Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo: The Rosé That Drinks Like a Red

Drink Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo before you die.

Why? A pink wine doesn't have to be Provençal to be good, and Cerasuolo is the proof.

Abruzzo was the first place I worked overseas as a winemaker. The reds were solid, made from a variety I’d never heard of — Montepulciano. The whites were pretty decent, uncomplicated, refreshing affairs. Trebbiano was the main variety. I’d heard of it but never tried it. And then there was Pecorino — which I’d thought was a cheese (which it is ... but it’s also a grape). But the pink wine, the pink wine was really something else entirely. For years afterwards I described my first taste of Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo as the best rosé I'd ever had.

Granted, my rosé experience then wasn’t that extensive and was mostly Australian. But there was so much more going on here: more flavour, more texture, more structure — still fresh and refreshing, yet it drank almost like a light red.

I don’t remember the first Côtes de Provence rosé I drank. But I do remember the first Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo.

Two decades on, I still rate it among the most interesting pink wines in the world.

If Provence taught us that good rosé should be pale, Cerasuolo politely suggests we forget that lesson.

Ten Second Summary

What it is: A deep cherry-coloured Italian rosé from Abruzzo, made predominantly from Montepulciano.
Tastes like: Cherry, red berries, pomegranate, herbs and spice, with far more body and texture than your average pale rosé.
Why it matters: Cerasuolo shows how arbitrary our modern ideas of what rosé should look and taste like have become.
Best with: Pizza, tomato-based pasta, charcuterie, seafood, grilled fish, roast chicken and plenty besides.
Buying shortcut: Masciarelli, Emidio Pepe, Valentini, Tiberio, Tenuta I Fauri and Cirelli.
When to drink: Delicious young; serious examples age surprisingly well.

Abruzzo vineyards with snow-covered mountains in the background

Vineyards and snow-covered mountains in Abruzzo | © Agricola Tiberio / tiberio.it; resized.

What is Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo?

Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo is a dry Italian rosé — rosato — from the Abruzzo region of central Italy, made principally from Montepulciano, the same dark-skinned grape behind Montepulciano d'Abruzzo red. The DOC requires a minimum of 85% Montepulciano, though many top examples run 100%. Cerasuolo became a separate DOC in 2010 after previously being a style within Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. You can read the Consorzio di Tutela Vini d'Abruzzo's description of Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo here.

And it doesn't look much like the rosé that has conquered the modern wine world. Forget onion-skin pale and fashionable salmon pink: traditional Cerasuolo can be vivid pink, cherry red, even ruby. Set a dark Cerasuolo beside a pale Provence rosé and it's hard to believe they share a category.

Which is precisely why you should taste them together.

Curiously, you often can't tell how dark a serious Cerasuolo is until you pour it — many arrive in dark glass. Elizabeth Gabay MW has written about the increasing use of dark bottles for premium rosé, where colour is deliberately not the main selling point. There is something rather appealing about that in a category increasingly sold on how pale and pretty it looks. Dark glass also has the rather more practical benefit of protecting the wine from lightstrike.

Is Cerasuolo a grape?

No — the grape is Montepulciano; Cerasuolo is the style. Worth spelling out, because Italian wine naming has a gift for making intelligent people feel stupid.

What does Cerasuolo mean?

It comes from cerasa, the local word for cherry — a nod to the wine's cherry-red colour and, handily, to one of its main flavours too.

A quick note on Abruzzo's tendone vineyards

Another thing you notice fast in Abruzzo is the tendone, or pergola Abruzzese: instead of rows of vertical wires, the vines form a high horizontal canopy with the bunches hanging beneath, easy to inspect and shaded from the summer sun.

One drawback if you're tall: plenty of the growers whose vineyards I inspected were shorter than me, and their tendone was built to their height. An hour spent stooped underneath it turned vineyard inspection into a surprisingly backbreaking exercise.

I also remember seeing vineyards converted to kiwifruit. Kiwifruit vines are commonly grown on similar overhead pergolas, which made the change of crop rather convenient.

Montepulciano grapes hanging beneath a traditional tendone pergola trellis in Abruzzo

Montepulciano grapes beneath a traditional Abruzzo tendone pergola | © Ra Boe / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0; resized by Blogger.

Why is Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo so dark?

Montepulciano.

