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ROCO Wines |
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ROCO Wines is the personal project of Rollin Soles and Corby Stonebraker Soles. Rollin is best know for his Argyle Winery, one of Oregon's largest and highest rated. Using fruit from their Wits' End Vineyard, Rollin and Corby make a small amount of Pinot noir each year, mostly for themselves, but they sell a small amount to the public each year. We are so please to offer these unique and exceptional wines. As Rollin tells it, to produce a worthy bottle of wine countless factors come into play. It's not one specific thing that makes the final product great; it's the confluence of all variables. You might have great root stock, but with no rain the promise of great wine drops off exponentially. Or you might have great root stock and plenty of rain, but not enough sun.
The winemaker is constantly battling to create a bottle of wine that, from the outset, has the deck stacked against it. There are those ideal years when all the weather conditions magically coalesce so that from the harvest to the barrel to the bottle the quality and fate of the wine is primarily in the winemaker's hands. But the reality is that Mother Nature rarely obliges -- especially not so far north. Rollin's primary commandment when making wine is: Thou shall not impose the winery's will over the vineyard's will. And all of the grapes that go into ROCO wine is fruit Rollin and Corby have grown themselves -- no blends from different regions or different farmers.
Rollin's philosophy of winemaking centers around the quest for structure and what he calls "the razor's edge." Rollin's goal is to maximize that phenomenon -- to have his grapes ripen at the last possible moment. This is what he calls "the razor's edge." And it's the big promise of Oregon wine: New World ripeness and sweetness, but with Old World structure. The razor's edge, then, is that delicate balance of getting the fruit at its fullest flavor without ruining it. If it's an early season, there may be plenty of fruit to harvest but the fruit hasn't had ample time to develop all of its flavor -- it doesn't develop its "fruit expression." If it's a late harvest and the fruit has had the opportunity to develop fully, it will have that edge -- just like the great crispness and acidity you taste when you bite into a late-harvest fall apple from Vermont.
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