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You know you're not a wine snob when your wine comes with instructions. Especially this instruction: Serve over ice.

It may sound like a Borscht Belt punch line, but in England of all places, birthplace of the wine snob, it ironically could serve as a motto for the next big tippling trend.

No fewer than three South African wineries began targeting English cities this year with rosés crafted specifically to taste better as ice melts into the glass. And, hold on to your smoked-salmon blinis, champagne house Piper-Heidsieck has also begun promoting the idea to Britons of serving bubbly on the rocks.

Yes, wine on the rocks.

Though produced in South Africa, the rosé brands were dreamed up by enterprising English distributors seeking to tap young, female pub-goers. Increasingly, British youth have been eschewing the tepid ale kegs of their parents and embracing alternatives that might be described as cooler in more ways than one.

"It's surprising how many people we found since launching this who say they put ice in their wine," said Anthony Fairbank, a partner in Off-Piste Wines in Gloucestershire, England, which makes one of the rosés, called Frozé, launched in May.

While wine drinkers have surreptitiously plopped a cube or two of ice into their pinot grigios and gamays since the invention of patio parties, the main thing that distinguishes the new rosés is the winemaking.

The grapes were crushed and fermented specifically with the intention of mixing with ice. Most notably, the wines are more concentrated and darker, with more of an electric-red colour than a pale-strawberry hue, and slightly sweeter than the typically off-dry rosés popular with wine novices, such as a white zinfandel or rosé d'Anjou.

"It does work if you've got enough residual sugar in it; that's the key," said Paul Letheren, Off-Piste's managing director.

If you're scandalized by the mere idea, think of the new rosés as sangria without the fuss.

Mr. Letheren says he and Mr. Fairbank crafted the final blend for Frozé with the help of second-year design students in Sheffield who worked on the company's labels. The basic rosé style the students preferred was rosé d'Anjou, a relatively sweet wine from France's Loire Valley, which typically carries a residual sugar level of 18 to 20 grams per litre. (A "dry" wine usually contains less than 2 grams per litre, while some dessert wines can contain 250.)

Once he started diluting the rosé d'Anjou with ice, it began to taste not only thinner but significantly drier. The reason: cold enhances the palate's perception of acidity, and acidity counterbalances sweetness.

Mr. Letheren and Mr. Fairbank settled on a final sugar level of 23 grams per litre. "When you put the ice in, it really does genuinely make it drier," Mr. Letheren said.

The other big difference between the new rosés, which sell for the equivalent of about $10 to $12, and wines you may have defiled with ice in the past is the explicit packaging. Frozé's label features shiny snowflakes and the tagline: "The refreshing fruity pink wine that's very nice ON ICE."

Another brand, Couture by Stormhoek, is labelled with a similar tagline, "Magic Over Ice." The words are printed along the bottom of a colourfully striped, fashion-conscious label. The central graphic depicts four glasses - a champagne flute, wine stem, highball tumbler and martini glass - with a cube of ice suspended over each.

"We're trying to get people to think a bit laterally," said Mike Paul, managing director of London-based Orbital wines, which owns the Stormhoek brand. "It's not just about selling this wine at £7 and that wine at £5, but to get people to drink in different ways."

At the risk of shocking traditionalists further, Mr. Paul says Couture also can be spiked with vodka to make a short, martini-style cocktail. It can apparently also be successfully mixed with ginger ale in a Pimm's-style highball for the horsey set or even poured into a champagne flute and garnished with berries. "In the bars, this will be linked to champagne promotions and vodka promotions."

Stormhoek also plans a national tour that will see a Couture-branded ice-cream truck equipped with a bar and blocks of multi-coloured ice travel across Britain to supermarkets and wine shops.

At least one other brand from South Africa - the bargain source for many private-label store brands in England - is promoting the over-ice concept. And there are rumours that Gallo, the giant California-based winery, is pondering a rosé-on-the-rocks campaign for its pink wines in the United Kingdom.

If the timing of all the promotions seems coincidental, it's not. Winemakers are scrambling to catch a wave generated by Magners hard cider last year. The Irish brand expanded into England last year with a monstrously successful television and poster promotion that showed bottles of the apple beverage being poured over ice into a glass. Typically, cider in English pubs is drawn from a draught tap and served straight, like beer.

The campaign essentially recast Magners as an urbane cocktail. The brand soon took England by storm, turning its parent company, C & C Group, into a growth play on the stock market.

"We just thought, well, if you could do it with cider, you could do it with wine," Off-Piste's Mr. Fairbank said.

Sweet though they are, both Frozé and Couture impressed me with their balance when I tasted them last month in London. At fridge temperature, they finished clean rather than cloying, even without ice. And when on the rocks, they did become noticeably drier.

While it's too early to judge whether the icy-wine gambit will take hold, Mr. Letheren says Frozé sold 26,000 six packs of regular-sized 750-millilitre bottles, despite a cold summer, in its first four months and has been embraced by such major supermarkets as Waitrose, ASDA and Tesco.

And the reviews on Lovethatwine.co.uk, an English website that lets consumers post their critiques, are mostly positive. "I picked up a bottle on offer at my local ASDA yesterday and have to say that this wine is indeed very nice on ice," writes "Lizzie" from England. "My friends agreed. Even nicer with this late summer sun we seem to be getting"

Will rosé on the rocks fly in Canada? Mr. Letheren says he recently presented Frozé to officials at the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, whom he says showed keen interest. But a new listing is likely to be at least a year away if it's accepted.