Albert Einstein famously said: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.” In the heart of summer, this is good advice for wine.

Consider rose, the simplest wine possible. Wine snobs can say what they like about pink wine, but there are moments when a snappy rose is the wine. This is that moment. There is no greater wine, for example, with a good anchovy-rich, Parmesan sprinkled Caesar salad, which is a summertime staple.

You want rose right about now. With Einstein in mind, I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about rose in one word: grenache.

Sure, other grapes, such as pinot noir and cabernet franc, turn in admirable rose performances. Any red grape variety can be made into rose. Come to think of it, any wine at all, red or white, can become a rose. Many of the world’s worst roses (it’s a fierce competition) are really junk white wines, often sweet, to which a dab of red wine is added.

Grenache is a red grape. But more importantly, it’s an intensely fruity red grape. Most roses are banal because, even when properly made, they spend only hours on the skins. It’s the skins that have most of the flavor and all of the color. If the juice stays on the skins too long you get red wine. So a rose, like Cinderella, doesn’t have much time before the party’s over. It gets whisked off the flavor rich skins in a matter of hours before it turns into a red wine.

You can see the problem: How do you extract flavor if the juice can only spend, say, overnight on the skins? It’s like showing New York to an afternoon visitor when they have to catch a flight the next morning. This is why you want grenache. Its skins are so intensely flavorful that, as with Times Square, even the quickest visit leaves a lasting impression.

But which grenache rose? This takes two words: Spanish rose. What’s more – brace yourself – the producer doesn’t matter. Really, any Spanish grenache rose or rather, rosado, will do as long as it’s the latest (2004) vintage. I’ve yet to have a Spanish rose that wasn’t fruity, dry, well-balanced, cheap, and good.

Spain has, by far, the world’s largest production of what they call garnacha, nearly 600,000 acres. That’s about three-quarters of the world’s entire supply. Grenache likes it hot, dry, and sunny.

Ever heard of the famous French rose called Tavel? You got it: grenache. A creature of the strong Provencal sun, Tavel is produced in a small zone in the southernmost section of France’s Rhone Valley just outside the city of Avignon. Tavel is France’s shrine to rose, as it’s the only appellation controlee devoted exclusively to making rose wine. Tavel is good stuff too, if spendy.

But if Tavel has the strong Provencal sun shining on its grenache grapes, what about Spain? No one ever called the place cloudy. In short, Spain has all the right conditions for great rose: endless sun, endless garnacha, and a huge local thirst for something cool to sip on during long summer siestas. (They haven’t discovered Caesar salad, but they do have gazpacho.)

That local Spanish thirst has one other attribute: The Spanish don’t like sweet wines. This means that whatever Spanish rose you find will be dry. Sweetness is the enemy of good rose. Producers add sweetness to give their roses some kind of flavor. Grenache doesn’t need sweetness added, because it’s got plenty of intrinsic flavor. The sweetness pitfall is thus elegantly sidestepped. (Einstein would be pleased.)

So consider this the world’s simplest wine column. Get Spanish rose. Get the latest vintage. Get any producer you can find. Spend less than 10 bucks a bottle. Now you’re done. Who says wine is complicated?