Cerasuolo comes from cerasa, cherry, and it describes the colour before it describes the taste. The grape is the same as the red — Montepulciano — but the skins stay in the must for hours rather than days: long enough to take a full colour that nobody here has ever tried to lighten in imitation of Provence.
Until 2010 it was a style within the Montepulciano d'Abruzzo DOC. Giving it an appellation of its own changed its standing: from a variant of the red to a wine with its own rules, its own specialists and its own Superiore bottlings. It is one of the rare cases where a piece of paperwork genuinely changed how a wine is thought about.
In the glass it is closer to a light red than to an aperitif rosé: cherry and pomegranate, a savoury note, a trace of tannin that gives it purchase on food. It is the wine of arrosticini, the local mutton skewers, and it handles grilled and spiced dishes where most rosés simply disappear.
Not to be confused with Cerasuolo di Vittoria, which is Sicilian, red, and made from Nero d'Avola and Frappato. They share a word and nothing else.
