Some people may wrongly believe that rose wine is made by mixing red and white wine but vintners should know better -- as one French winemaking group learned when they were hit with a fine for doing just that. The Vinovalie wine-growing association, based in the southwestern Tarn region, was fined more than 10,000 euros ($11,000) for turning to the simple art of colour mixing to obtain the pink-hued drink, a legal source said Friday.
Three of its bosses were also fined between 1,000 and 5,000 euros. According to the judgement, Vinovalie in 2012 "blended white wine with red wine to obtain rose, without registering this process." Emmanuel Gil, a lawyer for Vinovalie, told AFP she would appeal the court's decision.
Rose wine, dismissed by many as unsophisticated, is hugely popular in wine-loving France, especially in the warmer southern regions where men and women alike happily sip the chilled libation on a hot summer's afternoon. Rose-makers in France's picturesque Provence region, who have fought hard for their blushing wine to be taken seriously, were infuriated when the EU in 2009 briefly tried to allow producers to make rose by mixing red and white. The move, seen as heretical in France, was eventually dropped as vintners argued it would be a terrible setback for the rose market, flooding it with poor quality pink drinks.
Making rose the proper way is in fact a lot more complex, and achieving the distinctive pink hue requires a special technique. After red-skinned grapes are crushed, their skins are left in the macerating white juice for a few hours, long enough to gently tint the wine, then removed. The longer the grape's skins remain in the juice, the darker the finished product will be.
Mixing white with red to make rose is allowed in New World producer regions such as South Africa, Australia or California but it remains extremely rare, and is frowned upon by most producers. The Vinovalie association represents some 470 wine-growers across 3,800 hectares (9,400 acres) of vines.
