30 Sep Please The Palate Wine of the Week: Sosie’s 2018 Sparkling White Wine, “First Things First,” Vivio Vineyard, Bennett Valley, Sonoma County

After a day of fasting for Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement), my family gathered for a socially distanced break fast. Of course I brought the wine. And what better way to break a day of fasting than with a glass of sparkling wine. We opened the aptly named Sosie’s 2018 Sparkling White Wine, “First Things First,” Vivio Vineyard, Bennett Valley, Sonoma County, the Please The Palate wine of the week. The Sosie’s Sparkling White Wine is a sparkling wine made in the traditional method with the Roussanne grape. A white wine grape grown originally in the Rhône wine region in France, there are less than 400 acres grown in California. Family-owned winery Sosie Wines sources their Roussanne from the Vivio Vineyard in the Bennett Valley AVA in Sonoma. I enjoyed their bottling of Roussanne recently and now enjoyed the sparkling wine. The Roussanne comes from a cool climate site that has a strong marine influence. Like the still Roussanne, the grapes are barrel fermented with native yeasts and then go through malolactic fermentation before being aged in neutral oak for six months before secondary fermentation in the bottle. Roussanne produces a full bodied white wine and that fullness is apparent in the sparkling wine. The wine has aromas of apricot, orange and brioche. On the palate, it is dry with a rich and creamy mid-palate and crispy acidity. The sparkling Roussanne is called “First Things First”. The Sosie’s 2018 Sparkling White Wine, “First Things First,” Vivio Vineyard, Bennett Valley, Sonoma County was the first wine we had after fasting and at $30 it is a wine that can be at the ready at the start of any occasion.