2017 Ameztoi Txakolina Rubentis Rose

Malinda is taking the bar this week, so it's Erik (fiancé/sometimes photocred deserver) here with a guest post on what's probably my favorite wine right now: the 2017 Ameztoi Txakolina Rubentis Rose.

For anyone who isn't familiar with txakolina (or txakoli or txakolin depending on who you ask), which included me until a few months ago, it usually a slightly sparkling dry white wine from the Basque Country. Traditionally, it's served with pintxos before a meal. It's also traditionally poured into the glass from height, which helps bring out the aromas and is a lot of fun to do. Oh, and sometimes you drink it from a porron (see right), which is basically a wine bag but for good wine.

This txakolina is somewhat unusual in being a rose, which is also what makes it absolutely delightful. It carries aromas of lemon peel with some faint minerality. Drinking it, I definitely got those same citrus notes, along with strawberries and slate. The vineyard is on a hillside on the coast, and the wine absolutely reflects that.

As a fairly light wine, I would absolutely recommend having this while sitting on a porch or by the pool on a summer evening, or perhaps with some light appetizers with some friends while dinner is cooking. That being said, it was raining in eastern North Carolina all week because the weather here is garbage, so I had the wine with dinner this time around.

I can be fairly indecisive, so I made salmon two ways - grilled and seared with sweet thai chili sauce (from a recipe in Mayor of the Internet Chrissy Teigen's first cookbook). The wine held up better than I had expected to the heat in the chili salmon, so you can certainly serve the wine with dinner. And at 10.5% alcohol, it's not going to knock you out when you go back to finish the bottle.

I first had this wine at a tapas restaurant where it was on special. After my first sip, I asked the waiter for the name of the wine, and found out it was for sale at Wine Authorities. I bought two bottles the next day and have since bought a few more.  The winemaker is a fourth-generation family affair on the norther coast of Spain, just west of San Sebastian. They also make a semi-sparkling white wine, which is also excellent (my strong bias towards rose led me to review this one instead), as well as semi-sparkling red and sparking white and rose.