Rosé All Day

Recently a slew of products have adopted a rosé style to lure consumers to away from wine and focus on beer and vodka. Reading the fine print, most of these do not even contain actual wine. Rosés can be refreshing when the temperatures rise.  

Have you ever wondered how rosés are made since vineyards don’t grow roségrapes?  There are four ways to produce rosés....limited skin maceration, direct pressing, saignée method and blending.

Limited skin maceration is a process similar to making red wines....the grapes are crushed and left in contact with the skins. With rosé, the maceration time is shorter, usually hours or days as opposed to weeks or months. The juice is then drawn from the skins and the wine begins the fermentation process.

Direct pressing is when the juice is pressed from the grapes with little to no contact with the skins, similar to white wines. This process tend seem to produce the lightest colored rosés. 

Saignée method involves “bleeding” or remove some of the juice early in the maceration process of red wines. This juice goes into the fermentation process and continues its journey as a rosé. 

Blending id just that.....blending white and red grapes to produce a rosé. Now it’s time to find a favorite. Sounds like a great time for a wine tasting. 


Leave a comment

Please note, comments must be approved before they are published