by Patrick Ogle
Kir-Yianni Akakies rosé is a Greek wine made from 100 percent xinomavro. This wine is a sharp, crisp and not super fruity rosé with red fruit hints and floral flavors. Floral here means refers not to chewing on greenery but inhaling the fragrance of a subtle field of flowers. When you take a sip and exhale these floral flavors appear. They don’t exactly “appear” they are there in every sip but they are perhaps more obvious at the finish.
This wine has a dark color for a rosé and more body and more too it. The sharpness, the tartness and acidity balance with the floral and the fruit. This is a wine you can serve cold but as it warms you will notice more complexity and flavor. This is true of most wines that HAVE complexity—as the temperature goes up you will taste more.
Some people still think of rosés as sweet. Maybe it is remembering the bad old white zinfandel of days past. Maybe it is the pink color. These days most roses you find are, at least, fairly dry. Roses may be blends or may, like this one, be 100 percent from a single grape. You see cabernet franc used in Chinon rosés and other grapes you associate with medium to even heavy red wines.
The grape’s name translates literally to “acid black.” Yet the wine made from this grape is often described as similar to pinot noir. There is nothing extremely acidic about this wine even though there is enough acid to make things interesting.
Reading on this grape you read some fairly contradictory things; the wines are highly tannic or the wines are similar to a pinot. Which is true? This is something that will have to be explored more fully—finding some red xinomavros seems to be in order.
$16-20
Kir-Yianni Akakies rosé is a Greek wine made from 100 percent xinomavro. This wine is a sharp, crisp and not super fruity rosé with red fruit hints and floral flavors. Floral here means refers not to chewing on greenery but inhaling the fragrance of a subtle field of flowers. When you take a sip and exhale these floral flavors appear. They don’t exactly “appear” they are there in every sip but they are perhaps more obvious at the finish.
This wine has a dark color for a rosé and more body and more too it. The sharpness, the tartness and acidity balance with the floral and the fruit. This is a wine you can serve cold but as it warms you will notice more complexity and flavor. This is true of most wines that HAVE complexity—as the temperature goes up you will taste more.
Some people still think of rosés as sweet. Maybe it is remembering the bad old white zinfandel of days past. Maybe it is the pink color. These days most roses you find are, at least, fairly dry. Roses may be blends or may, like this one, be 100 percent from a single grape. You see cabernet franc used in Chinon rosés and other grapes you associate with medium to even heavy red wines.
The grape’s name translates literally to “acid black.” Yet the wine made from this grape is often described as similar to pinot noir. There is nothing extremely acidic about this wine even though there is enough acid to make things interesting.
Reading on this grape you read some fairly contradictory things; the wines are highly tannic or the wines are similar to a pinot. Which is true? This is something that will have to be explored more fully—finding some red xinomavros seems to be in order.
$16-20
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