Let's start by explaining why some zinfandels are pink and some are red, and why some pink wines are sweet and some are dry.

There are not pink zinfandel grapes and red zinfandel grapes. With very few exceptions, all wine grapes yield clear juice when pressed. The amount of time that the winemaker decides to leave the crushed grapes in contact with the juice determines the color as well as many other properties of the wine.

The reason that some pink wines are sweet and others dry goes back to Junior High Biology. If you had been paying attention during Doc Fannon's class instead of contemplating the market value of cherry bombs or watching the clock you would remember that "the miracle that is fermentation" is: Yeast consumes sugar and produces alcohol and carbon dioxide.

To make sweet wine, or in wine lingo, wine that has residual sugar, you have two choices. Stopping fermentation before all the sugar has been converted to alcohol is one method, but it is problematic. Instead, most wineries reserve some of the sweet, unfermented juice and then add it back to the blend once the fermentation is complete. With the exception of some really expensive pink Champagnes and one former Juneau restaurateur, blending red and white wine together to get pink wine is simply not done.

Oddly enough, mass market white zinfandel got started by accident. Sutter Home Winery was producing a batch of zinfandel when a particular batch got stuck in the middle of fermentation. That batch was put aside while the rest of the harvest was completed and the winemaker came back to discover a lightly sweet pink wine.

Rose, the real dry pink wine, has been produced in Europe for years. Many of you must surely remember Mateus Rose. It was one of the ubiquitous wines of the seventies. It was a dry pink wine from Portugal that came in the type of short, squat, green bottle that is normally reserved for southern German wines. What happened to that marketing department? Did they go to work for ENRON?

Because of white zinfandel, you couldn't give any dry pink wine away, but gradually the public started to appreciate the charms of these wines. They are perfect for hot days and casual meals of fried or grilled fish and chicken.

If you are shopping for pink wine, how can you tell if it's dry? If the label says Rose of "some grape name here," it's probably dry. If it says White and "some other grape name here," it's probably sweet.

Or you can just take my word for it and stock up on Goats Do Roam Rose from South Africa.

• John DeCherney can be reached at wine@acsalaska.net.