Rose Wine: How Is It Made?

While rose wine is not a common choice for many revelers compared to white and red wine, it has established a name in recent times.

Served chilled, this type of wine offers you savory aromas akin to fruits such as plums, blackberries, and cherries.

It is not uncommon for most people to assume that rose simply a mixture of red and white wine, derived from pressing together blue and white grapes. Wine-manufacturers are not permitted to use that process – not if the wine produced is rose. 

So what is Rose wine?

In the real sense, rose wine is an alcoholic drink made entirely from the similar blue grapes as red wines. Typically, the blue vines produce a light, colourless juice, which brings about many questions such as: How does the red color come about? Well, this is as a result of the red and blue pigments contained in the grape skins and not the juice itself. 

When we look closely at the white and red wine, you will find that when making red wine, the grape skins undergo a fermentation process (mash) collectively with the extract (juice). During this process, the grapes release the red coloring. When it comes to white wine, the grapes are shred leaving only the extract in a process called “must” fermentation. 

When making red wine, the discharge of the red and blue pigments from the puree happens for several weeks, and in case the procedure is tempered with after only some hours, it results in the production of only a little coloring from the skins of the grapes. In this case, the rose wine producer considers this as an advantage; hence, assuming full control of the wine coloring. The moment the juice has adopted a little red tone, it is then pressed and moved to another container to continue fermenting devoid of the skins. Eventually, the final product will be a rose wine. Thus, strictly, rose wines are red wines that undergo fermentation without the surfaces.  

Is it possible for rose wine to be a mixture of white and red wine?

Why not? The process exists, and it involves adding the red wine to a container with white wine. As such, the pink wines are produced using a similar method; however, the wines produced are not rose.

What about Rose Champagne, how is that made?

But there exists one exemption to this particular rule, and it is the rose champagne. As appertains to champagne, the term rose may is used even when the wine is produced by blending white and red wines. Most rose champagne is made totally from the white-colored chardonnay grapes by adding a small percent of red wine for coloring and rounding off the taste. That said and done; certain top-class winemakers still prefer a method that focuses on unskinned grapes during rose champagne manufacture.