• 2024 Rosé of Pinot NoirNew!
    Anderson Valley, Mendocino
    • (750 ml) $27.00
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Picky pinky Recent Press

In September 2024, we produced six lots of rosé, each one cool fermented in stainless steel to retain fruitiness. The wines were then transferred to seasoned French oak barrels to complete fermentation, age and develop greater complexity. By late December natural clarification had occurred, so Jim, Navarro's winemaker, prepared our first tasting. This initial evaluation included five Pinot Noir wines and one Sangiovese. We methodically evaluated each lot's strengths and weaknesses to guide our final blending decisions. Three of the five Pinot Noir wines stood out, especially a Blanc de Noir from our favorite rosé block—Hammer Olsen Chalone. In our second tasting, in January, we decided to combine the three exceptional Pinot lots and use them as the base wine, adding various amounts of the fourth-ranked Pinot lot from December. The results were unanimous. The base wine was the clear winner and any addition of the fourth wine made the cuvée coarser and less refined.

Harvesting 2024 Pinot Noir. [below] Pickers dump their buckets of fruit into a bin. Two sorters are stationed at each bin removing leaves and any unwanted clusters.
We remove the leaves in the fruit zone to make it easier for the pickers to easily harvest all the grape clusters. [below]

We didn't even bother adding the fifth-placed wine to the base, wanting the best for Navarro customers. The losing two lots of rosé will be sold in bulk; consequently, this 2024 bottling is sparse but delicious and will sell out before the 2025 is released. A tropical and rose-petal bouquet introduces strawberry-guava-lemon flavors with a crisp finale.


[above] Birds love ripe Pinot Noir. In fields with a “bird problem” we install netting over the fruit in the perimeter rows. This convinces most birds that the entire field is netted, minimizing damage. The netting is removed right before harvest.

Specifications
  • Harvested: Sept. 10 to 24, 2024
  • Sugars at harvest: 23.8° Brix
  • Bottled: Feb. 20, 2025
  • Cases produced: 1,250
  • Alcohol: 13.5%
  • Titratable acidity: 6.5 g/L
  • pH: 3.31