by Dale Robertson
Other than New Year’s Eve, no day seems more evocative of tiny bubbles than Valentine’s. Personally, I’ll be drinking lot of pink come Friday and here are two that, after recent personal samplings, left me feeling amorous.
2015 Argyle Brut Rosé
When I first met Rollin Soles about a decade ago, he had already been delivering award-winning wines from his Argyle Winery in Oregon’s Dundee Hills to the market for 13 years. Nothing has changed: Soles, who had Lyle Lovett and Robert Earl Keen as roommates while he worked toward his microbiology degree at Texas A&M, was in Houston for the recent for ‘Pinot in the City’ tasting with some 50 of his fellow Oregon vintners at Minute Maid Park’s Union Station, still makes a killer bottle of pink bubbles. In his words, this tart and lively bottle of bubbles – also a pinot noir (55 percent), chardonnay (40) and pinot meunier blend – ‘aligns rose petal, peach skin, and cracked fennel with energetic mineral length and creamy texture.’
Critical acclaim: Wine.com’s Wilfred Wong awarded the Argyle a score of 92, explaining that ‘the wine shows a lovely deep pink color and delicious, persistent flavors.’ He suggests pairing ‘its aromas and flavors of ripe strawberries and dried earth with lightly-seasoned, grilled salmon.’