White Zinfandel is a rose wine made from Zinfandel grapes that goes well with semi-sweet barbecue sauce.

Background
When vinified in the traditional manner, the Zinfandel grape can yield a rich, robust, rustic, red California wine. But in 1972, Bob Trinchero of the Sutter Home winery hit a marketing home run when he made a rose wine from Zinfandel grapes and called it White Zinfandel. In short, he created a different Zin from a similar source.

Special Attributes

• Cheap. It's hard to spend more than $10 on a bottle of White Zinfandel. But inexpensive is acceptable: Wine became the national drink of France, Italy, and Spain because people could afford to drink a little of it with their meals every day.

  
  

• Pink. Rose wines may not win complexity awards, but not every wine needs to be complex. White Zinfandel is merely simple and refreshing.

  
  

• Lightly sweet. Once you start thinking of wine in terms of the service it can provide at the dining table, your world oeno-view changes. Now all sorts of wines have a place: Little, sour, neutral, -- and, yes -- lightly sweet.

-David Rosengarten