POSTCARDS FROM PROVENCE 5:
Extremely Pale Rose All the Time
Ever since I arrived at the house here in St. Paul de Vence I've had an intense sense of deja vu. It's probably because I came here and stayed with a French family on the Riviera for a summer exactly 10 years ago, in a little village called Mougins right next door to Cannes. Everything - from the Boules players in the village squares to the yacht-clogged harbors of the port cities to the ubiquitous glasses of rose wine - reminds me of a time past. Fortunately, one slight deviation from the past is that I'm now able to drink much more of the fabulous pink wine than I was permitted to as a teenager the last time around.
There's a new book out that's completely dedicated to pink wine that's become something of an anthem for this trip. It's called Exremely Pale Rose and was first brought to my attention by The New York Times' wine columnist Eric Asimov not long ago in his blog. I've not actually read the book myself yet, but two of my travel companions are currently in the thick of it, and report it's very good. Personally, I've preferred to do "real" research on the subject while on this trip, saving the actual reading for foggy San Fran when I get back.
Back to wine, then. The quintessential beverage of these parts, rose is downed here in copious quantities, and my companions and I have taken it on as a personal mission of sorts to blend in with the locals by way of consumption (in other words, the American way). But because, logistically speaking, it's impossible to just drink wine - pink or not - all the time, I've devised the following three-step strategy to help us achieve our goal:
Recipe for drinking Extremely Pale Rose All the Time:
1) drink rose in a tumbler, NOT a wine glass
The locals drink rose at lunch, mid-afternoon, dinner - whenever - in what some people might call water glasses, or tumblers. Regardless, they're stemless, so they seem more daytime-appropriate. Plus, they're easier to balance as you sip in precarious locations like poolside or, say, on board a moving yacht. And finally, they're much easier to keep hold of while playing a fierce game of boules or ping pong.
2) add ice
It's not lost on me that adding ice to your wine in most civilized societies is akin to driving on the wrong side of the road or, worse, admitting that you prefer fast food to a proper sit down meal. However, it's tolerated here because a) it's so freaking hot, and b) it necessarily dilutes the wine a bit so that you can lower your alcohol intake without actually slowing your speed of consumption. You see, the point of drinking Extremely Pale Rose all the time is not to become intoxicated. 
Doing so, in fact, would be incredibly un-chic. Rather, the point, as you will hopefully recall, is to FIT IN. Becoming drunk would impair your ability to speak a foreign language and Faire comme ils font en France, therefore leading you further from your goal and nearer a late afternoon hangover, which is never fun.
3) when all else fails, dilute with straight water
Obviously you want to avoid this option at all costs, but it's been known to present itself as the only viable option to keep drinking Extremely Pale Rose all the time. I also don't think it needs explaining, but all the same I'll offer this tip for maintaining a satisfactory appearance while drinking diluted rose: 
don't overdilute the already pale pink stuff so that it looks like you're - gasp! - just drinking water. I don't think any readers of this blog would actually make this error, but it's worth mentioning for the random surfers with less vinous expertise who may navigate to this page randomly.
Rose Pong: Taking it to the next level
After drinking lots of rose one afternoon I got into a heated ping pong match with my dad. The guy actually beat me (21-19), an incredibly annoying accomplishment given the 10+ years of professional tennis lessons I had growing up. Aside: He also beat me in tennis back then, too, in spite of never having any professional training himself. All this, and I'm in (or at least near) my physical prime, while he's...well, you do the math.
Knowing I was looking for a way to redeem myself, my sister suggested we start up a game of rose pong - an adaptation of the eponymous beer pong tournaments played at college campuses across the country. The premise is simple: two people stand on opposite sides of the ping pong table with a glass of rose on each side, in the middle of the table. 
You try to get the ball in the other person's glass - which is partially filled with rose - at which point that person has to down the entire thing in one gulp. Guess what? Turns out I'm one heck of a rose pong player: I beat everyone in my family, meaning that everyone had still MORE rose, while I got to feel like a fat cat and the ultimate champion. Here, a pic of my dad drinking up. Cheers to that.
Purchasing advice & word of caution
I don't have any specific brands to recommend, as I've not been paying attention. That's not the point of Provencal rose, after all. It pretty much all tastes the same to me, although I do, like, I suppose (again, I haven't actually gotten around to reading it yet, so I can't be sure) the authors of Extremely, have a preference for the palest roses of the bunch. They tend to be the most traditional (read: evocative of this region) and the lightest on their feet. Just what you want when you're on vaca. Speaking of which, it's time to get back to that.
CAUTION: Drinking too much rose can lead to a loss of focus in other areas of your life as you spiral further and further into your obsession with drinking Extremely Pale Rose all the time. Case in point - this snap of a bum in Vence sitting on the other side of a fountain, waiting for his rose to chill in the water. On the up side, apparently bums in France get to drink Pellegrino in addition to chilling their wine in public spaces - not a bad place to be a bum.