If we had a dollar for every time we’ve been behind the 5OS bar and copped the “is your Rosé dry, I only like dry Rosé” question/statement, we’d all be surfing a lot more and writing tasting notes a lot less.

V14 we thought, for giggles more than anything, we should test out the conviction of those this way inclined and grabbed a couple of tonnes of Coriole Sangiovese fruit and soaked it in a reefer for a few days before fermenting it cold and slow until ‘heaven and earth pass away, not an iota, not a dot’, of sugar remained. When it had finally done its thing, we stabilized it and gave it a quick fine before setting it for bottling straight away.

None of us would admit it, but behind the scenes there was a universally high level of peeing yourself style nervousness. It smelt wicked and looked even better, but the palate was brutal and the typical varietal tannin added another layer of prickliness that had me reaching for the conc like a 10 beer ciggie. We snuggled up, found a way to resist that temptation and by the time we’d lifted our heads out of the sand a few months later, it had come to look a bit like a wine. 6 months later, it was strutting around with a golden gong from the AAVWS and sitting in its throne at the end of all our Christmas tables. “Dry, yeah you could say that, hold on tight and I’ll get you a taste.” SG