Making Rosé and Blush Wines

As with white and red winemaking, grapes for blush wines go first through "crush", passing through the crusher/destemmer machine. White wines spend almost no time with their skins, extracting color; red wines stay with the skins throughout fermentation, extracting rich, deep color.  So it follows that blush wines - like White Zinfandel, White Grenache or White Cabernet - land somewhere in the middle.  They take their pale pink hue from a very short period of contact - usually six to eight hours - with the skins of red grape varieties.

Next the juice is pressed off their skins and fermented, usually in stainless steel but sometimes in oak or a combination of both.  For the slightly sweeter styles of these wines, fermentation is halted before all of the sugars can be converted to alcohol.

The wines are then fined and filtered with egg whites or gelatin to remove any remaining proteins or astringent particles before bottling.  Sulfites may also be added to prevent oxidation.