Santa Barbara Winemakers.

Fiddlehead - Pink Fiddle , pinot noir rose, 2005 Santa Rita Hills. Alc 14.1%.

Chicken pot pie, home-made, with chunks of chicken, potatoes, chanterelles, green beans and carrots, a thick crust to get the thirst worked up and then dollops of Branston Pickle on the side. Yeah it's a Brit thing, I had no HP brown sauce. What best to quench that thirst? Something with flavour, minerality, fruitiness but not too much, traces of sweetness just enough traces to work like a fig leaf, something cold, crisp, refreshing.
If you have seen our interview with Kathy Joseph, you can feel her exuberance, enthusiasm and her happy being alive life. You feel happy just being in her presence because she has that derring-do, a mischeviousness that you trust, she inspires simply by being herself, happy in her skin. You can love her for being Kathy and noone else.
When we got a taste of the Pink Fiddle during bottling, I was struck by how bone bloody dry this wine was. An hour later you could have used my tongue to smooth down a sandstone rock but now this little buggar has settled down. She described this wine as a seriously fun wine. I kept counsel, got the mineral thing but thought more about a sauv blanc sensation as it slid down the epiglottis, I was willing to go along like a trusting puppy with her words of wisdom.
This is as much a guy wine as a girl wine, don't let the label put you off if you are still nurturing your manly sexuality, the only rose on this track is John Albans' "Sanrojo" and believe me that is a monster (I skirt into forbidden SLO territory, but Alban wines are immaculate, the Sanrojo is already legendary to those lucky enough to get some of the '04, single barrel production, I still have a few bottles left too.)
The Pink Fiddle has a heady 14.1% alc. and kicks like a mule. The nose is akin to New Zealand sauv blancs, the palate is left refreshingly clean. This is a party wine for when you leave the kids in the car on a summer's day in Arizona. It's the wine to lose your virginity to on a beach on a full moon. It's the wine to cut the lawn to, to pick flowers for the dinner table, to decide to take up pastel drawing of the human figure, to go skinny dipping. Basically cut loose and damn the torpedoes because there is life in this flint bottle. I'm only half way in to this bottle and you can tell by the review, I have not reached the "spanking" stage, but I sense the sex in a bottle Kathy was alluding to. If this wine was a work of art, the only image that comes to mind (pardon the pun), is The Guitar Lesson by Balthus ( I'm not providing a link but use google "images" as your guide). Freud can take you from guitar lessons to pink fiddles to pink curtains before you can say repressed.
Submit to this wine and give thanks to Tim Duggan for whipping Kathy and Karen around the cellar. You'll be seeing more of this in the years ahead, look on the top shelf next to "Barely Legal" to coin a "Sideways" wrist action by Miles. Keep it chilled though, this is not a wine for New England Puritans. Nor should you use any mechanical equipment.



Cheers

April 9, 2006