Chiaretto Rose Garda Classico 2004 review by Matt Kramer of the Portland Oregonian

A Review from the Portland Oregonian.

Sounds really, really good.

Chiaretto Rose "Garda Classico" 2004, Provenza: The summer search for the best rose of the season kicks off with what I must confess is my annual benchmark rose. Wine snoots may turn up their noses and shut down their palates when it comes to pink wines, but not in this column. A great rose is a summer joy.

This is a great rose. Really, it's one of the best that I know. And it's certainly unusual, at least in its grape composition.

Chiaretto is the local name around northern Italy's Lake Garda zone. One of that zone's best producers is the small family winery Provenza. In addition to making a top-drawer dry white wine called Lugana (which I recommended a few weeks ago), Provenza also creates the local rose called Chiaretto.

Now, most roses are made from a single grape such as pinot noir, cabernet franc or grenache. In contrast, Chiaretto is a blend of four grapes -- and pretty strange ones (for rose, anyway) at that. This is a blend of two local red grapes, groppello and marzemino, along with two not-common-to-the-zone varieties, barbera and sangiovese. I dare say there's not another such rose like it anywhere in the world.

Here you've got a delicately tinted pink wine with an equally delicate fragrance of wild roses, strawberry and a whiff of red cherry. The acidity is just right, neither penetrating nor "flabby." The scent carries through to the flavor, extending with a surprisingly long finish that lingers on your palate long after you've swallowed the wine. For a rose, that's quite a feat, as most roses are pretty thin, flavorless stuff. This has the requisite delicacy expected of a good rose yet delivers real flavor.

In this "pinkhead's" opinion, this is the rose to beat -- and worth hunting down. (Note to retailers: The supplier is Zancanella Importing.)

The price is right, too: $11.95 a bottle.

By Matt Kramer, a Portland wine critic and author.