Rose is one of the glories of French winemaking, even though it’s overshadowed by red Bordeaux, Burgundy and Champagne. The best French roses, which usually come from in and around Provence, are subtle, complex wines that have about as much in common with the American concept of pink wine as I have in common with $100 wine. Any rose that has Tavel on the label is well worth sampling, even at some of the prices you’ll find.

So what does that have to do with the Becker Vineyard 2009 Provençal Dry Rose (about $10, purchased)? It’s a mostly successful attempt by one of Texas’ leading wineries to make a Provencal-style rose without being in Provence. The grapes, in fact, come from Mason, about 40 miles north of Fredericksburg in the Texas Hill Country. This is no easy feat, but no less than Russ Kane, perhaps the most knowledgeable Texas wine writer, sings its praises.

What does Provencal-style mean? Very dry, low in alcohol, and with less fruit than New World roses. Don’t expect to find the big dollop of strawberry or watermelon that the latter have. Instead, these wines have much less intense red fruit. Drink this with any fall harvest kind of meal or while you are football tailgating. And don’t worry about drinking rose if it isn’t summer; this is the kind of wine that you can enjoy all year round. Retail availability is limited in Dallas, but you can order it from the winery.

Albarino is a Spanish grape that produces white wine that doesn’t really taste like sauvignon blanc, though it has some sauvignon blanc-like qualities. This has left it in wine drinker limbo, since quality albarino usually costs a couple of dollars than sauvignon blanc. Its cause hasn’t been helped by some Spanish wineries, which market albarino as a Spanish sauvignon blanc.

This is too bad, because well-made albarino is worth the extra couple of dollars a bottle. The Montecillo ($13, sample), made by the always reliable Maria Martinez, has everything albarino is supposed to have: some citrus, but not an overpowering amount; a long, clean, stony finish; and a more full, richer mouth feel that is completely different from that of sauvignon blanc. The wine geek term for albarino’s flavor is lychees, which is best described as something between a pear and a grape.

And did I mention low alcohol? Or that it has a screwcap?

Having said all that, albariono is, like sauvignon blanc, a seafood wine. Think boiled shrimp or steamed mussels or even something more exotic. The Spanish like to drink it with barnacles, called percebes, that are prepared in more or less the same way as mussels.

One of the best parts of this business is finding a wine that turns out to be something that you can happily drink for the rest of your life. Which is exactly what the Casamatta ($13, purchased, available at Central Market) turned out to be.

How well made is this wine? The Wine Magazines and I agree that it’s a terrific wine at a terrific price. And how often does that happen?

The Casamatta comes from a leading Tuscan producer, Bibi Graetz, who makes traditional Italian wines using some of the best New World methods. That combination produces a bottle that reflects the qualities that are the strength of Italian wine, like low alcohol and balanced acidity, but does so in a consistent, dependable manner that the hit or miss nature of too much Italian winemaking often can’t do.

The Casamatta is made with sangiovese, so look for some sour cherry fruit, a firm acid backbone, and lots more finish than a $13 wine should have. It’s almost embarrassing how much more interesting this wine is than similary-priced Chiantis from big-name wineries. Highly recommended. Serve this with everything from spaghetti and meatballs to roast chicken to cheese and olives.

I was drinking rose the other day, and a question came up. Why, if so many roses are supposed to be dry, do some California roses seem sweet?

Two reasons. One is the idea of perception of sweetness, in which our brains assume that something that tastes fruity is going to be sweet. Hence, a rose with a lot of strawberry fruit is going to seem sweeter than it is, since our brains associate strawberry flavor with sweetness. (Thanks to the great James Tidwell, who told me about this and explains it much more eloquently than I do.) The other follows from the first, and is part of the difference between New World and Old World styles. New World wines, like those from California, are fruitier than Old World wines, and the extra fruit flavor implies a sweetness that isn’t there.

Which, in a roundabout way, is where the l’Ermitage ($10, purchased, available at Central Market) fits in. It’s the opposite of a New World rose — a classic French blend of syrah, grenache and mouvedre that makes a surprisingly complex $10 wine. It has a very stony finish, a dazzling light pink color, and a touch of red berry fruit without any perception of sweetness. In this, it’s one of the best-made roses I’ve ever had, and is as enjoyable as many, more expensive ones. Don’t be surprised if it shows up in the 2011 $10 Hall of Fame.

Chill the l’Ermitage, and drink it over the Labor Day weekend on its own or with whatever picnic or barbecue you have planned.

Screwcaps wines aren’t a joke any more. We offer a list of affordable labels, plus a recipe for steamed mussels that go great with a screwcap white.

Call it the malbec conundrum. Argentina’s national grape produces one of the most popular wines in the world, but finding a $10 malbec that is worthwhile is not easy to do. There are plenty of cheap malbecs, but save for the Yellow & Blue, I haven’t had much success. Most of the $10 malbec that I taste is too fruity or too jammy or too much a combination of the two, as if winemakers are trying to make it taste like Australian shiraz.

