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C Rosés EVERYTHING'S COMING UP By Harriet Lembeck hampagne is back in the game. Since 2010, through 2011 and into 2012, Champagne sales are ris- ing – especially the rosés. When your customers ask about special parties, graduations and weddings, think pink. Explain that rosé champagnes are no longer sweet, and they are no longer frivolous. Remember Piper Pink? Its formal name is Piper Heidsieck Rosé Champagne. Of the grapes used, chardonnay is the only permitted white grape in cham- pagne, and it gives the acidity and forward fruit that lends longevity to the wine. The red pinot noir gives structure and depth, and the red pinot meunier adds richness and fruit. Because these rosé champagnes have an extra red wine component, they have deeper color and complexity, and go well with ham, lamb and beef. They can hold up to spices, and are versatile enough to serve with grilled fish. This 10-year-old Pol Roger Rosé still tastes fresh, and could take even more aging. The additional color can be achieved by two meth- ods. The usual way is to take still red wine from differ- ent villages in Champagne, and add it to the fermenting wine, at the time of the assemblage, which is just before the second fermentation. Usually this is between 15% Harriet Lembeck, CWE*, CSS** hlembeck@mindspring.com is a prominent wine and spirits educator. She is president of the renowned Wine & Spirits Program, and revised and updated the textbook Grossman's Guide to Wines, Beers and Spirits. She was the Director of the Wine Department for The New School University for 18 years. (*Certified Wine Educator, **Certified Specialist of Spirits) StateWays s www.stateways.com s July/August 2012 ROSÉ CHAMPAGNES ARE NO LONGER SWEET, AND THEY ARE NO LONGER FRIVOLOUS. and 18%. The method is easy to control, and achieves con- sistency of color, year to year. A more difficult process is fermenting all of the red grapes on their skins, (maceration), to pick up color. Few Champagne houses do this, but Taittinger, Louis Roederer and Nicolas Feuillatte are among those who do. This is more difficult because the colors lighten a little with each of the two fermentations, and red shades tend to drop out. Several years ago, when sparkling wine makers in Napa Valley were learning how to make these wines, they saw that deep colored juice turned paler after the first fermentation, and paler still after the second fermentation. This was all right if they were making a white sparkling wine, but not good if they were trying to make a rosé. Adding still red wines to the blend, instead of fermenting the juice on the skins to get the color, corrects this. At a recent lunch at the Brasserie in New York City, where 13 rosé cham- pagnes were served, only five were vintage-dated. Ed McCarthy, author of Champagne for Dummies, explained that the practice of making non-vintage wines dates to the days when rosé wines didn't sell well, and it didn't make much sense to produce a rosé that was vintage-dated, espe- cially when the vintage champagne market is so small to begin with. It is much easier to use reserve wines, from previous years, in the blends, which means that these "multi-vintage" wines cannot carry a vintage date. Houses like Ayala and Alfred Gratien only make NV Rosé Champagnes. And the houses that do make vintage-dated rosé champagnes, don't produce very much. At this lunch, where the bottles with vintages ranged 43