What’s a rosé wine?

As part of the EU wine reform that has been agreed by the countries’ agricultural representatives it is planned that it will become legal to make rosé wine by blending red and white wine. Today, in most EU countries, you have to make rosé from red grapes with a short skin maceration (except, we’ve heard, in Spain). But that might not be something that you’re average rosé wine consumer knows. Or cares about. Now, in the eleventh hour, there has come a lot of protests from primarily French and Italian wine producers who say that it would destroy the quality of rosé wines (if it ever was there to start with). But, one might ask, did then the countries agree to it in the first place? Well, one comment we heard was that the Italians did not want to raise their voice in the previous discussions since they had been cheating with the milk quotas and did therefore not want to attract any attention. And the French? Perhaps they were sleeping? We don’t know. But does it really matter? Would it be such a catastrophe if you could make rosé wines by blending red and white? (And would the consumer suffer?) Or is it the “traditional” rosé wine producers who do not want to get more competition? We’re not convinced. And then you should keep in mind that virtually all rosé champagne is made by blending red and white wine. And we have not heard anyone protesting against that. Have you? See e.g. Reuters and vitisphere.com