The Times Misguides Readers About Summer Beverages in Winter

It is January and it is currently snowing outside. Is this the correct time to drink rosé, that summeriest of

It is January and it is currently snowing outside. Is this the correct time to drink rosé, that summeriest of summery wines? The New York Times advises you to throw caution, etiquette, logic and sanity to the wind and do just that.

Times booze expert Eric Asimov’s campaign for the frivolous — but tasty! — warm-time cordial was sparked by a tweet by Lockhart Steele, who explained that one should drink the pink stuff during the cold months only if it’s being tested for summertime.

Yet the prejudice — what else can one call it? — endures. In a Twitter post last week, Lockhart Steele, the founder of Eater.com and other Web sites, suggested that few excuses were acceptable for drinking rosé in January. Well, excuse me, Mr. Steele, you’ve obviously never tried a wine like Jean-Paul Brun’s 2009 Rosé d’ Folie, a minerally pink Beaujolais that I would drink any time of the year, especially if I had a plate of chicken roasted with garlic, rosemary and thyme.

Why this insistence to drink rosé when it’s freezing out? As a collective we’ve gone back and forth over when to drink certain wines, kowtowing to convention one year and throwing up our arms in concession others. A bottle of white with my bloody steak, please, because who follows the rules these days right!

Not quite. We clamor for some decency in our lives, and thus we will not touch rosé until the rebirth of Christ allows us to wear white. A bottle of red will do us more than fine.

Click for Scandal Report: Champagne Mania Makes for A Boozy Golden Globes

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234 The Times Misguides Readers About Summer Beverages in Winter