Volume 05
Chasing Windmills. photo joneberlinfoto
2025 California Rosé Release.
Heading south of Napa, swinging briefly onto I-80 South towards Fairfield. Hang a right onto 12, past Suisun and the Peytonia Slough Ecological Preserve. With every click, further away from the "Napa reality." Duck hunting country, Travis Air Force base. Don Quixote, chasing windmills. My kind of country.
Purchase the Chasing Ether 2025 California Rosé here!
A couple more clicks, bumping tunes pushing one forward, a little Rhythm and Blues, maybe some Euro house, Mon, Petite Fleur! Oh la-la. Thinking about hanging a left to Locke, and Al the Wops. Not today, keep focus, I have grapes to secure. One hundred-year-old, geriatric vines. On their own roots.
Say what now, people!
One hundred years old! Birth year, 1925! Four years before dad. Ooofff! No hanging left to Locke today, zig when others zag. Right, towards Oakley, Contra Costa.
Hard right, parallel with the Sacramento River. The source, four hundred miles away. High in the Klamath mountains, northeast near Shasta. A long, pure run of river. Trying to find Suisun Bay, then the San Pablo. History, Spanish names for a reason. God’s country! As Tom Blake said, “Nature=God”.
The Antioch bridge looms ahead, cresting over the San Joaquin River, the longest in Northern California. You came for the wine but got the geography lesson. Sorry, not sorry. The river and the valley have been inhabited for some eight thousand years.
Say what now, people!
On the left, as you swoop down off the crest of the bridge, an Amazon fulfillment centre. To the right, a pole dancing studio. The middle of the sandwich? One hundred-year-old Mourvèdre, Carignan and Palomino!
Allen Luchesi photo joneberlinfoto
And, what a sandwich it is! Certain vineyards evoke a feeling in you about the potential they offer. Luchesi in Oakley is one such vineyard. Allen Luchesi swings his beater Chevrolet truck into the beach sand that makes up these exquisite vineyards of Contra Costa. He farms this and other sites in the area and has stories to tell. Like the time PG&E paid him to transplant a one-hundred-and-twenty-year-old Alicante Bouschet vineyard. Or when Randall Graham was his biggest buyer. Allen has seen many a harvest and the swings and roundabouts of the wine industry. We agree on a couple of tons of one-hundred-year-old Mourvèdre, Carignan and Palomino. The Palomino was intended to be a component of the Chenin-based white and it will be, but I couldn’t resist adding a barrel to the rosé blend.
V3 1/1
The grapes ripen early in Contra Costa, as the Palomino was picked on August 6th and the Mourvèdre and Carignan three weeks later in late August. The Mourvèdre was about 21 Brix and the Carignan around 19 Brix. The two lots were picked together on the same day, combined and whole-cluster pressed to tank. The intention with the pressing is to keep the color extraction to a minimum, so it was a slow, light press cycle. The juice was then racked to another tank for a cool fermentation. This fermentation took around 26 days to reach dryness. Once dry, SO2 was added to inhibit malolactic fermentation, and the wine was kept on primary lees in the tank until February.
The Palomino was whole cluster pressed directly to 5-year-old French Burgundy barrels for a natural fermentation. Primary and malolactic fermentation eventually finished in mid-January. A single barrel of the Palomino was racked and blended into the Mourvèdre/Carignan rosé blend, and then 210 cases were bottled on the 18th of February.
What I look for in a glass of rosé is, above all else, freshness, presence on the palate as if the wine is dancing, a lift from the tannins, and a “moreish” sensation of wanting to go back for more. This release has all of that in spades. The fresh cut watermelon will seduce you at first, followed by grapefruit pith, guava, candied orange rind and tarragon. On the palate, the wine is complex and refreshingly crisp with a lovely smooth viscosity and cut that leaves a lasting impression on the back end.
I really love drinking this wine and I think you will too. As a reward for reading this far, if you order 6 bottles or more, you will get a 20% discount. That’s a gallon of delicious rosé at 20% off! Who said having an attention span never paid off?
