Surrendering to the pink: Marketing dry rose to a white Zinfandel nation

Wines & Vines, May, 2001 by Tina Caputo

The year was 1972 and the world had never even heard the words "White Zinfandel." Just for fun, Sutter Home winemaker Bob Trinchero decided to use some of the free-run juices from his Amador County Reserve Zinfandel to create a dry rose wine in the French style. He called this pink wine "blanc de noir" and began offering it to the winery's tasting room visitors. If they had embraced it, White Zinfandel would never have seen the light of day.

But alas, Sutter Home's tasting room customers thought Trinchero's rose was too dry. To please the sweet-toothed masses, he began adding residual sugar to the wine--and millions of Americans held out their glasses for more.

In the decade to follow, Sutter Home's White Zinfandel became the nation's most popular premium wine, with sales skyrocketing from 25,000 cases in 1981 to three million in 1990. And the frenzy didn't stop there: In the year 2000, sales topped 4.5 million cases.

So what's a dry rose producer to do? Form a pact with Satan? Learn the art of mass hypnosis ("You're getting verrrry thirsty... for dry pink wine")?

According to Jim Fiolek of Zaca Mesa Winery, marketing dry rose wines is a two-fold challenge because White Zinfandel drinkers think dry wines are inaccessible, and "serious" wine drinkers think pink wines are a sugar-laden waste of time.

"As with most things in the U.S., appearances are more important than substance," says Fiolek. "So we face a Catch 22."

But once people try Zaca Mesa's Zinfandel Gris rose, says Fiolek, they're usually receptive to it.

"They need to know ahead of time that the wine is dry, or they can become confused," Fiolek says. "When they're told that it's dry prior to trying it, people usually remark that they didn't know they liked dry wines.

Zaca Mesa produces 1,200 cases of rose annually, most of which is handsold by small independent retail stores. In addition to targeting small retailers, Zaca Mesa relies on labeling to get its message out to consumers.

"One of the reasons we call the wine 'gris' is to take it out of the White Z or blush categories," Fiolek says. "Part of that strategy is to make it recognizable as dry to the consumer who is familiar with the term 'yin gris'--though there aren't as many of them as we would like. On the label Zin Gris is described as a dry, Rhone-style rose."

And if the labeling strategy doesn't work, Fiolek says, the folks at Zaca Mesa are perfectly willing to finish off the wine themselves.

"You'd be surprised how much rose we drink around here," he says. "We don't need beer anymore."

Bill Crawford, owner of McDowell Valley Vineyards, shares Fiolek's passion for pinks. McDowell began making dry rose in the early '80s, when other wineries were busy jumping on the White Zinfandel bandwagon. Today McDowell annually produces 2,500-3,500 cases of Grenache Rose, despite the uphill marketing battle it presents.

"We always have to work against the stigma that pink wines are sweet," says Crawford. "The worst part is that most of our consumers still remember Mateus and Lancers, but we still have more luck getting converts from the dry white drinkers than White Zin drinkers."

To gain such converts, Crawford urges skeptics to try his rose at tastings and offers food pairing advice.

"We recommend rose with anything spicy that most people would drink beer with, like fajitas, tacos, Thai food, Szechuan or Cajun," he says. "(We tell them) rose is less filling and has more alcohol."

After two decades of making Grenache Rose, Crawford attributes the wine's success to consistency and stubborn perseverance.

"We like rose at our house and we won't take no for an answer," says Crawford. "If you came to eat with us, I'll bet we'd finish a bottle of rose before we popped another cork. We believe wholeheartedly that rose is a real wine and it has its place in history as well as in gastronomy."

But as much as he loves the wine, Crawford says he doubts that dry rose will ever be embraced by the American masses.

"Go to the south of France in the summer and see what everyone is having with lunch out on the warm veranda," says Crawford. "But here there are too many producers with too many styles from dry to sweet, so the consumer doesn't always know what they are going to get. We've been producing rose for over 20 years and the best I can say about it is that it has been a slow and very modest growth. We are up to 3,500 cases on a good year depending on the harvest, (but) I'm not planting any more Grenache."

Randall Grahm, Bonny Doon Vineyard's winemaker and president-for-life, is a tad more optimistic about the future of pink wines in America.

"Dry roses will absolutely be embraced by the mainstream drinkers, but most likely for the wrong reasons," Grahm says. "It will likely soon be considered the terminally chi-chi boisson. Nevertheless, we'll take the drinkers, no matter what their motivation."

Grahm began producing a barrel fermented Pinot noir rose in 1982, which morphed into a Mourvedre, and finally ended up as a Grenache/ Mourvedre/Syrah/Cinsaut blend known as Vin Gris de Cigare.