Rosé? Blush? Are they the same wine?

If we ask any adult, who is aware of the existence of wine, how many kinds of wine there are, the answer will probably be three: red-white-rose. Although this answer is not complete, it is not wrong either. At least these three colors are also the names of the universally accepted three styles of wine.

WAYANA Wine Bar is our wine house in Kadıköy, Istanbul, where we serve only Turkish wines. One of the sections on the WAYANA Wine Menu is dedicated to rosé wines. But there is no separate section for blush on the menu. From this point of view, at least categorically, rosé wines have an indisputable part of their own. Wines bearing the title of Blush are hosted in this section.

If you wish, let's take a quick look at what the authorities say about rosé and blush wines. Rosé wines, whose color can be almost any shade of pink, are actually red wines that the grape skins are taken from the grape must without allowing the color to darken during production. To say without getting bogged down in technical details, when black grapes are juiced, the liquid color becomes grayish yellow. Grape skins must be kept in the grape juice (technical name for this phenomenon is maceration) to reveal the color tones we are accustomed to from red wine.

If the duration of the grape skins in the grape juice is kept short, rosé wine is obtained, not red. To summarize, rosé wines are red wines with a short contact time of the grape skins. The colors of rosé wines can vary from very light pink to light red depending on both the grape type and the time they stay in the grape must.

Blush has become an alternative for very light pink wines, put forward by American producers. In fact, it is a marketing response to the decline in sales of rosé wine in the 1980s. The best example in this field is the White Zinfandel wine. Zinfandel, a grape suitable for red wine, has been produced with the white wine technique and has become the pioneer wine of this field with its very light pink color.

Blush wines are slightly sweeter, lighter in color than rosé wines, and some are mini-bubbly. Thanks to these features, blush wines are easier to drink on their own. Among the rosé wines, there are also very light colored ones, but their tannins are more noticeable. With these features, we prefer rosé wines as a better alternative for food pairing.