By Malu Lambert 
Illustrations Astrid Skibbe

It’s baking hot. Lunch is almost ready and we plan to dine alfresco, in the garden. A pink bottle of rosé is centre table, sweating crystal drops of moisture.
“Do the grapes grow pink like this?” my friend asks me as I hand her a glass of rosé.

I feel my face turning pink in reply; perhaps that’s why it’s also known as blush wine.

My friend isn’t alone with her pink faux pas; it’s also quite confusing to distinguish between different rosés, as they can be made from any varietal or any number of varietals. The term rosé refers to a style of winemaking, not the cultivar.

My personal rosé quest began at Fairview where I met up with the winemaker, Anthony De Jager. I’d chosen the right day to start my mission; it was a hot, still day in Paarl, just the kind of weather to be drinking rosé.

“Here, try this,” says Anthony, and we get down to the basics. First off is the actual colour of the wine. Rosé can range from the palest of pinks to a light crimson. Most rosé is made either with red or black grapes. The amount of colour is dependent on how much contact the juice has had with the skins.


Some winemakers blend red and white grape juice to make rosé. Anthony is not convinced about this practice. He believes this gave rosé a bad reputation in the past. “In the sixties and seventies that was how producers were making rosé, basically cheap pink wine.”

Apparently it was as a result of this that the term Blanc de Noir made its appearance. The term means white from red, and discerning producers started using this label to separate rosé made from red wine from that made of a blend of red and white. The true colour of Blanc de Noir, though, is a coppery pink.
“Saignée, on the other hand,” says Anthony, “is French for bled.” Luckily it’s not as macabre as it sounds. It simply refers to the ‘bleeding’ of juice from freshly-pressed dark grapes.

According to Anthony this method serves two purposes. It concentrates the colour and tannins of the red wine that is being made, and the ‘run off’, or the bleed, is then bottled as a pale rosé.

It’s time to put some of my new-found knowledge to practice and we head into the cool interior of the tasting room; stone floors and dark wood dominate. Leaning against the tasting ‘bar’, Anthony hands me a glass of the Fairview rosé.
“I try to make a rosé with some complexity. In order for this, you need tannin,” he says, as I do the obligatory swirling and sniffing. The rosé is dry and I can sense the tannins he’s talking about. This is a pink wine with substance.
This kind of rosé, with body and character, can be a great partner with food. According to Anthony: “Rosé is a crossover wine, which in turn pairs well with crossover food, like the South African swing on Mediterranean food.”

“Here,” he says, grabbing a bottle of red off the shelf, “Now try this.” Anthony deftly mixes a bit of red wine with a bit of white.
I pick up the glass, and inspect the colour—the shade is a bit deeper. Feeling a bit shameful, like a student mixing together the leftovers of last night’s party, I pick it up, sniff, and gulp down a mouthful. The wine immediately lacks the body of the previous rosé. The texture is that of a white wine, and not a particularly good one at that. I can see now how rosé got its questionable reputation.


My next stop is at Backsberg. Guillaume Nell, the winemaker, is waiting for me under the oaks with a bottle of rosé in an ice bucket.

“I wanted to make a wine that tastes like a holiday,” he says as we get down to tasting. This rosé is slightly sweeter than Fairview’s. By no means cloying, though. And, he’s correct; it does taste like a holiday.

In the shade of the oaks, dappled sunlight hits the bottle. Looking at it, shining pink, I can understand that some of the attraction of rosé certainly lies in its beauty. One sideways glance, at the salmon-coloured bottle, and my eyes are first in line to drink it in.
Guillaume doesn’t like to plan ahead when it comes to making rosé.  “Making rosé is subjective. I see what grapes I have available, and then I decide there, on the spot, what to do with them. Wine and food are about enjoyment. I try not to be too serious.” Guillaume is right, rosé seems to reflect a more relaxed attitude to wine drinking and perhaps this is why rosé sales continue to grow. People who ordinarily wouldn’t drink wine now happily quaff it by the bucketful.

In the UK alone sales jumped a massive 29,8 per cent in 2008. Rosé now accounts for 10 per cent of volume sales in the UK off-trade. South African rosé sales grew in the UK off-trade by more than 40 per cent and in the on-trade they nearly doubled.
Here at home, rosé accounts for 9 per cent of all wine sales. And the market is continuing to grow, some even say at the expense of white wines.

Another reason for this growing trend could be that the French are the biggest consumers of rosé in the drinking world. And, where the French lead, our noses will surely follow.
The rise of rosé champagne is a clear indicator of how world palates are changing. No longer at the bottom end, being splashed around at embarrassing graduation parties, pink champagne has become a status symbol and will burn holes in even the more well-lined pockets.

There is a rosé out there to suit each and every palate. From the more serious, complex, and dry rosés, to the lighter, sweeter versions that granny loves.