IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE ROSÉ

In the beginning was the Cerasuolo. I was born and raised in L’Aquila. When I was little, people used to put a little drop of wine in the water.

The wine was the Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and only the rosé version arrived at our house. The Cerasuolo, precisely.

It was (is) light red, more than pink as it would have been many years later our Apulian Flarò from Negroamaro grapes. Le Tre Marie, one of the very first starred restaurants in Italy, offered a Rosé dell’Aquila made in Ofena.

I still keep it in my heart. One day, forty years ago, I asked the owner Paolo Scipioni to take some bottles of Tralcetto wine from a young producer from Pescara, Marcello Zaccagnini.

Today Zac – who personally brought a few cartons to the Tre Marie – is one of the main wine exporters in the United States.

Bruno Vespa