Pierre Peters Rosé Champagne

In light of ‘National Rosé Day’, we’re going in a slightly different direction for our annual article by focusing on the very best of the bubbly kind: Rosé Champagne.

Rosé Champagne is that wonderful looking pink variety of sparkling wine that comes from the Champagne region in northeastern France. Its popularity is taking off and here are the things you will want to know about buying and drinking rosé Champagne.

First off, when we refer to Champagne, we are not referring to sparkling wine. Sparkling wine is made all around the world, but only wine coming from the Champagne region, some 90 miles east of Paris, can be called Champagne.

Rosé Champagne starts out in much the same way as traditional white Champagne, or ‘Champagne blanc’ as the Champenois refer to it.

Bollinger Pinot Noir.

Grapes from the vineyards of Champagne are harvested and brought into the winery to be made into still wine (the vins claire) before going through the process of adding yeast and sugar to the bottle that react with the wine creating carbon dioxide which is then trapped in the wine by the cap or cork closure.

(For more on how Champagne is made, see our article here.) Champagne grows both white grapes (Chardonnay) and red grapes (Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier).

There are two methods for making rosé Champagne. The first is known as the méthode assemblage. With this method, the winemaker will add a small portion of still red wine made in the region (most often Pinot Noir but occasionally Meunier is used) to the vins claire.

The barrel room at Olivier Horiot.

This addition is usually about 5% to 15% of the final blend. At 5% just a little colour is added, resulting in a delicate salmon pink looking wine. As the amount of still red wine added increases, the colour darkens until it can become more garnet or light red. Piper Heidsieck makes a rosé with 20% still Pinot Noir added that creates a bright ruby coloured wine.

The other method of adding colour is called saignée. This French word translates to English as “bleeding”. The saignée method involves leaving the vin claire in contact with the skins of the red grapes for several hours, possibly up to a day.

Billecart-Salmon Rosé Champagne.

During this contact, known as maceration, the clear juice of the centre of the grape is exposed to the red pigments in the outside of the skins which then “bleed” into the juice of the vins claire.  The longer the period of maceration, the more colour will bleed into the resulting finished wine. Typically, the saignée méthode yields a deeper garnet coloured wine than the pink and copper hues that result from the méthode assemblage.

As first mentioned, rosé Champagne is increasing in popularity. The first rosé Champagne was made in the 1700s (Veuve Clicquot claims that honour) but it wasn’t until the 1970s that any amount of rosé Champagne could be found at restaurants or on store shelves.

2011 Roederer Rosé

Initially admired for its colour, it seemed to add even more festivity the world’s most festive drink. Even then, production of rosé seldom climbed above 5% of total Champagne consumption. Initially it wasn’t taken seriously by connoisseurs or the critics, and often derided as a gimmick. It also struggled with an association to the rapid rise of pink still wine in the 1980s, largely Zinfandel coming from the US that was cheap, extracted and lavishly dosed with sugar and not appealing at all to serious wine drinkers.

Though that association was not at all supported by fact, perceptions are slow to change. By the turn of the century, the pink still wine craze had lost its momentum and several quality Champagne producers were making and promoting some delicious and serious rosé Champagne.

Laurent-Perrier might be considered the leader of that charge and was joined by some of the powerhouses like Veuve Clicquot, Billecart-Salmon and Bollinger.

Two of the very best examples of Rosé Champagne.

Far from being a frivolous drink for party-goers, the best houses in Champagne started focusing on making their top rosé the best Champagne they produced. The shift to quality rosé is now well afoot. Dom Perignon has always taken their rosé seriously and it now sells for about 50% more than “regular” Dom Perignon (as if anything about Dom Perignon is regular!). Roederer makes miniscule amounts of their Cristal in a rosé style, and it’s a collectors dream. Krug rosé, if you can ever find it, makes a wine of incomparable power and depth.

Rosé Champagne now accounts for about 8.5% of Champagne drank in Europe and 11.5% in the United States. While rosé Champagne is generally more expensive than its blanc counterpart, that difference in price is more like 10% to 20% for the non-prestige vintage and non-vintage cuvees. As more work goes go into the making of a rosé, this small premium seems justified.

A glass of Billecart-Salmon shared with friends.

Rosé Champagne is a sight to behold, especially in an attractive Champagne glass. The star-like bubbles running through a salmon, copper, or burnished red coloured wine is liquid art. Wine is a hedonistic beverage whose purpose is to delight your senses, including your vision, and rosé does that with style.

But how about those other senses? Does rosé Champagne taste or smell appreciably different than blanc Champagne? This is where things get tricky. We would say there is a difference, but we need to acknowledge the difference is subtle. Could a person blind taste (literally) a blanc and a rosé Champagne from the same producer, and correctly identify which was which? Our answer would be “not easily”.

Tasting at Bollinger.

Mind you, we would give a similar answer to many aspects of blind tasting – it’s never easy! As the famed wine writer Hugh Johnson once quipped when asked if he had ever mistaken a Burgundy for a Bordeaux, his dry reply was “not since lunch”.

Attentive tasters will (and increasingly have) noted these subtle differences which is no doubt a part of the increase in rosé popularity. The nose of the wines we think will give you the most difficulty in distinguishing them. Champagne has a very distinctive nose, one often infused with autolytic characteristics of warm bread, brioche and the like, as well as citrus notes and minerality.

Enjoying a glass of Champagne.

In our experience these remain dominant whether it is rosé or blanc. But it is on the palate where more of the subtle differences can be detected. Often a rosé will show more red fruit character. Apple skins and strawberries will often be a tell. The body of a rosé is usually fuller than its blanc counterpart. More sensitive palates might get a sensation of tannin, which the addition of still Pinot Noir or a bit of maceration can impart to a rosé wine.

Though the big difference with rosé Champagne is its appearance, that along with the subtle flavour differences are enough to keep us coming back and adding more rosé to our personal Champagne mix.