"Every wine should speak clearly about its origins of both place and plant material, not winery manipulations." - Tony Soter

Over the past 30 years, Tony Soter has pursued many winegrowing challenges, but few have been as demanding and rewarding as the production of his traditional, handmade sparkling wines. At Soter, the goal is to produce a great wine that happens to effervesce, with fullness and flavor intensity that bring to mind the finest small-house, or "grower" Champagnes.

Wine First, and then Sparkling.
Farmed from the same low yields (under 2 tons per acre) as the Beacon Hill Pinot Noir, our goal is to create a rich and expressive base wine as the foundation for the complex, fine-beaded nectar that will emerge from our cellars. These low yields are responsible not only for concentration, but also for expressive aromatics; a vine that carries a lighter crop load is able to ripen its skins faster, and therefore produce more flavorful juice when harvest time comes. Soter endeavors to reach a perfect balance - the grapes are asked for maximum ripeness of flavor, and picked just at the limit of feasibility for sparkling wine production. If we were to guess, perhaps less than 5% of the sparkling wine produced in the world is intended to reach this standard of quality.

Terroir
The cool climate and shallow siltstone soils of Beacon Hill lend themselves to the development of perfectly balanced, early-maturing grapes for sparkling wine. Three acres of Chardonnay and two acres of Pinot Noir vines at Beacon Hill are dedicated exclusively to sparkling production. Our noble Dijon clones of Chardonnay, planted in 1988, contribute structure and character to the base wine. Pinot Noir provides great textural opulence, and adding a little older red Pinot Noir adds still more complexity to the final blend, and is responsible for the wine's beautiful "partridge-eye" color.

Vinification
The base wines are fermented separately in a mixture of new, neutral, and stainless steel barrels, and aged in these casks. After blending and bottling, the Brut Rosé spends at least three full years on the yeast ("sur lattes") before it is disgorged and given a small dosage of sugar, between 7 to 8 grams per bottle. Because the base wine we begin with is so rich, we feel that this small dosage (the industry standard is 10g-12g, and 15g is still permissible for 'Brut' wines) is all we need to balance the wine. Excessive sweetener is not needed as a performance enhancer at Soter, as it is in many overcropped, excessively acidic sparkling wines.

Every Soter sparkling wine is vintage-dated, vineyard-designated, and disgorgement-dated. The disgorgement date is very important to us, because we feel that the consumer has a right to know how long the wine has been aged on the yeast and how long it has been corked. Very few producers anywhere adhere to this practice.

(above: Five years after the vintage, this 2001 Brut Rosé bottle with a frozen 'plug' of yeast and wine is examined and then loaded into our disgorgement machine, where the plug shoots out, a dosage of sugar is added, and a cork and wire cage are added to the bottle. Then a label and a short 3-month rest are all that is needed before we release the wine to you.)

The Wine
With a beautiful pale pink color in the glass and a wonderfully fine bead, the wine has a spicy, blossom-laden complexity on the nose. Honey, suggestions of ginger, vanilla, and crème brulée overlay subtler notes of ripe cranberries and strawberries. Enjoy our Brut Rosé to the fullest: pair it with a main course. Dishes like paillards of chicken in chanterelle cream come to mind, or perhaps pair it with something as exotic as lobster and rose-petal agnolotti. Soon you'll see why Soter bubblies have won such a cult following, and why today they stand among the elite of American sparkling wines.

Tasting Notes and Facts
2003 Beacon Hill Brut Rosé
2001 Beacon Hill Brut Rosé
1999 Beacon Hill Brut Rosé
1998 Beacon Hill Brut Rosé
1997 Beacon Hill Brut Rosé