When I mapped out the ideas for this club for 2025, my original plan was to feature a full set of different skin contact wines in the summer during peak Rosé season. Then after tasting with several suppliers over the past few weeks a collection of wines evolved that hastened my plan for this feature to this quarter. In this category the best options are not available for long and I want to strike while the opportunity is available. After all, with temperatures already hitting the mid-80s in February is it not Rosé season all the time in Florida?
It goes without saying now, but all of the examples in this offering are dry wines. This has not always been the case, as when I first started learning about wine in the 1980’s almost all examples of Rosé were White Zinfandel. It is hard to believe now, but in the heyday of White Zin, 1997, one in four bottles of wine sold in the US was the sweet, pink stuff. Thankfully Chardonnay overtook White Zinfandel in 1998 and sales have dropped considerably over the past 25 years. Rosé started earning legitimacy with serious wine consumers about a decade ago thanks in no small part to Martha Stewart, who told her fans that Rosé was the drink of choice for summers in the Hamptons. That ignited a fire for the category that burns as strong today as ever, although the category is far more broad than just the examples of Provence that dominated in the 20-teens. I purposefully chose examples not from Provence to demonstrate the range, and each selection is made using a different process as well.
For those who are less familiar with the category of Rosé let’s start with a quick introduction. For most grape varieties the color compounds are found in skins not the juice. For example, if you squeeze a Cabernet grape in your hand the juice is clear. The color for the wine is only achieved by soaking the juice with the skins to extract color, a process called maceration. Most Rosé is produced by harvesting red grapes and allowing the juice to have a short contact with the skins. This not only gives the wine a little color but also some flavor. There are a number of techniques that winemakers use to achieve this result and for this set of features we will look at three of them. Not all Rosé is light and crisp like the ubiquitous examples from Provence, many are very complex and interesting wines that can actually develop for years in the bottle. Our selections this quarter demonstrate the different ways that Rosé can be made and offer you an interesting opportunity for food and wine pairings.
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