I have never believed in rosé season. Not because there isn’t one, but because rosé season is forever occurring in my mind. I will drink rosé while it’s snowing outside by a fire with roasted chicken. I will drink rosé in my sweatpants in the driving rain of New Orleans. I will drink rosé on the beach in November as the sun goes down over the Mediterranean, shifting from salty warmth to bone-chilling breeze. I will drink very nice rosé with a box of macaroni and cheese after I put my daughter to bed. Rosé is forever wine. 

However, when you buy wine for a living, there is a season in which rosé floods the shelves because wine is agricultural, and this is the season in which the pink things are ready to drink. We are only in the beginning flow of the tidal wave, and so you are receiving some of the first bottles that are coming to the shop—in totally different styles from totally different places. It’s really a tease so that you’ll remember us when you need more for the pool party, the thunderstorm cuddle, the next snowstorm of the century, the next post-bedtime reward. —Leslie Pariseau

Luis Pato "Baga Espumante" Bairrada, Portugal NV

We had the pleasure of hosting Maria João Pato, the daughter of Portuguese winemaker Luis Pato, in March. To behold her quirky way in comparison with her father’s helped us to understand the land that holds and shapes them. In the 1980s, Luis Pato broke from the norm of winemaking in Bairrada and started experimenting with sustainable farming, more natural methods of fermentation, and native varieties such as Maria Gomes, a refreshing, satiny white wine, and Baga, a structured and smoky red. The focus has paid off, launching these varieties into the international conversation, so much so that Pato has become a Baga icon himself. 

For this wine club, we’ve chosen the Baga Espumante to represent rosé from Portugal. It’s a sparkling wine done in the traditional method or method champenoise (i.e. two fermentations, rather than one) and is also partially a saignée rose. Saignée means ‘’to bleed,” which refers to bleeding off some of the juice in the early parts of the fermentation of red wine to create a more concentrated, deeper, richer rose, the type that often pushes the border between rosé and red wine. 

For this espumante, 60-percent of the juice is saignée, plus directly pressed Baga, which means the grapes are pressed just after picking. It’s a lively wine with super frothy, fuschia pink bubbles, black raspberry and plum-skin notes plus a dewy, charcoal minerality. A perfect complement to a backyard gathering or barbeque. —Cassandra Vachon

Sfera "Nebula Rosa" Rosato, Piedmont, Italy 2024

Rosé season has arrived (did it ever really leave?). While we are all enjoying this prolonged spring/relatively mild early summer, the heat is coming. Rosé is a survival strategy in a New Orleans summer. It’s a social lubricant and the perfect, cooling welcome glass when the dew point is threatening to wash us all away.

Sprung from a collaboration with a small family winery in Piedmont and Portovino, an Italian importer, the 2024 Sfera “Nebula” Rosato brings us to the vineyards of the Crotin family who first planted vines in and around Maretto in 1897. Helmed today by the three Calabrian-born Russo brothers, Federico, Marcello and Corrado, the estate has been practicing organic agriculture since the very beginning. Focused on Barbera, Grignolino, and Freisa, the brothers  have recently been experimenting with Nebbiolo from young vines to produce the refreshing, salty rosé in your glass today. The predominantly red clay soils here compare favorably here to Langhe where some of Italy’s finest red wines call home. 

Hibiscus and strawberry seeds, and crushed rose petal on the nose. A nervy backbone of salinity and mouth-quenching acidity snap on the finish. Drink a touch too cold on your nearest front porch. —Drew Clowney

Domaine les Terres Promises "Apostrophe" Provence, France 2025

It is rare that a wine from Les Terres Promises is not on our shelves. They are simply required drinking in the shop. Made by Jean-Christophe Comor in La Roquebrussanne in Provence, they are wines that defy the flat sameness of so much Provençal rosé. Each bottle has texture, body, watercolor sunset pink color, and luscious, luscious flavor. This vintage of Apostrophe (ah-POST-roff, en Français) is Grenache (45%), Cinsault (25%), and Carignan (30%), as the local tradition goes, and has a thyme-infused peach cream situation plus fresh rose petal and fennel whispers. Provence at its most perfect. —Leslie Pariseau

Anne Amie "Rosé of Pinot Noir" Willamette Valley, Oregon 2025

Since the 1960s, the Willamette Valley in Oregon has experienced a build toward becoming one of America’s greatest concentrations of low-intervention, terroir driven producers, running the spectrum from classic Burgundian varieties well suited to its cool climate to natural riesling. At the shop, we stock a range of relative newcomers like Ovum and Division to old guards like Eyrie (the OG OG) and Anne Amie. 

Anne Amie started as Chateau Benoit in 1979 at the Yamhill-Carlton site. Here you can still find some of the oldest vines in Willamette, including their signature and original almost 50 year old rows of Müller-Thurgau planted by Fred and Mary Benoit. Acquired by Dr. Robert Pamplin in 1999, the sites expanded and so did their grapes. In addition to the storied Müller, you can find Pinot Gris, Pinot Blanc, Gamay, and, of course, Pinot Noir. The new and current stewards of these grapes are veteran winemakers Jay Somers and Kory Sumner. With a shared love of all things burgundy and pure varietal expression they have found a path to walk together as co-parents of these beloved vines. 

For their current release of rosé they have taken the direct press option, picking Pinot Noir  grapes by hand from a few key sites and letting the clean juice settle after a gentle whole cluster crush. Just out of a cold bottle and into the glass, it is fragrant and mouthwatering with a light silky texture and juicy acidity. Salty watermelon, wild leafy herbs and volcanic marmalade. I’ve worked with these wines at dinner tables and bar seats for years and the response is always the same. They are crowd pleasers, taken at face value to simply be enjoyed. People know and love these wines. They trust them. The kind of trust that's been built with time and the intention Willamette is known for. —Beth Altenbernd

AT Roca "Pedregar" Catalonia, Spain 2018

Whenever someone asks me for champagne at a not-champagne price, I point them to AT Roca, a cava producer that has shifted the idea of what cava can be. Cava, as an idea to the larger public, is mass produced, no? AT Roca is the inverse—handmade and stunning, especially when vintage. And this is 8-year-old macabeau, co-planted with garnaxta, and fermented in barrels and then aged in bottle for 30 months, no dosage (meaning it doesn’t get dosed with a sugar mixture to kick-start a second fermentation). This is champagne-level wine, which makes sense because one of the founders, Agustí Torello Roca, apprenticed with grower champagne producer Bruno Michel. “Pedregar” means “rocky” thanks to the calcareous loam, which appears as a sort of rocky, sandy clay. And the flavor is a little rocky, in a romantic way, minerals, warm clay, teeny tiny strawberries, and misty clouds.  —Leslie Pariseau