Working by Hand
"Working by Hand" (Winemaking)
Winemaking: Roussanne At-A-Glance
- Most common styles
- Still, sparkling, sweet (very rare)
- Winemaker choices and options
- For dry wines, virtually all winemakers keep intervention to a minimum, preferring resulting wines to be all about purity of fruit. For sparkling and rarer dessert styles, managing harvest timing is a driver. In drier styles, lees stirring may be utilized to enhance texture
- Aging
- Stainless steel, concrete, large oak (vats, foudres), small oak (combination of newer and older for dry, and especially for the rarer sweet interpretations)
- Aging potential (yes/no). If “yes,” give range
- 2-15 years, pedigree-dependent; the best can live even longer
- Presented solo or frequently blended with
- Both. But most often in white blends with Viognier, Marsanne, and at times Grenache Blanc. Single variety wines are more common in Australia, California, and a couple of other New World locations.
For more on Roussanne, see “The Essential Guide to Semillon Wine“ by WinePros or check out Tablas Creek’s robust database of grape-specific articles.
Blending with other grapes:
- What it does: When classically mixed with its traditional cousins, Marsanne and Viognier, Roussanne is chiefly responsible for contributing texture, lifted aromatics, and complexity.
- Comment: While Marsanne plays the lead with white wine blends in the Northern Rhône appellations of Hermitage, Crozes-Hermitage, Saint-Joseph, and Saint-Péray, Roussanne can also be used. Further, it is employed in small quantities in Châteauneuf-du-Pape, where it is one of 13 grape varieties permitted for use in both red and white wines. There are great blended examples made of Roussanne in white Rhône-style blends in other global spots, most notably in California and in the Costières de Nîmes, where, in quality wines, its percentages dwarf most other white grapes. Again, Roussanne adds a generous body (from being later ripening/higher in sugar-alcohol) and an unctuous, almost oily texture while popping forward with soft herbal notes. Noteworthy stand-alone varietal wines can be found in New World spots, including California (Tablas Creek and Qupé), and Australia (Giaconda and Jamsheed).