Making Blush Wine or Rose Wine

The popularity of rose wine or blush wine is on the rise as opposed to earlier when it was less preferred because it was considered to be much lighter than red wine or white wine. For this reason it was referred to as summer wine. Today the scenario has changed with different styles of rose wines being available commercially and with many home winemakers trying out different methods of producing rose wine. Of all these varieties the popularity of dry rose wines is increasing steadily.

Rose wine is also called blush wine in the US and it is called Rose in Europe where this wine is drier. Most of the American blush wines are much sweeter than the European ones. There are three different methods of making rose or blush wine. The first such method is called "blanc de noir". In English it means a white wine is made from red grapes. The second method is known as saignée, which separates the juice from the red wine. The third method involves blending white wine and red wine.

Just because rose wine is popular as a sweet wine you need not make it very sweet. The depth of color of the wine will depend on how long you are keeping the juice in contact with the skins. Usually for making rose wine the contact period is only two or three days. The longer this period is the deeper will be the color of wine. The depth of color of the grapes will also determine the color of wine.

You will want to use the saignée or bleeding method to make rose wine if you wish to have more tannin and color in a red wine and at the same time removing the juice to make rose wine. Here the juice has to be removed quite early. This process is also called bleeding in vats. After the juice is removed very early it is fermented separately to produce the rose wine. Thus in this method the rose wine is actually a byproduct of the red wine. The red wine produced using this method will be more concentrated because some of the juice has already been separated.

In the blending process the red and white wines are simply mixed so that a rose wine is produced. However, most people today prefer to make rose wine using the other two methods and blending is still used mostly in Champagne, France. When you make your own blush wine or rose wine you need to experiment a little to get the quality you like the most. By experimenting with different methods using different types of grapes you will be able to find the right method depending on whether you like your rose wine dry or sweet.