How Rosé Wine is Made
Ever wonder how rosé is made? If you are familiar with the winemaking process you likely know that when a grape reaches optimal ripeness (desired amount of sugar aka brix balancing the desired amount of acidity) the fruit is harvested and brought to the winery to begin its fermentation process.
Winemaking is both a science and an art so every winemaker will do things slightly different, however here at Suhru we are taking the Provence winemaking approach to our rosé focusing on light, fresh, fruit flavors and a light salmon hue.
To achieve this style, we purposely harvest our fruit a full 2-3 weeks earlier than we would for our red wines to ensure higher acidity in the grape. Once the fruit arrives at the winery, it is destemmed and crushed. During the crushing process the berries are split open allowing the juice to run free and be in contact with the exterior of the grape skins which is essential for color extraction. This crushed fruit is left to soak for 6 hours of skin contact which allows it to extract a nice fruitiness and light salmon hue without the body, weight, or tannin, that an extended extraction (what we typically do for red wines) would result in.
Once the 6 hour soak is complete, the fruit is loaded into the press where we gently extract the liquid juice from the grape skins and seeds before the juice is pumped into tank. At this point the juice is inoculated with yeast and begins its fermentation process.
During fermentation the yeast cells that we have introduced through inoculation begin to consume the naturally occurring sugars in the grape juice. As the yeast consumes the sugar it produces alcohol and releases carbon dioxide (CO2). Once all of the sugars have been consumed and converted into alcohol the yeast cells die and settle to the bottom of the tank. Once everything settles the clear wine is racked (aka transferred) off the solids into a new tank where it undergoes the final finishing touches (heat stabilization, cold stabilization, filtering, etc) before it is bottled, chilled and served!