Italian rosé producers band together for strength in numbers

Tis the season when wine shops start stocking up on rosé. If you’re a rosé fan, you’re not alone. Rosé consumption has exploded, growing by more than 1400 percent worldwide between 2010 and 2020, according to the Italian Trade Agency. Forecasters predict continued growth between 2020 and 2024 of 70 percent — probably more if you factor in Prosecco Rosé, which has enjoyed an explosion of its own since launching in 2020.

Italy is the world’s tenth largest producer of rosé wines, and Italian rosé-producing regions have a long habit of drinking rosé that dates back centuries, some say millennia.

In an effort to boost the profile of Italian rosé (called vini rosa, or pink wines, in Italy), a partnership between six historic denominations was formed in 2019. These include Chiaretto di Bardolino, Valtènesi Chiaretto, Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, Castel del Monte Rosato, Salice Salentino Rosato, and Cirò Rosato.

Each appellation is exclusively for rosé wine that uses only native grapes. These two facts give rise to the movement’s unwieldy name (for Americans at least) of Rosautoctono, meaning ‘native pink’. The Instituto del Vino Rosa Autoctono Italiana is highly unusual in that it brings together winemakers in a historically fragmented country, where the industrial north and agricultural south can never come together on anything.

But this time they did, led by professor Luigi Cataldi Madonna of Cataldi Madonna winery in Abruzzo and Franco Cristoforetti of Villabella in the Veneto. As Cristoforetti explains, “Here in Italy you have very historical production of vini rosa, but in small quantities in small areas. Rosautotono was born because together we can let the world understand that Italy is one of the main producers of pink wine. Very high quality and very different from south to north. Different styles can match with every market, every need.”

What’s that mean for the consumer? If all goes according to plan, there will be a promotional push internationally, including the U.S. Here it will probably take the form of a roadshow for the wine trade, and that inevitably trickles down to the retail level. In short, more Italian rosé for you in more colors and styles.

The Greek–Roman Divide

All six regions are united by a wind effect from water, mountains, or both. That’s good for rosé because constantly fanning breezes mean higher acidity, which is essential for the impression of freshness that’s critical in a dry rosé.

But there are underlying differences between north and south. Those date back two-thousand years and depend on whether the ancient Greeks or Romans established viticulture there.

Southern Italy was called Magna Graecia after Greek settlers colonized the heel of the boot and Sicily. They brought their agricultural practices with them, including apparatus for making wine. A fundamental tool was the palmento, a type of wine press that included a stone vat for macerating the grapes after pressing. That contact with the grape skins meant darker-hued rosés. Whereas northern Italy and southern France (including Provence) had been colonized by the Romans. They in turn brought their torcio, a screw press that had no vat, so the pressed juice ran free without time to macerate. That results in paler wines.

There’s a divide between nomenclature as well. The south tends to use rosato for their rosés. Chiaretto is used in the north around Lake Garda. In modern Italian, chiaro means pale or light when referring to color. In between lies Abruzzo, which went its separate way with cerasuolo. And finally, Prosecco Rosé embraced the more international rosé since it’s aiming squarely at the export market.

Rosé North to South

LAKE GARDA: Carved out by glaciers, Lake Garda is flanked by two appellations and two regions of Italy. On the east side is the Veneto region and Chiaretto di Bardolino (10 million bottles), centered around the lakeside town of Bardolino. On the west is Lombardy and the Valtènesi Chiaretto appellation (2 million bottles). Both are extremely pale rosés. Both have loads of minerality too, owing to the area’s glacial deposits and thermal mineral waters, which have given rise to a plethora of spas around the lake.  

Wineries making Chiaretto di Bardolino have made a concerted effort to unify around this pale color. The grapes make that easy. Corvina, corvinone, and molinara have little pigment in their skins. Ironically the grapes of Provence, which is known for its pale rosé, are naturally high in pigment, so they have to work all the harder to achieve the same result. Across the lake in the Valtènesi Chiaretto zone, the main grape for rosé is the thin-skinned groppello. Both areas benefit from the winds whipping off the lake, which have given rise to a windsurfing culture there.

