Rosé

How long the juice stays on the skins

For the Rosado de Lágrima 2025, Raíz de Guzmán crushes Tempranillo from Ribera del Duero at 8 degrees and draws off only the juice that runs free without pressing. Ronsel do Sil leaves its Vel'Uveyra Rosado 2023 on the skins for five hours, Can Ràfols dels Caus gives its Gran Caus Rosat eighteen. What the colour in your glass mainly shows is how long juice and skins spent together.

Red grapes made into rosé

Viña de Eufemia makes the Carrascal Rosado 2025 from pure Bobal off vines more than 60 years old near Casas de Eufemia, 1,600 bottles of it. The Malarado 2023 from Carres is 60 percent Bobal and 40 percent Garnacha, with part of the Bobal aged in used barriques. Rosaberto presses whole bunches of Callet, a Mallorcan grape from around Felanitx, for its Rosat de Callet 2024, and Attis makes the Sitta Rosado 2023 in the Val do Salnés from Caiño, Pedral and Espadeiro.

Rosé with food

Rosés with skin contact carry more food than directly pressed ones, which is why we would always choose the Gran Caus Rosat or the Vel'Uveyra for anything off the grill. Ronsel do Sil suggests serving the Vel'Uveyra at 9 to 11 degrees with seafood or Asian dishes. We still have the Gran Caus Rosat 2004, pure Merlot, more than twenty years after harvest; the original run was 13,000 numbered bottles.

Bandol

In Bandol, Mourvèdre leads. It makes up 60 percent of the Trois Filles Bandol Rosé, 54 percent of the Gros'Noré rosé and 45 percent of La Suffrène's Rosé Tradition, with Grenache and Cinsault making up most of the rest. Trois Filles, Gros'Noré and La Suffrène are all in La Cadière-d'Azur, on clay and limestone looking out over the Mediterranean.

Audrey, Léonie and Justine Arlon press directly and raise their rosé in concrete, Alain Pascal at Gros'Noré leaves part of the fruit briefly on the skins, and Cédric Gravier at La Suffrène keeps his on fine lees in steel. There is more on the Arlon sisters and their pink house in Les Lauves in our Trois Filles story. Serve the Gros'Noré and the La Suffrène at 10 to 12 degrees, and the Trois Filles Bandol at 12 to 14.