By Ray Spaziani
Wine Talk
Ray Spaziani
Every year rose wine tries to make a comeback. This year it may have a chance. A rose wine is a wine that has some of the color from the skin of the grapes but is not dark enough to be considered a red wine.
There are three major ways to make rose wines. The first is skin contact. Dark-skinned grapes are crushed, but the skins are allowed to stay in the juice for a short time, usually between two and 20 hours. The must from the grapes is then pressed, and the skins are removed from contact with the juice right after pressing. This is unlike the production of red wines wherein the skin is left in contact with the juice throughout the fermentation process. This is what gives the reds a deeper, more purple color. The longer the skins are in contact with the juice, the deeper the color.
Another method of rose wine production is called the saignée method, or “bleeding” in French. When a winemaker wants to add a deeper cooler to a red wine, they can remove some of the pink juice at an early stage in the winemaking process. This adds additional tannins to the red wine. The red juice becomes more concentrated and the wine becomes more intense. The leftover light pink juice gets fermented separately to make rose.
The third way to make a rose wine is to take some red wine and some white and mix it together, then add some sweetness to it. This is illegal to do in France except in the Champagne region, where it is nevertheless looked down upon. California goes both ways with rose. The less expensive sweet rose is generally made in this manner.
Rose wine in the US goes back to the early 1960s when two Portuguese wine producing families came out with a sweet rose with a slight sparkle, because they did not allow the wine to completely ferment. They were called Mateus and Lancers. They set record sales in Europe and then in the US. They’re less popularity now, but still available. Dryer rose wines have become more popular.
In the early 1970s demand for white wine exceeded the supply of white wine grapes. Many California producers made white wine from red wine grapes using the French saignée method. In 1975, Sutter Home’s White Zinfandel experienced a stuck fermentation. This is problem in which the yeast dies off before all the sugar is turned to alcohol. The winemaker, Bob Trinchero, did not know what to do as Sutter Home was facing bankruptcy. He put the wine away for two weeks. He had no choice but to try to sell it. Thus the blush revolution was born from a winemaker’s mistakes. White Zinfandel took off like a rocket and is still one of the most popular wines sold in this country.
Rose is still made, semi-sparkling or sparkling and with a wide range of sweetness. Rose is made from a wide variety of grapes and produced all around the world. Many of the earliest red wines produced in the great French wine regions were made rose style with only brief periods of skin contact during the winemaking process.
Try some of the great roses from Provence and the southern Rhone Valley of France. Many local wine shops will carry lots of wonderful French roses this time of year.
Ray Spaziani is the chapter director of the New Haven Chapter of the American Wine Society. He is on the wine tasting panel of Amenti del Vino and Wine Maker Magazine. He is an award-winning home winemaker and a certified wine educator. His fall classes were sold out but have been canceled due the coronavirus. He hopes to return to them in the spring. Email Ray with wine questions and anything wine at realestatepro1000@gmail.com.