When wet spring days begin to morph into warm summer ones, there’s nothing quite as refreshing as a glass of rosé wine. I’m not referring to the sugared liquid once consumed in great volume in the 1980s–aka white zinfandel–but rather the drier version, crisp and with a hint of berry.

Rosé wine has always been a staple in France’s Provence region, but delicious roses now stem from Italy and Spain, Long Island and Napa. People are sometimes confused with the method of making rosé, assuming it’s the skin that produces the color, or perhaps a blend of both white and red to produce the result. Well…it turns out that depending on the vineyard and region, both may be right.

In a recent article titled “Think Pink,” the Bottlenotes blog explains how rosé wine is made–the methods, the grapes, and the styles. I’m looking forward to the next few months, when I can toast the long-awaited warm weather, accompanied by a glass of pink.

A votre santé!

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It seems as if everyone’s in the winemaking biz these days. And you have to wonder what has turned Scottish monks and American Pro Football players–both–into oenophiles.

In a recent article in The New York Times, Sarah Lyall writes about Buckfast Tonic wine, made by Benedictine monks, and “a symbol of Scotland’s drinking problem.”

Super charged with 15 percent alcohol by volume and a sweetened recipe loaded with caffeine, it’s no surprise that the younger population is drinking heavily (according to Lyall’s piece, on average, Scots age 16 and older drank the equivalent of 12.5 quarts of pure alcohol each in 2007, the eighth highest rate in the world). When faced with a potential ban of their beloved monk-made wine, the youths shouted in protest: “Don’t ban Buckie! Don’t ban Buckie!”

In the U.S., wine makers are not shedding shoulder pads and helmets for long black robes, but they are entering similar entrepreneurial territory. Joe Montana (aka “Joe Cool”), a winner of four Super Bowls as the quarterback for the San Francisco 49ers–so conveniently located to those nearby Napa vineyards–has joined forces with one of Napa’s classic vintners to make a wine from a Howell Mountain vineyard owned by Montana himself.

To learn about more ventures by pro football players-turned-winemakers, Drew Bledsoe and Charles Woodson, check out the Daily Sip by Bottlenotes.