Drinking Wines From Calaveras

As the weather warms (hush, 40 degrees is warm in February!) my thoughts have been turning to whites and rosés as I try to hurry in the spring.  It’s coming, I swear, my daffodils and irises are poking through the ground and I think I saw my hyacinths coming up as well!  So now is the perfect time to dive into some of the wines I picked up in Murphys when I visited last fall.  I chose the 2007 Hatcher Grenache Rosé tonight.  It cost me around $11 at the winery, had a real cork closure, and clocked in at 12.6% alcohol by volume.  I’ll be heading back up to Calaveras before the Wine Blogger Conference this year, “dragging” Thea with me, so maybe we’ll have time to stop in again.

I first noticed how incredibly dark the color on this Rosé was.  It almost looked like a very light red wine rather than a Rosé.  On the nose I found banana, like the Laffy Taffy banana flavor, strawberry, cherry candy, lime, white pepper, and red licorice.  In the mouth I found the wine to be nice and smooth with a peppery kick.  I got flavors of raspberry, strawberry, cherry, a banana aftertaste, lime, and some other underlying citrus.  I liked how juicy the wine was and at $11 this was a fantastic deal.

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