MAKING ROSE TABLE WINE
by growwiner DON PANAGAPKA
a member of the Kitchener-Waterloo Winemakers Guild
{Editor's note - Don Panagapka is, in my experience, a fierce competitor, great wine and cidermaker, and a general class act. This article on Rose is copied with Don's permission from a posting to the AWO listserver "Winetalk". My hope is that Don will continue to give we lesser winemakers a target to shoot for...and tell us how to do so! lfw} See also Diary of a Winemaker
Winetalk members:
The following is the approach I took:
The Rose's I tasted had the following qualities:
Comments???
Don Panagapka
member club, AMATEUR WINEMAKERS OF ONTARIO
Last June on Winetalk I mentioned that I felt that it would be a good idea for members to perhaps put one of their winning recipes on winetalk to stimulate discussion on a particular category of wine and, more importantly for winemakers to better their winemaking skills. I received some positive response from a number of winemakers and so now that my summer holidays are over and I am home more than one night at a time I thought I would submit my recipe and philosophy of a wine category.......in this case the class Rose.
Background: it seems to me that Rose is an unheralded class that warrants more recognition. In the Rhone/Provence/Languedoc areas of France Rose is considered a part of everyone's daily consumption of wine. The Roses of Tavel, for example, are excellent examples of some of the finest Roses in the world. Here in Ontario, however, it seems that they are not taken seriously at all. After all, most AWO members blend a red and a white until it is the right colour and enter it into our competitions.
I had the opportunity to travel to Provence and taste many Roses. I attempted to dissect the components that I thought made a nice Rose and came back to Ontario with what I thought was perhaps the right formula. Since that time (1996) my success at making Rose's has improved dramatically.
1) they were subtle in flavour with light tannins
2) they had an obvious fruity component that was there but was not overpowering
3) the sugar component was dry to ever so slightly off dry
4) the fruit component was there but not overpowering
Firstly, how was I to get the fruit? For the most part in Provence the Grenache grape is used. Since Grenache is not available here I acquired some from our good friend Dominic via the Lodi area. This Grenache I used for two purposes, the first to rack off early in the fermentation for the Rose part, and left the rest to make a Rhone-style wine (with more intensity, perhaps combined with Syrah).
Secondly, I looked for Ontario red grapes that might make a nice Rose. In my mind the Pinot Noir, Cab Franc, and Merlot had the right qualities to potentially produce a good quality Rose. They all have nice fruit and subtle flavours (as opposed to say the Cabernet grape). All of these grapes were dealt with in the same way. Start the fermentation, then when the colour is a typical Rose, rack off approx 15% of the must to make a Rose, and the rest will be more concentrated to make a more full-bodied red. 
Then I made a Rose out of each of Pinot, Cab Franc, Merlot, and the Grenache. All of these (with the possible exception of the Grenache) were still heavier than I wanted when the fermentation was finished. I determined that the tannins were too high for a Rose and so went about reducing them with the addition of egg-white. Now I had 4 subtle-tannin fruity Rose's. Then in the final summation I blended the 4 Rose's using different blends of the 4 until I had 2 or 3 that I thought were ideal. After that it was the task of the judges to determine which was the best.
I have to say that at the beach a Rose is the most appealing of the wines that my guests want. Perhaps it is the novelty, but I believe that the subtle flavours, the light fruitiness, and cool serving temperature of the Roses are their attractions.
Hopefully this will stimulate some discussion on Winetalk and all of us (including me) will make better and better Roses in the future.
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