Emme Wines "Tell Your Sister I Say Hi" Skin Contact Colombard 2025

This skin contact wine is floral on the nose, ripe tropical fruit on the palate. Textured and salty, a skin contact wine with color and tannin that still retains freshness.

100% Colombard from Ricetti Vineyard, separated into two different skin fermentations. The first portion of Colombard was foot crushed, then soaked on skins for 48 hours before being pressed. The soak pulls a bit of texture from the skins, but the bulk of fermentation time is juice only, so the resulting wine holds acidity and aromatics like a more traditional white wine.

The second portion of Colombard was also foot crushed, but it was left on skins for a full week. The fruit fermented to almost dry while on its skins, which pulled much more tannin as well as color and aromatics from the skins and into the liquid. The resulting wine is more traditionally "orange" – tannic, skinsy tasting and apricot colored.

Both portions were aged separately over the winter, then blended in March before bottling. At blending, the two components were vastly different. The 24-hour skin-soaked Colombard was textured, but pale in color and only lightly tropical on the palate. The 10-day skin ferment was sappy, intensely aromatic and dark orange in color. Together, they complement and fill one another out.

Indigenous yeast fermentation. 20 ppm SO2 added at bottling, no other additions, unfined and unfiltered. 150 cases produced.

Based in Sonoma, California, Rosalind Reynolds founded Emme Wines (named after her grandmother) in 2018 after years in the industry alongside the likes of Les Capriades, Martha Stoumen, and Pax (where she is also the assistant winemaker). Rosalind focuses on "old school" California varietals, like Carignan, Colombard, Merlot and Zinfandel, as well as uncommon grapes like Abouriou, Valdiguie and Muscat Vert, all farmed organically and sustainably, and she makes wine without additives and minimal intervention.