The 2015 Harvest was interesting to say the least. The harvest yields were low and the pace wasn’t as frantic as in years past. Going into the harvest season I had already made up my mind on challenging myself by producing an “in-house” Viognier, a first for our little winery. There must have been something in the air last year because when the Cabernet Sauvignon fruit was being processed, I decided we should try making a small batch of rosé, another first for our winery. In my mind, it was a win-win situation.
I figured we could bleed a little bit of juice off the Cab Sauv tank as the fruit was being processed, which would change the grape skin to juice ratio and produce a darker and heavier extracted red wine. If we made a halfway decent rosé, the family would have a fun little wine to drink throughout the course of the year. If things went really sideways, I figured we could scrap the idea of consuming it as wine and distill the rosé into brandy, using it at some point in one of the ports. However, the final product was too good to keep just for us, so the decision was made to share our 60-case production with none other than our loyal Wine Club members!
The method of bleeding off a red wine tank to produce a rosé is called Saignée; (from the French word for bleeding). Although the wine is technically pink, it is processed and treated like a white wine. This implies that the wine must be cold stabilized and careful attention must be had to not expose the wine to oxygen during production and bottling.
It is very common to find an off-dry Rosé, meaning that the winemaker chose to leave a small amount of residual sugar in the wine. The off-dry Rosés tend to have a rather sweet disposition and truthfully, these aren’t really my cup of tea. My mind had been made up, just like in the case of the Viognier, to go completely dry in the fermentation. If we were going down the rosé path, it was to be dry, have a clean aromatic profile and pack a little bit of a punch! We achieved exactly that! The nose of the wine shows hints of ripe strawberries; it carries a balanced acidity and just enough of cabernet sauvignon tannins to make it an ideal pairing for a light picnic or a Sunday by the pool!
We decided to name our cabernet sauvignon rosé “Rosario”. The wine was named after the city in Argentina where my grandfather and father lived for so many years. This beautiful city has a very special place in each of our hearts. We couldn’t be more proud to share this delectable, extremely limited wine with you.*
*Our “Rosario” is now available at our Tasting Room.
