French term meaning ‘bled’ for a winemaking technique which results in a rosé wine made by running off, or ‘bleeding’, a certain amount of free-run juice from just-crushed dark-skinned grapes after a short, prefermentation maceration. The aim of this may be primarily to produce a lightly pink wine, or to increase the proportion of phenolics and flavour compounds to juice, thereby effecting a form of concentration of the red wine which results from fermentation of the rest of the juice with the skins. The second operation has often been undertaken by ambitious producers of both red bordeaux and red burgundy.
