2025 Trends BC Wine Awards Top Rosé Wines
Gold
Dirty Laundry Winery 2024 Hush Rose $20.99
SpearHead Winery 2024 Dual Citizen Pinot Noir Rosé De Vries Vineyard $27
The Gallery Winery 2024 Entangled Hearts Rosé $28
Silver
Over the Fence Winery 2024 Rosé $31.99
The View Winery 2024 Pink Rhino $27.95
Bronze
Stoneboat Vineyards 2024 Rose $23
Winemaker’s CUT 2024 Rose $26
The rich realm of rosé wines
There’s a few myths about rosé wines that wine judge Jennifer Carleton wants to bust.
Offering private sommelier-led parties, Carleton finds when she pours a rosé everyone expects a blush: a sweet, off-dry wine.
“Some people still think or believe that rosé is a mix of leftover red and white,” she says. “It can be made the same way as any other white or red, but mostly a white.”
She loves the diversity in these pale pink vintages. “A rosé can be made with one grape varietal; it can be made from 12 varietals. It can be made into a rosé blend from wine fermented separately, or they can be all fermented together.”
Carleton stresses that any wine can be made to be bone dry. In the Okanagan, the trend leans towards crafting predominantly dry rosés, she says, noting that more than half are produced in a traditional French style from Pinot Noir grapes.
She is not one to judge a rosé wine by its colour, a hue that comes from the grape’s skin.
“Pinot Noir has a thin, light-coloured skin, so if a winemaker leaves it on the skin for two to four hours that will produce a very light colour. The juice sits with the grapes and skins, and then it’s gone. Then just the juice is fermented.”
When those skins are gone, so are the tannins. The result is a lighter-style wine, similar to white. But as Carleton points out, there’s a rosé for every wine lover.
“Some rosés are made from bigger reds, such as Malbec, that not only has thicker, darker skins but more tannins in the skins,” she says. “When left for seven days versus two hours [of skin contact], it’s going to be a totally different rosé.
“So, when I recommend a rosé for someone who is more of a red wine drinker, I wouldn’t recommend a Provence style of Rosé because it’s very light, subtly fruity, and soft. For someone who likes big, bold, tannic reds, I would I would put them towards more of that style.”
