Rosé

Rosé has existed in Australia as long as red grapes have, usually as an incidental by-product: a way to concentrate a red ferment by bleeding off some juice early, a technique called saignée, French for “bled.” What changed, from roughly the mid-2010s onward, was intent: producers began making rosé as the primary goal rather than a side effect, picking grapes specifically for it and targeting a precise, pale colour rather than whatever shade a saignée happened to produce.

That shift tracked a broader change in taste, heavily influenced by the pale, dry Provence style becoming genuinely fashionable worldwide, and Australian growers, particularly in McLaren Vale, had exactly the grape already in the ground to chase it.

Grenacheis Australia’s most common rosé base: thin-skinned, naturally high in fruit character, giving colour easily without much time needed on skins. Pinot Noir makes a paler, more delicate style, prized in cooler regions for the same restraint that makes it a serious red grape in its own right. Both can be pushed anywhere along the spectrum, from barely-pink to deep salmon, purely by adjusting how long the skins stay in contact with the juice.

Barossa Valley tends toward a fuller, fruitier style built on old-vine Grenache and Shiraz; Yarra Valley and Mornington Peninsula, working with cool-climate Pinot Noir, lean pale and delicate, closer to the Provence template that started the modern trend. None of it is accidental. Every shade in the glass is a number of hours someone chose on purpose.