Red? Rosé? Who cares? With a light red or dark rosé wine like the Italian treat I’m tasting as I write this, the question loses all meaning.
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I am not picking on rosé here. There is definitely a place for these light, rosy/pink/salmon/coral-and-so-on wines that fall somewhere between full-on reds and relatively transparent whites. That place, frankly, is summertime, particularly in the hot and humid late-season heat waves like we’re having here right now.
During most of the rest of the year, frankly, given the option, I’d rather enjoy a full, dark, and flavorful red – or a quality white – in just about any season. But when it comes to this week’s featured wine, Cirelli 2024 Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, I won’t even ask about the color. I’ll just open it, pour it, and enjoy it. Its reddish-orange color is dark enough to pass for a red, and it’s delicious, with ripe cherry and berry flavors that quench like a rosé yet are bold enough to make a red-wine fancier happy.
“Nature dictates the rules and is the principle of every activity,” the organic and biodynamic producer Cirelli La Collina Biologica declares on its website. All of the farm’s production revolves around respecting natural cycles, relative to olive groves (pictured), vineyards, fruit and vegetable crops and animal husbandry.
What is this strange fluid? It’s Italian, of course, and it’s one of the newest Italian designated wine regions in a land filled with traditional styles like Chianti and Barolo that go back centuries. It gives formal label recognition to a rosé-style Montepulciano d’Abruzzo that producers have long made more casually for their own use and sale to neighbors.
The appellation’s name “Cerasuolo” means something like “cherry-red color” in the local dialect. Established in Italian wine regulations as recently as 2010, the wine is a sibling of the long-familiar Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, a rustic, lovably food-friendly red made with the same Montepulciano grape.
This wine’s producer, Cirelli La Collina Biologica, makes natural, certified organic, biodynamic wines near the village of Atri, just a few miles from Abruzzo’s Adriatic coast. I’ve reported before on Cirelli’s red Montepulciano d’Abruzzo. This nearly-red rosé increases my affection for this producer. I’d buy either wine at any time.
This week I’m talking about a flavorful, refreshing Italian rosé wine so dark that it could pass for a red. Does this style appeal to you? Any examples?
Because Cirelli Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo is priced over $20 per Wine-Searcher and my local price, I have to leave it behind our subscription paywall. Because I buy all the wines I review at retail and do not accept wine samples or other gratuities from the industry, I rely on the support of paid subscribers to help cover the cost of the wines I review.
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