In French, rose means pink. As in English, the word also refers to the premier flower of romance. But when that little accent is added to the last letter, rosé takes on added significance—the name of one of the world’s most versatile wines.
Lacking a true rosé wine tradition, we Anglo-phones have adopted the French word to describe pink wine. After all, the French are clearly the leaders in the category—at least in terms of volume made and consumed. But other countries, such as Spain and Italy, have wine of the same hue and their own words for it. The Spanish drink rosado, while the Italians say rosato; in Germany, they call it Weissherbst.
Like red wine, rosé takes its color from the skins of red grapes.
Intensity of color will vary, depending on the grape varieties used and
the length of time the skins remain in contact with the juice. This duration
varies from less than an hour to as long as several days or more. Extended
skin contact will yield a wine almost red in color, while a very short
maceration period may produce a wine that is nearly—but not quite—white.
There are rosés that are made simply by blending red and white wine,
but many of the best rosés (with the exception of sparkling) are
produced by means of a method known as saignée (pronounced “sen-yay”),
a French word that means “to bleed.” The concept may not sound
particularly appetizing, but it does follow a certain logic. After a short
maceration time, the pink colored juice is “bled” out of the
fermentation tank and thus separated from the grape skins.
To begin the process, at harvest, red grapes are picked and brought
to the winery to be destemmed and crushed. The stems are discarded, and
the skins and juice are pumped into a tank. Through this stage, the winemaking
process is identical for both red and pink wines.
Within a few hours, the grape skins begin to separate from the juice. They rise to the top of the tank, where they create a “cap” of skins. To increase color intensity, red wine makers must regularly re-submerge the cap into the juice. But rosé producers don’t want their pink wines to turn red. So before that occurs, they separate the juice from the skins. Once the cap has formed, a valve at the bottom of the tank is opened, and the pink colored juice can be pumped, or “bled,” off into barrels or tanks to ferment. Some English-speaking winemakers refer to the saignée method as “cap and drain.”
After this stage, the rosé process is more akin to making white wine, which is fermented with little or no skin contact. Whether fermented in barrels or tanks, the wine is allowed to “go dry,” which means that all of the natural grape sugars are consumed by fermenting yeasts.
The saignée method may also be used by winemakers to increase intensity in their red wines. In this case, only a small portion of juice is bled away from the skins to make rosé. But the remaining juice stays in contact with the skins. Because there is a greater surface area ratio of skins to juice after the bleed, more color (and possibly complexity) can be extracted from the skins into the red wine-to-be.
As a result, some people refer to rosé made by the saignée process as a byproduct of red wine production. Technically, they’re right, but in this instance the concept of a secondary product should not be viewed in a derogatory sense. The so-called byproduct is, in fact, beautiful free-run juice that produces some of the best rosés on the planet.
Some top rosé producers, particularly in the south of France, prefer not to “bleed” their grape juice. Instead, they treat red grapes destined for rosé much as they would grapes for a white wine. After the grapes are harvested, they are crushed and quickly pressed or whole cluster pressed—just as white wine grapes are—directly into a fermenter. In this way, there is little or no skin maceration. Not surprisingly, wines made in this fashion are a lighter shade of pink.