• Producer: Mutt LynchWinery
• Location: California
• Year: 2018
• Type: Rose of Zinfandel
• Price estimate: $19
• Tasting notes: Salmon-pink in color with a little peach and mineral on the nose. Round, silky mouthfeel with flavors of peach, apricot, strawberry and white cherry give way to a bright middle with good acid and a mineral note. A touch of salinity and strawberry on the finish, the rose might lean towards sweet, but it isn’t. Dry, but fruit forward.
• Conclusions: I love a good rose and there are lots of okay roses trying to be good. Thus one is just out and out great. It is easy to drink, but interesting and complex. There are a few different layers to this wine and this is a wine that gets me to pop open the bottle when I’m just not sure if I really want wine. It’s that good.
• Notes: Bob and I had this at the Mutt Lynch tasting room in Windsor, California on our Sonoma trip. (Highlights from that trip should be posted soon.) Bob found the winery during his search and we decided to try it because of their zinfandel and the dog theme. I am a sucker for animals so a winery that combines wine and furry creatures is worth trying. The wines, especially the rose, are incredible. Brenda Lynch, the owner, wine maker, sales manager etc., got me to try and enjoy varietals I would normally pass over such as Cabernet and Petit Syrah. We tasted for a good long while, enjoying the great company of the owner and her phenomenal wines. Next time we are in Sonoma we are going back and I don’t want to tell anyone how much wine we had shipped from her vineyard. Worth the trip and any pennies spent there.

• Producer: Longboard Vineyards
• Location: Sonoma, CA (Northcoast)
• Year: 2018
• Type: Rose
• Price estimate: $26
• Tasting notes: Peachy- salmon in color with very subtle aromas of strawberry and peach. First sip is soft, but there is a tart tang that hits midway through the sip. Peach, apricot, golden raison and a little red plum. Good finish.
• Conclusions: This is one of those easy drinking roses that I love. Light and crisp with just enough layers to keep it interesting while still being able to concentrate on other things as you drink – in my case knitting, a movie or conversation. It is a great own it’s own wine and I need those every now and then. This would get overpowered by most dishes I make since its subtle and I tend to go heavier on the seasoning in food, but on it’s own with a chick-flick on tv, it’s perfect.
• Notes: When we did our rose tasting a few weeks ago, this one ended up being much lower than I expected in my ratings. That is not to say it isn’t a good bottle of wine, because it is. It’s very good, but head to head with the others, it didn’t rate at the top. I do wonder if this particular bottle would have faired better as it is crisper and has less watermelon taste than the one we had before. Just goes to show that wine is so very different bottle to bottle and you just never know when something will be perfect for the evening when you are drinking it. /Prost

Last week was Bob’s birthday and we did a little something different to celebrate. Rather than trying to buy him something (impossible – he always ends up buying what I think of before I can) or traveling somewhere (end of the school year for me and a bit hard to get away) we had a few friends over and did a blind rose tasting. Four wines, three we were familiar with, one new, blind. Could we determine which wines were which and would be still love our favorite wines without the labels?

We actually picked out five wines for this “tasting.”

• 2018 Bedrock Ode to Lulu
• 2018 Domaine Guy Mousset Cote du Rhone
• 2018 Longboard Watergirl
• 2018 Domaine Loubejac
• 2017 Cosado Morales

Bob picked four of these five – the Bedrock, the Guy Mousset, the Longboard and the Loubejac. I knew the first three were going in, but did not know which of the last two he picked. He uncorked them, took off the foil from the neck and wrapped each in a paper bag. When the time came to pour, I picked from the fridge, numbered the bag and poured without him looking; this way we both were tasting blind.

I am embarrassed to say, I did not correctly identify a single rose – a much worse result that the Sauvignon Blanc tasting we did a few months ago. Bob got one correct. the surprise winner was the 2018 Domaine Loubejae from the Willamette Valley. This Total Wine pick up was less than $15 and the unanimous favorite among all of us drinking. Lulu came in second for three of us and the last two split for third and fourth. I was very surprised I could not identify the Lulu or Guy Mousset since they are my “go-to” rose wines, but that is okay. There were no bad wines in this line up, nothing that we didn’t like. Let me repeat that – we liked every wine we tasted, even the ones that came in “last.”

It was a fun evening and I think we may have to try this with Pinot Noir or Zinfandel in the fall.

