Gabbi Hall
Things I am grateful for: Friends who will participate in activities, so that I can blog about them. This blog post on budget rosé wine is dedicated to my amazing squad, Sarah, Kerri, Kate, Rachel, and Natalie.
For our final girls’ night in Boston, I wanted to organize a blind rosé wine tasting. The idea was to find great wines under $15, taste them without knowing which ones we were drinking, and pick a favorite. Each lady brought a bottle–picked on the advice of trusted wine advisors (or in my case, based on the pretty label). In addition to wine, I brought cheese, crackers, flamingo napkins, score cards (download here), and my camera.
The Best Budget Rosé Wine
The five budget rose wine brands on the menu were: My Essential French Rose ($13), Barton & Guestier Côtes de Provence ($11), Elk Cove Vineyards Pinot Noir Rosé ($15), Dune Gris de Gris ($10), and Prophecy Rosé ($11). The winner, with three votes, was the Barton & Guestier–highly drinkable and very light—which Kate brought to the party. It’s the perfect summer sipper.
While none of the wines were awful, two of them were clearly the least favorite. When asked “Would you buy this wine again?” the Elk Cove Vineyards Pinot Noir Rosé and My Essential French Rosé both had a few no’s. One reviewer, who wished to be referred to as Mr. McGiblets, said the My Essential wine was too bland with a distinct alcohol after taste while another said it wasn’t smooth. The Elk Cove wine was described as a little too sweet. It was by no means sickeningly sweet, but it definitely leaned more towards the sweetness of a moscato.
Obviously, this wine tasting did not represent any sort of scientific research or a fair representation of all available rosés. We are the first to admit that we know next to nothing about wines. That said, we know what we like, and I think we all have great taste. #humblebrag We think a few of those wines are worth your time.
Not only was this activity a great topic for a blog post, but it was also a fun activity before we headed out to dinner. It’s really easy to coordinate, too. Here’s how you can host your own tasting.
Here’s the supplies you need:
Disposable glasses (We had five ladies tasting five wines, so we needed 25 cups)
Sharpie
Score cards (One per person / Download here)
Pens
Prize for the best wine (Optional)
Snacks
Assuming you are pouring the wines, start by numbering the wine bottles with the Sharpie. Then, number the cups. In our case, we had five ladies participation, so I needed to label fives cups with “1,” five cups with “2,” and so on and so forth. Pour the wine into the corresponding cups. No need to fill it up all the way–just enough for a few sips of each wine. Basically, you’ll be building wine flights. Try your best to make sure your friends don’t know which is which. If you want to be super stealth, you can wrap each bottle of wine in a paper bag.
Each person gets a wine flight, a score card, and a pen. From there, it’s pretty self explanatory. Sip the wines. Rank your favorites. We ate water crackers to help cleanse our pallets between glasses.
Whoever brought the favorite wine gets a prize. In our case, the favorite was determined by which wine had the most #1 rankings. Honestly, we did not have a prize on this particular occasion, but it could be cute to give away a gift certificate or something.
What is your favorite budget rosé wine?
Until next time, here goes nothing.
