07/10/2026
If you couldn’t see the colour, would you still know it was Rosé Ch*****ne? 🥂
Everyone knows someone who says, “Rosé Ch*****ne? Not for me.”
Fair enough. But I’ve always wondered what would happen if we took the pink away.
Rosé Ch*****ne isn’t simply white Ch*****ne tinted pink. It can be made by macerating black grapes, or by blending white base w**es with around 5–20% red Ch*****ne w**e. That can genuinely change aroma, structure and texture.
So there really can be something different in the glass.
But how much of “rosé” are we actually tasting — and how much are we expecting to taste because the w**e is pink?
In a 2009 experiment, participants smelled 18 red, white and rosé w**es from dark glasses. Red and white were identified reasonably well. Rosé was much harder: experts and novices both struggled to classify it reliably.
Then, in 2019, researchers gave 168 people three w**es: a white, a real rosé, and the same white w**e dyed pink to match the rosé.
The white w**e had not suddenly developed strawberries.
Yet people with w**e-tasting experience used more rosé-like — including more red-fruit — language for the pink version than for the identical white w**e.
That’s the part I find fascinating.
Experience doesn’t necessarily make colour irrelevant. It may actually give colour more meaning, because over time we learn what “pink w**e” is supposed to smell and taste like.
None of this proves that Rosé Ch*****ne and white Ch*****ne taste the same blind. These experiments were conducted with still w**es, not Ch*****ne, and Rosé Ch*****ne can be genuinely different in how it is made and what is in the glass.
But it leaves us with a very good dinner-table question:
If we served your favourite Rosé Ch*****ne in a black glass, would it still be your favourite?
Maybe the fairest tasting glass is a black one.
Or maybe that would remove half the pleasure. 🥂
— Two More Glasses
Great minds drink alike.
