The Wine Fairy

Another day, another strange rosé. Today we’re sipping on Lyla & Kennedy Barrel Aged Rosé.

This was a limited-stock bottle I picked up at the wine shop because the packaging was gorgeous and the price was right. My impulsive moment is about to be either punished or rewarded–we shall see.

The label text doesn’t reveal very much: “Named after our founders recently born twin daughters, Lyla & Kennedy bring a rich and vibrant profile that can be enjoyed by everyone.” (Cute! Also, that sentence is missing an apostrophe but I don’t know where to put it, so I’ll just leave it alone). The bottle also says that it’s made by Château de Marmorieres in the Languedoc, in the south of France.

I could have sworn the contents of this bottle were pink when I bought it a few months ago and stuck it in the wine cooler. It’s since faded to a pale apricot color.

The nose is fresh, green-ish strawberries and peaches, followed by a wave of citrus-y vanilla that can only be described as orange Creamsicle. It’s got nice, crisp acidity and a medium body. The sugar balance is flirting with off-dry and the alcohol’s on the higher end.

On the palate it offers bruised apple, orange juice (from concentrate), vanilla cream soda, and grapefruit soda. The last sips give up some savory notes of yellow-skinned tomato and olive. The most noticeable things about this wine are its oxidative flavors and pronounced vanilla character from the new French oak barrels.

Wait, hold up…oak barrels? You might think it’s an odd choice to age a rosé in oak. These wines are usually made in 100% stainless steel to retain their freshness and pure varietal characteristics. You might think the use of new oak is weird…but do you own a whiskey company?

Aha! The plot thickens. The “founders” (founder?) are/is/were the owners of the Indiana-based whiskey company Penelope Bourbon, which sold to MGP Ingredients in 2023 for a reported $215.8 million. In a LinkedIn post titled “Wine To Whiskey,” brand founder Michael Paladini reveals that Lyla & Kennedy’s ex-Grenache casks are later used to barrel-age the pink-labeled whiskey.

Of course! They needed some rosé casks! Premium whiskey can struggle to attract women drinkers–but rosé doesn’t have that problem. And as demand has grown for novel whiskey bottlings aged in every conceivable type of cask, it was only a matter of time before someone thought to mash up those two bevvies. We wish it had been us–but anyway, back to the wine.

So, Lyla & Kennedy is not a typical rosé. I probably wouldn’t serve it to someone who asked for rosé. There’s not a lot of fresh-fruit character on the palate and the oak influence is distracting, bordering on overpowering. That’s probably how it ended up on the wine-shop equivalent of a remainder rack.

I’m certain that this wine would confound the heck out of me on a blind tasting. It’s very lightly extracted–so barely pink as to look golden. It’s hard to believe that it’s a majority-Syrah blend. Apart from faint red-fruit aromas on the front end and some traces of vegetables on the back end, it basically tastes like a white wine. And not a modern-style white wine, but a thick-ish and lightly oxidized white wine with orange citrus notes.

If I was absolutely pressed to identify this in a glass, I might have guessed traditional oak-aged Fiano or Trebbiano–both of which I enjoy, but which don’t fit this bottle’s breezy, picnic-wine aesthetic.

In short, I’m really not sure who this wine is for. Besides, of course, its namesake tots–and the American whiskey that was patiently waiting to occupy its used oak barrels.

About those tots–I’m not sure whether to feel envy or pity. Is it awesome to have a rosé named after you as a baby, or does it actually suck?

Now, nobody has put my name on a wine bottle in my infancy or since then. I’m not counting Chateau Ste. Michelle, which is named for a saint. I used to get their Riesling as a birthday gift sometimes, because it says “Michelle”–with two “l’s”–in pretty script. (Ask someone named Josh what wine they receive on every gift-able occasion.) I thought I might make a pilgrimage up to Washington one day. Alas, Ste. Michelle de-centered wine and moved production off the Chateau grounds in 2021 after a private equity deal, which makes me feel old and sad.

But anyway, if someone had bottled a wine at my birth (it’s a thoughtful thing to do–I’m not trying to be salty here), I’d much rather it had been a prickly red than a fragile rosé. That way, it would have been mellowed out and ready for drinking around about the time I was old enough to pop a cork.

But little Kennedy & Lyla will probably never get to taste L&K rosé, except perhaps in whiskey-barrel form. Assuming they were born about the same time as this wine, they’ll be of legal drinking age in the United States in approximately 2043…and I’m gonna go out on a limb and say this probably shouldn’t be cellared for that long.

To Lyla & Kennedy: As I write this, it’s the year 2025 and the internet is currently in the process of eating itself. Blogs written by humans probably won’t be a thing by the time you’re old enough to read. But I’m drinking your bespoke wine now.

It’s a super sweet thing your parents decided to do for you, bottling a wine from the 2022 vintage and dedicating it to their daughters. I hope the planet’s okay. I hope that you’re loved and that you’re both healthy and happy. If you’re not, then I hope your millions of dollars help. And, oh yeah–the wine is okay, too.

As many wine reviewers do, it is our custom to give a numerical grade to bottles we review on this blog. But this one…hmmm. I really had no idea how to score it because I have nothing to compare it to. I’ve only had a couple of oaked rosés in my life–always structured styles like Tavel–and never a rosé with toddlers’ names on it, thus nudging me to be nice.

The usual methodology goes something like this: I have a 10 point scale, starting at zero. I consider the four Wine & Spirits Education Trust criteria (because I am a WSET student). That would be Balance, Intensity, Complexity, and Length.

I taste the wine, look at my notes, and assign up to two points for each aspect of wine quality. That accounts for 8 possible points. Then I add or subtract a point for value for money. Then I add or subtract a point depending on my gut feeling of “Do I want to drink this wine again?”

But an idiosyncratic wine deserves a less-rigid grading system. So I have invented a new 10-point scale just for Lyla & Kennedy Barrel Aged Rosé. The judges have spoken, and this wine will score either a “1” or “0” for each of 10 totally arbitrary criteria that I made up just now:

Glass stopper: 1 point

Color stability: 0 points

Strawberritude: 1 point

French stripes: 1 point

Novelty: 1 point

Sangria potential: 0 points

Bubbles: 0 points

Mystery: 1 point

Nepotism: 1 point

Preciousness: 1 point

That results in a subtotal of 7 points out of possible 10 for Lyla & Kennedy Rosé. Now I’m going to subtract half a point because as I mentioned, no one has yet named a wine after me–and after searching my feelings I have determined that I am in fact a little jealous.

Just like I had no idea how to score this wine, I really had no idea how to pair it. I decided to go with “grows together, goes together.” The Languedoc origins of Lyla & Kennedy Rosé and its subtle vegetal character pushed me toward Mediterranean. At 13.5% ABV, there was no disguising its heat–so I doubled down with some spicy chilis. It was indeed a nice match with harissa chicken breast, saffron rice, and cucumber-mint salad.

Bottle: Lyla & Kennedy Barrel Aged Rosé (2022)

Variety: Syrah (56%), Grenache (39%) and Cinsault (5%)

ABV: 13.5%

Suggested retail: $22.99 (I paid about 10 bucks, I think–I don’t remember.)

My rating: 6.5 (out of 10)

Review disclosure: I was not compensated or provided any free products for this review. Opinions expressed on The Wine Fairy blog are entirely my own.