Long summer days and sultry summer nights ahead (We’re always optimistic at Campania Wines!) and our minds turn to rosé wines or rosato, to be strictly Italian.  What could be more perfect for a lazy lunch or soporific supper in the garden? The exciting news is that, if it’s possible to do so, we’ve bettered perfection with our new Campania-region rosato. It’s blessed with the name Feudi Di San Gregorio Beneventano Rosato Ros’Aura – but we’ll call it Ros’Aura for short. It is sublime, and we’re the only company in the UK privileged to import it for your delectation.

Before we extol Ros’Aura’s virtues as the drink of the summer season, a little about rosé wines in general. In the dim distant days of childhood when we knew nothing about wine, we believed, as I suspect most people do, that white wine was made from white grapes, red wine from black and red grapes, and so it followed that rosé wine must be made from those pinkish-coloured grapes. Obvious, isn’t it? How wrong we were!

Ros’aura, is in fact made entirely from Aglianico grapes, which are dark blue – almost black, with thick skins and a high acidity and tannin level. How on earth, then, could these robust fruits produce wine of such a delicate crystal-clear coppery pink? Well, Ros’Aura is made from free run juice, with a gentle pressing of the grapes and very limited skin maceration – that’s to say, the skins, which hold the colour, are left to soak in the juice only for a brief time. For rosé wines, this could be from six to forty-eight hours, whereas for reds it could be weeks or months. In fact, in some ways, it’s harder to achieve an excellent rosé than it is a red or white because the timing of the maceration is so crucial.

Achieving excellence is something that the Feudi Di San Gregorio vineyard has certainly managed with Ros’Aura. First, it looks absolutely stunning in the bottle. (We were almost tempted to leave it forever on the windowsill with the sun shining through it, it looked so unbelievably pretty. Almost tempted, we said…)

To drink, well banish sticky candy pink supermarket rosés from your mind forever. Ros’Aura is crisp and dry and a bit minerally, and fresh like the taste of just picked red-fruits…raspberries, strawberries, redcurrants, cherries…just delicious. Thoroughly chilled, it’s lovely to drink on its own, though Italians generally pair it with food such as salami, sausages, pizza and cheeses.

The last thing to say is – don’t delay, order some today, because Ros’Aura is proving so popular that it’s flying off our shelves at a prodigious rate.

Treat yourselves to some rosato heaven in a bottle, before it’s too late – and have a wonderful summer!

https://campaniawines.co.uk/shop/feudi-di-san-gregoriorosaura-irpinia-rosato-doc/