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Fermentation Atlas

Alcoholic drinks from Worldwide

Rosé wine

Red grapes are crushed and left on their skins for only a few hours, or pressed straight away, so the juice takes up a little colour. The pink juice is pressed off, settled cold and fermented cool like a white wine. Made in 6 steps over 7.6 days – 16 days. The longest step, ferment cool to dryness, takes 7–15 days (Vins de Provence (vinsdeprovence.com)) and runs at 16–20 °C (Vins de Provence (vinsdeprovence.com)). Saccharomyces cerevisiae does most of the fermenting.

Key numbers
Main step7–15 daysReported[civp-rose][leborgne2023]Ferment cool to dryness
Temperature16–20 °CReported[civp-rose][leborgne2023]Ferment cool to dryness
AciditypH 3.4Measured[leborgne2022]Ferment cool to dryness
Fully documentedAlcoholic drinks7.6 days – 16 daysFamily: Red wineMore alcoholic drinksMore from France

Recipe

Amounts from a sourceAmounts from a pilot-scale trial at the Centre du Rosé (IFV, Vidauban); cellars set their own.
Red grapes · Grenache, Cinsault and Syrah in a Provence trial[leborgne2023]
2.5 g per 100 kg of grapes, twiceSodium hydrogen sulfite · Added at crushing and after maceration against oxidation and spoilage in the trial[leborgne2023]
0.4 g/LActive dry wine yeast · Rehydrated 20 min at 37 °C before it goes in[leborgne2023]
Starterinoculated wine yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae) or the grapes' own yeasts

Total time across the recorded steps: 7.6 days – 16 days

Start
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12 °C

What changes: Starting material: red grapes, picked whole and kept cool

Step 1 of 6
Harvest and chill the red grapes
Time
Not documented
Temperature
12 °C
Measured
Salt
None given
Acidity
Not documented
Which microbes the steps name, step by step
Yeasts

Picked into small 20 kg bins so the grapes are not crushed and start to macerate by accident. Output: whole bunches, kept uncrushed.

Flavour
Not documented
Texture
Not documented
Colour
Not documented

Microbes at work in this step

Not documented for this step.

Method

Measured measured in a studySet fixed by a specification or tested recipeReported one source reports itTypical a general value, not sourced for this fermentUnconfirmed not yet checked against a source

What makes this one different

Rosé starts like a red wine, from red grapes, but the juice stays on the skins for only hours, not days, and is then pressed and fermented cool without skins, like a white wine.

Related ferments

Variants

  • Direct-press roséBunches pressed slowly with no maceration; the palest rosés.
  • SaignéeAbout 5% to 15% of the juice is bled off a red-wine tank after a few hours and fermented as rosé.

History and sources

Every number is labelled with how it is known. How this atlas is made

  1. [leborgne2023] Leborgne C. et al. 2023, Untargeted metabolomics approach using UHPLC-HRMS to unravel the impact of fermentation on color and phenolic composition of rosé wines, Molecules 28:5748, doi:10.3390/molecules28155748paper
  2. [leborgne2022] Leborgne C. et al. 2022, Elucidating the color of rosé wines using polyphenol-targeted metabolomics, Molecules 27:1359, doi:10.3390/molecules27041359paper
  3. [puyo2023] Puyo M. et al. 2023, Use of oenological tannins to protect the colour of rosé wine in a bioprotection strategy with Metschnikowia pulcherrima, Foods 12:735, doi:10.3390/foods12040735paper
  4. [civp-rose] Vins de Provence (vinsdeprovence.com), The making of roséweb