Winemaker Notes
For the 2022 Grenache Rose, San Simeon removed the juice from the skins quickly in order to preserve freshness and imbue a lovely pink color. This pink wine is suggestive of summer fruits, with perfumed notes of honey dew, plum, and strawberry. Mature fruit flavors persist on the palate with complementary notes of orange hibiscus. This beautifully structured wine has a vibrant acidity, round body, and a long finish.
Pairs well with tuna tartare, prosciutto and melon, and a wide array of appetizers.
Professional Ratings
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Tasting Panel
Blessed by scintillating acidity, this stainless steel fermented pink wine offers up aromas of dried rose petal and watermelon. Red plum and a whisper of strawberry greet the palate on entry, and juicy melon and crushed stone form an alliance on the finish.
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.
Paso Robles has made a name for itself as a source of supple, powerful, fruit-driven Central Coast wines. But with eleven smaller sub-AVAs, there is actually quite a bit of diversity to be found in this inland portion of California’s Central Coast.
Just east over the Santa Lucia Mountains from the chilly Pacific Ocean, lie the coolest in the region: Adelaida, Templeton Gap and (Paso Robles) Willow Creek Districts, as well as York Mountain AVA and Santa Margarita Ranch. These all experience more ocean fog, wind and precipitation compared to the rest of the Paso sub-appellations. The San Miguel, (Paso Robles) Estrella, (Paso Robles) Geneso, (Paso Robles) Highlands, El Pomar and Creston Districts, along with San Juan Creek, are the hotter, more western appellations of the greater Paso Robles AVA.
This is mostly red wine country, with Cabernet Sauvignon and Zinfandel standing out as the star performers. Other popular varieties include Merlot, Petite Sirah, Petit Verdot, Syrah, Grenache and Rhône blends, both red and white. There is a fairly uniform tendency here towards wines that are unapologetically bold and opulently fruit-driven, albeit with a surprising amount of acidity thanks to the region’s chilly nighttime temperatures.