Would a president who once took a newspaper to court for calling him a drunk be pleased about his memorial being called Theodore Rosévelt Island?

/ Three Olives Rosé Vodka

This morning, I was minding my own business when I got an email that made me stop in my tracks.

“Rosé is so much more than a drink, it’s a lifestyle, a symbol of endless fun, and now, rosé is a destination,” Three Olives Rosé Vodka said in a press release that the brand characterized as a “national call-to-action.”

In its bid to spread the gospel about its beverage, Three Olives wants to rename one Roosevelt location “Rosévelt” for National Rosé Day, the holiday that allegedly falls on the second Saturday in June.

The company is asking voters to choose where it should bestow an “epic party” and “bring a pink paradise to life somewhere in America” this summer. D.C.’s Theodore Roosevelt Island—the largest presidential memorial in the city—is in the running, alongside towns like Roosevelt, Texas and Roosevelt, Missouri, as well as New York City’s Roosevelt Island, a Roosevelt Bridge in Stuart, Florida, and the Roosevelt District of Fresno. D.C. is not currently in the lead, thank goodness.

I’ve got a lot of questions. At the top of the list: why Theodore Rosévelt Island, and not, say, Rosévelt High School, or Franklin Delano Rosévelt Memorial, or Compass Rosé, or Rosé’s Luxury, or Rosé Park in Georgetown? While we’re at it, has Three Olives considered feeding some of its blushing liquid to the Chilean rosé tarantula at the National Zoo?

More pressingly, does this mean that rosé is officially over? The drink, once christened “Hampton’s Gatorade,” has grown in popularity over the past decade, gracing Instagram feeds and used as an inspiration for gummies and the once-ubiquitous “frosé.” In 2017, Washingtonians consumed the most rosé per capita in the country, per a report from Wine Access.

For what it’s worth, the use and possession of alcohol on National Park Service property is allowed under some circumstances, but it’s not clear if NPS would let a Rosévelt Island party fly.

So what would ole Teddy Roosevelt think about being called Rosévelt? He probably wouldn’t love it! He actually took the Iron Ore newspaper to court in 1913, suing the media outlet for saying that the then-presidential candidate “gets drunk, too, and that not infrequently, and all his intimates know about it.” Roosevelt took the stand and testified that ““I have never been drunk or in the slightest degree under the influence of liquor … I have never drunk a high-ball or cocktail in my life. I have sometimes drunk mint juleps in the White House. There was a bed of mint there, and I may have drunk half a dozen mint juleps a year, and certainly no more.” Roosevelt won the lawsuit.

But, as former DCist contributor Chris Klimek points out, the words chiseled into the monument read, “I want to see you game, boys, I want to see you brave and manly, and I also want to see you gentle and tender.” Sounds like something a Rosévelt might say.