Enter the Los Paulos (about $10, purchased, widely available), from the well-respected producer Dona Paula. It still has malbec’s juicy, ripe fruit (mostly cherry), but it’s not nearly as over the top as some are. There’s also a bit of a finish, which you don’t see in most inexpensive malbec — they’re mostly a big gob of fruit at the beginning, and hardly anything else. My pal John Bratcher, who is my malbec expert, said that he has tasted more expensive malbecs that didn’t offer this much value.

Finally, several things to keep in mind about this wine: First, it has a screwcap, which means that the wine changes significantly after you open it. It’s going to take 15 or 20 minutes before it tastes the way it should. Second, don’t be afraid to chill this — 20 or 30 minutes in the refrigerator before you open it. It’s a bit hot (which means the alcohol, at 14 percent, is more noticeable than it should be), and chilling it will keep the alcohol at bay. Third, it’s a food wine, and will taste better if you drink it with something like roast chicken, hamburgers or pizza.

Buying wine sight unseen is not easy. Store shelves are packed with too many bottles, too many of which lure consumers with clever labels that makes what’s in the bottle seem an afterthought. Those wines that do offer a glimpse of what’s inside usually do so in winespeak so convoluted that even professionals get dizzy. Eight dollar cabernet sauvignon does not have hints of mocha.

Which brings us to the Line 39 ($9, purchased). I was having a shrimp boil, and I was poking through the wine section at Kroger looking for something new to serve. This bottle was stuffed on a lower shelf, more or less hidden by the usual grocery store suspects. I’ll confess: The first thing I noticed was the screwcap. So I picked up the bottle, and gave it the once over. What I found, after the jump: (more…)

The search goes on for a replacement for Osborne Solaz.

The Volteo ($8, purchased, available at Whole Foods) comes close, and not just because it’s imported by the company that used to bring Solaz into the United States. In this, there are four other Volteo wines — a white, a rose, and two red blends.

It comes close because it is a solid, well-made Spanish wine that is surprisingly Old Word in style. That means it has some, but not much, cherry fruit, tell-tale Spanish acid, and enough oak to balance the wine. Oddly, the Volteo Web site says just the opposite; hopefully, the producer won’t discover its error and start making Spanish wine that tastes like California merlot.

Serve this with lighter red wine food, like barbecue (which is what I drank it with) and things like roast chicken. I’d also open the bottle 15 or 20 minutes before you drink it; it needs that much time to show what it has to offer.

Finally, a word about the label. The back actually has useful information (serving temperature, grape variety, and serving suggestions) and the front has what Volteo calls a  Smart Label: A blue frame appears around the label illustration when the wine is at the correct serving temperature. I don’t know if it works, since I drank the wine too warm. But if someone does get it to work, leave a comment.

Wine snobs can be so dull. I found the Feudo stuffed in a corner at Jimmy’s (a tip o’ the wine glass to the Italian Wine Guy for pointing it out), and did a little research on CellarTracker before I drank it. The comments made the Feudo sound like bottled water that had been left in the sun.

“A tad boring.” “A summer sipper.” “Quite simple.”

Sigh. They’ll never figure this stuff out, will they? The Feudo ($8, purchased) is not only a $10 Hall of Fame quality wine, but another example of how far and how fast Sicily has come in terms of wine quality. It’s a dry white wine that is clean and fresh, and even a bit rich, with some sort of licorice-flavored peach fruit. The grape — the grillo — used to be used mostly to make marsala, a dessert wine, but increasingly shows up in table wines like this. Does this wine taste like white Burgundy? Nope. But it’s not supposed to, is it?

Highly recommended, and it will pair well with grilled chicken, almost any sort of grilled or boiled seafood, and summer salads.

New label, same incredible quality.

It’s almost embarrassing to do a Vitiano review. I’m hardly the fawning type, yet I sound like a gushing school girl whenever I write about these wines. The quality is consistent from vintage to vintage; the wines are always spot on, balanced, and varietally correct; and they always offer $15 to $20 worth of value.

All of which is true for this edition of the Rosso ($10, purchased, available at Jimmy’s). And, since I was able to find it for $10, it will reappear in the 2011 $10 Hall of Fame. The Rosso, a blend of sangiovese, merlot and cabernet, is dark, deep, and fresh. Don’t expect a New World style of wine that will overwhelm you with fruit or tannins; rather, it’s an amazingly subtle wine for something that is this inexpensive. Drink it with any sort of red meat, tomato sauce or even roast chicken. Highly recommended.

One note: The wine blog that I do, the Wine Curmudgeon, is one of the 100 most trafficked wine blogs on the Internet, as measured by alawine.com (which is regarded as the authority for this sort of thing). I’m as surprised as you are.