Even by my own leisurely standards, I’m late getting a new post in place. That’s because Diane and I just managed ten marvelous days in Rome, a trip long overdue, thanks to Covid.
We revisited many of our favorite Roman sites, and as many as we could manage of our favorite restaurants and wine bars. Some of the latter have not survived the plague-related closures: We especially missed Angolo Divino*, a stand-by spot for a simple, light lunch and a great selection of wines by the glass, as well as in bottles. Happily, many others were still in business, and we were able to visit enough of them to taste a nice selection of local wines, my particular interest being the Lazio red variety Cesanese.
Cesanese seemed to be widely available this trip, so much so that a few waiters even spoke of it as a typical Roman red. You would think that would be the case, since it’s grown in the hills not far from Rome, but its availability is actually a recent development, one of the many results of modern Italy’s rediscovery of its own culinary and viticultural traditions.
When I first started traveling to Italy, Rome’s red wine was Chianti – not necessarily Classico (it was rarely so specified) and often sfuso – drawn from a tank or barrel. In those days – the late 1970s and early ‘80s – Rome’s white wine was rarely identified by any other name than bianco, and it was usually verging on brown. Much has changed for the better since then, and Rome’s current pride in Cesanese counts heavily in that score.
Perhaps there was a golden age of Cesanese in Rome’s more distant past. Ian d’Agata, in Native Wine Grapes of Italy, lists several popes as fans of the wine, and it seems to have always been popular with the growers, as the vine’s presence all through the Lazio region indicates. Currently there are three DOCs: the relatively minor and rare Cesanese di Affile, and two more important ones, Cesanese di Olevana Romano, actually produced quite close to Rome, and Cesanese del Piglio, now a DOCG and grown in the hills around towns like Agnani and Acuto. This area is what you could call deep Lazio, where traditions die hard and “Forz’ Azzura!” always means the Lazio soccer team and never the hated Roma club.
Cesanese is not an easy grape to grow: It ripens late and unreliably, but many winemakers – and increasing numbers of consumers – think it is worth the effort. Ian d’Agata waxes rhapsodic about it:
[T]here really are many fine cesaneses made today. The better wines are ripe red-cherry fruit bombs, with aromas of delicate sweet spices (a hint of cinnamon and of white pepper) and red rose petals, and come across as luscious and creamy. I can’t stress enough the wonderful, delicately aromatic nose that a well-made cesanese is endowed with: one whiff and you’ll be hooked for life.
In Wine Grapes, Jancis Robinson speaks of Cesanese’s “velvety tannins and a distinctive perfume reminiscent of mulberries and pimento.”
I tasted a good number of Cesaneses in my all-too-few days in Rome – those are the label photos that punctuate this post – and I was in fact uniformly struck by the wine’s softness: It really coddles your tongue and palate. And I did find their aromas attractive, though elusive and difficult to pin down, and definitely not uniform: They seemed to me to vary greatly from producer to producer.
Most important, Cesanese proved to be a fine food wine, matching very happily with a wide variety of dishes, from antipasti both cold and hot, through a range of Roman pastas, to meats and fowl grilled or cooked moist, usually in sweet/acid tomato sauces. I found Cesaneses to be thoroughly enjoyable wines, whether with food or by themselves. The ones I tasted were nowhere near the caliber of the great Barolos and Amarones – perhaps someday they will be – but they are also nowhere near the price of such wines. In Roman restaurants, Cesaneses went for a third to a quarter of the price asked for Barolo. For their actual quality and great enjoyability, that is bargain-basement pricing.
The biggest problem Cesanese presents the American wine lover is finding it. Some are coming into this country, but not in great volume – a problem that the Covid-caused shipping delays have only exacerbated. You will have to search for a bottle of Cesanese, that’s certain. But I assure you, from my experience of them, they’re worth the effort, whether you root for Lazio or Roma or even Tom Brady.
* The very week after we left Rome, Angolo Divino apparently reopened. See Charles Scicolone’s post about it.