Allie Merrick, co-host of My Wine Words, tasted our 2006 Cuvee Romy Pinot Noir on the tracks in Season 2 of Trainsipping.
Here's what she had to say:

Dark Velour, Blackberry & Cassis Ink
followed by Rich Dark Fruit, Cuban Cigar & Cognac.

As I approach the re-launch of Gypsy Dancer wines, I am reflective of my journey that brought me to this moment. I had been sitting quietly waiting for the time to be right, for the inspiration, for the proverbial lightning bolt to strike me and tell me that this is the moment to pick up and go on with that which I am now certain I am meant to do.

My life without Gypsy Dancer was not terrible. It was filled with love and gratitude and family. My mind wandered endlessly to alternative passions that I might persue. The sounds in my heart started to get more and more quiet as I settled into a routine of passionless existence. I found myself wondering if this was my new song. Could it just be that at this point in my life, I was just swaying and not so much jitterbugging? I have always had so much energy, could I just be running out of steam?

Thank goodness for second chances. For loud noises that wake us from our dream states and make our hearts beat fast again. For it is those moments when we realize that it’s not over, we survived to dance again in joyous elation with our arms outstretched and our faces lifted in happiness. So exhausted that we need to sit down and catch our breath. Dance again and again I say. Until you simply cannot. There is plenty of time for rest when we are dead. Until then… just dance.

Gary and I owned a small winery in New Zealand which was actually an old converted sheep shed. It was built of cinder blocks and covered by a tin roof. It was difficult to get all the equipment we needed to make the kind of wine we wanted to make, and we ended up shipping some items from Oregon. In the mean time, the show had to go on. We used this “portable” de-stemmer to remove the grapes from their stems for the fermenting process. The ceiling was very low and we were unable to use anything automated to load the grapes into the hopper where they would then be de-stemmed. So, we had to the carry the harvested grapes up a ladder in small bins and dump them by hand. As the equipment didn’t fit very well on the round oak curves, we had to use heavy plastic to guide the finished product into its intended location. Every day we rigged this contraption to make it work. One year we processed over 60 tonnes of grapes this way. It was exhilarating. The process was so rustic and base that it made you feel like you really had your blood, sweat and tears dripping into each cuve as you coaxed it into its highest form.

At the winery in Oregon, the fermentation hall was attached to the house in the old Burgundian style of 'living where you worked'. The fermentation hall was in the back, looming like a giant garage, and the barrel cellar was in the basement (which was actually the first floor of the building).  But I digress. Harvest/Crush was and always will be the most time sensitive and time consuming aspect of winemaking. At this time one particular year, we had very small little ones running around just as we were in the thick of it.  When the grapes came into the fermentation hall, they had to be processed immediately, regardless of the time of day or night that might happen to be.  As a result, we often ate dinner at odd hours and found ourselves doing punch downs at 2 a.m.  It was not out of the ordinary for Gypsy, our two-year-old at the time, to fall asleep in her high chair.  Such is the life of a winery kid.

Both my babies where born and raised in the winery. I sorted grapes the day before I gave birth to Romanee with little Gigi (Gypsy Gail) on my back in this backpack. Too bad I didn’t get a picture of that. Sometimes it’s not pretty, but you get the work done and finish the dance. The show must go on.

This is the story of Gypsy Dancer.

When I met Gary Andrus, I was working three jobs living in a tiny cabin at a drive-in movie theater in Colorado. One of my jobs was working for a wine distributor and Gary and I met one fateful day at a wine event in Vail. Gary said he knew the moment that I walked in the door that he would marry me. I wasn’t quite as optimistic. A few weeks later, he flew to Colorado to take me on a date and proposed that night.

Together we embarked on an amazing journey. We travelled, started two wineries on two continents in two hemispheres, and had two beautiful daughters, Gypsy and Romanee. Gary was such an icon to so many, but to us he was just Daddy, husband and partner.  We had so much fun making wine together and we did make a lot of wine.  Having the winery in Oregon and New Zealand meant two harvests per year.  When we hatched the plan, we were thinking endless summer but in reality, it was endless work.  I must say, the work was fun and exhilarating and I learned quickly what it took to make very high quality Pinot Noir. It was an education anyone with a passion for wine would love to have.

It broke our hearts when Gary passed away. The girls were very young and I decided to leave Oregon and start a whole new life in hopes it would ease the pain of his loss. We moved to South Dakota and went into the Bison business. We run our herd, a breeding operation, at my sister and her husband’s Prairie Moon Ranch and live in a tiny little prairie town near Badlands National Park.  The girls are thriving and settled and that was the objective, but I felt a yearning for what I finally admitted was my passion, making wine.

I approached Rebecca about making a 2012 vintage 2 weeks before the harvest and it was almost magical the way that everything fell into place.  We were able to get grapes from Dukes Family Vineyards, great friends that Gary and I helped start in the wine business. Rebecca and I spent a lot of time talking about what kind of wine “the new” Gypsy Dancer should be stylistcally and she took the reins and made an impressive wine.  I decided to start small in the first vintage and build from there.

One day as I was visiting with an old friend of Gary’s, a very successful winemaker, I told him that I was planning on re-launching the Gypsy Dancer brand.  He was shocked that I hadn’t asked him to make the wine at his winery and had chosen another path.  He then recounted how Gary had mentored him when he was starting out and how influential  he had been in his career and his life.  Further, he went on to tell me that he had made a “Gary wine” two prior vintages ago, but that it didn’t “fit” with his current winery’s style.  To me, Todd seemed almost confused as to why he made the wine in the first place. When we tried the wine, I was so amazed at how similar, stylistically, it was to Gypsy Dancer and how different it was from Biggio Hamina, Todd’s winery.  Moreover, it was with such passion that Todd told me how he had made the wine, in Gary’s style that struck me as meaningful. 

When I left his winery, I realized what direction I wanted to go with Gypsy Dancer, how I was going to tie the past to the future.  I realized that I needed two wines going forward. One, Gypsy Dancer Legacy which would help the girls and I to celebrate Gary and our lives together going forward, and a second, Gypsy Dancer Tribute, made by his fellow winemakers, people who were touched and influenced by Gary made in tribute to his contribution and style in the wine business.