AROMA: white guava, chrysanthemum, pennyroyal
FLAVOR: rose water, white raspberry, peach pit
FOOD PAIRINGS: crispy fish tacos, moules frites, BLT
VINIFICATION: 10.3 tons harvested on 9/20 and 10/10. The fruit was hand-harvested and the berries whole-cluster pressed to a stainless steel tank. The wine was fermented cool and finished dry. It underwent a long, slow malolactic fermentation which balanced the naturally high acidity. A gentle filtration was done prior to bottling.
SITE: From a mid-century planting of dry-farmed, head-trained Carignan in the township of Talmage. A severe diurnal shift supports gradual and often late ripening. The soil is red clay strewn with fist sized rocks. The combination of vine age, extended growing season, and tougher soil conspire to produce a rosé with great freshness and complexity.
NOTES: You’ve heard about 2023, right? The return to a classic California vintage. Wet spring. Good size crop. Perfect summer weather. October harvest dates. Low blood pressure. ;) The 2023 wines are super fresh, fruit dense, and because of the longer hang times and fully ripened skins—they are wildly aromatic. Like last year, this Rosè of Carignan comes exclusively from Rory & Vince Bartolomei’s vineyard in Talmage, Mendocino. You have turn your clock back 100 years when you visit Talmage, a special place where locals still ride into town on horseback. These two brothers look like they walked off the set of a Quentin Tarantino movie—such distinctive characters, so tied to a specific time and place. Their ranch was planted more than 80 years ago and the soldiering old vines have have been dry-farmed there for generations. Some healthy looking clusters came in on the morning of October 9th—a month later than in 2022—with textbook chemistry. To manage color uptake we elected not to crush the fruit before pressing it. This direct-to-press method reduced our juice yield but gave us the pale salmon colored wine we were seeking.
