ROSE WINE: ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW

Oh, rosé wine. Everyone loves it. Okay, maybe not everyone loves it. Maybe some people are indifferent about rosé, but one thing I can tell you for sure is that I have not met one person who told me that they hated rosé wine. So if you're like me, and up until recently you actually treated rosé just like a fad of some sort, let's go ahead and learn some more about it today. Hi everyone and welcome back to my wine diary. If you're new to my channel, please consider subscribing. The subscribe button is right down below. I shoot videos about wine. I have plenty educational wines on my channel already, and then I post new ones pretty much every single week. So if you're new, consider subscribing. If you are not new, if you're my old subscriber, thank you for sticking around. I'm so glad to have you back. So what makes rosé wine so special, this very pretty, very romantic looking wine? Well in a nutshell, rosé wine is wine that is made from red grapes, and it's made in a similar manner that red wine. However, the fermenting process with the skins on is highly reduced, and that's what makes it a little bit different from the red wine. So that reduced fermenting time with the skins on is what gives rosé wine this pink, light pink hue and then lighter flavor as well than the one of a red wine. Rosé is very trendy and it definitely has seen a surge in popularity over the recent years. It also has been the fastest growing wine category that continues to grow its popularity to this day. But one thing that not everyone knows about rosé is that it's one of the oldest wine types that has ever been made, which is pretty crazy to think. It traces back to the Greek and Roman Empires. Mind-blowing! As we think of rosé as this newer trend, it's really not. But nowadays rosé can be made all over the world out of any red grape grown in any wine region, which is another mind-blowing fact to me. Rosé is typically a blended wine made from different varietals of the wine grapes. However, it can also be a single varietal grape rosé. So for instance, California rosés are made 100% of Pinot Noir grapes. Speaking of where rosé wines are made in the world, let's talk about France first, or Provence region to be exact. If you're looking for that quintessential light pink, bone-dry rosé, look no further than Provence. This is the wine that I'm drinking today as well. So this one here I'll be tasting in just a second, but you can see the light color of it and it's definitely bone-dry. I already had a taste. So that heart and soul of rosé country, Provence, grapes that are used to make rosé in Provence are usually Grenache, Syrah, and Mouvedre grapes. So Mouvedre actually produced some rosé wines that can be aged, which is pretty crazy. Again, there's so many mind-blowing facts about rosé that I personally didn't know about. So Mouvedre, if you see that grape varietal on the bottle, know that you can actually age that wine. But they definitely produce crispier, lighter rosés that are perfect for a hot summer day. Continuing our journey through France, we now have Rhone Valley rosés. And rosés coming from Rhone Valley usually are made from Cabernet Franc and Pinot Noir grapes, which gives them a little more minerality. So they have that earthy taste to them and they're a little bit more fruit forward. Then we have rosés from Spain and Italy, and those are fuller bodied rosés with a little bit more oomph to them. So Rosados in Spain or Rosatos in Italy are definitely a little bit darker with their pink hue and they have more flavor than your northern France rosés would, for instance. So the takeaway here is that rosé can come from all over the world. Now let's talk about the shades of rosés. It is a and then the lighter colored rosés are usually drier. Now that's not always the case. Matter of fact, a lot of times that is not the case whatsoever. The color, the shade of rosé wine doesn't always correlate with its sweetness whatsoever. So the color of rosé has to do with how long that juice was in contact with the skins of the grapes, and it also has to do with the types of the grapes, the varietals that were used to make it. So for instance, your thicker skin grapes will produce darker hues of pink. Now how is rosé wine produced? It gets its very distinct pink color through a process called maceration, very common for a rosé wine production. So what happens here is red wine grapes are juiced and then left to macerate or ferment with those skins on for about a day or two. Then the skins get removed and wine continues to ferment. So because of that maceration process, we get the pink hue in our rosé wine, and the longer you leave those skins during the fermentation or maceration process, the darker and the deeper that pink hue color will be. So if we remove them faster, we get lighter colored rosé wines. The color of my rosé here, which does come from Provence area of France, you can see how it's very light, it's very peachy, and this is how you see a lot of rosés coming from France look like. So let's go ahead and smell this one. It smells a little bit earthy, it smells very crisp. I would say that earth minerality and maybe a little bit of watermelon comes through both on the nose and on the palate as well. Very refreshing. I personally prefer my rosé wines bone-dry and this is exactly it right here. This one has medium to full body to it and I would say medium acidity to it as well. And speaking about rosé's acidity, it actually helps it to be paired with food very very greatly. And this is one of my personal favorite things about rosé that you can pair it with pretty much anything. To me, it became a when in doubt wine. So when I literally can't choose what to go for in the menu or to cook at home, which wine to have with it, go with rosé. You literally will not be disappointed. You can have rosé with spicy food, that acidity will help you cut through spicy foods and just flush it down with nice freshness afterwards. You can have heavier dishes like rice, sushi goes really well with rosé as well. But then you can have it with maybe some hors d'oeuvres, oysters, snacks, you know, pizza, whatever your heart desires. Rosé really goes well with pretty much everything. Mine here, as I'm sipping and sniffing it a little bit more, the one very common I would say French style, so Provence style rosé scent that comes through on the nose is grapefruit. So it's a little bit citrusy as well. So earthy, citrusy, watermelon-y, very crisp, just calls for a very nice refreshing glass of wine. Serve it cold on a hot summer day type of thing. You guys, I brought up the fact that rosé is a summer drink, and I said a hot summer day quite a few times already. Maybe it's because it is a hot summer day here in Florida today. It's not exactly summer anymore. We are in the midst of September, but it feels like summer. It's very hot. So this rosé goes perfect with a day like today. But what I really want you to take out of this video is that rosé is super versatile, and you should really enjoy it all year long and enjoy it with all sorts of foods. Serve it chilled, so put it in a fridge for a while, and then serve it right out of the fridge. You can decant rosé if you wish, especially if you have a darker rosé that's made with thicker style, thicker varietal grapes. You want for those to open up a little bit more, so feel free to decant it. No wine will hurt from decanting. That's my opinion. It's my personal preference. I like decanting wines. At the very least, I will put a little aerator in my bottle here to give it a little bit more oxygen. And this is really it. This is everything I'd like for you to know about rosé wines. Explore, explore, explore. There's so many of them on the market right now. I personally love trying new rosés that I see in stores, so give it a go. Give it a go more than once. Just try it out. Try it out with different foods. You will not be disappointed. Thanks again for sticking around and watching this video till the end. If you're still here, if you're new, please subscribe. If you're old, welcome back. And until next time, cheers everyone.