2025 Emme Wines, Pink Lemonade, Ricetti Vineyard, Pink Wine, Redwood Valley.
Rosalind Reynolds, former winemaker at Pax Winery, created Emme Wines a few years ago and is making some fun and fresh forward thinking California wines, like this “Pink Lemonade” chillable red, what she calls her Pink Wine, though it is not quite what you’d think of as a Rosé with its deeper bright, almost glowing ruby/strawberry hue in the glass and its more fruit dense and spicy palate. Just about medium bodied, the 2025 Ricetti Vineyard Pink Lemonade, made from a unique field blend, along with combination of red and white grapes, hence the name, including mainly Abouriou, an ancient French varietal, a real rarity, and Zinfandel, which ripened a bit early, along with later picks of Valdiguié, once called Napa Gamay, Carignan, or Carignane, and Colombard, one of white grapes found in Cognac. The Pink Wine by Emme shows off crisp, refreshing and tartly dry crushed raspberry, tangy strawberry, cranberry, red peach and ruby grapefruit fruits, perfect when seeing a full chill, along with brambly spices, with cinnamon and hints of gravel, saline, peppercorns and juniper berry. I very much loved the clean and focused flavors, it is much less funky or raw than my previous experiences with the Emme wines and is a tasty quaffer. Emme Wines Highlights Rosalind’s commitment to the Northern California wine community, and farms all her grapes organically and make wine, in a natural style without additives. She says she works within a likeminded group of grape-growers and winemakers. 2018 marked the first year she set out to create something of her own, albeit with the welcome support of the talented people who surround her, she adds. She believes wine, at its core, is all about community, and she looks t support that through her choices in every detail of her efforts from winemaking to helping an artist friend, by putting her art on the label, as seen here with her friend Kate’s lovely artwork. The lineup of wines here at Emme include Pinot Noir, Carignan Rosé, a solo Valdiguié, which I look forward to trying myself soon, a Mourvèdre, a Dry Muscat and a delicate and light “French” Colombard white. While I did have some difficult experiences with her early “Natty” efforts, this wine is really delicious and I am excited to dig deeper into the collection in the future.
Of course by now we know the history of Zinfandel, mostly made into powerful, full bodied, high alcohol and jammy reds these days, though it done in a more spicy and subtle wine in early generations, as well as a blush, semi sweet pink wine, but there’s also a new set of wines and winemakers that are finding new expressions of this California State grape. As for Abouriou, that’s a completely different story, it was a native to the area south of Bordeaux, and was there way before the famous region ever had grapes. Abouriou, is as noted, a red French wine grape variety grown primarily in Southwest France and, in small quantities, California, as seen here in Roseland’s Emme Pink Wine. It is typically a blending grape that, along with Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Syrah, Fer, Cabernet Franc, and Merlot, is used to make the Appellation d’origine contrôlée wines of the little known Côtes du Marmandais, sometimes considered connected to Bordeaux more than the more remote areas of the southwest or Basque areas. This black-skinned varietal is sort of low in acid and high in tannins, completely opposite of its very very distant cousin Gamay Noir, and rarely found as a solo varietal wine, though I’ve had a few and was intrigued by its chewy, rustic and grippy profile. In California, it is quite rare, and the grape was sometimes called Early Burgundy, another allusion to Gamay, though maybe more like Tannat, with high yields and resistant to heat. The goal here with Reynolds Pink Lemonade wine was to produce a fruitier, lighter wine, with the Abouriou and Zinfandel crushed and left to ferment on skins for 8 days, with the goal of extracting a good portion of the tannins from the Abouriou skins, and then wine was then pressed to stainless steel to finish primary fermentation. Once sugar-dry, the wine was racked to neutral barriques to age for 6 months. The other grapes were used as a counterbalance to the earlier, more tannic picks. After 5 days carbonic in tank, the partially fermented fruit from the Valdiguié, Carignan and Colombard was pressed to stainless steel to finish primary fermentation. Once sugar-dry, the wine was racked to all neutral barriques to age for 5 months, then the full wine was blended and bottled with low sulfur, to make this fresh Summer red. Reynolds, who is regarded as a talent in her own right, had a hand in make some fabulous stuff with Pax, should be on your new California radar, and this one is a fun way to start exploring her distinctively crafted wines.
($26 Est.) 90 Points, grapelive