It's a deeply pigmented grape, so you don't need prolonged skin contact to get a colourful wine. Cerasuolo is traditionally made either by giving the juice a short spell on the skins before pressing, or by essentially vinifying red grapes as if they were white. The Abruzzo wine consortium describes both methods.

Masciarelli's Villa Gemma is a good real-world example: 100% Montepulciano, just 12 hours of cold skin contact, and still emphatically not pale. Tiberio takes the opposite route — free-run juice, no maceration or pressing at all — and still ends up bright pinkish-red.

The lesson: dark rosé doesn't mean the winemaker beat the daylights out of the skins. The grape matters. And colour isn't the only difference — good Cerasuolo carries more phenolic grip, body and structure than rosé built to resemble lightly tinted water.

Emidio Pepe Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo in a glass showing its deep cherry-red colour

Emidio Pepe Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo showing its deep cherry-red colour | © e_calamar / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0; resized by Blogger.

What does Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo taste like?

Cherry. Lots of it. Depending on producer and site, also sour cherry, strawberry, raspberry, redcurrant and pomegranate, alongside flowers, herbs, spice, citrus peel and occasionally something earthier or more savoury.

But flavour isn't the whole story — texture is. There's usually more substance than in a pale rosé: more body, more weight, sometimes a gentle tannic grip, while good examples keep enough acidity and freshness to stay light on their feet.

Villa Gemma leans on fresh and black cherry with pomegranate; Tiberio shows red cherry, berries and pomegranate with a crisp, floral finish; and Decanter's 2026 tasting of Emidio Pepe found a similarly energetic, textured wine built around cherry and pomegranate.

That's the distinction I noticed the first time I tasted it. The rosés I knew were pleasant enough — fresh, fruity, cold, job done. Cerasuolo had more going on. It felt like proper wine.

The rosé that changed my mind about rosé

Some of that's nostalgia, since Masciarelli was my first overseas job — but not all of it. Back then, rosé occupied a modest corner of my wine brain: fresh, simple, drunk young, nothing like serious red or white.

Cerasuolo challenged that. It still delivered rosé's usual charms — freshness, fruit, easy drinkability — but added texture, structure and enough savoury complexity to make you think about what's in the glass. That distinction looks sharper now, since much of the world's rosé has moved the other way.

Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo vs Provence rosé

Provence has been extraordinarily successful — its pale, delicate style so influential that rosés made thousands of kilometres away now seem determined to look Provençal. Pale became fashionable, then paler, until pale got confused with good.

It isn't. Colour tells you about grape variety and winemaking; it tells you almost nothing about quality. Cerasuolo is the magnificent counterargument. Gambero Rosso has argued that stripping Cerasuolo of its traditional colour to chase the Provençal look risks removing what makes it distinctive.

A pale Côtes de Provence rosé can be delicate, citrusy, crisp, almost ethereal. A traditional Cerasuolo can be deeply coloured, cherry-laden, juicy, savoury and structured enough for proper food. Neither is better — they're just wonderfully different.

Which is why our Pink Wines bucket list recommends tasting the two side by side: nothing shows off how broad "pink wine" really is quite like it.

What food goes with Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo?

Cerasuolo goes where many rosés fear to tread: enough freshness for seafood and fish, enough body for tomato, cheese and meat. Pizza's the obvious start, and tomato-based pasta, salumi, antipasti, grilled or fried fish, roast chicken, pork, vegetables and rich cheeses all work beautifully.

Masciarelli pairs Villa Gemma with meat, fish, tomato pasta, vegetables, pizza and fried food; Decanter calls Cerasuolo unusually versatile across fish, meat, pasta, cheese and vegetables. That's the beauty of a wine sitting between rosé and light red — you don't have to worry too much about the rules.

Can Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo age?

Yes — though that's no reason to cellar every cheap bottle for fifteen years. Most Cerasuolo is best young, the cherry fruit exuberant and the wine at its freshest. But it isn't limited to one summer: the best examples have the fruit concentration, acidity and phenolic structure to develop with time, and Decanter's 2026 report noted Cerasuolo's surprising capacity to evolve in bottle, with older examples to prove it.

At the extreme end sits Valentini, which is made and released much like serious fine wine, with extended time in wood and bottle before it ever reaches market. Francesco Paolo Valentini has discussed ageing the family's Cerasuolo in large oak casks. I wouldn't buy Cerasuolo mainly to cellar — but tasting a mature bottle would be a fine addition to the bucket list.

