New Hours, New Perspective

This week we started new hours, open til 7:00 Tuesday through Thursday. It's just one more hour three days a week. however we are hoping it will jump start our sluggish weekday business. Well the first week has been a good one. We have had multiple sales each day! The question is was this just coincidence or were the new hours in some way responsible. Only one of the sales was actually during the extended hours. I was at least able to stay busy and keep from getting bored. Next week will give a better indication if the new hours are making a difference, but certainly it will take more than a couple of weeks to prove the value.

Next week, Jan & I will be taking a road trip to Cleveland to attend a showcase of Rudi Weist German wines. This should be a great opportunity to learn more about German wine, as there will be ten producers there and they will be able to answer questions about their wines. Look for more on this adventure the end of next week.

It's been a long time.

I have been absent from the blogespher for some time now. I am not sure if anyone noticed, but I figures that since I would have an extra hour to kill at the store tonight, I might as well be productive. So a lot has happened with the store over the last year or so. We are now in the neighborhood of two thousand different wines in the store. We have topped 135 champagnes and will probably be at 150 by the end of the year. We have changed our tasting format so that every week we have six reds and six white wines available. Most exciting, is the new preservation system we purchased last month, which will allow us to pour more wines, including sparkling wines by the glass or taste. We have plans to conduct  some intermediate priced tastings on Sunday afternoons, such as an upcoming tasting featuring verticals of Seghesio single vineyard Zinfandels. We are also planning to conduct some educational tastings. Jan and I both passed the Certified Specialist of Wine exam and introductory sommelier test this spring. This has given us some great ideas that we hope to incorporate into educational tastings in the coming months. Stay tuned I hope to be a little more regular with my posts in the future.

Blind tasting

Last night we hosted our third annual blind tasting at the store. For those of you not familiar with what a blind tasting is all about, it's where the labels are covered so that no one knows what the identity of the wine being tasted is. Each year I have tried something different and this year I went for relatively obscure grapes or producers. This type of tasting can be a humbling experience, as you are exclusively relying on your sense of taste and smell with no preconceived notions based on varietal or producer. I had at least one person who had to admit that they actually like the Merlot in the tasting the best. No one got all of the wines correctly. When possible this is actually the best way to sample wine, as you will get a truly unbiased appraisal of the wine..

Tonight, we have something totally different on tap, with our monthly dinner featuring ten Chateauneuf de Papes, including two whites. This should be a great opportunity to see what makes this classic French wine region so special. Next week I will have a report on the highlights of this tasting.

New Year, New Resolve.

It has been a while since I posted to this forum. There have been many changes to my wine appreciation over the last year and a half. Our wine store is now more than two years old and we have weathered three holiday seasons. This year has seen highs and lows for the store and has been a series of new lessons. We saw solid growth for the year, while several months sales were relatively soft. We worked hard to establish our place among the many fine wine stores in the region and I think we are slowly succeeding in providing the most comprehensive selection of champagnes and sparkling wines. Our tastings have gained acclaim as good values and great opportunities to meet fellow wine lovers.

In the coming year we hope to introduce more new wines to our customers and establish our Saturday afternoon tastings as exciting opportunities. Jan is going to continue to expand her menus for our tastings, including perhaps offering pizzas on Wednesday nights. We continue on a monthly basis to offer regional tastings from different parts of the wine world, so that regional differences can be more clearly defined. We will also feature tastings guided by our great assistants, Jay, David M. & Christine. We hope to feature several wine maker tastings or dinners this year as well.

We also are looking into expanding our building, with both more space for tastings and display. Jan & I plan to take the level one sommelier teat this summer and we are studying for the certified wine educator test. We want to serve the needs of our community and as such are happy to assist in fund raisers when possible. We are also looking forward to supporting the Mt Washington Farmers Market again this year.

My goal this year is to post to this blog on a more regular basis. If any of my handful of followers have any topics of interest or suggestions please let me know and ideas for how to serve our customers are also welcome.

Thanks for the support over the last couple of years!

