Food & Drink
The Best Canadian-Made Rosé Wines
Rosé all day, the Canadian way.
As much as the “rosé all day” trope may feel tired, rosé season is here, and Canadian wineries are particularly adept at making stellar bottles of the blush-hued beverage. Some may think rosé is a light, ‘summer water’ type sip. But pink wines live in the broad colourspace between red and white wine – bottles can range from super chuggable with just a kiss of pink to incredibly complex and rich ruby in colour. Some are light and refreshing, while others are sparkling. Whatever bottle you choose, rosé is an excellent drink to reach for as we spend summer weekends keeping our distance in parks, on lakes, or in backyards. Here, the best pink-tinged bottles by Canadian winemakers.
The Grange Gamay Rosé
Grange Winery started a few years back as a mother-daughter project in Prince Edward County. Mother Caroline tends to the vines while daughter Maggie conjures up innovative wines. Some of the wines are traditional, showcasing classic examples of each grape, while others veer quirkier. The gamay rosé is the latter, giving off the same tart, berry flavours of a sour beer.
If you’re in the area, the winery is always open to visitors picnicking between the vines, and is happy to sell you baskets packed with glasses, wines, and local cheeses to snack on.
Leaning Post Rosé
Before starting this Winona, Ontario vineyard, couple Ilya and Nadia Senchuk spent decades dreaming of founding their own vineyard before Ilya left his post as a beloved Niagara winemaking consultant and Nadia, her job in the corporate world, to found Leaning Post.
Now, the vineyard is one of the province’s best-loved natural vineyards, where the couple and their children tend to small lots of pinot noir, chardonnay, and gamay grapes. For this bottle, the family transformed these traditional grapes into a spunky rosé, with big floral aromas and the sweet-meets-sour flavours of fresh pomegranate juice.
Pearl Morissette Roselana
Put it simply, this wine can be dubbed a party punch. Made with gamay and pinot noir grapes, the feisty, easy-to-drink wine sips with full notes of berry compote and jolly rancher. The winemaker, Francois Morisette, cut his teeth in the French Grand Cru regions before launching his own winery slash award winning restaurant. All of these Niagara wines are carefully hand-picked, and conjured into deliciously juicy, graceful wines.
Adamo
This small-batch winery lives outside Ontario’s big wine regions of Prince Edward County and Niagara, but don’t discount it – they make punk wines with heaps of flavour. A particular highlight is their effervescent take on rosé, which is a fun, juicy bottle with a burst of fizz. Adamo has a few different iterations of rosé – may we suggest a tasting?
Therianthropy Le Maillot Cabernet Franc
The name of this Niagara negociant vineyard comes from the mythological ability for humans to shapeshift (think, werewolves!) so expect wines with quirky personalities. Like the Le Maillot Cabernet Franc, a wine that lives in a space between red and rosé. The tannic, quaffable wine was left to ferment on grape skins for three days, giving it a funky, textured mouthfeel. Serve it chilled, preferably under a sunny sky.
Orofino Pozza Vineyard Cabernet Franc Rosé
Over in British Columbia’s Similkameen Valley, Orofino Vineyards is making a sophisticated summer water. Made with cool-climate Cabernet Franc grapes, this blush-hued wine is dry, slightly dusty and super approachable, offering the perfect match to a charcuterie board or lobster roll.
Greenlane Estate Saffron Sparkling Rosé
Greenlane Estate’s Sparkling rosé is fun, fancy, and festive, with bright cherry flavors and a kick of bergamot. This bottle will easily hold its own when paired with bolder flavours of barbeque or tacos. The sparkling rosé comes packed into a reusable, resealable bottle, begging to be slipped in your beach bag.
A Sunday in August Pinot Gris
So this isn’t quite a rosé, but the wines from this small-batch British Columbia winery drink like summer magic. The skin-contact orange wine is made predominantly with pinot gris co-fermented with pinot blanc and gewurztraminer. It’s bright, frunky, and fresh, like a breezy summer day in a bottle.
Organized Crime Rosé
The family-owned vineyard loves doing everything by hand, from farming the land by hand to crafting wines that paint a vivid picture of the Beamsville wine region. This bottle is a bit more spunky than your average bottle of rosé – made with 85% pinot noir, it’s fruity, with slight winks of savoury herbs and strawberry cream. It’s a great pizza wine!
Averill Creek Joue
Averill Creek’s Joue line is winemaker Brent’s way of getting creative – Joue means to play, afterall. What he’s come up with are electric wines with a wild streak – the blend of pinot noir, marechal foch, pinot gris, and gewurztraminer has the simple fruit-forward flavour you want from a summer rosé, but with a big, bold personality.
Haywire Pink Bub
Though 2020 certainly doesn’t feel like a year for celebration, Haywire’s sparkling rosé makes a case for sipping something a little bright and bubbly. This rosy wine is made at Okanagan Crush Pad, a collaborative organic winery in the valley. It’s delicious by itself, but try spiking it with Aperol, soda, and fresh fruit for a refreshing Spritz riff. The strawberry-forward bottle also comes in pocket-sized versions.
Rosewood Notorious PTG
The winery-slash-meadery is always turning out bottles that make you take a second glass at, from wacky whites to pet-nats (bottles with slight effervescence) to mead made by the bees on their property (order directly from the winery and throw in hand-crafted beeswax soaps or honey). This bottle (P.T.G stands for Passe-Tout-Grains, an appellation in the Burgundy region in France) is made with a blend of pinot noir and gamay for a super juicy, floral wine with a rich red color. Pop it slightly chilled.
Rosehall Run Pet-Nat
The name Pétillant Naturel, or pet-nats, refers to a slightly sparkling wine with a lower alcohol. The bubbles come from the méthode ancestral process, where wines are bottled and capped in the midst of the fermentation process. The natural sugars continue to ferment in the bottle, adding a kiss of bubbles in the finished wine. In comparison to your standard Champagne, pet-nats are a little more wild, with expressive flavors and tongue-coating bubbles. Rosehall Run’s take is made with a mind-bending assortment of grapes (including sauvignon blanc, gewurztraminer, pinot gris, gamay and pinot noir) for a rich, full-of-energy red.
Plot Wines
The teeny winery in the Okanagan Valley is the brainchild of two pals: winemaker Kevin Rossion and his pal, creative director Adam Kereliuk. What they created was a winery that lets local fruit shine through low-tech winemaking approaches. They dub it ‘old school vibes and new world wines’, and that’s exactly what their tempranillo rosé is. The B.C.-made, Spain-born bottle gives off a dry, delicate palette, with floral and watermelon notes with a kick of black tea. It’s dry, delicate, and mouthwatering. The vineyards are nestled right up in the valley’s mountain range, so look for whiffs of mineral mountain air.
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