Today is International Rosé Day. To celebrate, I’m posting about a recent Rosautoctono tasting.

Say what?!

Rosautoctono doesn’t roll off the tongue easily, like rosé does. But let’s break it down. Rosa means pink in Italian. Autoctono is their preferred word for indigenous or native. So Rosautoctono is a pink wine made from native grapes.

That’s also the name of a new transregional organization uniting six appellations in five regions of Italy: Istituto del Vino #Rosautoctono Italiano. That cross-regional part is important. Some would say it’s miraculous. For as anybody knows who’s spent time with Italians, they are a nation of campanilistas. Which means to say they’re loyal to their own belltower (campanile) and believe their town is the absolute best in the world.

Despite this, those five regions that have historic ties to rosé wine decided to band together in 2019 to ride the wave of popularity that rosé now enjoys. Perhaps because rosé goes by different names in various regions — chiaretto in the north, rosato in the south — they landed on this unwieldy rosautoctono name. But, as Shakespeare says, a rose is a rose by any other name. And there’s power in synergy, especially when it comes to marketing. 

“Here in Italy we have very historical production of pink wine, rosa, but in small quantities in small areas,” says Franco Cristoforetti, president of the Chiaretto di Bardolino consortium on Lake Garda and one of the driving forces behind the new association, together with Luigi Cataldi Madonna of Abruzzo. “So we never could export much outside Europe. Rosautoctono was born to let the world know that Italy is one of the main producers of pink wine. Very high quality, and very different from south to the north. These different styles can match with every market’s needs.”

Indeed, from the pale pink color of Lake Garda rosés to the cherry-lollipop hue of Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo, rosé takes every form in Italy, which makes 10% of the world’s rosé.

Even Prosecco has gotten in on the act, debuting the new DOC category of Prosecco Rosé last year. Its numbers are growing fast: In 2020, production was 17 million bottles. This year, it’s expected to grow to 60 million. Given the universal love for Prosecco, Cristoforetti sees pink Prosecco as a Trojan horse that will allow the smaller rosé appellations to storm the gate alongside it. “Prosecco Rosé can be the key to open the market,” he declares.

As part of that marketing push, the Chiaretto di Bardolino consortium just launched a Change.org petition to get a rosé emoji officially added.  “You can find red wine, sparkling wine, but not pink wines. So we at the consortium thought this was digital discrimination,” says Angelo Peretti, a journalist and consultant. So they designed and submitted a rosé emoji to Unicode Consortium, and are asking all rosé fans to sign the petition, “so they can share their love of a good glass of pink wine on social media.”

Stay tuned for more on Rosautoctono wines. I’ll be writing about them in an upcoming feature in Tastes of Italia. Meanwhile, grab a bottle of vino rosa and kick back. Nothing could be finer in the summertime.