Serve it to me blind, and I assume this is a beer. Hazy in coloration, a slight head on the pour. Perfumed like a Hefeweizen with some aromas of malted barley. Grainy on the palate, apricots, limes, sour fruits, tannic finish. Taut, tart, crisp finish.
I have no clue how to assess this wine. I’m not even sure that I liked this wine. It certainly made me think, contemplate. Was certainly refreshing.
What’s the deal with this thing? It was not bad, not spoiled, just unique. Very unique. Looking on CT, it appears my views are in-line with some others.
Sounds a lot like a Cornelissen rose, except the Cornelissen would also have stems, leaf, and ginger.
Wines like this almost intersect with beers made to drink like wine.
As a science experiment I’m holding my Stonecrushers for 10 years. I have no idea what to expect from aged Roussanne done in the orange wine style.
I opened their Ramato style Pinot Gris during a Warriors game and loved it. It’s my favorite pink of the summer, so far.
It’s cool to hear these reactions to wines that clearly push boundaries of what we tend to expect. I tried the Donkey & Goat line up at a Portland trade tasting lately and felt similarly. Some of the wines totally blew my mind, in a good way. Not conventional, typical in any way but delicious and fascinating, in that order. Bravo to Tracey and Jared.
Yup…sounds like a StoneCrusher. A Roussanne made by skin-contact during fermentation, then finished in a reductive fashion…
so not an orange wine in an oxidative style. Done w/ minimal SO2, so if there was noticible fizz on the palate,
it may be refermenting.
But definitely a wine that makes you think outside the box.
Tom
Ok, I’m still thinking about this wine. I did not make the connection to an orange wine style until you mentioned it, but it clearly had extended contact with skins, stems and seeds. The color suggested it, the tannins suggested it.
Funny that this wine sparked a lot of conversation at the dinner table. I was out to dinner with a business colleague that is in his 70s, a true Renaissance Man, one of my close friends. He grew up in a traditional Italian family that made wine for the dinner table every single year, a barrel of red and a barrel of white. He regaled us with stories of that family tradition, but what sparked the conversation, was him saying that the color and haziness of this Donkey and Goat reminded him of the whites his father made, and even noted that they macerated and fermented grapes with the stems, leaves, seeds, bugs if they were on it, etc.
Ultimately the problem I had with this wine, while I think I enjoyed it, it did not taste like a Roussanne. I had a dish that I thought would pair great with that noble Rhone grape, and I got a beer instead. Contrary to the winery’s written manifesto, for me this wine did not pair well with food, it overpowered the food both in its flavor profile and its uniqueness. It actually is meant for a cocktail glass (I’m commenting on their manifesto), despite being low in alcohol, or consumed solo for contemplation. I would have preferred to have started with this wine - well, Rav Pig’s Old Fashions with bourbon-infused bacon are the best starter courses! I think this wine would have worked better with the cheese and chacuterie tray not my main course.
I really look forward to trying more wines from this unique winery. I have always valued distinctiveness over anything else. So while I may sound critical of this wine, I remain very open-minded to exploring more from this winery.
That’s one of the characteristics of skin-contact whites. It often can destroy the varietal character of a wine…
at least the varietal character as we recognize it. Skin-contact whites have a very distinctive character that I term “phenolic”.
It runs thru the aromas of almost all skin-contact whites (unless the skin-contact was maintained for only a few days).
It’s just like heavy botrytis tends to dominate varietal aromas in those wines.
Tom
Well, I did once have a well regarded winemaker tell me this about a wine he shared with me blind, made by a winemaker many on this board ‘worship’, which did not smell or taste like the variety on the label:
‘When a wine is perfect, it transcends the variety.’
Nope, not my belief at all . . .
Doesn’t mean you can’t still enjoy a wine like this - you just have to think of it 'differently ’ . . .
After tasting this at the winery, I liked it enough to buy a bottle. But I drink more beer than Roussanne! And while I don’t have anything against varietal character, it’s not a necessity for me. But I guess it can certainly be problematic when you don’t have a lot of information besides grape variety to go on when forming an expectation (including how it will pair with a dish, in this case) and then it turns out be a misleading piece of information.
Cloudy means unfiltered. Fizzy can be from trapped CO2 in a minimally processed wine. Even a 2013 at this point. Refermenting wine is usually very apparent and not nearly as common as cloudy and/or fizzy wine. commonly suggested but not commonly true, in my experience.
Also a lot of minimal SO2 winemakers will leave a bit of residual CO2 as a preservative (eg, Fourrier) so I wouldn’t read too much into fizziness or cloudiness.
Sounds plain awful; I do ponder wines and like it when a wine prompts me to think, but I do not drink beer and sounds like this requires far too much thought for what it is.