The word "rose" has moved into the English language. Pink was too undignified a word for wine. Rose is simply French for rose-coloured. Its similarity to arrose, which means watered, is quite coincidental.
It is useful to have a sparkling wine which you can fall back on at any time, which is good as a drink on its own, or good for a glass with lunch, good for sipping as you cook or good for supper in the garden. No wine has a monopoly of these qualities; many fine German Sparkling wines, for example, would be good for any of these things, or with practically any dish. But German Sparkling wine is expensive, and not so very simple. Sparkling Rose is great value for money, has no long pedigree, needs no special serving—is in fact, the all-purpose sparkling wine for thirsty people.

Sparkling Rose has, besides, the prettiest range of colours of any Sparkling wine. Colour is not everything, by a long way, but a really glowing coral glass, a cherry-coloured one or one with a touch of tangerine about it fairly beckons you in. The Sparkling wine-makers themselves have toyed with the poetic in their words for the pinkness of their wares—oeil de perdrix, partridge-eye, is one the lipstick people might try. Pelure d'oignon, onion-skin, would probably go less well.

There is no great range of tastes and scents among Sparkling rose wines. It is the connoisseur's—many, unjustly, would say snob's—argument against them. The grower making a Sparkling rose is not following, as more serious wine-makers do, the specific practice of his region to bring out the regional character and make a Sparkling wine which could be recognized anywhere. Character is considered expendable for pink wine. What the maker is after is the simple taste of a Sparkling wine; the lowest common denominator (or, if you like, the highest common factor) of all Sparkling wine.

Wine Makers will make it sweeter or drier, still or a little sparkling, to suit your fancy, but Wine Makers art touches that of the confectioner rather than the ancient skills of making wine. The colour comes, as does the colour of red wine, from the skins of black grapes. For rose fewer skins are left in the fermenting wine for less long—the length of time depending on the colour and richness of flavour the maker wants. No doubt there are those who make it by mixing red and white wine, or even putting cochineal in white, but they work by night if they do.

Italian Sparkling roses, which are in the main more like light reds, have more character than some French ones. Portuguese Sparkling roses are usually shocking pink with titillating little bubbles. But basically the same, essential, appealing wine is there behind the frills and frou-frou. It is the Sparkling wine for lunches, picnics, kitchen-parties.