 Two to try: Gorgo Chiaretto di Bardolino ($13) is an organic wine from a female-helmed, second-generation winery. This crisp rosé offers bright cherry, strawberry, and a hint of tangerine zest. Costaripa “RosaMara” Valtènesi ($30) is a blend of groppello, matzemino, sangiovese, and barbera. A pretty petal pink, it has aromas of sour cherry and pomegranate.

ABRUZZO: The region of Abruzzo flanks Rome, so it’s about halfway up the boot. The Apennines run through it, including Italy’s highest peak outside the Alps. So there’s wind aplenty off the mountains and Adriatic sea. Some vineyards are also cooled by Europe’s southernmost glacier, Il Calderone.

This is the land of montepulciano the grape (not to be confused with Montepulciano the town in southern Tuscany, which makes Vino Nobile from sangiovese grapes). As a red, montepulciano is typically a fruity, quaffable wine served by the glass in bistros. As a rosé, Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo (6 million bottles) is generally the darkest and reddest of the six Rosautoctono appellations. Cerasuolo comes from the dialect word cerasa, for its cherry color and flavor. Some describe the color as liquid red hots, which is pretty accurate.

One to try: The Ciavolich winery has been around since 1853, but that doesn’t mean they’ve stopped experimenting. Ciavolich’s Fosso Cancelli Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo ($25) is partly fermented and aged in clay amphora, in a testimony to the past. The wine shows tangy cherry and strawberry flavors, backed by herbal and balsamic notes.

PUGLIA: The heel of the boot, Puglia is a hot climate. That means big, alcoholic reds, which are hardly suitable for summertime drinking. This is the reason why Puglia has a long history of making rosé.

There are actually three rosé denominations here: Salice Salentino Rosato plus Castel del Monte Rosato, a DOC, together with Castel del Monte Bombino Nero Rosato, a DOCG (1 million bottles for all three combined). The subzones use different grapes. In the Salento peninsula, you’ll find negroamaro, brought by the Greeks in the 8th century BC. The name means black black, the first part Latin-derived, the second part Greek. Vinified as a red wine, it’s highly tannic and alcoholic, so producers in the past would sell the red wine to negociants to ship to northern Italy and France and make rosé to drink at home.

Castel del Monte is a bit north, lying on the lower slopes of Monte Vulture, an extinct volcano. The main grape here is bombino nero, which is high in acid, low in sugar, and the clusters can contain non-pigmented grapes, making it a natural for rosé.

Two to try: The most famous rosé from the Salento — and the first to be bottled in Italy — is Leone de Castris Five Roses ($19). It has a WWII story behind it, which involves a Nazi shipping blockade, the proprietor’s risky choice to vinify the entire vintage as a rosé, and empty beer bottles collected from American soldiers. The wine is as good as the story, offering juicy cherry, strawberry, and pink grapefruit scents with a long, fruity finish.  Properly speaking, it’s a Salento IGT, but it gives an idea of what negroamaro can do as a rosé. Then there’s Marmo’s Rosato Cocevola ($11), a Castel del Monte made from nero di troia, another grape of Puglia. Matured in French barrique for a few months with frequent stirring of the spent yeast, this dark-hued rosé is intense, with rose petal and maraschino cherry notes and a saline finish.

CALABRIA: Cirò is probably the only denominazione di origine controllata to have penetrated the U.S. market from Calabria, the toe of the boot. Reds, whites, and rosés are allowed under the Cirò DOC. In the case of Cirò Rosato (2 million bottles), the grape is gaglioppo, a relative of sangiovese. Low in pigment, high in tannins, it’s another southern Italian grape that’s tough to drink as a red in the heat of summer. As in Puglia, there’s a longstanding tradition here of drinking rosé. “We have been drinking rosato here for centuries,” says Raffaele Librandi, president of the Cirò consortium. “We don’t have a tradition of reds made with long macerations. Rosa for us is our everyday wine — all year long.”

One to try: Scala Cirò Rosato ($17) from the Scala family isn’t the easiest to find. (That honor probably goes to Librandi’s Cirò Rosato, $17, which is also quite good.) Family-run since it hung out its shingle in 1949 on land owned since the 1700s, the Scala winery is now run by the son, who turned it organic. This rosé is vibrant and fresh, with notes of red fruit, blood orange, savory herbs, and great minerality.

Published in the Spring 2022 issue of Tastes of Italia.