Clairette Rose

Identity

Clairette Rose is the pink-berried mutation of Clairette, grown notably in the Gard.

It is the fourth colour mutation this corpus publishes, after the three Grenaches and the three Terrets. But this one brings something the others did not: a measurable practical consequence of the colour.

The problem of stained wines

Pl@ntGrape judges its white winemaking "of interesting quality", then adds the caveat: a risk of unwanted colouring, what growers call "vins tachés" — stained wines.

That is the physical limit of the exercise. A pink berry vinified as white must be pressed fast and without maceration, because the slightest prolonged contact between juice and skin lets the pigment across. A faintly pink white is not sellable as a white, and not coloured enough to be a rosé.

Which is why grey and pink mutations are always trickier to vinify than clean white ones: Grenache Gris raises the same question, less acutely.

In the vineyard

Bud burst mid-season, ripeness late, like the Clairette it comes from.

Pl@ntGrape judges its "susceptibilities and tolerances identical to those of Clairette, its parent variety". It has therefore not been studied in its own right, and the fields this corpus leaves empty — vigour, structure — stay empty for that reason and not through oversight.

One could reasonably suppose it shares Clairette's susceptibility to oxidation in the cellar, which would double the constraint: fruit to be pressed fast for the colour and protected afterwards for the oxygen. This entry does not assert that — the source does not say it of the pink form.

In the glass

This entry's single descriptor, green apple, is a reading of Clairette's register, not a quotation. No source opened here gives an aroma profile for the pink form.

Where it is named

At Palette, an accessory variety — and, as with Terret Gris, it is the coloured form the appellation keeps. Châteauneuf-du-Pape's specification also names it, separately from Clairette.

Two texts counting the mutation apart: that is what justifies a distinct entry, even when genetics sees only one.