Rose Wines For Summer

By Alex Russell on December 15, 2010 in Food

Everyone loves a glass of rosé in summer. There’s nothing quite like sitting in the sun with a glass of cold, pink, alcoholic stuff, but rosé wine has a bit of an image problem. Many people think of rosé as the leftover or inferior grapes that just weren’t good enough to be made into the real wines. Sometimes this is true, but these days many winemakers put as much effort into their rosé as they do their regular reds and whites. This also means that you can pick up great wine for a bargain price.

There are three major ways to make rosé wine:

1. Skin contact. The colour from most red wines comes from skin contact during fermentation. The longer the skins are left in the fermenting juice, the deeper the colour of the wine (as well as more tannin extraction). Rosés can vary from an almost pale orange to a vibrant purple/red, depending on the amount of skin contact.

2. Saignée. This word means ‘bleeding’. Here, the winemaker removes (‘bleeds’) some of the fermenting juice from the vats of red wines. The juice that is left in the red vats therefore has more skin contact (thus more tannin and colour) and the rosé juice is then treated separately, with no further skin contact.

3. Blending of red and white wine. This is rarely used except in Champagne and sometimes at parties with crap wine!

The first method is usually used when the winemaker intends to make rosé, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that wines made using the second or third method are necessarily rubbish.

So which wines should you look out for?

Spinifex Rosé ($24ish) – A bone-dry style, not much in the way of fruit flavours here. A sensational food wine, so get out the prawns and fresh bread rolls. The Spinifex team have strong connections to Southern France and this wine is made in a style reminiscent of the rosés from Provence.

Chateau Riotor ($30ish) – If you like the Provence style wines, this is the real deal. A very popular choice that again goes really well with food. Plus, it’s French, so it’ll keep the wine snobs happy.

Charles Melton ‘Rose of Virginia’ ($25ish) – This is a really rich style of rosé. Longer skin contact means deeper colours and a little bit of sugar is left in the final product, for just a touch of sweetness. Quite a fruit driven style, worth tracking down for something a little different. Note that it’s called the Rose of Virginia, not Rosé of Virginia.

Teusner ‘Salsa’ Rosé ($22ish) – It’s almost criminal that fruit from 45 year-old Grenache vines goes into this wine, but great grapes result in great wine. More fruit driven than the Provence styles, but it’s not a sweet style. You can belt this one down by itself quite easily.

Rockford Alicanté Bouschet ($25ish) – You won’t find many Rockford wines in liquor stores outside of Adelaide, as they prefer to sell to their mailing list and to restaurants. Alicanté Bouschet is a teinturier, which means that the grape has red flesh and thus red juice, which is quite rare. A fruit driven style with a fair bit of sweetness to it that gains complexity as it warms up. At 10% alcohol, it’s a great wine for lunchtime.

Other popular choices include: Dominique Portet ‘Fontaine’ Rosé, Turkey Flat Rosé, Margan Shiraz Saignée and De Bortoli ‘La Bohème’ Rosé, all in the low to mid $20 range.