Rosé wine is now more popular than ever, offering drinkers an alternative to the rich, strong red and the lighter, more acidic flavours of white wine.
It is a very drinkable wine, dry but fruity and these days rosé wines are much fresher, and not as sweet as they once were. It has become common to serve rosé wines at the dining table and it is a wine that accompanies most dishes.
Rose wine is now enjoyed all year round and no longer only reserved as a summer wine to be drunk outside in a sunny garden. It is also often less expensive than comparable reds and whites.
Provence in southern France, is probably the pinkest wine region in the world. Almost 90% of their wine production is rosé wine. But Spain also has a long tradition of producing rosado, which simply translates, similarly to the word, rosé, as pink in Spanish. Rosado wines in Spain are a popular choice to accompany tapas.
Rosé wines are considered to be fresh, easy-drinking and unpretentious. As a rule, people find it much easier to choose a good rosé and don’t worry as much about the different variations and vintages as with reds and whites.
The Power of Pink
Some people just enjoy drinking it for the colour, which is why rosé wine producers work hard to get the colour just right. After all, pink is not just one colour, but it is made up of hundreds of hues and shades. It takes much skill and experience to get the perfect colour and rosé wine producers use methods from both white wine and red wine production to produce the perfect rosé.
The pink colour occurs when red grape skins briefly touch wine. Some red wines have to ferment on red grape skins for some weeks, but rosé wines are stained with red for only a few hours. The wine producer can decide what precise colour of the wine they require and will take out the red skins when the wine becomes the desired colour. Most red wine grapes can be used to make rosé wine.
Rosé wines can be made still, semi-sparkling or sparkling. They can also vary in sweetness, from a very dry Provencal rosé to a sweet White Zinfandels.
The main flavours of rosé wine are red fruit, melon and citrus with pleasant floral touches. The wine has a lovely crunchy flavour, similar to rhubarb or celery. Of course the flavour of the wine will greatly depend on the type of grape it has been made with.
With its continued popularity, and with more men now choosing it as their preferred wine, the future certainly looks rosy for the pink stuff.
