Although it remains most associated with France, Italy is also a major producer of rosé wine, though here we refer to it as rosato (plural: rosati). And it’s made all over the country. Plenty of it is sparkling too, and of very good quality (see below for recommendations). Surprisingly, however, Italians have not been as great at consuming this wine as they are at producing it. Though the country vinifies 9% of the world’s rosé, and is the second largest exporter behind France, it is just sixth in consumption — after France, USA, Germany, UK, and Spain.

This behavior is probably as much tradition as it is cultural bias, which feeds on itself: fewer people buy rosato, so fewer drink rosato, thus establishments stock it less. In Italian wine shops as well as in restaurants, owners tend to buy only the wine they know will sell easily, which is rarely pink. In fact, many Italian drinkers see rosato as girlish, or worse yet, wrong — as if it were a red that somehow went bad.