Rosé has gotten a bad name because of white zinfandel which is certainly a sweet wine and often the gateway/entrance for wine drinkers. I am personally all for anything that helps folks appreciate wine. My hope is that folks are willing to move beyond this experience to wines that are not dominated by sweetness. Wines that are less sweet or not sweet at all actually offer a much wider array of flavors and tasting experience. Learning to appreciate these subtleties is the path of a wine lover. While Fiddlehead Cellars Rosé is indeed pink and has the name “Pinkie” on its label, it has no discernible sweetness.
There are a couple of ways of making a rosé: one is to simply blend a white and red wine to the desired flavor or color. The traditional manner of production is to minimize the contact of the juice with the skins of red grapes. All color in wine comes from skin contact. By limiting the time of contact, the winemaker accomplishes two things: the most obvious is a lighter color. The second is the lighter development of tannins in the wine. Tannins are the chemical compounds that give a pucker to red wines. This characteristic is more of a feeling than a flavor but is essential to a dry wine experience. So a rosé bridges the flavor components of a white wine with some of the characteristics of red wines. Essentially the winemaker creates a white or lighter wine that red wine drinkers will like too.
Fiddlehead Cellars Rosé is made in the traditional way described above by Kathy Joseph, owner and winemaker of Fiddlehead wines. She specializes in two varieties of grapes: Sauvignon Blanc & Pinot Noir. This rosé is made from pinot noir grapes.
The wine is highly allocated and because we have a great relationship with Kathy Joseph we have 10 cases of the 305 she produced. We are going to save some of those cases for her Winemaker’s Dinner on August 4th, but this is really the time to enjoy this wine.
As usual, this wine is reminiscent of spring strawberries in the glass. Be warned: this wine is designed to be tasted when it’s young (that is, newly released). It loses the light fruit qualities fairly quickly. The wine is still tasty but not with the characteristics that I look forward to each year. I can hardly improve on Kathy’s tasting notes that can be found here: http://www.fiddleheadcellars.com/uploads/7/4/9/8/7498238/2011_pinkie.pdf
So how much is “Spring in a glass”? $23
We are storing this wine under refrigeration in order to preserve the young character until our August wine dinner.
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