There's an extraordinary proposal that the EU would allow any wine producer in Europe to blend white and red wine to produce rosé. "Pink plonk can be made by simply mixing red and white."Naturally, Provence rosé producers are up in arms.
The uproar has generated some fantastic rhetoric:
"The battle for rosé's nobility risks being lost with a wave of Europe's magic wand. When you go home tonight, try mixing white wine with a few drops of red wine. It comes out orange and doesn't taste good It's nothing like rosé."
"It's as if the ferryboat was sinking and there was only one lifeboat – rosé. The new rules will allow everyone to jump in the boat and the result will be that everyone will drown. All our efforts have borne fruit and have permitted French rosé to be the world market leader. Now they want to saw off the branch which we have nurtured and are sitting on."
Producers say it is sacrilegious to simply throw together different coloured wine rather than following the "nobler" tradition of macerating red grapes for a few hours and bleeding off the rose-tinted liquid.
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