Reading between the lines on the beautifully designed label, it would appear that this is another attempt at selling cleanskins (i.e. wines sold not by the wineries that made them, but by third parties that resell them under the own labels) in the USA. Although K&L have been doing this for years under the Kalinda label, and although the Cameron Hughes label has been around for a couple of years, I have yet to see anyone selling wines cheaply. Instead, what you generally get is relatively high end wines at relatively high prices - this, it seems to me, is a mite perverse in what's generally acknowledged as pretty crappy economic times. After all, a California pink wine at $10 is still relatively expensive considering that this wine was displayed near $7.50 wines from Argentina, $5 wines from Australia, and of course our very own white zinfandels at $3.
So how's the wine?
First off, the color is entrancing. It's a wonderful, dark pink that's similar to pomegranate juice. It's not quite so dark that it could be mistaken for a thin red Burgundy, but just barely. The nose is medicinal, shot through with camphor, cotton candy, roasted corn, and a fair whack of spicy black pepper.
Tasting at first of nothing but fresh wild strawberries, it's unsettlingly like a gourmand perfume aimed at teen-aged girls. That passes quickly, though, calming down into rhubarb-ridden cream shot through with subtle spicy notes; the texture is fairly serious for a pink wine, with a sort of supporting tannic note that gives it a certain gravitas. There's a brief uptick in acidity on the finish, giving it a much needed freshness, and yet the finish does go on for a while, restating the themes of the wine - pepper, strawberry, rhubarb - with a steely repetition of serious, serious, serious.
This could be the closest pink wine to a red wine that I've ever experienced; it's an interesting style to say the least. Whether or not it'll work for you isn't something I can guess, but I can say that you're getting a hell of a lot of wine for your money here. Yes, I still wish we had a cleanskins industry of Australia scale, but as long as we have wines like this available for not-outrageous prices, I'm more than satisfied with what we've got.
So how's the wine?
First off, the color is entrancing. It's a wonderful, dark pink that's similar to pomegranate juice. It's not quite so dark that it could be mistaken for a thin red Burgundy, but just barely. The nose is medicinal, shot through with camphor, cotton candy, roasted corn, and a fair whack of spicy black pepper.
Tasting at first of nothing but fresh wild strawberries, it's unsettlingly like a gourmand perfume aimed at teen-aged girls. That passes quickly, though, calming down into rhubarb-ridden cream shot through with subtle spicy notes; the texture is fairly serious for a pink wine, with a sort of supporting tannic note that gives it a certain gravitas. There's a brief uptick in acidity on the finish, giving it a much needed freshness, and yet the finish does go on for a while, restating the themes of the wine - pepper, strawberry, rhubarb - with a steely repetition of serious, serious, serious.
This could be the closest pink wine to a red wine that I've ever experienced; it's an interesting style to say the least. Whether or not it'll work for you isn't something I can guess, but I can say that you're getting a hell of a lot of wine for your money here. Yes, I still wish we had a cleanskins industry of Australia scale, but as long as we have wines like this available for not-outrageous prices, I'm more than satisfied with what we've got.
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