Fullerton Wines Three Otters Rose Pinot Noir Willamette Valley 2025

Rose Wine from Oregon, United States

The 2025 Fullerton Three Otters Rosé is a vibrant, sustainably farmed Oregon Pinot Noir rosé, featuring aromas of strawberry, watermelon, blood orange, and Meyer lemon, with a long, smooth finish. It is characterized by a “refreshing and round” palate with notes of lingonberry and cherry blossom, representing a well-structured, bright, and food-friendly, 100% Pinot Noir.
This Pinot Rosé comes mainly from two vineyards in opposite ends of the Willamette Valley. The Pinot Noir portion is from old-vines growing at the foot of Parrett Mountain in the Chehalem Mountains on wind blown loess and alluvial soils, covered with lacustrene, ice-age, flood sediments. The grapes are picked and transferred directly to the press, undergoing an extended 3-hour press program to extract gentle color and crisp flavors. The Pinot Gris comes mostly from a vineyard in the southern end of the valley, both from 1968 own-rooted vines and from a younger, replanted block. These grapes are destemmed and kept cool, allowing for 6 days of skin contact prior to pressing. This yields a salmon hue, floral and fruit flavors, as well as a round mouthfeel.

The story of our rosé originates from a friendly competition in our first harvest in 2012. Winemaker Alex Fullerton and his father and proprietor Eric Fullerton couldn’t decide on a house style for rosé, so they decided to each make a rosé to see whose was best. Though the wines were destined to be bottled separately, Alex got curious and tried blending the two, and voilà! The sum was better than the parts. He called Eric over to the winery, and both agreed the two wines should be blended and a  tradition was born. We now make two rosés, one that is whole cluster pressed, yielding a very crisp and light colored wine (Alex’s style), and one with 6 days of skin contact, which yields a deeper, fuller-bodied wine (Eric’s style). The two wines are then blended to taste, delivering a crisp, fresh rosé with wonderful structure. Prior to fermentation, all of the lots are put through a 2-week lees stabulation, where we extract aroma precursors from the sediment into the juice. A process we learned from Provence winemakers that has become a mainstay of our rosé and Pinot Gris winemaking style.

Beautiful salmon pink color. The nose exudes strawberries, watermelon, blood orange and Meyer lemon, with a perfumed and floral edge. The palate is both refreshing and round echoing the blood orange, strawberry, and watermelon from the nose, with notes of lingonberry, cherry blossom and rosewater, finishing long and smooth.