When I’m recommending a wine, quality trumps style—meaning I’ll recommend wines I don’t personally care for if I know other people will like them. Except for rosé: With rosé, I’m determined to bend people to my will, which means ignoring the general mass of flabby, sweet wines masquerading as “dry” rosés and seeking out the genuine article. I can’t accept rosé as a cocktail wine. Rosé—good rosé anyway—is food wine, possibly the most versatile food wine of them all. Today’s rosato from the dynamic Funaro estate, in addition to being a slightly deeper style of rosé well-suited for the transition to fall, is a food wine extraordinaire.

It’s got the perfect amount of tangy, tongue-lashing acid to balance its sunny wild-berry fruit—not an easy balance to achieve, as anyone who’s purchased a basket of strawberries or tomatoes at the farmer’s market well knows. I don’t need to describe it: You all know it instinctively, and will recognize it in Funaro’s 2020, which is crafted from the native Nero d’Avola grape. It doesn’t matter that summer has come to a close: This will serve you well all year round.

There’s a palpable energy to the Funaro wines. Close readers will remember their bright, buoyant red from Nero d’Avola, offered recently, which was a radical departure from the norm for the variety in Sicily (most producers opt for a richer, oakier, more Shiraz-like expression of the grape). But the Funaros have embraced the ethos of the natural wine movement, and generally aim for maximum transparency and minimum manipulation. Their farm is comprised of two estates in Western Sicily, not far from the coastal towns of Marsala and Trapani. Like many wine properties in this area, which may have once supplied the large Marsala houses or one of the local winemaking cooperatives with grapes, the Funaro family holdings were taken over by siblings Tiziana, Clemente, and Giacomo Funaro in 2003 with an eponymous label in mind. In addition to building an eco-friendly winery facility complete with solar electricity and a natural wastewater recycling system, they obtained organic certification for their vineyards, olive groves, and orchards in 2011. Most of the vineyards, which are planted to a wide variety of local and international varieties, are located on the family estate in the village of Salemi, in loamy soils at about 140 meters in elevation.

What we’re seeing more and more from Western Sicily is a continued sharpening of focus on the part of producers who once grew grapes with an eye toward quantity more so than quality. White varieties such as Inzolia, Catarratto, and Grillo, once funneled rather anonymously into Marsala wines, are developing distinctive identities of their own. The same goes for Nero d’Avola on the red side, although it had a significant head start on the whites. Also known as Calabrese, the variety is historically linked to the town of Avola, at the eastern end of Sicily near Ragusa (thus its “black grape from Avola” moniker). Before the wines of Mount Etna stole the spotlight and the Nerello Mascalese grape became de rigueur, Nero d’Avola was undoubtedly Sicily’s biggest claim to fame. 

Today’s rosé was crafted in the direct press method, meaning it was macerated on its skins for just a few hours, then the juice pressed off to continue fermenting in stainless steel (it wasn’t, by contrast, wine that was “bled off” from a red-wine fermentation). It has a deep (though not excessively so) onion-skin hue with hints of copper and magenta, with aromas of strawberry, blood orange, rhubarb, a hint of blackberry, dried flowers, and wet rocks. The fruit/earth balance, and the crisp acidity, fit right into my above-mentioned “food wine” paradigm: Pair it with anchovy pizza, pastas with spicy tomato sauces, grilled salmon…frankly, other than maybe a ribeye steak or a beefy braise, there isn’t much this wine won’t complement. Serve it at 45-50 degrees in all-purpose stems and, since I’m writing this during the waning days of summer, we’ll stick with something “seasonal.” But do try to save a few bottles for your Thanksgiving dinner—it may just steal the show!