• Basic info: Panther Rock Wine Cellars “Six Degrees” Rose of Pinot Noir, California – 2016
• Type: Rose
• Price estimate: $13 (local wine store)
• Look: Orange/pink. Darker than expected for a rose.
• Smell: iced tea, raspberry syrup
• Taste: Powdered ice tea mix, artificial lemon flavor, raspberry. Not as sweet as it sounds and it has a tart finish.
• Conclusions: Very weird, but not un-enjoyable. Easy enough to drink, but it didn’t really remind me of wine.
• Other notes: When we were kids my parents use to buy these very large containers of powdered iced tea mix. I think dad liked the lemon flavored tea, but we made a gallon at a time with the powdered mix. This tasted exactly as I remembered that powdered iced tea tasting. Seriously, I looked at the bottle twice to make sure it was actually wine and not tea. It has that slightly artificial taste, but it isn’t unpleasant, maybe because it reminds me of childhood, but there it is. It could also be the 11 hour day at work that preceded this glass of wine.
• From the bottle: “Raspberry with notes of peach and melon; a crisp finish. Gently pressed and cold fermented to attain peak flavor and balance.” 12% alcohol by volume.

• Basic info: Vintjs Rose, Monterey, CA Rose wine – 2017
• Type: Rose (no varietal noted)
• Price estimate: $7 (Trader Joe’s)
• Look:  Bright pink
• Smell: Strawberry and a hint of peach
• Taste: Strawberry and watermelon are the major flavors. The wine is slightly sweet with a little bramble notes at the middle. Ripe summer raspberry on the finish.
• Conclusions: I thought this wine was okay. It didn’t wow me and it isn’t something I am going to remember, but for a summer wine to just enjoy, it works. I didn’t get a lot of the acid and brightness that makes rose so great, but it was fine.
• Other notes: I made a concerted effort to pick up some sub $10 wines recently for a few reasons, only one of which was budget. Part of my experiment, if you want to call it that, was to see how different types of wine were at that price given what I (little) I know about how expensive it really is to make wine. I started with rose and white wines because they do tend to be a little less expensive than reds since you don’t need to age them and I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised. So far there haven’t been any wines that wowed me, but for an everyday drinking wine, these have been pretty good. We did have one bottle that was just not drinkable to us and we tossed it. The others made the trip to Trader Joe’s well worth it.
• From the bottle: No bottle notes. 12.5% alcohol by volume.

• Basic info: J. Bucher “Rose of Pinot Noir” Russian River Valley, CA – 2016
• Type: Rose/Pink
• Price estimate: $25
• Look: Electric dark pink, almost a light red in color. Vibrant.
• Smell: This was weird, but I swear it smelled like herbed butter.
• Taste: Pine, strawberry, sour apple and watermelon. Finish was fine, but not anything memorable.
• Conclusions: Bob liked this a lot more than I did. I thought it was okay – pretty good, but not great. The first few sips were odd, and I think some of that had to do with the smell of the wine, but it was okay. It isn’t one I’m going to seek out again, but it was nice.
• Other notes: This was one of the six wines we got from Underground Wine Events, which focuses on small producers. The Longboard was so good, I had really high hopes for this one, but it just wasn’t fantastic for me.
• From the bottle: “World-class wines start in the vineyard. For over 50 years, our family has farmed in the Middle Reach of the Russian River Valley. Our passion and dedication for producing the finest agricultural products ensures exceptional fruit from out vineyard. We look forward to sharing our wines and our Journey with you.” 13.1% alcohol by volume.

• Basic info: Limerick Lane, Rose of Syrah, Sonoma, CA – 2016
• Type: Rose
• Price estimate: $17 (local wine store)
• Look: Transluscent pale salmon in color
• Smell: Strawberry and peach. Very light aromas
• Taste: White cherry, strawberry, peach, with a tiny citrus. Long finish, especially for a rose with mineral and peach notes.
• Conclusions: Beautiful wine. Clean, fresh and and totally enjoyable.
• Other notes: When we saw the rose from Limerick Lane at our local wine store, I have to admit, I got really excited. We are still saving a bottle of the zinfandel from them for a semi-special occasion but this is within the everyday drinking range, so we popped it open and it was as good as I hoped. I’m hoping the wine store has more the next time we are there.
• From the bottle: No bottle notes. 12.6% alcohol by volume.