In the  French wine family, the rosés have a special place. Considered a “summer wine”, it is mainly consumed between June and August when the temperatures are high. It is characterized by a “fruity taste” which differentiates Because of its particularity, it’s not as highly regarded as other wines, though it is in fact the oldest wine in history; historians estimate the first exploitation of rose wines was more than 1 million years ago around the Mediterranee Sea in area that is now Provence Alpes Cotes d’Azur.

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The Provence is currently the first producer of rose in France (150 million bottles produced each year), and probably one of the biggest consumer of this wine as it is a real tradition when the temperature rises.  Moreover, France is currently the first producer of rose in the world with more than 29% of global production and despite the slump of red wine production, rose gains market shares every year: it went from 8.4% of all wine consumption in France in 1991 to 14.7% in 2003.

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However, Provence is not the only region where you can find quality rose, you can also find some in the Rhône and Bordeaux region (12% of the French national production of rose), in the Languedoc, in the South-West and in the Roussillon. Nevertheless, these regions are best known for their red or white wine produce rather than rose.

We can distinguish 3 different ways of producing rosé:

-          Skin contact

-          Saignée

-          Blending

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The first method mainly consists in crushing black-skinned grapes and leaving the skins in contact with the juice for a short amount of time. Then, the skin is removed, as opposed to red wine production when it must stay with the juice. The more you leave the skin with the juice the darker and more intense the wine will be.

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The Saignée or “bleeding the vats” is the process of producing rosé by using  red wine fermentation. In fact, the colour of the red wine can be influenced if a part of the juice is extracted at an early stage. Then the red wine will be darker as the volume of juice is reduced and the pink juice extracted can be fermented separately in order to produce rosé.

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The ultimate way to produce rosé, called “Blending”, was very controversial for years and only stopped being so in 2009 when the European Union recognized with absolute majority (France included) the mixing of red and white wine as a legal process to produce rose wine. Indeed, the blending consists in the simple mixing of red wine and white to obtain this particular pinky colour. This method is still discouraged in the major wine regions except for Champagne.

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Rose wines represent an art of living, a way of thinking, and there’s nothing more delightful than drinking a glass of rosé in your property in Provence, basking in the glorious sunshine.