SAINT JEAN D’ARDIÉRES | Pinot Noir Rosé | 2017
pinot noir

WineStatistics will be evaluating wines in no particular order on no particular schedule. Just stay tuned and you will never miss one. If the wine is tasted more than once, the rating table will be updated so as to reflect all the new impressions and observations. The logic is simple – the more we taste, the more we learn.

Today we are going to review another rosé wine, but one that is a rare find, because it is a single varietal pinot noir rosé – Pinot Noir Rosé 2017 from Saint Jean D’Ardiéres. The making of rosé wine with pinot noir grapes is all about timing – the longer the skins are in the juice, the darker they dye the wine. For pinot noir, this process looks a little like a combination of red and white winemaking. The grapes get crushed into a tank with the skins and seeds, then the juice is monitored by the winemaker, who takes samples every hour or so to check on the color of extraction. When the color gets to the desired hue and shade, the winemaker strains the juice from the skins into clean tanks where the wine completes its fermentation. Some pinot noir rosé wines have less than 7 hours of skin contact time, but enough theory, let’s move on to the tasting.
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Take a look at the tasting notes below and our detailed assessment of the wine:

Visual
Peach pink color, with pastel pink shades towards the rim of the glass.

Olfactory
The nose is strong, filled mostly with flavours of sweet stone and berry fruits: raspberry, strawberry, cranberry, berberry, wolfberry, red mirabelle, red cherry, red currant, wildberry, wild strawberry, peach, strawberry jam, sweet cherry jam and some subtle hints of honey and candy.

Gustatory
The wine is dry, with high alcohol level, high acidity and firm tannin. This is a fruity, fresh and crisp rosé wine, with a bitter-zesty profile, as it tastes lean, velvety and a bit austere and angular towards the end. It has a fair overall balance and it feels quite nuanced – well, this is a quite unusual rosé wine, yet a very appealing one.

Aftertaste
The wine has a medium finish and a balanced, bitter-crisp aftertaste.
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This is definitely a great Wine of France and the overall rating says the same, with 90.1 points scored it is right there, among the best wines we’ve tasted so far. Please click on the chart icon on the left in order to get to the wine rating page, where you can find all the wines we’ve tasted to date.

Conclusion: this is a rosé wine in its prime form – rich, refreshing and well balanced, maybe just a bit angular, yet very well made, with its own ups and downs. The wine feels lean and appealing, therefore we would recommend to drink it now, as long it is still young and beautiful, as no more bottle ageing is required – the wine is fine right here and right now. As we often like to mention – it is always better to drink a wine a year too soon than a day too late, which is valid for this wine as well. In order to complement the wine’s aromatic profile at its best, we would recommend to pair it with light dessert dishes, like for example a berry fruits tiramisu or some grilled salmon bruschetta, as the later one is epic – all the acidity and tannin in the wine will cut nicely through the fatiness in the dish. Enjoy!

WineStatistics tasting results:

SAINT JEAN D’ARDIÉRES
Pinot Noir Rosé | 2017

grape: | pinot noir |

region: France | Beaujolais

overall rating: | 90.1 |

conclusion: great | a must try

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(c) The WineStatistics ratings are based solely on our own knowledge of the world of wine and on our personal wine tastes, which may, or may not, differ from yours – the reader. There are no absolutes of right and wrong in wine appreciation.