2022 Cuvee Zero Rose Ruth Lewandowski

Farming : Certified Organic

Winemaking : Hand-Picked Grapes | Native Yeast Fermentation | Unfined | Unfiltered | Vegan | No Added Sulfites

Region : Mendocino, California

Grape : Touriga Nacional | Souzao | Tinta Roriz | Sauvignon Blanc

Alcohol by Volume : 10.9%

Notes:

We saw some better yields for vintage 2022, not “normal,” per se but far better than ’21, thankfully. As a result, the Rosé sticks a bit closer to the OG Portuguese focused theme with all the aroma, flavor and textural signatures of these deeper red varieties we’ve come to know and love. The vast majority of the blend remains Touriga Nacional, Souzao, and Tinta Roriz, however, we peppered in a tiny bit of Sauvignon Blanc as we did last year since we received such great feedback from all of you. Tinta Roriz was whole cluster direct pressed (no skin contact). Touriga Nacional and Souzao were foot trodden together and pressed post ~2 hours maceration. Natural fermentation occurred without temperature control or fermentation aids of any sort. The wine went through full native malolactic conversion. It spent 5 months on lees, one racking before blending/bottling. It was bottled unfined, unfiltered, and without additions of SO2.- Winemaker

Who is Ruth? I’ve said it a thousand different ways since the beginning of Ruth Lewandowski Wines, and I think its most comprehensible to explain “Ruth” as a concept more than a living, breathing individual. A concept born out of the affiliation of my own philosophies of farming and winemaking (which indeed spill over to inform so many of my life beliefs) and one small but very significant text in the Old Testament of the Bible, the book of Ruth. Without sounding ‘preachy’ and so as not to offend the sensitive, and in the interest of concisely summing things up, I don’t believe there to be a deeper, more compelling depiction of the natural cycle of death and redemption (both in the physical realm we can see and the spiritual realm we often do not) than this one short book.

Death is, indeed, the engine of life

Nothing that is alive today could be so without something having died first. This is the redemptive nature of our universe, of our planet, of our soils, plants, and ultimately you and I. The cessation of things is necessary to begin anew, even more fully. From the wreckage of death and tragedy at the beginning of the book of Ruth, a young woman finds life, finds beauty and is able to truly live….not simply in spite of the death, but because the death occurred at all. The regeneration of the life of our soils occurs only through organic matter…all completely dead, broken down carbon-based items. A natural fermentation is the building up and dying off of multiple strains of yeast and bacteria, each paving the way for the next strain to take over (and each leaving their altogether unique signatures of flavor, aroma, and textural compounds).

Who is Ruth? Well, with this sort of explanation, I suppose I could say that there is a bit of Ruth in all of us. – Winemaker