Keeler Vineyards Sparkling Petillant Naturel Rosé Eola-Amity Hills 2022

Keeler Estate is in Oregon’s famed Willamette Valley. It occupies a rather coveted location, between the Cascade Mountains and the Pacific Ocean, and without question one of the most coveted places to grow pinot noir on planet earth. Craig and Gabrielle Keeler found this property after searching high and low to start their lives as vintners – eventually walking through a wild field with felled trees and overgrown brush that somehow captivated Gabrielle’s spirit. They decided to make the 200-acre property their own, and a year later, after much landscaping and endless repairs, they moved in. What followed was the making of a world-class, biodynamically farmed vineyard churning out exceptional fruit for great wine.

The Keelers take a more natural approach to winemaking. They believe in as little intervention and manipulation as possible to ensure that the wine speaks for itself without outside influence. Because of this, they use native yeasts for fermentation and a variety of vessels for aging and vinification to bring the best characteristics out of each wine: stainless steel; oak barrels; concrete eggs and dolia; aka clay amphorae. The vessels bring out varying textures and flavor profiles to create the Keelers’ interesting wines… and “interesting” is quite certainly what this wine is all about!

For this pet-nat, the wine sat on its skins for two months, which explains the dark pinot noir-esque color. Very rarely do you ever see a wine this color called a “rosé,” but that merely adds to the mystique here. And in flavor and texture, this is closer to still pinot noir than rosé, too, which makes it all the more mystifying to drink. It’s got a relatively full body, and it’s a bit like lambrusco with a lightly effervescent fizz, and a fiercely mineral driven edge. As opposed to something like Champagne, which is usually under a full six atmospheres of pressure, this pet-nat is closer to about four or five. And I’m in LOVE with the flavor! It tastes like just what it is – natural – as if the fruit was plucked from the earth and put into a bottle. It’s all sour black plums and brandied cherries, iron ore with a stunning minerality, and accents of bay leaf, smoked hay, and crushed blackberries. The result is absolutely delicious, and for the price, it can’t be beat! And we all need a bit more Oregon wine in our lives, so this one is the one to go on!