BRUSSELS – Europe’s agriculture commissioner yesterday defended her plan to allow winemakers to make rosé wine by blending red and white, saying this would put EU producers on an equal footing with non-European rivals.
The plan has angered quality rosé makers in France, Italy and Spain – the world’s three leading wine producers -- who say the two methods are completely different and mixing two wine types to make a third is misleading to consumers.
Next month, experts from the European Union’s 27 countries are likely to vote to scrap a longstanding ban on rosé blending.
“I have no interest in jeopardising the quality of European wine production,” EU agriculture commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel said.
“But the fact is today, according to the OIV (International Organisation of Vine and Wine), we already import wine that is a mélange (mixture).
“So my idea would be to give our European producers the same possibility as their competitors outside Europe,” she told a news conference.
The commission, which put forward the proposal, wants to remove the ban on blending to allow European producers to compete better in growing export markets in Asia and elsewhere.
If, however, the product is “real” rosé, made according to traditional methods, this could be mentioned on the label, it says.
Usually, to make a blended rosé, white wine is used as the base and coloured with between 3 and 5 per cent of red, giving a colour that approximates to standard rosé but with a different structure, taste and bouquet, producers say.
Recognised quality rosé, however, is made through maceration of black grapes, where the wine’s colour comes from contact between the juice, initially colourless, and the grape skin and seeds that contain natural pigments. – (Reuters)