Wine Pick: The Most Honest Rosé In Town

€œI won't lie, the 2019 vintage was a tough one.€ Such began the most honest mail-out from a winery owner I€™ve received in years. The author was Amulet's Dwight Sick, who made his reputation making killer wines for Stag's Hollow and went out on his own last year making, among other things, a true Rhône-style red that used grenache (a rarity in the Okanagan) to great effect. The toughness he recounted related to relentless September rains that wreaked havoc on grapes up and down the Valley. To add insult to injury, the 40 percent of his grapes that were in good shape were eaten by a family of three black bears that feasted like kings for a week. But you know what they say: when life gives you bears and rain, you make rosé. That's the other truism Dwight owns up to: while everyone talks about making serious rosé, a lot of the local pink wave comes from a hodgepodge of leftover grapes that didn€™t have anywhere else to go (we're looking at you, cabernet-malbec rosés). But grenache (joined here by 27 percent syrah) is the prototypical Provençal grape for rosé, and the result is one hell of a crisp, copper-hued wine with crunchy stone fruit and some lovely pronounced savoury notes ($60/magnum). Not the goal he was aiming for, but one we'll happily applaud.