Kaena, Grenache Rose, 2012, Santa Ynez Valley, California

I finally got to taste this beautiful rose on a trip to the Santa Ynez Valley last month.  I have been wanting to get my hands on this wine for so long after falling in love with pretty much everything I have tasted from Hawaiin-born winemaker Mikael Sigouin.  He knows his way around a Rhone style white as wells as lovely single vineyard Grenaches.  But can he make a knock out rose?  The answer is a resounding yes!  

This Grenache rose is a fun dark pink in the glass hinting at ripe California fruit.  It's got a playful candied yet fresh nose evoking vanilla, hot cotton candy, and circus peanuts.  The wine-maker does a good job of taming the ripeness of the fruit and bringing out lovely clean strawberry and Asian pear flavors riding on a silky smooth body.  This wine ends super clean with just a hint of green on the finish.

It's funny because when we visited the Beckmen tasting room (where Sigouin is also the wine-maker) in Los Olivos they told us that their rose was sold out even though it is still widely available on Oahu.  However, I have hunted long and far for the Kaena rose over here and have never seen it!

Honolulu late afternoon sun shining through a Foxen tasting glass!

Bodegas Borsao, 'Tres Picos' Garnacha, 2010, Campo De Borja DO, Spain

This Grenache from the small northwest Campo De Borja region of Spain has a straight up massive, complex, and appealing nose.  Initial dark brambly fruit notes transition into graphite, savory meats, and dank ocean water.  The heat and oak are definitely present but always kept in check.  The color is all high contrast waves of black and red.  It's got a sweet (yet still bone dry) juicy new world core with shimmers of acidity that last through to the finish.  And no doubt there is a long finish on this one.  The fine grained tannins give structure and are more sweet than bitter.  This wine is easy to find, popular with a certain mainstream critic, and fucking delicious so of course the wine snob haters gotta hate on it.  But if you can find it on sale for 15 bucks like I did, you'd be dumb not to take it home for the night.  Let the haters hate and the players play.      

Trium, Grenache Rose, 2009, Pheasant Hill Vineyard, Rogue Valley

Gevurtz is back like it never hurt before! Happy summer everyone. Sorry for the long hiatus. I lost my tasting mojo for a bit at some point but the sunny weather has got me all motivated to spend lots of time on the internet drinking, spitting, and swirling all by myself! Ha. Anyway, I just got back from a little trip down to southern Oregon with the lovely Shannon Wilson and tasted some really great under the radar wines bursting with originality and character. Here is a little sneak peak.


We stumbled upon Trium Winery in the hills outside of Ashland and both fell pretty hard for this ballsy little scrapper of a wine. The 2009 Grenache Rose features fruit from the estate Pheasant Hill Vineyard. (This is the same vineyard that produces fruit for the outstanding Ransom Cabernet Franc.) The Trium is colored at the darker end of the rose spectrum. In fact, it's just a hint lighter and brighter than a Willimate Valley Pinot. The nose has forceful creamy strawberry shortcake notes combined with green honeydew and a touch of heat.


It has a more rich, luscious, and mouth-coating body compared to many of the roses I have been drinking lately. This is a very giving wine putting forth layers of gummy cherries, gummy peach, and ripe plum flavors on the front to mid-palate. It walks right up to that line of being too sugary sweet but it ends with a nice high limey saline note that somehow leaves your palate feeling clean. At 15% alcohol, this is no easy feat. I don't know if it was just because it was one of the first really hot days I had experienced in Oregon. And even though it was quite fruit forward something about this wine felt terroir-driven. A bit of southern Oregon summer in a glass . . . Yum.