2017 Epoch Rosé

Pale orange-pink. Displays incisive, mineral-accented redcurrant, strawberry, blood orange and white pepper aromas, along with a sneaky basil nuance. Chewy, dry and sharply focused on the palate, offering sharply delineated citrus fruit, red berry and floral pastille flavors that deepen and give way to more plush peach and melon qualities on the back half. Shows outstanding clarity, tension and mineral cut on the finish, which hangs on with impressive tenacity. This taut but generous wine, which effortlessly mixes power and finesse, makes a strong case for being the most impressive New World pink wine that I tasted this year. Hell, it's one of the handful of best rosés that I've recently had, from anywhere. If you like rocks in your rosé, here's your wine.

The 2017 Rosé from Epoch is immensely impressive and certainly deserves a place on the shortlist of the best Californian rosés I've tried in the last couple of years. It's a Mourvèdre-based wine that includes some Grenache saigné, and it's fermented and matured in stainless steel barrels. The wine offers up a pretty bouquet of peach, crisp melon and subtle herbs, followed by a medium-bodied, delicately textural palate with succulent acids and lovely concentration, concluding with a pure, beautifully defined finish.