Rosé wine has always intrigued me for many different reasons, so I never take it for granted. When it is good, it’s very, very good.
Of course, when it is bad ... well, you can finish that sentence.
The news value here is that I saw an authoritative story the other day on the internet that indicated that sales of pink wine in the United States have declined in the past 12 months. I never imagined that this would happen. But the story said that a lot of it that was made from the 2022 vintage is now being closed out.
It is true, of course, that rosé doesn’t need to be consumed immediately. An extra year in the bottle simply means that wine won’t be as fresh or as interesting as it was when it was younger.
U.S. wine buyers should therefore be alerted to the fact that 2022 rosé wines that remain in the marketplace probably will be discounted, and if they are not, they will soon become an obvious liability. Older dry rosé wines, especially those that were bottled in clear glass, will soon show their bronze colors as they shift away from pink, which indicates a tired wine.
I never imagined I would see this, especially given the fact that dry pink wine has been on a roll for the past decade. Since about 2014, sales of dry rosé wine have been on the rise.
A huge percentage of that came from the south of France, where some of the best pink wine in the world is made.
That sales boom was a far cry from a decade earlier, when there was a widely circulated myth that all rosé wines were sweet. That may have been true 30 years ago, when most winemakers still believed that all pink wines were for novices who didn’t like dry wine.
Moreover, in the 1980s, it wasn’t easy to make a great dry rosé since oxygen can easily turn the color from pink to orange or brown. In the 1980s, screwcaps rarely were used, and it was the use of the cap, not the cork, that helped to make dry rosé wines as fresh and as interesting as they became by 2000 or so.
The quality of dry rosés improved significantly when methods of making it grew more sophisticated and the terrific fruit flavors of various grapes could be captured. This included grenache in Europe and pinot noir in the United States.
It’s not easy to make a great dry rosé, but around the world, we began to see hundreds of dry versions that displayed all sorts of fascinating aromas, from tangerine or cherry to watermelon or citrus, and many other enticing characteristics.
By about 2005, dry rosé was being made by various procedures. The best way was to harvest red grapes earlier than you would for red wine and leave the juice and the grape skins in contact with one another for a short time to pick up color and flavor.
I generally don’t favor making rosé by what is called saignée, during which juice is drawn off a fermenting tank of fully mature red grapes. Usually, such wines lack the delicacy and fruity aromas of wines made intentionally to be rosé.
Before the world began to understand dry rosé, lots of people would tell servers at wine festivals and in tasting rooms that they didn’t want to even try their dry rosés, saying, “I don’t drink sweet wine.” People often thought that if it was pink, it would be sweet, no matter what the label said.
If the story I saw on the internet last week was correct, 2022 dry rosé wines might well be a category of interest to bargain hunters. The majority of those wines were for sale about a year ago at between $16 and $20 per bottle. But most 2022 rosés still represent good drinking.
Discount stores should have many at $10 to $15.
