Channing Daughters, located on the south fork of Long Island in the town of Bridgehampton. It is usually overlooked by me because it is on the “other fork”. In fact I have a tendency to ignore the vineyards and wineries of route 25, I tend to ride Sound Avenue out east; Shame on me.
This wine was introduced to me via The New York Cork Club. The NYCC is a wine club that focuses on wine of New York State. You can find out information about the club here and I highly recommend this to all of my readers. I am a club member. (The NYCC is a great Christmas gift to give to someone)
When I opened this wine, Melissa and I made an Italian inspired dinner and I thought this would be a great wine for the meal. It is 100% Pinot Grigio grapes. But this is not your everyday Pinot Grigio.
Ramato is a unique wine; it is an “orange wine”. To give you an understanding of what an “orange” wine is; I give you this explanation from Wikipedia:
Notice the orange tinge.
Orange wine
is wine made from white wine grape varieties that have spent some maceration time in contact with the grape skins. Typically white wine production involves crushing the grapes and quickly moving the juice off the skins into the fermentation vessel. The skins contain color pigment, phenols and tannins that are often considered undesirable for white wines while for red wines, skin contact and maceration is a vital part of the winemaking process that gives red wines its color, flavor and texture. Orange wines get their name from the darker, slightly orange tinge that the white wines receive due to their contact with the coloring pigments of the grape skins.
Now that Wikipedia has helped me explain this wine, it now for my tasting notes.
On the nose I was getting this very cool aroma of fermentation. If you want to know what grapes smell like while they are working to become wine, open this bottle and take a whiff. There was this nutty, spicy aroma that reminded me of a Christmas spice cookie. There were also elements of pear and apple along with some honey and a touch of vanilla.
The taste of this wine was even better. It was very silky on the palate. It had great body and substance. I was picking up some of the elements that I had on the nose, but I was getting a little baked apple or bear flavor. There was a touch of toast and vanilla.
I messed around with this wine, mainly because my wife and I both felt that it had a lot of red wine elements. So we let it come to room temperature and the fruity elements were more pronounced. The colder it was, the more of the acidic it was.
I believe that this wine is a wine that can show well fresh out of the cooler or fresh off the wine rack. Try it both ways. It is alot of fun. We enjoyed it; I have a feeling you will to.
Keep your eyes open in the future, I plan on making a trip to Channing Daughters in the New Year. From their website and just by tasting this, there are alot of good things going on at Channing Daughters and I cannot wait to go and visit and share my experience.
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What do I see written up in one of the freesheets which litters the morning train? Orange wine. Orange wine, as in leaving the white grape skins to macerate with the juice, creating a salmon blush, rather than wine made from oranges; which I could go for, too. Apparently, ‘This trend has translated into the mainstream’, causing ‘mass-market retailers’ to stock ‘more than one variety of the amber nectar’. Well, if there’s one thing I love, it’s a trend which translates into the mainstream.
These translating-into-the-mainstream orange wines are ‘grippy’, ‘soft’, ‘approachable’, ‘earthy’, ‘honeyed’ and ‘completely different’. They look fantastic in the pictures, tainted and unnatural and oddly Victorian. They come from Georgia. Or Croatia. Almost the first thing I do, several days later, is try and buy some…: http://sedimentblog.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/orange.html
We are so excited you are captivated by these wines! But please, try to refer to them as “amber” wines – most of them are not orange, but are amber in color. They are not made with oranges, and tend not to be citrusy, either.