Back in the early 1990s, French winemaker Stephan Asseo was fed up with having to kowtow to rules that he felt were inhibiting his creativity as a winemaker. He was born in Bordeaux and became a specialist in Bordeaux’s right bank, where Cabernet Franc and Merlot were the coin of the realm. Fair enough,  but he wanted to work with Rhône varieties too, and that was not at all allowed. And if he moved to the Rhône region, then he couldn’t work with the Bordeaux varieties.

Feeling that the French wine bureaucracy was stifling innovation via constraint by precedent, in 1996 he bade au revoir to France and moved to Paso Robles, where he could use any damn grape varieties he wanted to. His L’Aventure wines, with no constrictions on grape selections have been immensely successful in the succeeding years and Stephan has had a pretty major impact on many winemakers in the region.

This Estate Rosé is a good example of this cross-pollination, combining grape varieties from Bordeaux, the Rhône, and even Spain (late at night, if you listen closely, you can sometimes hear the grapevines singing “Kumbaya.”) These estate-grown wines really do sing well together (even if only figuratively), coming together in a wine that gives you strawberry, citrus peel, and if you taste closely, maybe a hint of watermelon. Buttressed by a subtle savory edge, it’s not overtly fruity, and there’s just enough phenolic grip from the saignée process to give it shape, especially with food. And even though it looks like a Provence rosé, it’s got body, kind of silky and smooth on the palate, just as you would find in a rosé made in the Northern Rhône region, at least if it were legal to even make one in France! We’re pleased that Stephan Asseo has made the most of the liberties and freedoms inherent in being a winemaker in California, and not in France, home of the fuddy-duddy, uncreative, future-denying lawmakers who probably couldn’t tell the difference between a Languedoc Merlot and a bottle of Petrus.

But, I digress. Just try this wine. You’ll love it. Really.