Going Into A Cava

We always enjoy a good bottle of sparkling wine, but our picks usually come out of California. Cava is Spain's sparking wine. This cava, Codorníu Pinot Noir Brut Rose, is a rosé, which I thought was a delightful idea.

However, I had been under the mistaken impression was always made from blending a white and a red wine.

Actually, rosés are most commonly made by crushing red grapes and allowing the juice to sit with the skins for just a few days and then removing them before fermentation, which gives it some color, but not enough to turn it fully red.

The blending method apparently was more common in the past, but the method has since fallen out of favor. A recent EU plan to allow blended rosés (promoted by winemakers in parts of France where red and white wine is in surplus) was abandoned after traditional rose makers argued it would bring on the "industrialisation" of wine .

We opened this Codorníu Pinot Noir Brut Rose after an afternoon of pruning. It's a lovely color and light as it can be ... which is a little too light for my tastes. It lingered on the tongue not a bit, and hardly had any weight to it at all. Not much of a reward for a couple of hours of hard labor.

But it wasn't bad at all - it was fun and refreshing and I think it might be especially suited for Sunday brunch or champagne cocktails.