Six Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo producers to look for

Masciarelli – Villa Gemma

I'm obviously biased. First made in 1986, from 100% Montepulciano grown around San Martino sulla Marrucina at roughly 400 metres, twelve hours on the skins yields a vivid, cherry-fruited wine with plenty of freshness and substance. Gambero Rosso has ranked Villa Gemma among the region's leading Cerasuolos, and Decanter included the 2024 in its recent 18 bottles to seek out. But mostly, it's the wine that got me paying attention in the first place.

Masciarelli Villa Gemma details | Find Villa Gemma on Wine-Searcher

Valentini

If you want proof of how seriously rosé can be taken, this is the bottle: hard to find, expensive by Cerasuolo standards, made from Montepulciano and aged well before release — handled like fine wine, not a summer quaffer. Not your Tuesday-night pizza bottle; very much your how-far-can-Cerasuolo-go bottle.

More about Valentini Cerasuolo | Find Valentini on Wine-Searcher

Emidio Pepe

One of Abruzzo's great traditional names, its Cerasuolo stays characterful rather than chasing the palest international look. Decanter's 2026 tasting singled out the 2024 for its energetic, textured cherry-and-pomegranate fruit — a good bottle for understanding that Cerasuolo's rusticity is a feature, not a flaw.

Emidio Pepe Cerasuolo details | Find Emidio Pepe on Wine-Searcher

Agricola Tiberio

An instructive contrast to Masciarelli: also 100% Montepulciano, but made from free-run juice with no maceration or pressing, fermented in steel with indigenous yeast. Bright, crisp and cherry-driven proof that Cerasuolo's identity doesn't depend on one recipe.

Agricola Tiberio Cerasuolo details | Find Tiberio on Wine-Searcher

Tenuta I Fauri – Baldovino

Genuine regional character in a more accessible package. Gambero Rosso has praised its juicy redcurrant, spice and smoky notes, and Decanter included the 2024 among its 18 recommended wines. If Valentini is Cerasuolo's rarefied end, Baldovino is the everyday appeal — interesting wine you can actually put on the table.

Tenuta I Fauri Baldovino details | Find Baldovino on Wine-Searcher

Cirelli – Anfora

Francesco Cirelli's amphora-aged Cerasuolo offers yet another take on Montepulciano as pink wine — fuller, more structured, still lively and drinkable. Decanter included the 2023 among its recent picks, proof of how much variation hides inside a denomination most wine drinkers outside Italy have never heard of.

Cirelli Anfora wines | Find Cirelli Anfora on Wine-Searcher

Where to buy Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo

The hardest part. Cerasuolo is easier to find in Italy than in most export markets, though that's improving. Rather than chasing a vintage, start with the producer: Masciarelli and Tiberio are sensible entry points; Emidio Pepe and especially Valentini are for when budget and opportunity align.

Wine-Searcher is the easiest way to see which Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo wines are available near you.

Don't worry if your first bottle isn't one of the six above — just find a proper example, made with enough confidence not to have had its colour stripped out in pursuit of fashion.

Is Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo worth trying?

Absolutely — not because every bottle is profound, or because dark rosé is somehow better than pale (that's the same mistake in reverse), but because it challenges an assumption: rosé doesn't have to be pale, delicate, simple, or drunk within a year of vintage.

It can have colour. It can have texture. It can have tannin. It can even age. Most importantly, it can still be deliciously refreshing and vanish alarmingly fast over lunch.

Find a good Côtes de Provence and a good Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo. Put them side by side. They'll scarcely look like members of the same family.

That's exactly the point.

Quick FAQ

What type of wine is Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo?

Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo is a dry Italian rosé from Abruzzo made principally from Montepulciano. Despite its deep colour, it's officially a rosato, not a red.

Is Cerasuolo a grape?

No — it's the wine style. The grape is Montepulciano.

Is Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo dry or sweet?

Dry. The deep cherry-red colour can mislead people into expecting sweetness, but the DOC specifies a dry profile.

What does Cerasuolo mean in Italian?

The name comes from cerasa, the Abruzzese dialect word for cherry — a reference to the wine's characteristic cherry-red colour.

Is Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo the same as Cerasuolo di Vittoria?

No. Cerasuolo d'Abruzzo is a Montepulciano-based rosé from Abruzzo; Cerasuolo di Vittoria is a Sicilian red made from Nero d'Avola and Frappato.

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