Rootdown Wine Cellars 2024 Rosé of Trousseau St. Amant Vineyard Amador County

750ml bottle

11.9% abv

Organic

100% Trousseau

Soft, creamy, long. Nose and palate of wild strawberry, pomegranate, herbs.

St. Amant was planted in 1972 to ungrafted Zinfandel. Later that decade, a section of this Zinfandel was grafted over to five Portuguese varieties after the owners became interested in Port-style wines. Bastardo (née Trousseau), one of the few Portuguese varieties UC Davis had at the time, was St. Amant’s first Portuguese crop in 1981. After a spell with Phylloxera, a pesky root-chewing louse, they replanted their Port varieties on Phylloxera-resistant rootstock. The 1.8 acres of organically farmed grapes that Rootdown sources in this vineyard were planted in 2004 on Honcut soil (deep, well-drained soil formed into somewhat coarsely textured alluvium from base igneous and granitic rocks) atop floodplains and moderately sloping alluvial fans.