Last weeks tasting

Last Friday we tasted sparkling wines and champagnes. I am gratified with the response we have had for our focus on sparklers in our store. We sold a good amount of wine from the tasting, which is not always the case. I also opened some fun bonus pours including a Beringer Bancroft Ranch Vineyard Merlot 2004. This wine was gorgeous, with silky chocolate notes and and a rich lingering finish. Best if all, though still pricey, this ready to go wines is $51.99 down from $79.99. That is 35% off. Yes still expensive and yes it is a Merlot, but this wine rivals more expensive Cabernet's and is ready to drink today for those special occasions that always pop up.
We also opened a Mumm Napa Pinot Noir 2008 that was great for summer time sipping. This light red wine has more body than your average pinot noir and there is a certain richness, that cab drinkers can appreciate. Unfortunately I missed an opportunity to by more of this great value. I do have a few bottles left however at $17.99. This wine was originally $37.99. This is a great deal for the summer. Though, I may be out of this wine soon, I am sure there are many other retailers in the greater Cincinnati area who bought more of this great Pinot.
I am looking forward to our Riesling tasting this Friday and Saturday, where we will try to debunk the idea that all Riesling is unsophisticated and sweet. We will be pairing these wines with some Thai inspired dishes, which will show how magical a good pairing can be. I will also likely open some fun reds, for those who just can not tolerate white wines. These will be available by the glass for a modest fee.
I am working on a fun idea for a tasting in August, where it will be a round table tasting. I will offer several dozen wines for tasting, where all will be limited inventory and when the wines is sold out we will move on tho another wine. This tasting will feature a wide variety of wines and price points and should have something for everyone. Since this tasting will feature more wines than our usual tastings, we will likely be charging $20 and pouring smaller amounts of wine than usual. Look for more information on our web site calendar section and www.localwineevents.com.
For those of you who red this blog mention it when shopping and receive a discount on you tasting!

The argument for lower alcohol levels in wine

I have been railing against the rising alcohol levels in all new world wines, over the last fifteen some odd years, for some time now. After reading an interesting post on "the gray market report", about Siduri Pinot Noirs and the perceived high alcohol levels, I felt moved to post a comment on that site. This post also has moved me to make the argument for lower alcohol levels on my own blog. So here goes!

I have been either a wine consumer or retailer for almost twenty years and have noticed alcohol levels climb from a high of 13 to 14 percent at the high end for Zinfandel to those percentages serving as the floor for most all new world wines, including whites. Some on the production end of the wine business have plead that this because the grapes must be ripe to make good wine. This may be true, although we are most likely in line for climate change from global warming, I do not think that the effect can be cited for the dramatic change over the past dozen years or so. These increases largely parallel the growing strength of the wine writer to move the market through their ratings. How does this effect alcohol in wine? Well one way of creating a high scoring wine and thus more sales is to make a big ie: high alcohol wine.

I have had some high alcohol wines which I considered to be exceptionally good, so what is my beef with high alcohol wines? Well simply put, in this day and age of greater attention to drunk driving and drinking during pregnancy, these elevated alcohol levels have reduced the enjoyment of a night out or a simple glass of wine after a hard day. I have repeatedly seen couples come to our wine tasting and one will restrict their consumption to remain sober enough to drive home. I am not saying they should drive drunk, but that an increase of 2 to 3 percent reduces the amount of wine a small person can consume without fear. The simple fact that a wine may not taste "hot", as is the argument made in the post cited above, does not let these well made wines off the hook. In many ways this is even worse because most people do not check alcohol levels on the wine they consume, so if it tastes good it becomes much easier to finish that bottle and in the process become legally impaired. If the wine tastes "hot" at least the consumer is forewarned.

What is the answer to this? I am not a wine maker and I realize that there will be years when grapes will be exceptionally ripe, whether the wine maker wants them that way or not. I recently had the opportunity to meet Dan Phillips, owner of importer Grateful Palate, and I asked him about high alcohol levels in the bulk of their wines. His response was in part surprising. He said that the grapes dictated the high alcohol levels in order to ripen. This argument is certainly more understandable than his follow up reason. To my surprise, he said somewhat defensively that people drink wine for the alcohol. I find this to be largely absurd. I have run into a few people who do drink wine for the alcohol, but by and large these people have not been wine drinkers, but were alcoholics. I have recounted this conversation with a number of my wine drinking friends and all have shared my incredulity.

I do not see anything changing anytime soon and perhaps the winemakers are correct and the grapes require the high alcohol levels. It would be interesting though, if the bulk of the wine writers started to call for lower levels of alcohol and if they started rating those few wines higher, would we then see levels decrease? Until then I will continue to advocate for more reasonable alcohol levels.

