Summer Rose should be crisp, interesting yet subtle, well balanced, with just the right amount of acid and tannin to show off food, and it should be affordable, while feeling fabulously exclusive, and reminding you of time with friends or expensive flings along the Med (or our own Coast!).

Enter Bodegas Muga. Their big reds can get into the stratospheric price range, but their Rose is a fabulous buy, if you can find it. Like the better known French rose, the grapes are grown specifically for this wine.

The 2012 Muga is fresh and very well-balanced with crisp grapefruit and nectarines, lovely strawberry and hints of peach, apricot, and woody bramble. This is an elegant Rioja rose with fabulous minerality, and subtlety, and an almost universal appeal for Rose lovers.

I encourage you to seek it out, and buy it by the multiple case lot. You will drink through it quickly this summer!

$10.99 Shopper’s Vineyard – Clifton, NJ
$14.99 Wally’s Wine & Spirits- LA