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Northwest Rose |
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Rosé is a pink wine made from many different grapes that are traditionally used to make red wine. There are rosés of Pinot noir, of Grenache, of Mourvedre, of Cabernet, and of many more varietals. Oregon Pinot noir makers have produced "pink wine" from Pinot noir for years for their own consumption. It was typically made from the "free run" juice that comes off the grapes first. Winemakers rewarded their workers with bottles of the wine, or kept it for themselves. What you might not know is that many Pinot makers' preferred summer wine, served cold, is a dry Oregon Rosé, often their own. Gradually, wine lovers have caught onto this "insider" wine. Dry Oregon Rosés offer fresh fruit flavors of strawberries, cherries, raspberries, with hints of ruby red grapefruit, watermelon, and spice flavors like thyme, cinnamon or ginger. A good rosé will have a nice acid balance with delicate fruit flavors. The clean, fresh flavors are followed by a crisp mouth feel. Rosé wines are best served slightly chilled, similar to a white wine. A cooled wine focuses the flavors and keeps this wine crisp and refeshing. Rosés are excellent food wines due to the balance of acidity and fruit and a light to medium body. They are a great companion to shrimp, scallops, crab dishes, cold meats and meat salads, chicken salad, pasta salad, barbecued chicken, grilled halibut, pan-seared fish, paella or salmon in parchment paper. In the South of France, rosés are famously associated with salads, especially salad nicoise from the Cote d’Azure. This is one of the few times you will find a wine paired very successfully with a salad. Rosé is the French word for “pink.” The wine is made from red grapes, but the skins are removed early in the process, resulting in a light pink color. Rosés can be produced from just about any grape, including Grenache, Zinfandel, Merlot, Tempranillo, Syrah, Pinot Noir, and grape blends, such as Grenache, Syrah and Viognier. The wines have flavors of strawberry, raspberry, cherry and even plum, with some spice, a light complexity of flavors and a balance of acidity that works very well with food. Although I am a fan of aging wines, Rosé wines should be consumed within two years or less—don’t age these wines or you will lose the fruit. They should be consumed young and chilled, but not iced. As spring reveals longer days and the deck becomes more inviting to stay and linger into a warm, dusky night, I love the taste of a cold, frosted glass of a dry Rosé wine and simple foods for hotter weather. This is the time of the year when big, tannic red wines, my favorite throughout the late fall, winter and early spring, become too heavy in hot weather and don’t particularly complement the lighter fare served on patios and decks throughout the late spring and summer. The best wine to pair with a cold pasta salad and a gorgeous sunset, as the day weans from direct sunlight to that amber glow of the evening, is a dry Rosé wine. This isn’t the pink or “white” Zinfandel that many consumers associate with light, cloyingly sweet pinkish wines. And, the problem with marketing a dry Rosé is that white Zinfandel drinkers think it is too dry, and many serious wine drinkers scoff at a “salmon-colored wine” as being too sweet and lacking any character or oomph. It is a tough wine to sell because the mainstream American palate has not embraced this wine for summer sipping. Three Methods of Making Rosé Maceration Method: After the grapes are crushed, they're moved to a large stainless-steel vat, where the juice stays in contact with the grape skins. After the desired color is achieved, the juice is drained off the skins into another vessel to ferment. Thick-skinned grapes, such as Syrah, Cabernet, or Zinfandel, have shorter skin contact time, while thinner-skinned grapes, such as Grenache or Pinot Noir, are left on the skins longer. The longer the maceration time, the more color, flavor, and character are imparted to the finished wine. Saignée, or "bled" method: Saignee, pronounced “sonyay”, is a French term meaning “bled” and this relates to the running off, or bleeding, a certain amount of first-run juice from red grapes. The grapes and skins -- usually a blend of dark-skinned, intensely flavored grapes that would make a big, powerful red wine--are crushed and left in a large, stainless-steel vat. After an hour or two, a certain amount of juice is drawn off or "bled," and fermented into a delicate rosé (the juice that stays behind is made into red wine). Saignée allows a winemaker the option of making a delicate rosé wine from intensely flavored grapes (it also concentrates both the color and the flavor in the juice that remains with the skins). The resulting rosé will be complex and flavorful, but lighter than the resulting red wine would be. Blending red and white wines together: Blending is the way rosé Champagne is often made, and in France, that's the only time blending red and white wines is legal. Our favorite Rose
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