2021 Chris Hamilton Cellars Rose Napa Valley 750 ml

First, you need an “in.”

Then, in order to buy fruit from one of the famed sites owned by the Pelissa-Hoxsey family, you wait. You wait until your toddler is thinking about college. You wait until your new car becomes an old beater. And only then do you get a chance at fruit from the family that supplies grapes for marquee wineries like Pilcrow and Nickel & Nickel.

But that’s not how it happened for vintner Chris Hamilton. He’s cultivated some amazing relationships in his time in Napa Valley, which is how he did the winemaking equivalent of skipping the line for Space Mountain. He got a call telling him that one of the Pelissa-Hoxsey family’s old clients was walking away from a few contracts at the legendary Lincoln Creek and Rock Cairn Vineyards—and he parlayed that rare opportunity into the 2021 Chris Hamilton Cellars Rosé Napa Valley.

If you’ve ever been to Brix Restaurant in Oakville and looked across Highway 29 at the brilliant fields of mustard, you’ve seen Rock Cairn, which is where the Cabernet in this rosé comes from. The Merlot comes from Lincoln Creek Vineyard, just a few hundred feet down the road.

The care that goes into farming these vineyards shines as clear as a bell in this rosé. It’s made using the saignée method, where it’s simply “bled” from tanks of what is to become red wine in order to improve the red’s juice-to-skin ratio. Winemaker Jeff Onysko put the wine in stainless steel to keep it as fresh, lively, and citrusy as possible. The result is a rosé with gravitas—one that speaks to its origins in a prime section of Napa Valley.