Despite the tremendous momentum organic farming, the wine industry is suffering. Six million hectolitres were distilled last year and a hundred thousand hectares are going to be uprooted, or nearly 15% of the total surface area. The fault lies in the lack of love that is affecting the blood of the vine in France: minus 70% in sixty years – the reds being more in difficulty than the others. To ward off the inexorable trend, initiatives are multiplying. Like, to regain the favor of female palates and millennials or to break the codes of consumption. Champagne is no exception either with the vogue of rosé champagne. Enough to bring color back to our viticulture? Our guide.
Champagne is taking on color, a pink shade that bubble lovers are increasingly appreciating. And this craze does not date from the recent wave of pale wines from Provence that are flooding the shelves and summer feasts. “Sales have been growing steadily for about twenty years, reaching 10% of volumes in 2022,” says Jean-Christophe Delavenne, vice-president of the General Union of Champagne Winegrowers. The United States has shown itself to be the most enthusiastic in this area, with 5.9 million bottles, dethroning Great Britain for the first time (3.6 million) as the leading market for shipments of pink bubbles. In total, last year, around twenty million colored bottles were exported. To which must of course be added purchases in France, estimated at around 15 million – unlike deliveries worldwide, the French market does not have detailed statistics. Volumes to be compared to the small million bottles of this category which found their palate to their taste at the end of the 1980s, but also to the total sales of champagne for the year 2022: 325.5 million bottles, a historic record, both in volume and in value (6.25 billion euros).
The history of flesh-colored champagne did not begin at the beginning of this century. During the Enlightenment, Abbé Pluche wrote: “The people of Champagne are experts in making wine well, whether sparkling or not, [qu’] They are able to render at will cherry color, bird’s eye, the last whiteness or perfectly red.” In 1764, the first trace of their trade, an extract from the account book of the Ruinart house in Reims, lists “a basket of 120 bottles, including 60 sparkling oeils-de-perdrix 1762” addressed to Mr. Baron de Welzel, grand cupbearer to HSH the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz (Germany).
The search for alchemy
The fact remains that while these bottles shared the color of our contemporary champagnes, they certainly did not have their taste. “At the time, the grape varieties and production methods were different,” says Frédéric Panaïotis, cellar master at Ruinart. No chardonnay populated the rows of vines, in which pinot noir and meunier coexisted with almost extinct varieties – arbane, fromenteau, petit meslier… This Ruinart oeil-de-perdrix was probably produced by maceration. This gives its color to the juice during a short infusion of the skin of the black grapes, from 24 to 72 hours depending on the color and style of the desired wine. The anthocyanins contained in the skin of the grapes thus impregnate the must. The longer this maceration lasts, the more the rosé champagnes will be marked in color and structured in aromas.
At the beginning of the 19th century, however, “the main method of producing rosé champagne consisted of colouring the wine with elderberries”, explains Isabelle Pierre, head of the Moët Hennessy group’s Champagne houses, who discovered the famous Ruinart register. A process that did not satisfy the great lady of Champagne, Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin, better known as Madame Clicquot. Widowed at 27, in 1805, she confidently took over the reins of the family business. True to her motto “Only one quality, the very first!”, the enterprising young woman intended to produce wines that were different from the others. “Not only in their colour, but also in their flavour”, explains Isabelle Pierre.
Veuve Clicquot is the inventor of rosé champagne produced by mixing white juice and red wine.
© / Clicquot
Intrepid and visionary, she slipped into the cellar, at the time when the workers were having their meals, to carry out experiments in secret. In 1818, she invented the blended rosé. This method, called traditional, consisted of adding to the white juice, before the fermentation, a small proportion of pinot noir vinified into red (from 5 to 20%). From the Burgundy winegrowers who supplied it, Veuve Clicquot asked for “a wine with a strong color, but which did not smell too much of Burgundy”! Dissatisfied with the results, she decided to use the resources of the local vineyard: “There is a hillside in Champagne called Bouzy which has always provided non-sparkling red wines of excellent quality and a very delicate taste”, she observed.
The Reims region, the only one authorized to mix white wine and red wine
The blended rosé remained the prerogative of the Reims house until the middle of the 19th century, then many others imitated it. Today, more than 90% of rosé champagnes are produced using this method, which is an exception in the European Union: the region remains the only one authorized to blend white wine and red wine. Originality will therefore consist, later, in returning to maceration: the saignée rosé. This is what the brilliant Bernard de Nonancourt, another immense figure of Champagne, president of Laurent-Perrier for more than sixty years, undertook by throwing a spanner in the works of France in 1968: his Cuvée Rosé proved to be a technical and commercial success, never denied. He thus gave its letters of nobility to this category of champagne, which lacked it. Until then, the rosé wine of coronations was quite rare, expensive and, above all, vintage to escape the bad reputation of its “non-vintage” bottles since the Belle Epoque. These then flowed in abundance in the brothels and Parisian cabarets, where La Goulue, sparkling queen of the French cancan, feasted on them with crayfish in a swamp. A real “flesh-colored” wine!
This bad image was such that Lily Bollinger, the elegant widow who ran the iconic Aÿ house after the Second World War, opposed the production of a colored champagne, “too frivolous” for her taste. However, she was convinced, in the 1960s, by the development of the Grande Année Rosé, the fruit of the meeting between a vintage champagne and a red wine from a single plot, the famous Côte aux Enfants. As for the “non-vintage” Bollinger Rosé, it only saw the light of day in 2008… Similarly, almost a century (!) separates the creation of the emblematic Cristal de Roederer from that of its rosé version, in 1974.
Today, all the Champagne houses and winemakers offer rosés. Over the years, other prestigious bottles have been launched one after the other: in addition to those already mentioned, Dom Pérignon (1959), Dom Ruinart (1964), Comtes de Champagne by Taittinger (1974), Belle Epoque by Perrier-Jouët (1975), Alexandra by Laurent-Perrier (1982), Krug (1983), Louise by Pommery (1984) are among the greatest sparkling wines in the world. Not forgetting, of course, the Grande Dame by Veuve Clicquot (1995). A well-deserved tribute.
Six shades of pink
There are different shades of rosé which are valuable indicators of the method of preparation of this beverage and its pairings.
Light pink : This subtle color results from direct pressing or a blend of chardonnay and a small proportion of red wine. Aperitif and raw fish.
Salmon : more sustained, this hue reflects a greater percentage of red wine in the blend. With a tangy dessert, like a rhubarb tart.
Orange : Both methods of preparation can produce these warm coppery reflections. Its fine vinosity takes it to grilled white meats (veal, poultry).
Strawberry : the result of a short maceration or the addition of a substantial portion of red wine, it develops a rather round and structured palate. Soft or pressed cheeses.
Raspberry : This marked dress comes from bleeding. Subtle balance between freshness, deliciousness and vinosity. Shellfish, southern cuisine, even Asian.
Cherry : Its pronounced color, resulting from a fairly long maceration, gives a foretaste of the intensity of its aromas. A rib of beef will not scare it.
.