Vintage 2009 provided a fine opportunity to make a fair volume of my micro-project, the Velo Malbec Rosé. With 1500 liters in the tank right now, I have about twice as much as last year’s meager 80 case production. The idea for the wine came about after several vintages of wrestling with the soft-skinned Malbec, which had a tendency to fall apart on the grape-sorting table, resulting in buckets of juice being collected from the drain pan which would then be tossed into the fermenter at the end of the day’s crush. In October of 2006, we were poised once again to return the pink juice to the fermenter, literally standing there with the buckets, when we thought, “what are we doing, why not make a little rosé with this?”
We saved the run-off juice, then drained a bit more from the fermenter so we would have enough to fill one 210 liter stainless drum. A couple of days later we racked the clean juice to a new drum, gave it a little bit yeast, stuck it a cool corner of the winery and left it to its own devices. When the dust had settled by mid-November at the end of harvest, we rolled it out and drew off a sample of pale, vibrantly acidic, dry rosé scented with watermelon, strawberry and a touch of rhubarb.
As we were getting ready to bottle the inaugural vintage of Velo Malbec Rosé my wife, Julia, and I discovered we were going to be having a daughter. In lieu of cigars at her birth it seemed appropriate to be able to offer my friends a bottle of pink wine.