Live life with fine Spanish wines

As far back as I can remember people in bars in this part of Spain have been ordering “un claro de Navarra”. I always assumed this was what we would call a rosé in English. But then I discovered that a claro is not the same as a rosado. And to add to the confusion you also often hear a request for a “clarete”.

Rosé wine has never been hugely popular in Spain but then it hasn’t lost popularity either. It has always been drunk mostly as an aperitivo and usually by older people. Now that rosé wine seems to be losing its image as an unsophisticated and somewhat inferior wine, I thought I would investigate the differences between rosado, claro and clarete.

First of all, let’s be clear, we are talking about the pink-coloured wines here. Not to be confused with French Claret, despite the similarity in the names. Claret is a term that is mostly used in Britain and it really just refers to a red wine from Bordeaux. In fact, the name is protected by European Union law and can only be used for wines from this area. (Which reminds me of that line of John Cleese’s in Fawlty Towers: “I can certainly see you know your wine. Most of the guests who stay here wouldn’t know the difference between Bordeaux and Claret.”)

As far as I can make out, claro and clarete are one and the same. I have been asking the barman in our local bar near to our premises and nobody seems to know why some people say claro and others clarete. It just seems to be a personal preference for one word or the other.

But then the local barman and his customers weren’t much help either when I asked them if they could tell me the difference between a clarete and a rosado. After a bit of research, I’ve established that when producing a rosado the juice and the skin are left to soak for between 8 and 24 hours, or 2 to 3 days, or even 16 to 24 days, depending on who you ask! This mixture is monitored and care is taken not to allow it to ferment. Once the mixture has achieved the desired colour, the juice is separated and only then does the fermentation take place. Due to the absence of the skin, this process is known as virgin fermentation. As most of the tannins are in the skin, this method produces a wine that is more similar to a white wine in flavour than a red wine.

On the other hand, a clarete is produced the same way as a red wine with the juice and the skin kept together during the fermentation. Although both rosado and clarete can be produced with red grapes only or with a mixture of red and white grapes, a clarete is often produced when there aren’t enough red grapes and white grapes are added. A clarete is often a little more astringent than a rosado due to the tannins from the skin.

In summary, a rosado is a white wine with colour and a clarete is a light-coloured red wine. In English there doesn’t seem to be words to distinguish between one production method and the other, all pink wines are called rosés.

Mind you, I bet that if you go into any bar in Spain, chances are neither the bar staff nor the customers will be able to tell you which is which so this is all rather academic really. As I mentioned, the boys in the bar here have no idea what the difference is though they do seem to think that a clarete is generally of lower quality.

So there you go, make sure you always specify that you want a rosado. Whether or not it should be from Navarra is a topic for another day…..

Ane Miren

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 1:37 pm and is filed under About. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.