March 2023 Rosé Club

   This month we were inspired by the grapes of the Loire Valley. If it's French splendor, style and gastronomy you seek, the Loire Valley will exceed your expectations. Poised on the crucial frontier between northern and southern France, and just a short train or car ride from Paris, the region was once of immense strategic importance. Kings, queens, dukes and nobles came here to establish feudal castles and, later on, sumptuous pleasure palaces – that's why this fertile river valley is sprinkled with hundreds of France's most opulent aristocratic estates. With crenellated towers, soaring cupolas and glittering banquet halls, the region's châteaux, as well as the villages and vineyards that surround them, attest to over a thousand years of rich architectural and artistic creativity. The Loire Valley is also known for its outstanding wines (red, white, rosé and sparkling).  The Loire Valley remains largely undervalued when compared with its more famous neighbors in Bordeaux and Burgundy. On one hand, this is a real shame. On the other hand, we should pray that the trend continues, as the Loire Valley represents some of the best value in all of France. The Loire Valley boasts an enormous range of grape varieties and styles: you can find bone dry whites, dry and sweet sparkling and rosé wines, light as well as fuller bodied reds, and exquisite dessert wines. 

Our Loire Valley Rosé comes from importer Paris Wine Company, which was founded by Josh Adler, former wine director at Bi-Rite Market here in San Francisco. Since 2012 Paris Wine Company has worked to select exceptional winemakers across France to help them export their wines. Their mission is to help winemakers develop their network and to match them up with excellent distributors who will help tell their story and promote the wines with the highest levels of passion and professionalism. Their principal interest is finding exceptional producers who make wines with energy, purity, and balance. They look for wines that have some indefinable quality that makes them stand apart from the rest, that go well with food, are easy to drink, and where the first empty bottle leads easily to the second.

The vast majority of Paris Wine Company’s producers work their own estate vineyards, practice organic or biodynamic farming methods, hand harvest, and use native yeast and minimal intervention during vinification and élevage. Les Deux Moulins is located between Anjou and Tours, with vineyards made up of gravel and schist soils instilling the wine with a vibrant and long-lasting mineral finish. 

Our second wine is from Lieu Dit; a partnership of longtime friends Eric Railsback and Justin Willett. The two met in Santa Barbara while Eric was finishing college and Justin was just beginning his career in winemaking. They were among a small group of young winemakers and restaurateurs in Santa Barbara unified by a common interest in wine and all its mysteries.

After countless bottles shared together and many trips to France, Railsback and Willett decided to found Lieu Dit in 2011 and focus it solely on the varieties indigenous to the Loire Valley, now grown in Santa Barbara County. The varied micro-climates and marine based soils of Santa Barbara County are ideally suited to this set of grapes. Lieu Dit centers on Sauvignon Blanc as well as limited bottlings of Melon de Bourgogne, Chenin Blanc, Cabernet Franc and Rosé of Pinot Noir. Each vintage, the quest for purity, elegance, and balance in every wine is paramount.

Think Pink,

Carrie Upson

General Manager