Founders, Rob and Amy Kuchar, have been in the wine business for many years (you can read more of their story in Cape Fear Living) but it wasn’t until they moved to Wilmington, North Carolina in 2013 that the inspiration for Rosé Water hit them.
“Obviously, we’re big wine fans,” says Rob, “but even the most refreshing whites and rosés tend to be a bit cumbersome in the bottle and are too high in alcohol for some of the activities we enjoy here, living on the coast.”
“We enjoy an active lifestyle and are very conscious about what we put in our bodies. The spiked seltzers and sparkling products that have taken over the market just didn’t do it for us. There were too many unnatural ‘natural’ flavors, weird aftertastes, and everything seemed to be spiked with some form of mysto-booze. We wanted something clean, something simple.”
According to Amy, “It all started one day at the pool. We packed our cooler with sparkling water and a few bottles of our favorite rosé. We started blending the two right there, poolside. The result was light, refreshing, low-alcohol, low-calorie, and it tasted great!”
While Rob and Amy enjoyed this combination for years, everything aligned in the summer of 2019 and the time seemed right to share a refined version of this beverage with the larger market. The search was officially on for clean, simple ingredients that improved upon the basic wine spritzer concept.
According to winemaker, Thomas Houdayer, “When Rob and Amy reached out to me regarding the new product, I knew what they were talking about because I had seen it before, on patios and beaches all over France. Wine spritzers were something people enjoyed at home but the challenge would be to develop a product that would work in a mass-market distribution scenario while maintaining its tasting profile.”
After rounds of sampling and blending, it was determined that a higher acidity rosé was best developed to cut through the sparkling water to maintain the wine’s delicate notes.
“We found the perfect grapes and juice in the Loire Valley in France,” says Thomas, “built the rosé to a higher acidity, tested it in varying percentages with the water, and found our special Rosé Water blend.”
And while the wine in Rosé Water might be a bit too sharp to drink on its own, we think you’ll agree, it’s perfectly paired with pure, sparkling water to provide an amazingly simple, refreshing beverage experience.
And what about the water, you ask?
The wine, delicately crafted in France, is shipped in bulk to a small village at the base of the Austrian Alps. It is there that the wine is combined with pure, alpine water from an artesian well located deep within the Earth. This proprietary blend is then sparkled with a quick hit of CO2, canned in 8.5 ounce servings, and shipped to Wilmington, North Carolina for active wine drinkers to enjoy – wherever it is they do their thing.