Guest Post on My wWine Education

I have made periodic guest posts for My Wine Education over he past year as I have embarked on Opening my own fine wine store in the Cincinnati suburb of Mt Washington. These post have been dubbed Wine Store Wednesday and have chronicled the progress of our store and the process involved in opening a new store. I have been somewhat remiss in my posts to this blog site, but I have been very active in the wine world sampling some wonderful wines with commercial reps., wines I have purchased and through the Internet, with samples provided for me through Twitter Taste Live.
Recently I participated in a late night event with TTL. This tasting started at 8:30 PM Pacific time, or 11:30 Eastern time. I sampled five wines from a new venture from the folks who make Cornerstone wines. These wines are called Stepping Stone and though not priced to the luxury market are still not bargain priced. That said, I felt they were well worth the $16 (Rose and Sauv Bl) to $35 (Cabernet Sauvignon) prices. I also tried a great Cab Franc and a Syrah. These were all lush, full bodied wines, that would please any proponent of fruit forward California wines.
The Sauv Blanc was unusual in that the citrus notes were muted and more light tangerine. The wine was almost creamy. I could recommend this wine as a great summer sipper for those who are not interested in a glass of grapefruit juice with alcohol. This wine is both food friend, with nice balance , and soft enough to be enjoyed on its own.
The next wine tasted was a full bodied Rose. I love Rose' because they are all different ands so food friendly. This wine did not disappoint. While I was sampling this wine my wife brought me a hot fudge sundae and to my surprise it was quite complementary. I have more than fifty Rose' in my wine store and this wine, when available in the state would easily fit into my inventory.
These two wines were followed , by an incredible Syrah, that was lush and full bodied. This wine was the winner from my perspective. I did like the Cabernet and the Franc a great deal, but the Syrah had just the right balance of easy drinking to food friendly acid. I was excited enough about these wines that I called the local distributor to try and get them into my store. However only one is currently in the state of Ohio, so we will have to wait for these great values to come available.
We are entering the season of Holiday trade events, so I am sure that I will have many new and exciting wines to share with you over the next months. Stay tuned and check out the stores web site at www.watertowerfinewines.com for information on our tastings and more store information.

The sixth month

We are at the beginning of our sixth month in business and somehow we appear to be on the cusp of success. I thought we had a decent December, but we almost hit December sales in January and then in February we beat December. No small feat considering December should have had a holiday bump and of course February is the shortest month and typically fairly slow. All I can say is that I am really pleased.

The store has been humming along without any major hitches now for the last couple of months. I am still fine tuning our computerized inventory and we have crept up to more than a thousand different wines in the store. I have been able to pick up some terrific buys, such as Champagne Charlie for $99.99 and Ch Lascombe Margaux 2005 for $94.99. This seems to be a great year to have entered the retail wine business, since so many wineries are discounting there top end wines. I really feel like I ma still in Kentucky with all of the discounting that is going on.

We had our first Customer Appreciation tasting last week and it was a rousing success, with nearly thirty people in attendance and almost three cases of interesting wines from my home cellar opened for tasting. The highlight for me was a 1970 Bordeaux, which I had gotten from winebid several years ago. This wine was incredibly smooth and anything but over the hill. It may be hard to beat next year.

Next week is the Cincinnati Wine Festival and we will have a chance to try some interesting wines at the trade event on Friday afternoon. We will get a rare Friday off as well, since we will not have a tasting, to allow our customers to check out the Festival. We are looking forward to some fun tastings in the coming months. Check out our web site for further info. www.watertowerfinewines.com.

Grower Champagne Tasting

Last Sunday we hosted our first Champagne Brunch featuring Grower champagnes. We ended up with a merry group of 18. We poured 8 Champagnes and a Cremante as the welcome wine. Jan outdid herself with the buffet, with more than eight items to choose from all but the meat items being vegetarian. The winner was the Pierre Peters Cuvee de Reserve Brut, which sold out. Also showing well were the Marc Hebrart Cuvee de Reserve Brut, Rene Geoffroy Cuvee Empreinte Brut and the Gaston Chiquet Tradition Brut. It was a full day witht the last couple still there after 5:00. We will be host our second Champagne/Sparkler Brunch in may and it will feature Prosecco's. Watch our web site www.watertowerfinewines.com for the date.

