Robert Sinskey Vineyards

Desert Island Wine...
Pink Sunshine!

“If you were stranded on a desert island and only had time to grab one case of wine before your ship sank, what would it be?” Though an unlikely scenario, I ask this question of almost every potential employee of RSV. As bizarre as it may seem, it reveals much about an individual’s food and wine knowledge and if their philosophy is simpatico with RSV.

Some might choose what many wine writers have deemed the greatest wine of all time - the 1947 Cheval Blanc. Choosing to be stuck on an island with your only beverage being this powerful (and well aged) Right Bank Bordeaux might score some points for wine trivia knowledge; it reveals this candidate needs work on their food and wine philosophy. Let’s have a reality check. As great as this wine may be, it isn’t going to go well with your foraged fruits and roots… and the protein you might be lucky to find on land, or spear or net from the ocean, isn’t going to be the most enjoyable… a true first-world problem! And its auction value of many thousands of dollars won’t help on an uninhabited island. I guess one could use the bottles to write SOS on the beach and hope a well heeled yachtster sniffs it out.

At one time, I probably would have said Pinot Noir was my preferred desert island wine as it can go with the birds you might be lucky enough to dispatch, yet it can also work with fish and roots one might have to survive on. But it is still not ideal. Then, when we started to make Abraxas, that became my choice as the aromatic white blend would work with just about everything.

But what about the Vin Gris of Pinot Noir? It has enough oomph to work with the heartier fare one might find running on or flying around an island, yet it has the aromatic qualities that can go with the roots and some of the fruits - and it’s definitely delicious with the fish, molluscs, crustaceans, cephalopods and even the seaweed that can be found in the sea.

Most people think of rosé as a summer wine. I could not disagree more. It is an anytime wine. Of course I love it at summer picnics at the beach, but it is also delicious apres-ski with raclette or, more simply, a good soup and a grilled cheese sandwich after a hard day on the back forty. It is a refreshing contrast for just about any food and it can bring a little sunshine to the grayest of days. The Vin Gris of Pinot Noir is the perfect desert island wine no matter what season finds you stranded on your own private island.

But Seriously Folks...

Most American rosé, until recently, was made of the moment, for the moment. These wines were usually made by the saignée method - a technique that “bleeds off” freshly fermenting juice of more serious red wines, leaving behind a by-product that was used for a pink beverage that many times ended up frivolous and sweet. Rosé was meant to be fun, not serious.

RSV’s Vin Gris is a rosé that is fun and serious. It has been imitated by many but never duplicated because of the care RSV puts into its making. Selected lots of Pinot Noir from organically farmed estate vineyards, slow and gentle direct pressing, delicate copper pink juice whose color is determined by vintage, not the blending back of red wines, these are things that most don’t consider when making rosé. We do, and it makes a difference in the glass. RSV’s Vin Gris is quaffable rosé at the outset but has the “stuffing” to last for years in the bottle. Hallelujah!

When you get a rosé that’s a mix of serious and fun it’s time to pull out the snacks - seriously fun snacks that include this Taralli recipe. Taralli comes from the land of my great-grandmother. They are crunchy addictive crackers that go amazingly well with our addictive rosé. Serve the Taralli with a massive cheese and meat board or on their own with a glass of rosé. Either way both will shine.

Until the Next Wine....
Maria

EAT: Taralli - The Pretzel of Puglia

RSV organically farms five vineyards in the Carneros region with a total of 32 different vineyard blocks for 32 different lots of Pinot Noir. Of those, five blocks are selected for the Vin Gris of Pinot Noir. RSV Winemaker, Jeff Virnig, has been crafting this beautiful Vin Gris of Pinot Noir for thirty years. He has had the luxury of time to refine the Vin Gris and has perfected techniques like picking each vineyard at different levels of ripeness for each site - at that razor’s edge of flavor and brightness - to assure the wine is balanced, complex and just plain delicious. The grapes are hand-harvested at night, delivered to the cellar door in the wee hours of the morning where they are delicately whole-cluster pressed and the pure juice is cold-fermented to preserve the layered fresh fruit, mineral and spice characteristics of the finished wine. Purely delicious!