Trends in wine consumption are nothing new. Indeed I have jumped on pretty much any band wagon that has gone past in the last 10 years – the “anything but Chardonnay” trend of the late 1990s, followed by the “actually Chardonnay is very nice can we have it back please?” trend of the early 2000s (sort of how we flirted with cargo pants around 1999 as an alternative to jeans, before we realised that pockets on the outside of trousers was patently ridiculous, and that you can wear the same jeans for more than four days without needing to write a song about it – I think I’ve had mine on for about 3 weeks now without anyone noticing – and came running back to jeans and have been wearing them ever since); then there was the “Viognier” trend, the “Pinot” trend after the film Sideways came out, and now the “South America” and "Low Alcohol Wines" trends. (Incidentally, Mosel Riesling and Hunter Semillon have always been 'low alcohol' - it wasn't invented in the lab down at Tesco, as much as they would like you to believe it was). All very good trends, excellent, keep them coming.
But pink wine? The wine press has been quick to sing the praises of pink wine with all sorts of articles along the lines of “you thought pink wine was shit – well you’re wrong, it can actually be quite nice.”
Well, this piece takes the opposite view – pink wine is shit, the masses are wrong, and there are structural reasons why pink wine cannot be serious.
One such pro-pink article (at least half heartedly) is ‘Can Rosé ever be a serious wine?’ by Joanna Simon in the August edition of Decanter magazine. Her argument is that people dismiss pink wine because it is rarely oaked, designed to be drunk young, and therefore not worthy of serious consideration; but that because there are plenty of serious unoaked, drink-now wines (e.g. Sancerre) we should not dismiss pink wine on these bases. That is perfectly fine, and I agree that these are not reasons why pink wine should be derided. But it does not follow that there are not other reasons why pink wine is no good – Simon does not cover the field of reasons why pink wine is, well, not as good as proper red and white wine.
My main argument would be that pink wine can never be serious because it is pink. This is not some sort of joke. Pink wine is not made from pink grapes. It is made by either adding red and white grapes together, or squeezing red grapes without letting the pigment in the skin colour the wine beyond the desired level of pinkness.
Basically, pink wine arises because the natural process of winemaking that results in the best expression of any particular grape has been interfered with, either by adding to or subtracting from the normal course of winemaking. And that pretty much always comes at a cost. In the case of pink wine, the cost is that the resultant wine not only rarely has any varietal definition, but this Frankenstein of wines doesn’t even provide us with a product that does a job not already done by some other wine.
There are, of course, several wines that rely on interfering with the natural course of wine making but that are nevertheless masterpieces – Champagne, Amarone, Sherry, or any fortified wine for that matter. But there are usually good reasons why these gimmicks work. They originally put bubbles in Champagne by accident, and if you tried flat wine from Champagne it would turn your face inside out, so the bubbles are an improvement. In making Valpolicella, the technique of drying part of the harvest so that some of the wine is effectively made from raisins has resulted in a wine far superior in intensity and flavour than the relatively insipid stuff that results when this method is not employed. Similar reasons exist for fortifieds – for example the Palomino grape is very bland so making it into Sherry makes sense; Pedro Ximénez only shines as a fortified wine.
But to my mind there isn’t a similar excuse for Rose. It is neither geographically necessary, nor the best expression of any grape from which it is made, nor a delightful accident.
Pink supporters will probably rejoin with some cant about how, technicality aside, in summer time it is just nice to drink chilled pink wine that is zingy and fresh but with some nice red fruity, lolly water characters to it. Well, point number one is that if you want a wine to taste like lolly water you already agree that pink wine is crap. (I don't mind if you like crap - I do mind if you claim it to be a serious contribution to the wine portfolio though). But moreover, I just don’t think it’s possible to combine the zingy acidity of crisp whites with the red fruit of light reds and have a product that combines the two. The moment you introduce the characteristics of red wine to white, you are shackling the ability of white wine to do what it does best. It would be like putting a brick in Margot Fonteyn’s underpants, or asking Barney Gumble to sing the ‘mad’ scene from Lucia di Lammermoor. As much as we might want to combine the best of two things we like, this can’t always be done. As Simon Marchmant from Posh Nosh would say: “Never buy anything that calls itself shampoo and conditioner. It won’t do either.” Mixing white and red doesn’t make some sort of ‘super wine’ – it is the worst of both worlds.
I don’t doubt for a minute that within the pink wine genre, there are some that are better than others, and some very skilled winemakers plying their trade. I just think it’s a waste of time. I shouldn't complain though - it leaves more of the good stuff for the rest of us, I suppose.
