Please The Palate | Please The Palate Wine of the Week: Pali Wine Co. 2025 Wild Series Skin-Contact White Wine, Central Coast

Gewürztraminer and Pinot Noir. They may not be the first two grapes you would think to put together. Gewürztraminer brings intense aromatics and floral notes, while Pinot Noir brings red fruit, freshness, and acidity. But sometimes opposites attract, and together they make a surprisingly good match. Add some skin contact from the white grape and remove skins from the red grape, and things get a little wild. The Pali Wine Co. 2025 Wild Series White Wine is the Please The Palate Wine of the Week.

About Pali Wine Co.

Pali Wine Co. was founded by Tim and Judy Perr in 2005 and has grown from its beginnings in a Lompoc garage into a family-run winery focused on California’s Central Coast. Today, two generations of the Perr family are involved, along with longtime winemaker Aaron Walker. Pali focuses on small-lot wines, with an emphasis on sustainably, organically, or biodynamically grown grapes and wines that express a sense of place.

The Wild Series is Pali’s exploration of minimal-intervention winemaking. The wines are fermented with native yeast, bottled unfined and unfiltered, and made with minimal sulfur, with the goal of highlighting freshness, aromatics, texture, and energy.

Tasting Notes

The Pali Wine Co. 2025 Wild Series Skin-Contact White Wine brings together two seemingly unlikely partners: Gewürztraminer and Pinot Noir, grown in two small vineyards on California’s Central Coast. The Gewürztraminer spends time on its skins, bringing color, texture, and the grape’s naturally expressive floral and exotic fruit character. The Pinot Noir is pressed off its skins, contributing freshness and lift. Together, the two grapes create a wine that does not fit neatly into the traditional idea of a white wine or a rosé. It is a little unexpected, a little unconventional, and appropriately wild.

The first thing that catches the eye is the copperish-pink color. Upon closer look, the color of the wine is the color of apricot skins. The wine offers aromas of apricot, honeysuckle, melon, and citrus. On the palate, the wine has a smooth texture from the skin contact, balanced by fresh acidity and a stone-like quality.

Food Pairing

The Pali Wine Co Wild Series Skin-Contact White wine can be paired with anything from fresh seafood and shellfish to vegetable-forward dishes or mildly spiced cuisine. I took it with me to dinner at Nanbankan, a petite yakitori bar offering charcoal-grilled skewers & small plates of traditional Japanese food. We enjoyed the wine with each bite, which included Shiso Chicken (white meat wrapped with shiso leaf), Negima (dark meat chicken and scallions), Ebi (grilled shrimp), Nanban Yaki (top sirloin beef), Nasu (Japanese eggplant), Shi-Take (Japanese mushrooms), Yellowtail Collar, Australian Lamb, and Yaki-Onigiri (char-broiled triangular rice ball – one stuffed with salmon and one “house special” stuffed with dry bonito).

Where To Purchase

The Pali Wine Co Wild Series Skin-Contact White wine retails for $25 and can be purchased directly from the Pali Wines website.

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