2024 Llewlyn 'Cuvee Hildy' Rose of Carignane

I haven't released a Cuvée Hildy in a few years. The 2023 version, a mucho rock'n'roll rosé of old vine Carignane, is still recovering in bottle somewhere in the back of the
warehouse - sort of becoming my lost album, maybe never to be released.

The '24 is a dark rosé of old vine Carignane from Testa Ranch in Mendocino county, about 45 minutes north of Cloverdale where the wine was made. I grapes were picked early in the morning, foot stomped, and pressed the next day. I call it a rosé, but it exists somewhere in the purgatory between rosé and light red. Some of this wine stalled out with some residual sugar, and after giving it a year to slowly chug toward dry, it still had a little too much come harvest. I put this portion on the skins of freshly pressed 2025 Carignan and pulled it off before it picked up too much new-vintage character. The two lots originally felt too different to put together: one a touch too reductive, the other a little too volatile. With time the two felt more in harmony together rather than separate. So here we are. A year and change in a mix of large-format wood and regular barrels.

Salty watermelon, red Gatorade after an AYSO soccer game, bitter grapefruit, and gravel-y earth. There’s definitely a big, wet kiss of VA, but cold, high acid wines have been a real treat in the recent, somewhat inappropriate heat of northern California. tl;dr: Dark rosé of old vine Carignane. A year and change in barrel, with a little help from the skins of a new vintage. Very electric and high acid — salted red grapefruit, chewing on plum skins, Friday night, and the smell of sun-baked rocks with moss growing on them