Pinot Noir Rose

This post was intended to be a pitch for the Les Boursicottes Sancerre Rose which happens to be 100% Pinot Noir.  It is imported by the remarkable value-oriented Scoperta Importing Company of Cleveland Heights, Ohio.  Much of their portfolio is affordable to most of us.  Les Boursicottes, however, is pricey.  Internet pricing indicates it may be a thirty dollar suggested retail, but our current 2019 vintage needs to go, so it's half of that now.

Scoperta, being a smaller importer, doesn't offer scads of information about their wines so we decided to pivot to a post about Pinot Noir Rose in general, only to learn there isn't much information about roses...period.  Wine Folly does a pretty good job of assigning flavor profiles to different varietal roses but that isn't what we wanted.  We wanted to know what makes Pinot Noir Roses, in particular, so good.

Pinot Noir is the great red grape of the world.  Cabernet Sauvignon is more widely planted and seems to do well in most places, as long as it's not to warm; but Pinot Noir at its best is a truly transcendent experience.  Unfortunately that kind of experience seems to be limited to Burgundy, France and maybe just a couple other places.  In other words, ninety percent of them are disappointing.  So if you want to hedge your shopping bets, get a Cabernet.

But why are Pinot Roses so good?  Here I have to confess - I don't know.  I cut cheese for a living so that one's beyond my pay grade.  But the romantic side of me wants to believe there is something magical about the Pinot grape.  As we said, the grape only does well in a few locations around the world, yet Pinot Roses seem to always overperform.  What gives?

We think we have two explanations.  

The dark and dirty secret about Pinot Noir in the marketplace is that a whole lot of it is rarely the single varietal Pinot Noir wine the consumer thinks it is.  Most California producers know their pinot juice is weak so they blend it with Syrah or something else to achieve fullness.  That way they can make a pretty good red wine.  It's just not Pinot Noir.  Could some of the Pinot Roses out there be similarly blended to achieve a fullness that mediocre pinot lacks?

Secondly, when good ethical producers have a bad vintage, they punt and turn that juice into rose.  So if the terroir that produces reliably good Pinot Noir as a rule is now turned into rose then it follows that that rose would also be superior.  Or something like that.

So have we achieved anything here?  Probably not.  But if you want to try some good rose, try a pinot.  And if you need a good dinner wine, try the Les Boursicottes.