YOU SAY ROSE, I SAY ROSATO...

Rosati are an often underexplored route in to the intriguing diversity of Italy’s terroirs, grape varieties and winemaking traditions. This wine is an Italian speciality that has its own icons and hidden gems and, despite the common association with picnics and light summer sipping, can offer a much wider range of drinking options and often surprising stucture and ageability.

Rosato is the direct equivalent of the French ‘rosé’. It is the term that most commonly appears in the wine names of the country’s DOCs, but it is by no means the only one. As Shakespeare almost said, ‘A rosé by any other name would smell as sweet’, and pink wines assume different names in different parts of the country.

In the bilingual Alto Adige/Südtirol, a pink Lagrein wine is a kretzer, while on the southern shores of Lake Garda, a rosé is a chiaretto; in Abruzzo, it is a cerasuolo; at Carmignano