Through Rose Coloured Lenses

Over the past five to seven years, Rose wines have become increasingly popular, they suit our climate perfectly and who doesn’t like to see a beautiful onion skin coloured wine surrounded by fresh seafood on their Instagram feed, but what exactly is it?

Rose is style of wine not a specific grape variety and gets its colour through contact with red grape skins. This colour can range from pale onion skin through to salmon, pink and ruby red. The darker the color generally means more fruit sweetness and intensity, but it not a hard and fast rule.  Most Rose’ show flavours of red fruits including, strawberry, raspberry, floral notes, citrus and a nice line of acidity to keep it all fresh.

Common varieties used in the production of rose include, Grenache, Shiraz, Cinsault, carignan with pinot noir making more a showing in recent times.

As with all wines there are differing degrees of quality which can come from the grapes or more commonly the process used to make the wine.  There are three main techniques to make Rose:

Maceration.

This is how red wines are made, but with the time the juice is in contact with skins once crushed is reduced to 2 – 24 hours, the longer the juice is in contact with the skins the darker the final wine will be, the juice is then stained of solids and ready for ferment.

The Saignee Method.

Not dissimilar to the maceration method, Saignee or ‘to bleed’ is when a portion of juice is run off while the remainder of the wine continues to macerate for a red wine.  This method can create some lovely wines, as the quality is generally higher with this style.

Blending

Considered a bit rough and clumsy and even looked down on in some circles is simply blending a white and red wine together.

We have a wide range on offer at Grand Cru with local favourites through to the amazing structured wines from Domaine Ott of Provence.