Winemaking
How rosé is made
Brief contact between juice and black grape skins — not by mixing red and white wine.
Overview
Rosé gets its colour from a short period of skin contact, typically two to twenty hours, after which the skins are removed. The longer the contact, the deeper the colour.
Blending red and white wine to make rosé is prohibited for still wine in the EU. Sparkling rosé is the deliberate exception, and Champagne rosé is frequently made that way.
Colour is not a quality signal. Provence made pale rosé fashionable, which created a widespread assumption that paler means better — a marketing outcome rather than a principle.
Step by step
1 Direct pressing
Black grapes are pressed immediately, picking up minimal colour during pressing. Produces the palest rosé.
2 Short maceration
Juice sits on skins for a few hours before being drawn off. The most common method, and the one that gives most control over colour.
3 Saignée
"Bleeding" juice off a red fermentation. Produces rosé as a by-product while concentrating the remaining red wine.
4 Fermentation
Cool fermentation in stainless steel, as for white wine.
The prohibition on blending red and white for still rosé is set out in EU wine law, with sparkling wine explicitly excepted.
Sources
Sources consulted
- Regulation (EU) No 1308/2013 — Common Organisation of Agricultural Markets — European Union
- WSET educational materials and the Systematic Approach to Tasting — Wine & Spirit Education Trust
More in winemaking
Winemaking
Fermentation
Yeast converting sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide — the step that makes wine wine.
Winemaking
How red wine is made
Fermenting grape juice in contact with the skins, which is where colour and tannin come from.
Winemaking
How white wine is made
Pressing the juice off the skins before fermentation, then fermenting the clear juice.