How Rosé Is Made: Three Techniques Behind Abracadabra

There are three ways a winemaker can make rosé, and each one leaves a different fingerprint on the wine in your glass.

We use two of the three at Brian Carter Cellars, in deliberate proportions, to build Abracadabra Rosé. The technique matters because rosé is one of the few categories where production choices are visible in the finished wine. Color, weight, finish, and ageability all trace back to how the wine was made.

The Three Techniques

1. Pick and press, with or without skin contact.
2. Saignée of crushed red grapes.
3. Adding red wine to white wine.

That third technique is the one most people are surprised to learn about. It is the standard method for sparkling rosé in Champagne. For still rosé, it is uncommon at the high end and rarely used for serious wines in this country. Worth knowing it exists, but I will leave it there.

The other two are the ones doing real work in our cellar.

Pick and Press

This is the most traditional and the most common technique worldwide. You harvest red grapes at the ideal ripeness for rosé, which is usually earlier than you would for a red wine, and then either crush them or press them whole-cluster.

If you want to pull more color from grapes that don't have much, you can leave the crushed fruit in contact with the juice for up to 24 hours before pressing. The longer you wait, the more color and the more tannin you get.

At Brian Carter Cellars, the Sangiovese we use has enough natural color that we don't need to crush. We load it into the press whole-cluster with no skin contact at all. This gives us a wine with lower astringency and a softer, less aggressive finish. It is the bulk of what ends up in the bottle.

Saignée

The French word saignée means "bleed," and that is what it describes. You take a tank of red grapes destined for red wine production, and after crushing, you bleed off a percentage of the juice from the skins. The remaining red wine in the tank ends up with a higher ratio of skin to juice, which gives you more color, more extract, and more concentration in the finished red. The bled-off juice becomes rosé.

We use saignée on Sangiovese, Grenache, and Mourvèdre, the larger-berried varieties where it makes the biggest difference for the red wine. The rosé juice that comes off the skins has more body than pick-and-press juice. We ferment it in neutral barrels on the lees, which adds another layer of mouthfeel. That fraction makes up about 25 percent of the final Abracadabra blend.

Two techniques, layered together: the elegance of pick-and-press as the spine, the weight and texture of saignée filling out the middle.

Two Myths Worth Retiring

There are two stubborn myths about rosé that come up constantly in our tasting rooms.

The first is that rosé should only be consumed in the spring and summer. I drink rosé year-round, and so do most people I know in the trade. Abracadabra pairs beautifully with Thanksgiving turkey, holiday salmon, and brunch any month of the year.

The second is that rosé should always be drunk within a year of release. Depending on the wine and how it was made, that is just not true. Abracadabra in particular evolves with a year or two of bottle age. The fruit relaxes slightly, the texture rounds out, and you start to see the saignée influence more clearly. I always set aside a few bottles to drink a year or more after release.

What to Pair With Abracadabra

Quick pairing list for Abracadabra Rosé:

• Grilled or pan-seared salmon
• Roasted chicken with herbs
• Charcuterie and aged cheeses
• Stone fruit and burrata salads
• Spicy Asian food, especially Thai curries
• Thanksgiving turkey and cranberry sauce

Serve it cool, around 50 to 55 degrees Fahrenheit. Pour generously.

Brian Carter, Winemaker