Nero d'Avola Rosato NV No. 3

Well, where do I start? For this rosé I did almost everything opposite to what one would learn in winemaking school and at other wineries. This cuvée was born out of interpreting what I thought would taste best from this variety at this specific site. I started with the “vino di una notte” technique... This translates to ‘one night wine’ and refers to the traditional (and out-of-style) Italian technique of crushing red grapes and leaving them to macerate on skins (and in our case, stems) in their own juice overnight, adding color, texture, and complexity to rosé wine. I love using this technique with our Nero d’Avola because it produces a wine that falls between rosé and a red wine—zippy and bright like a rosé but textured and robust like a red wine. The farming at Bricarelli Ranch also adds to the complexity of this wine. Dry-farmed on well drained soils, grape berries are small due to water scarcity and have a higher skin to juice ratio (skins are where you get a ton of flavor). Dry farmed grapes are rarely used for rosé production in California. The roots of these vines penetrate deep into the soil in search of water, at depths where soil mineral content goes up and organic matter is scarce, elevating the uptake of minerals, which I notice most as textural differences in the wine. The final contribution to the complexity of this wine: I blend a small percentage of a Nero d’Avola Rosato Solera (started in 2018) to the 2025 vintage rosato to add a “base note” to the blend, anchoring it with a slightly more complex aged note. Oh, and I also allow all of my rosés, this included, to undergo malolactic fermentation. Learn the rules to break ’em!