When it comes to hyper-regionality, no one can touch Italy. As SommSelect Editorial Director David Lynch explains, the western end of Liguria is the only place to find today’s bright and distinctive coastal red.
Let’s start with the pronunciation of today’s grape variety: ro-SAY-zay. If you’re lucky enough to have enjoyed a bottle of this wine in the place where it is made—the western end of Italy’s Liguria region, an extension of France’s Côte d’Azur—one sip of today’s 2016 from Foresti will have you hankering to go back. This is one of those distinctly ‘Mediterranean’ reds that Italy (and the south of France) do so well, yet while many of these wines are warm, richly concentrated evocations of coastal scrubland and sun, Rossese has more of a ‘mountain wine’ feel—it’s a lighter-weight product of the Alpine foothills that define the Ligurian landscape. The medieval village of Dolceacqua, one of the handful of municipalities the Rossese grape calls home, tumbles down from the Ligurian Alps toward the Mediterranean, and its signature red has one foot in the forest and one on the beach—offering an atmospheric mix of herbal, underbrush-y notes layered with ripe, red fruits. If bright, tangy, easy-drinking reds are part of your rotation (think Beaujolais, the Jura, Galicia), this sunny Italian specialty is for you. Just be warned: Once the cork is pulled, it disappears quickly.
Only about an hour’s drive from Nice and just inside the Italian border, Dolceacqua is a picture-book medieval village once immortalized in a Monet painting. It is one of a handful of western Ligurian municipalities that comprise the Rossese di Dolceacqua DOC (denomination of controlled origin), which is physically quite small—there are only about 280 hectares of vineyards planted to Rossese in total, and thus the amount of Rossese wine in commercial circulation is relatively minuscule. Liguria is one of Italy’s smallest-production wine regions, not least because it is almost exclusively mountainous; the most evocative image of Ligurian viticulture is that of the steep terraces of the Cinque Terre, but it really doesn’t matter which part of the region you’re in—there is no flatland viticulture here because there are no plains, just thickly forested hills running right up to the sea, with just a sliver of beach between them.
One of my go-to Italian wine references is Ian D’Agata’s exhaustive “Native Wine Grapes of Italy” (UC Press, 2014), wherein he describes the “neck ache” he gets every time he looks at a Rossese vineyard. As D’Agata notes, Rossese has been genetically linked to the Tibouren grape of southern France’s Var region, where its most prominent grower is the Clos Cibonne winery, maker of several long-lived rosés from the variety. It’s one of several coastal varieties Liguria shares with its Côte d’Azur neighbors; there’s a goodly amount of Grenache in Liguria, and of course Vermentino (Rolle in France) is its signature white.
Foresti is a small winery based in the village of Camporosso, just to the south of Dolceacqua where the Nervia River runs into the Mediterranean. In addition to its own 20 hectares of estate vineyards, the Foresti family has worked as a consolidator for scores of neighboring growers, vinifying wines from their grapes and selling them to local restaurants and inns. This 2016 Rossese is some of the first Foresti wine to find its way to the US, and its technical specs are straightforward: it was fermented and aged in stainless steel only and sourced from vineyards that in some cases are nearing 100 years of age.
In the glass, the 2016 Foresti Rossese di Dolceacqua is a bright, reflective ruby in the glass, with hints of pink and crimson at the rim. The aromas are both floral (yes, rosy) and fruity, with notes of wild strawberry, raspberry, red currant, underbrush, wild herbs, black pepper, and dried rose petals. Light- to medium-bodied, its tannins are soft, its acidity fresh and lifted, and its alcohol very moderate. It’s a sheer pleasure to drink now, opening up nicely after 15-30 minutes of air and even better with a slight chill—a service temp of around 50 degrees is recommended here, and use Burgundy stems to highlight its high-toned perfume. This is a red wine you can feel very comfortable serving with seafood, but whenever I think of Liguria I remember all the time I spent winding through the woods, looking for tucked-away vineyards and wineries. The attached recipe for salsa di noci is as classic as basil pesto in these parts, and will highlight the foresty (not kidding) personality of the wine. Cheers! — David Lynch