Snow Day

Sitting in the store contemplating the snow that fell last night and this morning. We Had a good tasting last night, in spite of the snow. The main event was sparklers and rose' and all things considered they were well received. We had several bonus wine including 05 Stemmler Carneros Pinot $26.99, Don Ramos Campo de Borja $6.99, Louis Bernard 03 Lirac $10.99 and a special treat Quinta da Romaneira Vintage Port 2004, which had been over $50 and is now $26.99. It was a small, but mighty group that braved the weather. It is funny how you view the weather differently whether you are the owner of an retail establishment or and employee. Whereas as an employee. bad weather only means you might have a boring shift, as a store owner it means the loss of income. The way I look at it though is that there is nothing that I can do about the weather, so just go with it. Just as we are having bad weather now there will certainly come a time when we have unexpected good weather and will make up for the slow times.

This month we are kicking off two new regular tastings, first up is our quarterly Champagne Brunch every other quarter will be a grower champagne tasting, the others will spotlight other styles of bubbly and be more affordable for every day consumption. The other reoccurring tasting we are kicking off this month is our monthly Tuesday Premium Tasting. These tastings will allow us to focus on more esoteric wines and varietals. They will be held on Tuesday nights at 7:00. This month's will be Premium Italians and be held on the 23rd. Next month we will be featuring Beringer Luxury wines including the Private Reserve Cabernet.

We are looking forward to the coming of spring opening up the deck for use. We anticipate that will boost our business substantially. Look for more news and updates in future blog entries. Thanks for you interest and attention.

I am back again

Just a heads up to anyone who is still following me at this blog, I will soon be entering new updates about our store and wines I have come across. For those of you who may not know my wife and I opened a wine store called Water Tower Fine Wines in Mt Washington last Septmeber 22nd. We have bee trilled with the response our store has been given. We have open tastings every Friday night from 5:30 to 8:30. More information on the store can be found at our website www.watertowerfinewines.com. We hope to see some of you at the store and I will share more information on the store over the next weeks and months.

Water Tower Fine Wines is Coming Soon

Tuesday September 22nd will usher in a new era in my life with the opening of our wine store in Mt Washington at 6136 Campus lane. I intend for this to be a different kind of wine store. My mantra is "It helps to know what it tastes like, if you want to buy it."
As such my goal will be to sample as much wine as possible to my customers, so there knowledge and appreciation of wine can be stretched. We will carry over 500 different wines including more than 50 sparkling wines. Our Friday wine tastings will start on October 2nd at 5:30 with the first 15 people being treated to a sample of whatever sparkling wine I open that night. The tasting will be a brown bag comparison of similar wines from different regions for $15. There will be a premium pour available for a separate charge. Food, made by my talented wife will be provided to complement the wines. This is very exciting for us and we hope that our enthusiasm is shared by our customers. Come see us and share joys of learning about wine and food.
David

Belated Twitter Taste (not so) Live

I know the Frederick Wildman Twitter Taste Live took place on Saturday night, but several things caused me not to be able to join. The primary issue was the temperature in Cincinnati, it was raw and in the low seventies, certainly far from ideal weather to sample such a fine selection of summer wines. So we tried them twice over the last two evenings and will finish them off tonight. That said, they were exceptional wines! I am not sure how many people read this blog, but I know that some other bloggers have gotten flack for not acknowledging freebies. I got these wine for free as samples.

The Sauv Blanc ,which is clearly marketed to the US market, called Attitude (2008) is a crisp clean wine from Pascal Jolivet. This wine was not grassy in the least, but rather had a refined tart pink grapefruit flavor that I find very refreshing. The wine has "racy acidity", which makes it very food friendly. My wife particularly liked it with asparagus. This wine was a hit with all of those who we sampled it with.

The next wine was a Chablis (2007) from Christian Moreau. This wine exhibited the lighter side of Chardonnay. It was simple and straight forward, with clean vanilla and honey notes. This was a very refreshing wine with hints of melon. For this often overlooked French stepchild of Chardonnay, often overlooked in the over oaked work of the American wine industry, this was very good.

From Burgundy we took a detour to Alsace and the Hugel 2007 Riesling. Hugel has always been one of my favorite Alsatian producers with just enough of the gravely flintiness of the region to make it refreshing, while not overpowering the wine. This wine had wonderful green apple notes complemented by melon and peach. I found just a hint of nuttiness on the finish. Again this was another wonderful wine!

