Côtes de Provence Kirkland Signature Rosé wine review

 

This is our review of the 2016 Kirkland Signature Rosé wine (from Costco). With the end of a long winter the first sunny days are coming to Seattle, and with sunny days the types of wines one can drink expands to the seasonal varieties. You can drink wine any day of the year, but in the case of rosés they make for better summer than winter wines. Rosé wines are served often at the beginning of meals, for apéritif, or during the main meal. They are served cold, sometimes ice cold. Wines generally shouldn’t need an ice cube, but if there is a wine that can tolerate an ice cube even when coming out the fridge, it’s a rosé. 

2016 Costco Kirkland Signature rosé review

We don’t publish a post for every wine we drink. Perhaps we should, in which case it would be quite a list. We’d need to review the wines we like and those we don’t, and right now we’re focusing on wines that we tell ourselves “wow, this is great tasting bottle”. The Kirkland Signature wines tend to be higher end products labeled under Costco’s own brand. When reading the label on the bottle we notice a few details: 

• An appellation côtes de Provence controlée
• A “cru classé”, which means it has gone through additional selection
• This wine is a blend: 30% Grenache, 20% Mourvedre, 10% Tibouren, 10% Rolle, 5% Syrah, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon
• The actual origin of the wine is the Domaine de la Croix, made by Hélène Sinaeve and Michel Rolland
• Alcohol volume: 13%

Visually the wine is beautiful. The bottle is tastefully designed, the front and back labels leave plenty of space and transparency for the actual wine color to show. This rosé wine is slightly lighter in color intensity than some of its counterparts with some light pink pastel appearance. 

Now as far as taste: Layla liked it so much and found it so smooth she immediately transitioned to this bottle, from a previous rosé we decided to compare it with, side by side. I bought initially 4 bottles of rosé at Trader Joe’s, 2 from Bordeaux, 2 from Provence, and then went to Costco and saw these on display and bought 4 more bottles. From having none we ended up with 8 bottles. From thinking maybe these 4 bottles from Costco were too adding too much to our inventory, after tasting it we thought we should buy more of them before they are gone. Unlike its counterparts that can be overly sweet or have a bitter aftertaste, this wine is well balanced and very smooth. It has a fruity flavor, hints of melon, and no oaky taste as if it was aged in metal barrels like some of the Sancerre white wines.

In addition these bottles right now are on sale under $10 USD at your local store. If you come across these bottles and want to try a nice rosé wine from France for the Spring and Summer the Kirkland Signature rosé wine is one of the nicest wines you can get regardless of price.