With Allen & Son pit-cooked barbeque, cole slaw, hush puppies, HoneyBaked Ham, and homemade potato salad.
Laetitia Arroye Grande Valley NV Brut Rosé
William Deutz Millésimé 1996 Brut Rosé
The Deutz wins on one count: It's got the more persistent bubbles, and releases them in a slower, more methodical fashion, whereas the Laetita loses its fizz more quickly [I don't know how important that is to Champagne purists].
But on all other counts - color, body, aromatics, and flavour - the Laetitia is a clear winner.
[The color on the Deutz was particularly disappointing: I went to the bother of labelling all the glasses for everyone - there were seven of us, with fourteen glasses - thinking that, once in the glass, the two wines would be difficult to distinguish, but it turns out that the Deutz is a yellow wine - sort of a satiny, antique, faded Queen Anne yellow - which, again, might be a color that appeals to purists, but it doesn't bear any resemblance to the lilac/lavender/violet color that Deutz uses on its tinfoil & label.]
Importer of record on the Deutz was Premier Cru, so I don't think that heat damage was a problem.
In our market [and judging from Wine-Searcher, most American markets], the Deutz is five to six times as expensive as the Laetitia, so this one's a no-brainer. [And purchase now, before the folks at Laetitia wise up and raise the tariff.]
By the way, we tried another bottle of the Laetitia about a month ago [which was why I wanted to try it opposite the Deutz - to see if the Laetitia really was as good as I thought it might be]. I saved a little in the fridge [with a rubber stopper], and came back to it five days later [at which point, of course, the Laetitia was just a flat wine], and then tasted it opposite a cult rosé from the Loire. The Laetitia showed no signs of oxidation whatosever, still had clear, cutting, powerful, penetrating flavors, and once again wiped the floor with the old world competition.
So if you belong to the "slow oxidation implies cellarworthiness" camp, then the Laetitia might have the legs to age for a few years [if not decades].
And the Laetita has a very solid fruit body [I imagine that a purist might argue that it's just a little too fruity, although, in fairness, that's going to be true of any wine from California], so if the acid backbone can hold up, then, down the road, this Laetitia might turn into something really interesting.