Next we travel back to Burgundy for Olivier Leflaive's "Les Setilles" 2007, this was wonderful expression of chardonnay, with just the right amount of oak to give it creamy vanilla notes. It also exhibits the tropical fruits which are most associated with the grape in its unoaked form. This is a clean wine with fresh tart notes that I find to a great expression of the grape. There are hints of citrus, mango and guava. This is truly a summer wine, while many of the over oaked American expressions of the grape are better suited for steak and cold weather.

My favorite of the tasting was the next wine from the Rhone. The Parallel 45 Rose'from Paul Jaboulet. I must admit my wife and I have been on a serious Rose' kick this summer. That said it was still a really good wine. This wine had body and creaminess sometimes missing in Rose'. It had light refreshing notes of strawberry and is very thirst quenching. A great summer sipper.

Finally came the Gamay from Potel-Aviron 2008. Just as with the Rose' I must admit that I am not a big fan of Beaujolais. I was pleasantly surprised with this wine, it was good. While still not one of my favorite, I must say that this is a good red wine for the summer and even though I am not a fan of chilling red wines, I could see this wine with a slight chill on it. This is a good wine for anyone who likes wines on the fruitier side. Though heavy on the fruit this is still a clean and smooth tasting wine. I still cannot say that I really like Beaujolais wines, but I do have more respect for them after trying this example.

In closing I want to thank Frederick Wildman for providing these wines free for us to sample and review. They were all very nice. More importantly for most consumers they were affordable. The Rose' is $12, the Beaujplais is $13, the Sauv Blanc is $18 (though a little high for a sauv blanc, not so for a good Sancerre), the Hugel is $20 and worth it, and the two Chardonnays are $23. I think these are all affordable and worth the money. Obviously there are a lot of good summer time wines out here for those without a clue, these could be good starting points in each of their categories. I also want to say in closing that we will likely carry several of these wines in our new store when we open this fall, so Wildman will benefit from there sampling in more than one way. Thanks again.

Our new venture.

My wife and I have been busy the past week. We finally closed on a building, in the near in Cincinnati suburb of Mt Washington, where we will open Water Tower Fine Wines this fall. We have been talking about doing this for many years and now that we have actually embarked on the journey, it is very exciting. We have many ideas for what we want in our store, but I believe that customer input can be very useful and as such I am happy to take suggestions. If there are things that you feel must be included in a good wine store and tasting room let me know. If there are things that you dislike and would not want in the ideal store, also let us know. Obviously it is our store, but we will take to heart all ideas and incorporate as many as we can. Thanks to all that will join us in this exciting journey.

My wife's birthday

Last Friday we went to the Palace restaurant in the Cincinnatian for my wife's birthday. They have a Prix fixe menu with two savory items from the menu and one sweet for $44.00. We both ordered appetizers and I had a chicken dish and my wife had a salmon dish. The food was exceptional. We chose a Verdicchio to have with our meal. This is a wine comes from the Marche region of central Italy on the Adriatic. More specifically it comes from the zone Castelli di Jesi. This particular example comes from a wine maker named Maurizio Marchetti. This is a vibrant white wine light enough to pair well with fish and chicken, yet it has enough body to hold up well with rich sauces. We both very much enjoyed this wine and finished it in the room with out accompaniment and it was just as good without food. This is a nice change of pace for a summer sipper. The restaurant price was $35 and I think it perhaps could be had for as little as $10 to $12 dollars retail. For those with a bit of adventure give it a try.

Our New Venture

After getting the short of the end of the stick on an attempt to purchase an existing wine store in Cincinnati, my wife and I decided to look for a building and open a wine store and tasting room from scratch. We have found a building in Mt Washington and will close on it within several weeks. We have purchased a liquor license, that we are in the process of transferring to our business. We have begun jumping through all of the other hoops to get to our opening day. It is our hope to be open with our store by mid September or early October. I have established a Facebook fan page "Water Tower Fine Wines and Tasting Room" and a Twitter acct. "wtfinewines". Both sites will have updates with progress and the twitter acct will have information on what wines I am opening each day, that can be sampled for a small fee. Please visit and follow these pages for updates and We will look forward to seeing you once we are open.

