Rosé Pure x Redcurrant

Rosé Pure x Redcurrant by Wiesen and Seckinger: fruity and dry

Rosé Pure x Redcurrant by Wiesen and the Seckinger winery is an aromatized wine-based drink made from 90 percent rosé wine from the Palatinate Pure line and 10 percent spontaneously fermented redcurrant juice, the carbonation of which develops inside the sealed bottle.

Rosé Pure x Redcurrant is an exception in the Wiesen range; while apple and quince usually form the base, this glass features grape wine from the Palatinate with added redcurrant juice.

Raspberry red, cloudy, and full of red berries

The color is a vibrant raspberry red, more reminiscent of syrup than wine. The fact that the liquid remains slightly cloudy is due to the yeast that has been left in the bottle.

The aroma opens up a whole basket of red berries, in which the redcurrant clearly takes center stage. On the palate, a fine perlage works against a fruitiness that, despite all its fullness, remains dry and does not feign sweetness. The acidity of the red berries keeps the fruit upright and lean. The alcohol content is 10.5 percent and takes a back seat to the fruit.

Grilled lamb skewers, tomatoes with burrata, and a cold melon salad with mint pair well with it. Because it brings its own acidity, it copes well with a sharp dressing that would otherwise defeat a wine. As an aperitif, it requires nothing more than a glass with a rounded bowl.

How the Palatinate meets the Bergstraße

The Seckinger brothers run their winery in the Palatinate and contribute 90 percent to this bottle, namely rosé wine from their Pure line. Wiesen adds 10 percent redcurrant juice, spontaneously fermented and relying solely on what comes from the berry skins. Ten percent sounds like little, but it almost completely defines the aroma of this bottle.

The result is declared as an aromatized wine-based drink, and this cumbersome term hits the nail on the head more accurately than any buzzword. All other bottles from the producer do not contain grapes; here, vineyard and meadow orchard meet in a cuvée.

The same hands also make sparkling wine on the Bergstraße, which must lie on the lees for at least three years before it can be sold. That waiting period is omitted here, and you can certainly tell by the fruit. The names of both producers stand side by side on the bottle, connected by a simple x.

Fermentation only ends in the bottle

"Ancestral" means that the carbonation does not come from a tank, nor is it added. It develops inside the sealed bottle from the sugar still present in the liquid at the time of bottling, and the yeast does the rest without further assistance.

Afterward, the yeast remains inside, which is why it enters the glass cloudy and a fine sediment settles at the bottom of the bottle after a few months. It was never fined or filtered, and sulfur was kept to an absolute minimum. A bit of cloudiness in the glass is therefore not a flaw, but proof of this. The pressure varies from bottle to bottle, which is why the cap should be opened slowly.

To see what redcurrant sounds like without any grapes, take a look at the Ancestral made from apple and redcurrant. In the 2020 Rosé Apple Brut, on the other hand, the apple provides the color, and everything else that bubbles and fizzes from the house can be found in the bottle-fermented selections in our range.