The Cliff Notes: The color of this wine is translucent rhubarb tinged by copper. Aromatically it’s fragrant lime, sweet honeysuckle and Smarties — yes, from your childhood. The wine hurls mouthwatering lime and weighty grapefruit from an exceedingly long complex palate. It finishes (when? if?) on high-tone fruit punch and hibiscus.

Cases Produced: 460

A Story: 2009 as a vintage was precocious, a warm growing year that favored full physiological development but needed to be reined-in to truly sparkle. Crazy, these old-vine Pinot noir grapes could quite handily have gone into a deeply colored $40+ bottle of Pinot, but for a philosophy that dry rose? defines summer. On that front I refuse to be alone. This is the bottle by which we ensnare you, bind you to your patio, and bust your expectations about what “summer wine” might be. In some ways making it is not even a choice, (I’m saner than that, really), it’s a vocation. And likely my Achilles heel.

The building of: 100% Pinot noir, whole cluster pressed and 100% barrel fermented to absolute dryness using a long, slow, low-temperature, wild-yeast regimen to promote vineyard characters and preserve fleeting fruit esters. 100% barrel aged in older French oak barrels. Lees (dead yeast cells) from a Chardonnay fermentation are stirred during aging, incorporating Champagne methodologies from 100 years ago to strip color and broaden an earthy mid-palate. The result is similar to a rose? Champagne from that era … without the bubbles. Racked once and filtered prior to bottling April 2010.

Alcohol: 13.5%

pH: 3.26

Vineyards: These Pinot Noir grapes came from Temperance Hill’s 29-year-old Flat Block, one of the best organic, old-school, old-vine vineyards in Oregon.