It's a good time of year for rosé, and 3CUPS carries a range of certified organic, authentic rosés from across Europe. Lately it seems like I see a new pink wine arrival every week, last week we served a rosé flight, and next week we'll have new stacks of rosé in preparation for June 3BOTTLES... for which the theme is rosé. We really like the stuff!

There’s a storm brewing in Europe (especially in France) amongst the farmers who produce rosé wines, and we wanted you to know about it. The European Union is changing the legal definition of rosé to allow for a cheaper way to make pink wine. The new laws would allow a short-cut invented to produce commodity pink wines in the New World, where you simply blend a bit of red wine into mostly white wine to arrive at pink wine. The traditional winemakers are steamed about this commercial process and are fighting back.

The word "rosé" refers to a style of wine and not a grape or a place. It can be made anywhere and can be made from any red wine grape, and so appears in almost every area that makes wine. The richest rosé traditions come from Mediterranean Europe. Traditionally rosé is made when red grapes are crushed and then have only brief contact between the skins, which contain the colored pigments and tannins, and the juice, which comes from the colorless flesh of the grape. It is the degree of contact between the skins and the juice that determines the final color of the wine.

Gilles Masson, a director of the Rosé Research Centre in France, on the new blending technique:

"You don't get the specific aroma of rosé which we get from dark grapes and a special production method. You don't get that harmony, that balance on the palate of acidity and alcohol. It is just a colored wine."

On May 26, Provence vintners will hold a news conference in Brussels with colleagues from Spain, Italy, Germany and Switzerland. In the meantime, an internet petition has attracted 28,000 names.