Love at first sip might be your reaction after trying a Patton Valley Vineyard Pinot Noir Rosé 2007.
At least, that was mine.
So much so that I just about stretched the limits of the Wine News Review fairly frugal affordability index.
That is, I plunked down $17 for a bottle of the Patton!
That was after a wine tasting this past weekend at one of my favorite wine shops in the D.C. area, Vienna Vintner.
Dry (forget the notion that rosés have to be sweet), ever so subtly frizzante with watermelonly tones and a slight acidic rush. But what I think got to me was its hint of flowers.
It is, after all, spring.
For more on the subject of spring and rosés, check out TODAY columnist Edward Deitch’s recent observations in an aptly headlined column “Stop and ‘smell’ the rosés.”
Deitch expounds on his affection for the season’s pinks and lists a couple of his finds, including one that fits rather nicely in the fairly frugal affordability index: a 2007 Roseum from Vina Robles in Paso Robles on California’s Central Coast (about $13).
Bonus info: Ever wonder why some wines are pink? The preferred method of producing them, according to my handy copy of The Oxford Companion to Wine, is to allow the juice of the grapes to linger with the dark-colored skins for only a brief period of time, several hours in some cases.
Want to find a perfectly priced bottle of wine? Give the Smarter Wine Search a try.
Sam,
Thanks for the kind comments on our 2007 Pinot Noir Rose (my email won’t let me insert the ‘ over the e).
I thought I would pass on a few notes on how that wine was made. All of the fruit was from our certified-sustainable Pinot Noir vineyard. We picked some fruit from young vines that weren’t quite ready for the red program, and crushed it into plastic picking bins. We never crush fruit destined for the red program, but for rose, you want the skin contact. We let it sit on skins for several hours, then drained the free run juice into stainless steel barrels for fermentation, and pressed the rest. We picked this fruit a little earlier than that for the reds, wanting the higher acidity. To the juice from the young vines, we added some “saignee” juice. This is a French term for a traditional practice of draining a little juice off of red fermentors right after the fruit is destemmed to decrease the juice-to-skins ratio and increase concentration in the reds. As we had some rain in the 2007 harvest, we bled about 2-3% of the juice off the reds and made it into rose.
This may be more information than you care for, but thought I would pass it along.
Keep up the blogging!
Regards,
Monte Pitt
Co-Owner
Patton Valley Vineyard
Hey, Monte – thank you very much for the backgrounder. That’s a fascinating process – no wonder the wine tastes so good! Drop by anytime.
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