rhone, $20.</p><p>Miner, 2009 Mendocino Rosato, $15.</p><p>Staff writer Peg Melnik can be reached at 521-5310 or peg.</p><p>melnik@pressdemocrat.com.</p>