Great Value

Last Friday I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to join #TTL or twitter taste live. The featured winery was Clos LaChance and we were trying several of their entry level or Hummingbird series wines. Included were an unoaked Chardonnay Glittering- Throated Emerald 2008 Monterey Co., Cabernet Sauvignon Ruby - Throated 2006 Central Coast and finally Meritage Crimson Topaz 2007 Central Coast. First as a blogger, I was privileged enough to get these gratis. That said, I have no issues with pointing out if I do not like a wine, because what I may find a flaw may be desirable to others. First we tried the Chardonnay, which if tried blind all of those assembled would have sworn was a New Zealand Sauv Blanc. The wine had loads of citrus with hints of other tropical fruit, which to me was largely overridden by the grapefruit. I am not a fan of citrus/grassy sauv blancs, however this wine was very refreshing and would have been perfectly suited for a hot evening on the deck. Next we tried the Cabernet Sauvignon. This wine was great,particularly for the money (under $20). There was rich black raspberry flavors that coated my tongue. This wine outshone it's price point and left me wondering what their more expensive wines are like. Finally we dug into the Meritage. This also was a treat, with traces of red, black and blue fruit all melded into a harmonious blend of flavors that also lingered nicely in my mouth. I was really impressed with these wines which priced out from mid teens to mid twenties.
To me good values and though the chardonnay tasted more like a sauv blanc to me that should not be an issue for those who appreciate grapefruit and grass in their white wines. If you come across these wines or any others from Clos LaChance, I would not hesitate to try them as long as the price is right for you.

wine blogging wednesday

The topic this month is California Dreaming or remembering the first magical wine from California. My wife and I shared our development of wine appreciation. This was largely accomplished through a long series of tastings we attended at a now closed wine store in Cincinnati( The Mushroom ) from the mid 90's until they closed in the early 2000's. We were learning about wine at a time when California wines were still reasonable and when I look back at my tasting sheets from those days, I see many of the wines that today are considered cult wines and are substantially more expensive. The one wine that sticks out through all of that fantastic clutter is Bouchaine and their wonderful Carneros Pinot Noir. The wine, at the time was made by Eugenia Keegan, who is very highly respected as a wine maker. We had tried Bouchaine Pinot Noirs at 3 separate tasting and without remembering it, each time purchased another bottle. The price at the time was in the mid twenties, which was at the higher end for our wine buying habits of the time. Shortly after discovering the wine it changed dramatically and was almost not recognizable. We subsequently found that Eugenia Keegan had left the winery. There were many years were we stayed away from Bouchaine because it had changed so dramatically. Just last year however I attended a tasting of Bouchaine wines and was thrilled to find that the quality had returned and, though not the same as it had been, it was once again a very good Pinot Noir. Better still their base Pinot was still in the mid twenties price wise. This is still a special wine to my wife and I and will always hold a special place in the history of our wine enjoyment.

A rare find

Yesterday, I had the pleasure f a attending a wine trade tasting, at which there were a lot of good wines in a variety of price points. There was one producer that stood out for me though. It was Bonaccorsi Wine Company and I had the pleasure of sampling three of their single vineyard Pinot Noirs and single vineyard Chardonnay.I had a nice conversation with the wine maker Jenne Lee Bonaccorsi. The wines were quite sophisticated. The chardonnay was lush with ripe tropical and rich mouth feel. All three Pinot Noirs were very good, but I was particularly fond of the 2004 Melville. There seemed to be a greater depth of flavor and lushness here that I have found with other premium small production Pinot Noirs after additional time in the bottle. I have found that these wines compare favorably with some of the fine burgundies, yet retain the playfulness often found in New World wines when compared to Old World siblings. It will be exciting to see where this young winery goes in it's next decade of wine making.

It's Rose' season! Maybe?

Last night we opened a bottle of 2006 David Girard Rose, which I bought at Arrow Wine in Dayton last year. I had tasted David Girard Red wines before and been very impressed, so when I saw this wine we decided to try it. Now that we have I have even more respect for this producer. The wine is a rose of blended Rhone varietals and has rich red fruit flavors usually associated with Red wines. There are hints of cedar and a great balance of tannin and acid. This was a very pleasant wine that even though it was theoretically over the hill for a Rose, it was still very fresh and vibrant, not the least bit washed out. I would be comfortable recommending this producer's Rose from newer vintages based on the quality of this older wine. As it warms up give it a try if you can find it.