Iruai Wines- Lounge Lizard Rose 2022

Iruai Winery (“ear-oo-eye" … the artist formerly known as Methode Sauvage) was started in 2013 by Chad and Michelle Westbrook Hinds in Berkeley, CA as a gypsy natural wine project, before laying down roots in the mythical Shasta-Cascade mountains of Siskiyou County.

Trading in the urban winery hustle for the vigneron life, we are exploring avant garde vineyard planting and rehabilitation techniques using the permaculture methods laid out by Masanobu Fukuoka, while formulating our own “chaos organics” method of re-enchanting the land. Truly unlike anywhere else in California, Western Siskiyou County feels like a cross between Switzerland and Montana, cut with a rain shadow from Mount Shasta that divides it starkly between high mountain prairie and dense alpine forests.

Proudly dancing to the beat of its own steel drum, what was intended to be a light and simple rosé, decided to wander. Our lackadaisical rosé ferment hero took nearly six months to go dry, and along the way it rode bareback on a wild mare through an alpine valley in bloom, dined on every untamed blackberry thicket crowding the full winding length of the great lazy river, and crawled on its hands and knees into a cozy rabbit den to wind away the night to the hoots and plucking of a better than average woodland critter jug band. Well...after a long hibernation with those anthropomorphised critters, our rosé ferment finally went dry. We named it 'Lounge Lizard,' because of its laziness, but we mean that as a compliment. In tarot parlance, the 'Lounge Lizard' would be 'The Fool,' and we could all use a reminder to let our inner 'Fool' flag fly: cast off the worries of the world, if only for a bit of day drinking. The '22 'Lounge Lizard' Rosé is wild, rocky, and bounding with a just-pied-in-the-face frisson of big blackberry energy. Enjoy in the sun, in good company, and in quantity.

FRESH BLACKBERRY . LIME ZEST . RAINER CHERRY . PIXY STICKS

MOVIE ‘Capitan Ron’

FOOD Fresh Corn Chips + Kimchi Salsa 

Type: Rose
Producer: Iruai 
Varietal: 80% Tempranillo / 20% Grenache
Country: United States
Region: California
Farming: Organic