BRUSSELS — Blended, bled or crushed? Rose wine customers will get to know exactly how their grapes were treated to turn their tipple a blushing pink under new EU rules laid out today.
The European Commission said it would lift a ban on blending red and white wines to make cheaper “vin de table” and set out new labels to allow shoppers to distinguish between blending — a method many European producers shun — and traditional methods of making rose wine.
It said rose table wine should be labeled as either “traditional rose” or “blended rose,” to assure French wine makers that their hallowed rose would never be mistaken for a diluted red.
The new rules will be voted on — and likely approved — by EU governments in May and would then come into force in August, officials said.
In Europe, winemakers usually tint white wine pink by mixing it with crushed red grape skins for a short while or by adding a red-colored juice that they get from bleeding red wine vats.
But simply blending red and white wines to make rose is strictly forbidden for most ordinary wine — a ban that doesn’t apply to Spain or to high-quality champagne producers who mix the two to make pink bubbly.
Blending is a far cheaper method of making rose and there are no restrictions on selling blended rose wine from the rest of the world in European stores.
EU officials were keen to allow European wine makers also to blend their wines if they wanted — but faced fierce opposition from France which did not want to water down traditional production methods.
The labeling solution offered a compromise, by setting a clear pink line between the two, and a similar distinction already exists for high-end quality wines.
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