  We revisit the suggestion that charged rho-mesons undergo Bose-Einstein
condensation in isospin-rich nuclear matter. Using a simple version of the
Nambu-Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model, we conclude that rho-meson condensation is
either avoided or postponed to isospin chemical potentials much higher than the
rho-meson mass as a consequence of the repulsive interaction with the preformed
pion condensate. In order to support our numerical results, we work out a
linear sigma model for pions and rho-mesons, showing that the two models lead
to similar patterns of medium dependence of meson masses. As a byproduct, we
analyze in detail the mapping between the NJL model and the linear sigma model,
focusing on conditions that must be satisfied for a quantitative agreement
between the models.
