Barrymore Wines

Drew Barrymore has opened yet another chapter in her never-boring life.

And who doesn't want to be a winemaker these days? Welcome, then, Drew Barrymore to the sister- and brotherhood of vitners!

Well, more accurately, we should welcome the 37-year-old star of "E.T." and "Charlie's Angels" and the owner of a "Rebellious era" sub-entry in Wikipedia to the brother- and sisterhood of wine importers. Which is not a bad thing. I love wine importers. But don't expect to see Drew in a row of Merlot vines with a pair of pruning shears or down in a musty wine cellar rolling barrels around any time soon. (For the record, Drew is teaming up with Wilson Daniels, an established importer, to make this all happen.)

Her first wine under the rather appealingly conservative Shepard Fairey-designed "Barrymore" label is a 2011 Pinot Grigio from Italy. It isn't cheap, at $20. I haven't tried it yet. But at $20, it's by definition ludicrously overpriced. Pinot Grigio is a lunchtime wine that's built for washing down...well, lunch. And it has a name that's fun and easy to say (It rhymes!), which led it to be foisted on the American public as a Chardonnay alternative in bars a few years back. You can get a perfectly tasty one for less than $10.

But let's not complain too excessively. Drew says she wanted a wine that was "fresh, dynamic, and fun." Her Pinot Grigio is probably just that.

The trend here to note isn't so much celebrity winemaking as celebrity wine-branding. I'm even willing to cut Drew some slack on the price tag. She's staged a nice comeback. There's no reason she should ever sell herself short again.

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Ahhh....

When I was growing up in wine, there was nothing, and I mean nothing, more debased than the dreaded white wine spritzer. It was the quaff of the weak. Usually white wine with a squirt of soda water, sometimes garnished, sometimes not. I literally never consumed one — until I reached my mid-forties.

And there you have it. A wine spritzer is really a cocktail, but it's a cocktail that you can only really embrace as you age. Okay, sure, younger folks can take to the spritzers. Sure. But the point is that you don't want to be drinking Manhattans and Martinis in middle age, not all that often anyway. But you still like a nice cool drink with a tiny bit of a kick. Presto! Spritzer.

The key to a good spritzer, especially now that the cool weather is giving way to the warm, is to treat it like something to be mixed — a cocktail, not merely a handful of ice, half a glass of white wine (or red), and several splashes of soda. 

You can be as simple or as complex as you like on the front. I prefer to move a scooch past simple, but stop well before complex. So I use a rocks glass (although a highball glass if fine), a lot of cubed ice, some pretty el cheapo white or red wine, and lemon or lime (lemon for white, lime for red). I squeeze in about a tablespoon of lime or lemon juice over the ice. Then the wine. Then the soda, freshly carbonated and very, very fizzy (I recommend the SodaStream system, but Canada Dry is cool). If you want to add a kick, some bitters or a dose of Campari can be nice.

You can also do your own improvs. Add some grapefruit juice. Some vodka. Work in some mint. The sky's the limit. Just remember that the objective is to quench the thirst, not disorient the mind.

Stir. Sit back. Relax and be refreshed. Enjoy. And be proud that at long last, finally, you have grown up enough to be a spritzer man.

KPCC/Matthew DeBord

When the weather warms up, the pink wine comes out.

Winter gives way to spring and spring gives way to summer. In the wine world, a similar progression takes place. Big, robust red wines — the kind of thing you use to wash down stews while sitting in front of the fireplace in wool sweaters — give way to lighter reds and then...well, when the weather warms up, it's time to break out the pink wine.

Officially, we call these wines rosés (less frequently, blush). You probably remember the day when an Americanized version, white Zinfandel (nothing like big, hearty red Zinfandel) was derided. 

That was a bad patch for pink wine. But we know better now. In fact, we know enough to welcome the arrival of the pinks when the temperature climbs and the days get longer. We've evolved.

Rosé really and truly matters in France, specifically in Provence, where the wine is a rite of summer. They've been drinking the pink in Provence forever. In the U.S., rosé drinking caught on in the 1980s. Luckily, we can now obtain a wide range of rosés, from the U.S., from France, and from many other winemaking nations. 

The wines are never particularly complex. But that's not their purpose. Their role in the life is to accompany picnics and breezy summertime lunches on the patio, as the bossa nova trickles from the speakers and small children turn cartwheels across the green, green grass while adults offload the stresses of the weekly grind and consider a future unburdened by workaday fears. 

My ideal companion for rosé (or — Eek! — even white Zinfandel) is a simple mozzarella salad, with tomatoes and basil, drizzled with olive oil and sprinkled with sea salt and white pepper.

Rosé is produced in two main ways: the pink color comes from contact with red-wine grape skins during the maceration, or soaking, process prior to fermentation; or some red wine juice is extracted from the process of red-wine making and later fermented separately. 

A typical rosé has a light, flowery aroma and flavors of strawberry or raspberry. Some have a bit of sweet edge to them, and most lack much tannin or bold acidity, although when drunk well chilled they come off as nice and crisp, like biting into a freshly picked apple.

If wine is "bottled poetry," then rosé is bottled happiness. This is not a drink of depression.

Rosés will be all over the place for the next few months. Here's a recommendation: Hartley Ostini's Hitching Post Pinks (pictured above, at Whole Foods), from the Santa Barbara area. 

What better way to end a long, hard week than with a glass of wine...and some tweeting? I figured that people were combining these pleasures, so I created a Storify to prove my point. 

But maybe once Saturday arrives you can step away from the Twitter for a few hours and focus on wine, all by itself.

Matthew DeBord/KPCC

Does this scare you? It shouldn't, because nobody really needs a whole bunch of wine gear.

A lot of people are intimidated by wine because they think they need to master a special corkscrew or buy special fancy stemware or use special decanters. It goes on and on. And the wine world doesn't help matters by marketing lots of...what's the technical term I'm looking for here? Oh yeah — junk to folks who aren't all that experienced.

So how much wine gear do you really need? Well, you can get by with a pocketknife and a Solo cup. Actually, if you buy wines that are sealed with twist-off screwcaps, you can dispense with the pocketknife. And if you don't need to stand on ceremony, you can get rid of the Solo cup. A glass wine bottle is its own kind of stemware.

I'm not really advocating either of these tactics (please don't drink straight from the bottle, unless you're having a picnic in Paris). But what you should obtain is a good corkscrew. I recommend a simple model from the Screwpull brand. It's basically fail-safe. You'll never ruin a cork. 

When it comes to stemware, I used to recommend somewhat premium stems, like those from Spiegelau or Schott-Zwiesel, but now I say just go and buy six or eight basic stems from IKEA. Total cost will probably be about $10.

That's all you need. A decanter is worth it if you intend to drink older wines, and even younger wines can benefit from decanting. But you can use any old clear jar or pitcher for the purpose. A nice decanter just makes for better presentation.

You don't need a wine rack. You don't need a climate-controlled wine storage system. You don't much of anything except thirst and curiosity.

Actually, one thing is a worthwhile investment: an online subscription to Wine Spectator. You get access to a vast searchable database, so you can learn as you drink and make better buying decisions down the road. A mere $50 gets you a year of online access. 

It's a wine education. And it costs more than you should ever spend on wine gear.