A blend of 35% Chardonnay, 35% Meunier and 30% Pinot Noir, the 2017 Vintage Brut Rosé has a pale cherry-pink color and scents of red berries, melon, toast and potpourri with top notes of citrus. The palate is medium-bodied and creamy with full, ripe fruits and nuances of pastry that linger on the long finish.

A blend of 45% Pinot Noir, 30% Pinot Meunier and 25% Chardonnay, the 2014 Brut Rosé is very pale salmon-pink in color with a nose of white strawberries, sour cherry, crunchy rhubarb and underlying notes of toast and freshly baked bread—so crisp and clean! Light to medium-bodied with a wonderful balance of delicate red fruit and bakery notes, it has very crisp, cleansing acidity and persistent mousse, finishing long. 2,500 cases produced.

The 2011 Brut Rose is a blend of 75% Pinot Noir and 25% Pinot Meunier, and a blend of Argyle's Eola-Amity and Dundee Hills sites. It has an attractive bouquet with subtle scents of rosewater and peach skin. The palate is nicely balanced with a twist of bitter lemon on the entry. Moderate weight in the mouth with red cherry and cola notes, it finishes with subtle brioche and tinned apricot, and displays sufficient tension to beckon you back for another sip.

The 2010 Brut Rose is a blend of 70% Pinot Noir (from Stoller) and 30% Pinot Meunier undergoing 9% malolactic and given a 7 grams per liter dosage before disgorgement in July 2014. It has a bright bronze/salmon hue. The nose is crisp, but just a little bashful compared to the Blanc de Blancs at the moment. The palate is soft and approachable on the entry with attractive strawberry and mandarin notes, but I would have preferred there to be more tension and animation on the finish.

Argyle’s 2009 Brut Rose mingles Pinot Noir with 42% Pinot Meunier and 10% Chardonnay. Strikingly redolent of a florist’s shop in its combination of illusive floral perfume with greenery, as well as intimating the cherry, red raspberry, and almond paste that then lusciously and buoyantly inform the palate, this pushes up to the limit of what I’d want to experience in sweetness for a wine already so forwardly fruity, but finishes with admirable persistence and at once soothingly and vivaciously. “Five years ago,” relates Soles, “is when I (began) put(ting) a lot of Meunier in this cuvee, and that’s when the floral(s) came up.” Specializing in sparkling wine since its 1987 inception, Argyle has gone from strength to strength in that department under the direction of founding winemaker Rollin Soles (who trained originally as a microbiologist). The program here also incorporates a vast array of (by local standards) relatively high-volume still wines. Already large – and controlling the Knudsen and Stoller Vineyards – Argyle undertook a major expansion in 1996 by purchasing the 160 acre Lone Star Vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills. “I never make wine by a recipe,” relates Soles, and with his sparklers that applies not only to their ratios of Pinot Noir to Chardonnay and their dosage; it also applies to the levels of sugar at which fruit is picked, which can vary considerably. These are in any event consistently higher than one would encounter in Champagne, but even though finished alcohol typically centers on 13%, the wines exhibit no lack of levity. Soles gives his still Pinots an extended cold soak; generally inoculates, while trying to let the indigenous yeasts first have some say; extracts via punch-downs; and isn’t afraid to allow post-fermentative cap contact if he decides (as he usually does) that a wine will benefit. (Some excellent Pinots that Soles crafts under his own Roco label including from his own vineyard are covered in the on-line second part of this report.) Awkwardly lactic notes and/or what I like to call “memories of high malic” – not to mention sheer simplicity – dampened enthusiasm for those Argyle Chardonnays I tasted; an off-dry Argyle Riesling from their Lone Star Vineyard in the Eola-Amity Hills was canned fruit in character; musky; prematurely (as I see it) petrol-laced; and faintly metallic in finish, as was its sweeter (arguably overly-so) version dubbed “Nusshaus.” Many of the still wines here are given nicknames. The most prevalent of these – Nuthouse and Spirithouse – refer to past uses of the old buildings that serve as winery facilities in “downtown” Dundee, the latter designation picking out the more expensive cuvee of a given variety, though the word “reserve,” confusingly, gets used sometimes along with and sometimes in lieu of the aforementioned nickname. Tel. (503) 538-8520