Winemaker Notes
The nose has beautiful aromas of raspberries and wild flowers, and the palate is wonderfully bright and fresh with notes of strawberry and pear.
Rosé is the perfect all occasion wine! It is especially perfect as an aperitif, with all seafood dishes, salads, charcuterie and goat cheese.
Blend: 30% Syrah, 30% Cinsault, 20% Mourvèdre, 10% Grenache, 10% Rolle
Professional Ratings
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Wine & Spirits
Charles Master and his father, Mel Master, who also runs Tortoise Creek, scour the vineyards around Bandol for the fruit for this wine, a blend of equal parts syrah and cinsault with some mourvèdre, grenache and rolle. It’s as delicate as its pale pink-gold color, a subtle rosé focused more on stone and herb flavors than any particular fruit. A refreshing salinity runs through it, highlighting the wine’s clarity and lift, and making it terrifically easy to drink. Best Buy
Whether it’s playful and fun or savory and serious, most rosé today is not your grandmother’s White Zinfandel, though that category remains strong. Pink wine has recently become quite trendy, and this time around it’s commonly quite dry. Since the pigment in red wines comes from keeping fermenting juice in contact with the grape skins for an extended period, it follows that a pink wine can be made using just a brief period of skin contact—usually just a couple of days. The resulting color depends on grape variety and winemaking style, ranging from pale salmon to deep magenta.
Cotes de Provence is an extensive but valuable appellation that includes vineyards bordering the main Provencal appellations. Its sites vary from subalpine hills, which receive the cooling effects of the mountains to the north, to the coastal St-Tropez, a region mainly influenced by the warm Mediterranean sunshine.
Here the focus is on quality rosé, as it defines four fifths of the region’s wines. Following in the rosé footsteps, a lot of new effort is going into the region’s red production as well. A new generation has turned its focus on high quality Grenache, Syrah, Cinsault and Carignan. Cotes de Provence white wines, which represent a miniscule part of the region as far as volume, are nonetheless worthy of consideration and can include any combination of Clairette, Semillon, Ugni Blanc and Vermentino.