Sandhill Rosé leads a booming parade

Photo: Sandhill's Sandy Leier

The annual sales of BC VQA rosé wines have reached an astonishing $411 million a year and the category is growing at eight per cent a year

Some rosé brands are doing even better. Sandhill Wines, which has just released 7,018 cases of its 2021 rosé, says its brand has been growing at 36% a year. And it is not even the largest brand of rosé from BC. That may be Quails’ Gate Estate Winery. Jeff Del Nin, the chief winemaker there, is about to bottle 12,000 cases. Had the 2021 grape harvest been larger (the heat dome in June reduced yields), Quails’ Gate was prepared to make 16,000 cases of rosé because it has the potential to sell that much pink wine.

This enormous appetite for BC rosé wines has developed in just the last 15 or so years. JoieFarm of Naramata pioneered quality rosé with 140 cases in 2004. That was such a success, that JoieFarm made 1,100 cases in 2005. Another pioneer of rosé winemaking was Daniel Bontorin of Bottega Wine Studio at Cawston, where he is developing a portfolio of rosé wines. He began his winemaking career at Le Vieux Pin Winery. There in 2005, he had made about 70 cases of an exceptional rosé, called Vaïla (named after the vineyard manager’s daughter). Almost all the wine was snapped by restaurateur Vikram Vij. Those two rosé wines helped establish the category, especially because both wineries targeted the restaurant market first. Getting the sommeliers on side has been fundamental to the subsequent success of rosé. Sandhill has had a rosé in its portfolio at least since 2011, when the legendary Howard Soon was the winemaker.

Here is a note on that wine, which I scored 90 points: Sandhill Rosé 2011 Sandhill Estate Vineyard ($17.99 for 396 cases). There are four varietals in this: Gamay Noir (41%), Cabernet Franc (31%), Sangiovese (21%) and Barbera (7%). The grapes were cold-soaked about four days and then 10% of the juice was drained off (the French call this saignée).

When Howard retired, Sandy Leier took over in 2018. She was born in Vancouver and grew up in Kelowna where she prepared for a winemaking career with a degree in chemistry from the University of British Columbia Okanagan. She joined the Andrew Peller winemaking team in 2006. Before taking over Sandhill, she was the lead winemaker for both Calona Vineyards and Wayne Gretzky Okanagan. In 2018, she made 1,878 cases of Sandhill Rosé. By 2020, the volume was up to 6,112 cases. The volume in 2021 might have been greater than it was but for the heat spike in June which reduced the entire grape crop in the Okanagan and the Similkameen Valleys. In particular, Sandy had less Gamay to work with. The Sandhill rosé is a blend of Gamay and Merlot. The 2018 rosé was 83% Gamay; the 2019 was 81% Gamay; the 2020 was 65% Gamay and the 2021 is just 40% Gamay. It is not a negative. The 2021 rosé is a crisp, dry rosé that is a little more robust in texture than its predecessors due to the influence of Merlot in the blend.

Sandy did not employ the saignée method which is not appropriate for producing large volumes of rosé unless the winery also makes large volumes of reds that need concentrating. When Daniel Bontorin made the initial rosé wines at Le Vieux Pin (and later at LaStella), he would crush Pinot Noir and drain off about 15% of the juice. “Our goal is not to be a rosé company,” he told me at the time. “Our goal is to make better Pinot Noir.”

Sandy’s winemaking technique is different. “I like to do just a limited amount of skin contact. We direct pressed a lot of the fruit – whole bunch pressing to get the juice right off the skins. There is virtually no skin contact. The only skin contact is in the press. We hold a little of the fruit back and keep it on the skins just long enough extract some colour and bit of tannin. Then we press that as well. Most of the juice coming out is light in color and that is what I want. It is Provence-style … light coloured and delicate.” The juice is then cold-settled in tank. “We keep it in stainless steel for the entire process,” she says. “We ferment the wine in tank with a white wine yeast to show off the bright fruit characteristics in this wine. We ferment it about 11 days – a nice, slow fermentation. We don’t want it to get too warm or it will blow off that beautiful fruit character.”

The fruit here combines two appellations. Some 58% of the volume is from Andrew Peller’s Rocky Ridge Vineyard in the Similkameen while the rest is from the Sandhill Estate Vineyard on Black Sage Road. The result of blending these terroirs is a rosé that is more complex. The Merlot and the Gamay were fermented separately. “On tasting them, the Merlot offered a little more of the finish I was looking for,” Sandy says. “I was not planning to use more Merlot but, in the end, it was kind of nice.”

Here is a note on the wine, which is widely available.

Sandhill Rosé 2021 ($21 for 7,018 cases). The blend is 60% Merlot, 40% Gamay Noir. The wine has aromas of watermelon and raspberry leading to flavours of strawberry, pomegranate and nectarine. A slightly firm texture adds to the crisp and lingering finish. This wine will pair easily with a wide variety of foods. 91.