Are you planning on celebrating June with sparkling rosé wines? Well, you should be….

Did you know that there are 2 rosé holidays in June?  Yes, there’s National Rosé Day on June 12 and International Rosé Day on June 25.  And in true fashion over here at Bubbly Side of Life, we will be celebrating both of these days with Sparkling Rosé Wines.  

Nothing against still rosé wine, it’s just that in our world everything truly is better with bubbles.  

Sparkling rosé wines

Rosé Holidays

As if summer and warm weather isn’t enough to turn to the deliciousness of a bottle of sparkling rosé, June conveniently gives us 2 holidays to celebrate and what is the difference?  

Well, as someone who celebrates any and every occasion, quite frankly we’re just excited for these two rosé days and we put our own spin on it as you will see as you continue reading.  But here’s the actual answer.

National Rosé Day

Celebrated on the second Saturday of June, it became a holiday in 2014.  It was created as a way to celebrate this style of wine that dates back to 600 BC and to unite rosé lovers together.  

International Rosé Day

Celebrated on the 4th Friday in June, this became a holiday in 2018 to honor and celebrate rosé wines from around the world.  

Truly, just two great reasons to try a new bottle of sparkling rosé, pop the cork and celebrate!

Sparkling rosé...how does it get its color?

How Rosé Gets Its Color

Many people wonder how rosé wine or sparkling rosé wine gets its color.  And the simple answer to that question is the skin of the grape.  

Here’s what’s cool, it doesn’t matter if it’s still or sparkling, the process starts out the exact same way.  

There are several ways to make a rosé wine, but here’s the most common.  The fermentation starts exactly as it would if you were making red wine.  And the difference is that with rosé wine, the skins only stay in contact during alcoholic fermentation for anywhere from 2-20 hours.

The skins are what give the rosé its color.  The shorter the contact, the lighter the color.  The longer the contact, the darker the color.  

And in honor of the two different rosé holidays, we decided to do 2 separate sparkling rosé wine tastings.  

National Sparkling Rosé Tasting

For National Rosé Day, we lined up 4 sparkling rosés from around the United States:  2 from California and 2 from Oregon.  

Since this is a National “holiday” we stuck with sparkling rosé wines that are somewhat local to us.  As you know, I am a big fan of accessible wines and being able to hop on a quick flight to go visit a winery and for this IL based girl, California and Oregon work well. 

Sparkling rosé wines to enjoy on National Rosé day

Here was our line-up (in no particular order):

For the first time ever in the history of a tasting that I have lined up, we liked all of them.  We finally were able to narrow down our top 2, but truly, we enjoyed them all.  

The top 2 were:  Furioso and Campos Family Vineyards and we couldn’t even all agree on which should be the #1 spot and which should be in the #2 spot.  

Truly, you can’t go wrong with any of these options.  If you’re looking for a good, refreshing sparkling rosé with hints of strawberry and floral notes, any of these are a good choice.  

And yes, they all did vary a little bit offering different flavors, but truly we enjoyed them all and only picked a top 2 because we felt like we needed to.  

Note:  The Bayer 2018 sparkling rosé is no longer on their site, but we did a tasting of 2017 and 2018 and enjoyed them both, so I have to imagine the 2019 is just as good.  

International Sparkling Rosé Tasting

Now on to the international sparkling rosé tasting. As you know, I am a huge fan of affordable, accessible sparkling wine where you will not feel guilty for popping that bottle on a random Monday night (although I never think you should feel guilty).  And for this reason, I often don’t taste or recommend champagne because the price point is typically much higher.

For this tasting, we did include a champagne at a somewhat accessible price point of $40.  And I wasn’t surprised when it wasn’t our #1 favorite.  Don’t get me wrong, it was good and we enjoyed it, but it didn’t make our top 2.  

International sparkling rosé wines to celebrate International Rosé day

Now, on to the International line up:

Shockingly once again, we enjoyed all 4!  There is usually one that is an absolute dump down the drain or quickly save it with a cocktail, but again, we enjoyed all of these.  

LaMarca Sparkling Rosé was definitely the #1 and is truly one I stock at all times.  Since I discovered it several months ago, I buy a bottle every time I am at the store.  It’s light, bright and crisp.  You will taste your favorite red fruits: strawberry, cherry and raspberry and alongside the crisp citrusy taste you typically think of when you think LaMarca Prosecco.

In our #2 spot it was truly hard to narrow down, but after several tastings, the Crémant inched its way there.  Like I said, none of them were bad and there was quite the debate for the #2 spot.  

What was truly fun was the group I had gathered for this tasting had never experienced a crémant or cava before and didn’t know the difference.  So it was truly a blind taste test for them which is a lot of fun.

How to Celebrate Rosé Day

Well, quite simply, go to the store, grab a bottle, pop the cork and celebrate!  I mean truly one of the things we try to do around here is normalize popping the bubbly to celebrate any and all occasions (even ones you have to make up!).  

I love hosting sparkling wine tastings like this sparkling rosé tasting we did for several reasons.  But it allows you to try something new and who knows, you might find a new favorite.  The key to a sparkling wine tasting party is to make sure everyone has oyster crackers.  They truly cleanse the palate from one taste to the next.  

To accompany this sparkling rosé tasting, we did whip up a quick charcuterie board.  It wasn’t anything fancy, just something to snack on since we were tasting 9 different sparkling rosé wines.

Super simple charcuterie board to accompany your sparkling rosé tasting.

Want more?

We will be revealing all of these bottles on Instagram, so if you’re not following along over there, you’re missing out on this and so much more (like bubbly cocktail and mocktail recipes!).  

Last year we shared our favorite 13 sparkling rosés:  The Best Sparkling Rosé Round-Up…13 of our current favorites

And of course, if you’re looking for sparkling rosé cocktails, we have those on the blog and probably the easiest place to find them is Bubbly Side of Life on Pinterest.

Tell us….what’s your favorite sparkling rosé wine?  And will you be popping that bottle to celebrate one of these two holidays?