Pansy! Rose 2003

Kim Crawford 2003 Pansy! Rose from New Zealand

Wacky Named Wines

Reduced Price:$9.95 at K&L Wines (I bought the very last bottle in the store so it is no longer available at this merchant)

86 % Merlot, 14 % Malbec, contains sulfites, Alcohol 14% by volume

Produced and bottled by Kim Crawford Wines


Click on the photo to enlarge. (Stylin' by Sam, Photo by Fred)


The Winemaker's Notes:
Pansy! is a sculptured wine. Made from Pinot Noir grapes from Nelson, a portion of juice was bled from the grapes one day after crushing. The wine was then handled like a white wine, cool fermented and sulphured once dry. Once stabilized the wine was bottled early to retain its natural freshness.
Further profile details can be found here

The Blurb on the Label:
Fresh, funky, fleshy and fun, this rose is an ideal apperitif, summer sipper or just because... Like life, Pansy is made to enjoy.

According to Erica Crawford "Pansy wine is about "friendship, kindness and generosity of spirit". The wine is aimed directly at the gay community. Read more details here

Our Tasting notes:
Visual: Deep raspberry red in colour, nearer to a shade you might associate with red wine than what you might expect of a rose. The gaudy screw-top lid is a particularly ugly shade of pink, something like a really bad polish that a little girl might try to persuade you to choose at the nail salon.

Nose: A very mild perfume suggesting Raspberry Ripple Ice Cream, Strawberry Nesquik, vanilla, white chocolate and cheesecake. Overwhelming vanilla and red fruit. Fred also detected a mustard aroma, which I had trouble locating.

Taste: The same vanilla and red fruit accents that came through at the sniffing stage, sweet around the tongue, a buttery feel, almost like a ready made kir, but not as delicious.

Conclusion:
If I was gay (I'm not, even though I recently attended Gay Traffic School ), I am not sure how I would feel about a wine, aimed at me, being packaged in this way. I am certainly in touch with my own feminine side, my favourite colour is pink, but in terms of instant of appeal, this bottle isn't talking to me. The language used on the label - a series of flippantly constructed alliterative adjectives which sound appealing but do nothing to actually really describe the wine(funky/fleshy/fun) is certainly not aimed at anyone who takes their wine seriously. I wouldn't have minded if drinking the wine had been a silly, sexy or outrageously camp experience. But to be truthful, it took a lot of effort to find the energy to finish the bottle. Had I been soaking up Summer rays, in a beautiful outdoor setting in the Southern Hemisphere, maybe I would have had better vibes from this wine. But on a chilly, San Francisco night, as an apperitif, with a comforting meal of pan-fried duck-breast, roast potatoes and courgettes to follow, I am afraid Pansy! didn't blossom into a new wine romance for me.

This post is an entry for Wine Blogging Wednesday's Wacky Named Wines, being lovingly hosted over at Chez Pim Head over there to read reviews of more wacky named wines from all over the world.