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Le Rosé STORY
History in the time of Pink Wine
Intro
Rosé, when spoken the word itself immediately evokes a sense of peace while bringing a smile to ones face for all that it represents. A simultaneous combination of feelings encompassing freedom, laissez-faire and the enjoyment of life embrace under an umbrella of absolute chillout and overwhelm your soul...this is the world of Rosé.
The Beginning
Rosé, you will be surprised to learn, was the first commonly drank type of wine in the world.
The oldest records of wine production are from Georgia and Armenia but the regular production and mass consumption of wine started in the very appropriately called "land of the gods" which is modern day Greece.
The early rosés were a blend of red and white wines. Pure red wines were not viable for consumption at the time since they were considered too strong, so they were often diluted. It is important to note that due to the fact that hard pressing and longer maceration were not yet employed so even without dilution the reds at that time were very pale.
The Birth of French Rosé
Sometime in the 6th Century BC, Greeks from the region of Phocaea arrived in modern day France and founded Massalia which is today known as Marseille. These settlers brought many aspects of their culture to this new colony but most importantly they brought the reason we are here today: Rosé. After establishing production in this new location, the Greeks traded and distributed their wines throughout the Mediterranean giving birth to the first French Rosé wines.
The Romans took over Southern France after the Greeks and founded the region they called Provincia Romana which we now call Provence. They further developed the wine culture started by their Greek predecessors and with the extensive trade routes of the Roman Empire made the pink wines of Provence famous throughout their incredibly significant and far-reaching network.
Wine production following the Roman occupation of Provence spread out to the region of Bordeaux which today is revered for its red wines; considered the standard by which all wines are measured. The initial production of wine in Bordeaux was a dark Rosé referred to as "clairet", which became highly sought after by the English. This type of wine continued to be popular in England until the 1900's; long after the Romans had started to make darker red wines popular around Europe several centuries earlier. Today, although not easy to find Clairet is still in production with bouts of attempts through the years to make it popular again.
The production of Rosé during the period from the Roman occupation, with the exception of the production of Clairet in Bordeaux, to the late 1800's was mostly limited to the region of Provence whose wines had started as the pink wines of Massalia (Marseille) when the Greeks landed and continued to evolve through time in production methods to eventually mature into the modern day Rosé that we all love.
The Evolution of Rosé
Going into the early 1900's there was a clear and fundamental shift in the technique to produce Rosé. Having been born as a blend of red and white wines centuries before, the method of exposing grape skins for a shorter time during fermentation to result in a light wine gave way to a new breed of wines which is the Rosé that we drink today.
In parallel to Provence in France, these modern techniques also allowed Portugal, Spain and Italy to develop their own versions of pink wines.
The catalyst for Rosé, which had been eclipsed from its former glory during the days of Massalia and Provincia Romana by red and white wines, was the rise of the French Riviera as a key holiday destination.
French vacationers began drinking Rosé after long days at the beach and discovering that it was the perfect way to hydrate while enjoying perfect moments of sea, sand and sun - thus coining the term "vin de soif" which literally translates to wine for quenching thirst. This is how the wine category became a symbol for freedom and happiness; it was in fact the wine people would only drink during a time of the year that they were feeling at their best....holidays.
By the 1950's the French Riviera had become the premier coastal destination in the world; attracting aristocrats, celebrities and the rich and famous from across the planet. As a complement to this cementing of its position as the world's playground for the "creme de la creme", the Cannes Film Festival began to attract the Hollywood crowd furthering the regions image; especially following several film productions such as To Catch a Thief (1955) featuring Grace Kelly and Cary Grant which were filmed on the Riviera. Guess what all these people were drinking during the day (besides champagne): Rosé. This solidified the category's holiday wine image in a very strong way but also linked it to the glitz of what the French Riviera had become.
Enter American Blush Wine "Rosé"
The American consumption of Rosé for a better part of the 1900's had been limited to low quality Portuguese wines such as Mateus and Lancers as well as some Spanish varieties; including the wine aficionados worst nightmare: boxed wine. These wines were many things but mostly they were very bad wines.
By the 1970's white wine consumption in the U.S had outpaced red wine to such a degree that producers found themselves having to make white wine from red wine grapes via the saignée method or "bleeding" which leaves excess wine that is usually disposed of. In 1975 California winery Sutter Home created a wine using the excess juice from its saignée process but due to a stuck fermentation, a production mistake wherein the wine's sugar doesn't fully convert to alcohol, the result was a sweet catastrophe. However, Sutter Home proceeded to replicate this process and called their product White Zinfandel or "Zin". This marked the birth of a new category of semi-sweet Rosé wines referred to as "blush wines".
Blush wines took the U.S by storm and moved the taste profile away from the pale, fresh and dry characteristics of Provence rosé, replacing it with something sweet and closer to a wine cooler than a classic rosé. This gave rise to a new type of Rosé consumption in the American market, while eclipsing any sophistication or complexity offered by the classic Provençale-style pink wines, which resulted in a period of tarnishing for the category which many people in the industry consider to be the darkest time in its modern history. All previous gains made in favor of Rosé's image by its association with the French Riviera during its rise as the playground of the rich and famous in the 50's and 60's were erased for decades by the cheap, sweet and unsophisticated character of the white zinfandel and its like-charactered successors. The world's largest consumer market was consuming pink wine like never before but it was alas not a true Rosé.
The Return and Rise of Rosé
In the early 2000's ease of travel and communication was increasingly making our world a much smaller place. People were traveling more than ever and France had become the premier destination for American tourists in Europe. A direct beneficiary of this new found love for all things French, with an unprecedented number of Americans visiting the country, was definitely Rosé.
As Americans rediscovered the classic and dry pink wine once again, during their beach days on the French Riviera or their afternoons in charming Provence, the previous decades of darkness for Rosé gave way to light and a seemingly unstoppable trend in favor of the category that saw exponential growth in U.S imports of the product. The thirst of American consumers to continue and replicate their pink moments of je-ne-sais-quoi all but erased the existence of blush wine, a product that would have made the ancient Greeks take over California, if only to end the production of such a blasphemous creation.
In parallel to the rise of Rosé in the Americas, the rest of the world also saw equally stunning growth in its discovery or rediscovery of our beloved pink wines.
Rosé Today = Rosé All Day
The return of Rosé to the world stage has been a phenomenon, with old school wine producers in traditional categories still trying to recover from the shock and make sense of what has happened.
Sales of Rosé in the United States and around the world have consistently grown year on year for the past 15 years at a rate that has proportionately outpaced reds and whites.
While Provence and Southern France in general remains the cradle of Rosé and gold standard, beautiful pink wines have emerged in recent years from many other places, making the Rosé journey dynamic and adventurous while further fuelling consumer interest in the category.
Celebrities have invested in their own Rosé brands (such as Jon Bon Jovi's Hampton Water or Drew Barrymore's Barrymore), influencers all over cyberspace cannot stop posting about Rosé and in the summer of 2014 the Hamptons - destination and vacation home haven for America's rich and famous - experienced a Rosé shortage which created absolute panic. The consumption of pink wine in this enclave for the jet-set and gliterrati is of such dimensions that Rosé is often jokingly referred to as "the gatorade of the Hamptons".
We are now living in the era of Rosé, where the world is just a bit more blissful through pink lenses and for a moment it seems like time stands still.
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