Bonny Doon 2001 “Vin Gris de Cigare” (Earth) – Mostly grenache, with some mourvèdre, grenache blanc, and roussanne. Fruit-pop wine, bubblegummy and fun, with a rounded, polished, and highly marketable exterior. There’s lots of understated flash here, and while this does mean that there’s less substance than one might want, I don’t believe the wine is aiming for anything other than what it is. In which case it’s a success. (6/12)
Browse Tag
rosé
Cerasuolo performance
La Valentina 2011 Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo Rosé (Abruzzi) – Succulent. Red berries, both tame and with the slightly bitter wildness of some trailside plumpness that you know you probably shouldn’t eat, but which you just can’t help popping into your mouth anyway. Balanced, finishing with just a little grace note of spice. (6/12)
Oh Delaille, why?
Delaille “Domaine du Salvard” 2011 Cheverny Rosé (Loire) – Nakedly appealing, yet far from uncomplicated, its chalky reserve and high-tension poise at odds with the easy pleasure of its strawberry-ish fruit. Delightful. (6/12)
Paula Cole
Chaussard “Nana, Vins et Cie” “You Are So Bubbly” (Loire) – The 2008 bottling, I think, but I don’t know for sure. Frothy and thick, a very particulate wine with a fair number of stylistic familial relationships with both the orange and the natural, yet with a quirky and variably appealing individuality of its own. Cooked strawberries, albino plums, earth, perhaps even a little fruit soda. Challenging, and not everyone will like it. But I do. (6/12)
A ticklish subject
Clos Saron 2010 “Tickled Pink” (Sierra Foothills) – Syrah and cinsault. Bony and forgettable. But the a new bottle arrives, vastly more generous than the previous, and while there’s still a parched, desert butte quality on a bed of minerality ground slowly down from gravel to sand, it at least makes one take notice. The notion that this ages well makes sense when one compares it with the bleak starkness of another rosé known for its ageability: that of R. López de Heredia. The organoleptics are different, though.
Baxter
Lagier Meredith 2011 Rosé of Syrah (Mount Veeder) – Very pleasant, a bright pinkish-red berry on which one wishes to absent-mindedly snack. It doesn’t really submit to detailed analysis, but it’s nice. (5/12)
Our kelly
R. López de Heredia 1997 Rioja “Gran Reserva” Viña Tondonia Rosado (Center-North) – Restrained. Very restrained. The bony, exposed-wrinkle structure of this wine…so unique among rosés…is a little more stretched than usual here. Even for Tondonia Rosado, this is bare and stark. There’s that skeletal minerality and steady-state, bell-tone fruit that tastes more like the desert in which one will either find appeal or not (I do), but the wine’s just…well, “tired” isn’t quite right, because it’s not faded beyond its intended form. Perhaps the best way to describe the wine is that it’s afflicted with a very slight pallor. (11/09)
Pure pink
Beckmen 2010 Grenache Rosé Purisma Mountain (Santa Ynez Valley) – Very fruity. A bit of a bomblet, really. A raspberry neutron bomblet.
Bare mayos
Los Bermejos 2010 Lanzarote Rosado (Lanzarote) – Almost shockingly excellent. Berries, beached and already lightly tanned, accelerating from playful canter to full-on gallop. There is almost no aspect of this wine that isn’t appealing (I leave myself wiggle room because I don’t much like the packaging…not exactly important stuff). This is the sort of thing one should own in multiple case quantities. I certainly plan to. (1/12)
Truthiness
Verdad 2010 Grenache Rosé Sawyer Lindquist (Edna Valley) – Raspberry bubblegum. Texturally rich (aided by the strong impression of sweetness) with decent acidity. Not bad, not great.