How is Rosé Wine Made?

Rosé wine is quickly becoming the go-to tipple for many wine lovers. With its spike in popularity in recent years, many winemakers are choosing to produce pink wines alongside their usual reds. The traditional process of making blush wine has elements of both red wine production and white wine production – adopting the same fermentation process as red, but fermented at the temperature of white. Although you may have heard of some winemakers choosing to simply blend red and white wine to create pink, this approach is actually forbidden in most of the EU. Here is our breakdown of the traditional winemaking method for rosé, which starts in the vineyard.

Picking Black Grapes

Rosé wine is always made from black grapes, the exception to the rule being Rosé Champagne which uses Chardonnay in its blend. Therefore, the first step to producing rosé is to harvest the black grapes from the vineyard that you want to use for a blush wine. A lot of winemakers will grow a variety they intend to make red wine with, but allocate a small amount of the crop to producing a pale pink wine from the same harvest.

Crushing

The grapes are crushed into a juice, either by machine or the old fashioned way of using feet and hands. A few smaller wineries still prefer to crush the fruit in vats barefoot, sometimes referred to as ‘grape stomping’ or ‘foot trodding’.

Fermentation

This is the exciting part that turns grapes into alcohol. Black grape juice is placed into a stainless steel fermentation tank, then yeast is added to convert the fruit sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Just like with red wine production, the skins are left on during fermentation to ensure colours, flavours and tannins are imparted from the grape skins into the wine. However, unlike with red wine (which can be fermented for weeks), to create a rosé it’s essential to ferment at a much lower temperature (the same as for white wine production) and for only 12 to 36 hours so that grape skin contact is minimal.

The only time you would ferment without the grape skins for rosé wine is if you’re adopting the Saignee Method. This is where the crushed grapes sit in a vat for 1-2 days and are then filtered, meaning the skins are not present as the juice is transferred to the fermentation tank. So, for this method, the colours and tannins are imparted into the blend just before fermentation, rather than during.

Pressing and Removing Skins

After a short fermentation, the wine needs to be pressed to remove any trace of grape skins from the final blend (unless you used the Saignee Method and filtered out skins before fermentation). At this stage you will see that the resulting wine is pale pink, due to only being in contact with the skins for a very short amount of time.

Bottling

Most pink wines are bottled straight away to capture their delicate fruity flavours, and are best consumed young. The only exception to this rule being vintage Rosé Champagne which benefits hugely from bottle ageing. Before bottling, rosé will have fining agents added to it to get rid of any haziness in the appearance of the wine. It will then be ready for immediate consumption.

Enjoyment

Due to its elegant aromas and gentle character, blush wines tend to be best served chilled. Cool your rosé in the fridge before opening to really accentuate the refreshing fruit flavours!