2023 Pinot Noir Rosé
Dusty rose in color, the nose features lime peel and pink grapefruit beside hints of dried mango and white flowers. The palate is both juicy and robust with flavors of strawberry, peach hard candy and lime meeting a pithy finish of pink grapefruit, sarsaparilla and rose petal.
Vintage
VINTAGE 2023 required experience and patience that was rewarded with essential hang-time and ripening. The growing season started cool, then May sunshine brought an average bloom in mid-June followed by a glorious summer. We enjoyed many classic 80-degree Willamette Valley days, with nighttime highs staying down in the 50s even in August, typically the warmest month here in Oregon. The only exception to these consistent diurnal swings was a single big heat spike in mid-August. We anticipated picking in early September. However, some fortuitous rain events allowed us to push back harvest and we were thankful for the additional hang time.
Harvest came early, but not too early. We brought in beautiful fruit and we were pleased to still be picking Pinot noir into early October. When you have fast accumulation of fruit sugars, cool weather can be a welcome respite with even small amounts of rain helping the grapevines regulate and slow ripening. One of the reasons why Oregon Pinot Noir is so prized is for its freshness of fruit, and you can only get that vibrancy when it’s under 50 degrees during picking.
2023 brought amazing fruit quality, but our production was down, especially on cool climate white wines like Pinot Gris. Being an estate grown winery, we must follow Mother Nature’s lead as we cannot buy fruit to increase production. Smaller yields do mean a smaller crop and less wine, but we embrace vintage variation. Another great benefit of being estate grown is that it’s our decision exactly when to pick. Rather than rushing to bring fruit into the cellar, in 2023 were able to play the odds and wait out the rain on blocks that needed additional hang time to get the flavor development we needed.
Vineyard
The fruit for this all Pinot Noir Rosé is hand-harvested from our estate vineyard sites in the Willamette Valley. For the Rosé, we choose both young and old vines from higher elevation vineyards on their own rootstock. These give us full aromatic and flavor development as well as great freshness of fruit within a framework of lower alcohol.
Winemaking
Pinot Noir fruit for our Rosé is hand-harvested very ripe and gently whole bunch pressed with limited skin crushing, which makes virtually a “white Pinot Noir”. The wine is fermented cool in stainless steel tanks. Then carefully selected lots of fermented red Pinot Noir juice is blended back for color and texture. Our Pinot Noir Rosé is finished completely dry.
Viticultural & Enological Data
- Vine Age 8-50 years
- Harvest Sugars 23 Brix
- Vatting Free-run juice is cold fermented in stainless steel tanks. Select Pinot Noir juice added for texture & color.
