Many wine experts look down their noses at blush wines. These experts reconsider blush wines to be too straightforward and lacking in complexity. Regardless of what experts think, blush wines are quite popular and are here to stay.
Making a Blush Wine
Wines
There are some ways of producing a blush wine. First of all, the juice of all grapes is white. It is the dark-colored skins of the grapes that add tannin and color to wine. The first way of manufacture a blush wine is to crush the grapes and leave their skins in with the mix for a given duration of time and then rack the grapes, or remove the stems, seeds and skins. If the duration of contact lasts just a short duration of time, the resulting wine will be a pale pink in color. Typical lengths of time using this recipe run from about six to eight hours. This type of process is also referred to as exiguous maceration.
Another way of producing bush wines is called saignee. This is a bleeding process where some of the juice from the must, or crushed grapes, is removed from the mix before fermenting the juice into wine. This results in a more intense red wine. The blush juice that was bled becomes a secondary byproduct which can then be made into a blush wine.
Rose wines can also be made straight through the pressurage method. This involves using white wine grapes with dark skins so that the dark skins of the grapes will give the wine a pink color.
The final way to make a blush wine is to add some red wine to a white wine. This recipe is not used oftentimes anymore in the wine-making world except in the Champagne region of France.
Rose
Rose is the customary blush wine. Probably originating with the with the old Greeks in Rome, Rose in Europe today is typically a dry drink rather than the sweeter blush wines of the United States.
White zinfandels
White zinfandels were created in 1973 when owner Bob Trinchero of Sutter Home Winery, located in Northern California, bled his red zinfandel to make the juice more intense. When he decided to vinify the juice that he had taken, white zinfandels were born.
White zinfandels might be paired with:
Pasta dishes with cream sauces
Antipasto
Mild cheeses
Egg dishes
Indian cuisine
Lamb
Fresh mozzarella
Spicy Szechuan dishes
Thai foods
You might try a rose with:
Paella
Smoked fish
Fresh goat cheeses
Olives
Feta
Prosciutto and melon
Mushrooms
Artichokes
Serving blush wines
Blush wines should be served when they are young and when they have been chilled to about 50 degrees F. Many population prefer to drink blush wines while warm spring and summer days because of blush wines’ light, crisp taste.
An Introduction to Blush Wines
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