What are Rosé wines and how are they made?

9. June 2008 by Sebastien Gavillet.

I was asked this question today by my son and  I thought it would make a worthy subject to write about, especially that it is during summer month’s that one enjoys rosés the most.

Rosé wines are made of red grape varietals with the exception of rosé Champagne or rosé Sparkling Wines, which is also made with white grape varietals.  I say varietals because chardonnay is not the only white grape used to make sparkling wines.
However, there are some winemakers who add a little white wine to make a blend of their own in their still wine rosé. But this is not common practice.

About rosé wines:
The major difference is characteristic of rosé wines is that old world rosé tends to be more bone-dry as to the new world rosé, especially Californian rosé which is can be almost sweet with very similar characteristics as that of white wines. It is however important to note that today some Californian rosés winemakers make a fruity, elegant and almost bone-dry rosé wines, resembling those of the old world.  Sophia, by Coppola is such a wine.

TIP: It is important to know that one should drink rosés still wines young. 1-3 years of age. A good Rosés Champagnes with some age can be a real delight.

So how is rosé made?
Well there are several ways to make rosé wines.  The four which are most commonly used are often explained erroneously on the internet, worse even on some og the top ranked sites! I love the internet but it has become as big of an information highway as a disinformation highway. This is one of the reasons I started to blog. To try to inform you correctly. Anyway back to topic. The four approaches to making a rosé wine are bleeding, pressing, limited maceration and run off.

-Saignée or bleeding which makes the best quality rosés are made from the juice which was extracted by stacking the grapes up in a tank and letting the grapes own weight do the crushing. As the juice is in contact for a very short time with the skins, the color obtained by this technique is very pale, such as Gris de Bourgogne or a Rose from the Loire Valley. The wines are rich, fruity and have great freshness.

-Pressé or pressed is the technique of pressing the red grapes until the juice has the desired color. Once the color is reached, the winemaker stops the pressing. Only the juice pressed is used to make rosé.

-Limited maceration is the most common technique used in the making of rosé wines. They (the grapes or the skins more specifically) are left in contact with the juice until the winemaker decides that he/she is happy with the color and than transfers the “wine”  minus the skins to another tank to finish the fermentation process.

-Finally, the run off style is the process in which the winemaker removes the juice from the tank during the fermentation process of red wine and uses that juice to make the rose wine. This results in making the red wine left in the vat more intense/dark in color and a so-so rose in my opinion.

FYI: typical Provence rosé wines are mostly made using the same local blends as that of red wines. They are mostly made with Grenache and Cinsault varietals but are also known to be made from Mourvedre.

For my aroma hunters, the typical aromas found in rosé Wines from Provence region (Côtes de Provence, Côteaux d’Aix-en-Provence, les Baux-de Provence, Bandol, Cassis, Bellet, and Palette) are grapefruit, banana, strawberry, raspberry, redcurrant, almond, linden, cut hay…
If you wish to try a typical rosé from Provence, I recommend you “Mas du Fadan”, Côte de Ventoux, 2007.

Oh by the way a great bottle of rosé should not cost you more than $20-$25 unless it is Rosé Champagne!

Cheers!

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