Valentine’s Day Mix

ROSE WINE

A rosé (from French, rosé [ʁoze]) is a type of wine that incorporates some of the color from the grape skins, but not enough to qualify it as a red wine. It may be the oldest known type of wine, as it is the most straightforward to make with the skin contact method. The pink color can range from a pale “onion-skin” orange to a vivid near-purple, depending on the grape varieties used and winemaking techniques.

There are three major ways to produce rosé wine: skin contact, saignée, and blending. Rosé wines can be made still, semi-sparkling or sparkling and with a wide range of sweetness levels from highly dry Provençal rosé to sweet White Zinfandels and blushes. Rosé wines are made from a wide variety of grapes and can be found all around the globe.

When rosé wine is the primary product, it is produced with the skin contact method. Black-skinned grapes are crushed and the skins are allowed to remain in contact with the juice for a short period, typically two to twenty hours. The grape must is then pressed and the skins discarded, rather than left in contact throughout fermentation (as with red wine making). The longer the skins are left in contact with the juice, the more intense the color of the final wine.

When a winemaker desires to impart more tannin and color to red wine, some of the pink juice from the must can be removed at an early stage in what is known as the Saignée (from French bleeding) method. The red wine remaining in the vats is intensified as a result of the bleeding, because the volume of juice in the must is reduced, and the must involved in the maceration becomes more concentrated. The pink juice that is removed can be fermented separately to produce rosé.

SPARKLING WINE

Sparkling wine is a wine with significant levels of carbon dioxide in it, making it fizzy. While the phrase commonly refers to champagne, EU countries legally reserve that term for products exclusively produced in the Champagne region of France. Sparkling wine is usually either white or rosé, but there are examples of red sparkling wines. The sweetness of sparkling wine can range from very dry brut styles to sweeter doux varieties (French for ‘hard’ and ‘soft’, respectively).

The sparkling quality of these wines comes from its carbon dioxide content and may be the result of natural fermentation, either in a bottle, as with the traditional method, in a large tank designed to withstand the pressures involved (as in the Charmat process), or as a result of simple carbon dioxide injection in some cheaper sparkling wines.

PET-NAT

Pét-Nat (Pétillant Naturel) is produced in the ‘methode ancestral’, otherwise known as “rurale,” “artisanale,” or “gaillacoise.” Long story short, the wine is bottled prior to fully completing its first fermentation, allowing carbon dioxide to be produced by the natural sugars found in the grapes.

Pét-Nats have a light and fizzy mouthfeel and are generally low in alcohol. They are usually slightly sweet, though dry examples do exist. The wines can benefit from a couple of years in bottle, though do not develop with further aging. The bottles are often cloudy, due to remaining lees presence and lack of filtration. Pét-Nat production is extremely variable and can be hard to control and therefore requires a level of expertise on the winemaker’s part. The end result is a raw, rustic, and lively wine, extremely reflective of the terroir from which it came.