Italian Rosato
YOU SHOULD BE DRINKING ITALIAN ROSÉ
High-quality dry rosé is one of my favorite wines, and it’s now made in a number of regions in Italy, from Lake Garda in the north to Mount Etna and Calabria in the far south. As the quality of Italian white wines has shot up in the last few decades, so too has the quality of the better Italian rosés. Dry rosé is extremely versatile; I don’t drink it with red meat, but otherwise everything else is up for grabs.
The production of quality dry rosé is traditional in a few regions of Italy, such as Puglia and the Veneto, but now there are world-class examples being made in a number of new regions too, including northern Piedmont and Mt. Etna, in Sicily. It turns out that many different native Italian red grape varieties make distinctive rosé.
There are two ways of making rosé; both only use red grapes. The first, a by-product of making red wine, is called ‘saignée’ (which means ‘bleeding’ in French); some of the juice is taken out of a red wine fermentation at the beginning of the process, when it’s still pink, and fermented separately. Because the grapes for this method are harvested to make red wine, they are relatively ripe, higher in sugar and lower in acidity.
The other method, called ‘direct press’ or ‘macerated,’ is where all the grapes are pressed off early in the winemaking process, so they have acquired a little color. (Sometimes the grapes are crushed and macerated for a period of hours before being pressed off.) Direct press/macerated fruit is harvested specifically in order to make rosé, which means the harvest will be earlier than it would be for saignée, at a lower level of sugar and a higher level of acidity. In general, this makes for more vibrant wines, because of the earlier harvest date, and most of the best rosés are made this way. As with all wines, the harvest date is a crucial winemaking decision. (Blending white and red wine to make rosé is generally done only with sparkling wines such as Champagne.)
What color is good rosé wine? The color can vary very widely, depending on a how deeply colored the constituent grape variety is, and how long the skins are left in contact with the juice. I find the color makes surprisingly little difference in the depth of flavor of the wine, for example there are some very pale rosés from Etna that are very complex and interesting. And we see similar results from the electric pink Nebbiolo-based rosés from Piedmont. As is true of most red wines, don’t judge rosés by their color.
When to drink rosé? Good dry rosé is the perfect match for roast chicken, it’s excellent with all sorts of fish, especially salmon or tuna, and for that matter it also goes very well with tacos or Vietnamese noodle dishes. If you’re in a restaurant with a group, a bottle of rosé can pair with a variety of different dishes. I drink quality rosé all year, not just in warmer weather. Keep a good bottle of rosé in the fridge at all times!
Common misconceptions about rosé:
Rosé has to be drunk within a year or less of the harvest. This might be true of basic commercial examples, but not the good ones, which are best starting maybe nine months after the harvest and drink well for at least a couple of years after that, just like good white wine. (The famous Spanish rosés from Lopez de Heredia are released at 5 or 10 years of age, and drink well for some time thereafter.)
Rosé is usually sweet, or sweet-ish. Again, only the less interesting ones. This is pretty much true of all kinds of wine, actually; residual sugar is used to dress up many bad wines, red and white and rosé too.
Rosé is only useful in the summer. I have white and rosé wines in the fridge all year.
Our selection of rosé:
Le Pianelle Costa della Sesia Rosato