Vine Path Blog 6/20: Rose Season is On!
Vine Path Blog Post 6/20 Rose Season is On!
I don’t know if you pay any mind to arbitrary wine holidays, but if you do then you would have just celebrated the biggest one of the year, Rose Day! Every second saturday of June wine chuggers from around the globe gather to suck down their favorite summer time beverage, not uncommonly in abundance. With that spirit in mind, this month’s collection celebrates the third wheel of the wine world, Rose, in all it’s glorious color.
Brothers Andrew and Adam Mariani in front of their estate vineyard.
Scribe Estate Rose of Pinot Noir
The Scribe estate was established in 2007 by Andrew and Adam Mariani, two brothers that wanted to make honest wines of place in Sonoma and the surrounding areas. In contrast to the ultra-manicured and over-designed (dare I say, “stuffy”) wineries of their neighbors in Napa, the Scribe winery is characteristic of the laid-back, casual and fun culture that defines the Sonoma wine making scene. Scribe Winery rapidly developed a reputation for making incredible wines, building a following of Bay Area tastemakers like Alice Waters of Chez Panisse and Cortney Burns of Bar Tartine. When you try this Rose, you’ll understand why. Like all of their wines, their Rose is made from sustainably grown fruit and fermented in a traditionalist, hand-off manner. No inputs are used in the winemaking process and all the wines are unfined and unfiltered. All of the fruit for this Rose came from their estate in Sonoma so we’re talking top-tier Pinot Noir. The style is racy, high acid, and light on its feet. It’s become a seasonal favorite for us in the store.
Coralie and Damien Delecheneau in La Grange Tiphaine.
Grange Tiphaine Rose Riange Tournant Sec
The La Grange Tiphaine domaine was established in the late 19th century by Alfonse Delecheneau and has remained in the family ever since. The husband and wife team of Coralie and Damien Delecheneau now spearhead the project and are making, it seems to me, some of the best wines in the Loire Valley. The Delecheneau’s 10 hectare domaine is certified organic and is situated in the Coteaux de Loire and Montlouis areas of the Loire’s Touraine district. The wines are always clean, precise, vibrant, fresh, and tense. For the Rose, they blend together Chenin Blanc, Cot (otherwise known as Malbec), Gamay, Cabernet Franc, and Grolleau from some of the younger vineyards in the domaine. The grapes go direct to press and are raised in stainless steel before being released without fining or filtration. The style here, like the color, is deeper and more concentrated, though don’t let that fool you, this wine is still dry, refreshing and thirst quenching. I don’t know where people got the impression that deeper hued Rose was sweet or bad, or that Rose is supposed to taste either like raspberry cotton candy or absolutely nothing, but these ideas have to go. These deeper Rose’s have their own unique and compelling character that’s worth getting to know.
The bottle in question, 2016 though…
The Withers El Dorado Rose
Our friend Andrew Tow is making amazing wines out in California. We’re so smitten with what he’s accomplished that we regularly carry several of his wines at a time. If you come in Bacco’s you will always find one of his bottlings. The Withers, which is the name of the highest part of a horses back, was established only a handful of vintages ago and they’ve rapidly proved themselves to be one of the best up and coming projects in California. They’re principle focus is on their line of single vineyard Pinot Noirs and Chardonnays from around the Sonoma Coast, but they also make some amazing wines from Rhone varietals mostly sourced from El Dorado. As members of the Rhone Rangers, their dedicated to the advancement of Rhone varietals in California and their output demonstrates why you should pay attention. This Rose is modeled on the most prestigious Rose appellation in France, Bandol, and it’s principle grape is the hearty and intense Mourvedre. Like Bandol, Andrew’s Rose is capable of aging (you’ll notice that this is a 2018 bottling) and the wine is better off for it. This is what structure looks like in Rose. Tense, high acid, richer in the mouth, and more concentrated and ripe. We carry this wine all year round and we never, ever tire of it.
Caroline Hoel and Hank Beckmeyer.
La Clarine Farm Rose Alors
If you were to ask me to name a winery that I thought was the most exciting in California, I’d likely name La Clarine Farm in the Sierra Foothills. Established in 2001 by the husband and wife team of Hank Beckmeyer and Caroline Hoel, the project was, like everyone else who wants to make wine, about making great wines of place. Through a series of revelations, Hank came to adopt a style of sustainable farming not often applied to winemaking and that’s what makes La Clarine Farm so thrilling. Inspired by the late agricultural philosopher and rice farmer Masunobu Fukuoka and his book “The One Straw Revolution", Hank set out to make La Clarine Farm fully ecologically consistent with local habitat. Fukuoka’s idea, often referred to as ‘do-nothing’ farming, is to recognize that the farm is itself habitat, that is to say that the farm is consistent with the nature that surrounds it. The process of ‘do-nothing’ farming is to basically do just that, nothing. La Clarine Farm does not control for any pests, viruses, mold or mildew, nothing. You might reasonably ask why take that risk. The answer is simple, once the farm adapts to its place in the local ecosystem it will exist in harmony with it. Instead of thinking about farming as problem solving by controlling for the problem, it’s problem solving by full integration into the habitat. Wines grown in this way are few and far between but from my experience they taste notably different and absolutely stupendous. Like The Withers Rose, this is also based in Mourvedre and is from El Dorado though this wine is fermented and raised in large oak puncheons. The style here is a simulacre of the ultra-rare and super nerdy Rose of R. Lopez Heredia in Rioja. The style here is richer, fuller, more intense and tight than is typical of Rose. The oak treatment also lends to the overall concentration and development of the fruit tones while contributing a light vanilla note to the nose. This is a great Rose to age for several more years.
A wild, untrained vineyard at La Clarine Farm.