Cereza
Cereza is an Argentine grape variety with pink skins, whose name means "cherry" in Spanish. Although it covers much less vineyard today than it did in the last century, it remains part of the country's wine history and is also used to make grape concentrate.
History
Ampelographers think the vine most likely reached Argentina with the first Spanish settlers, as happened with several other colonial-era grapes. Its parentage is a cross between Muscat of Alexandria and Listan negro.
In the mid to late twentieth century, Cereza, Criolla and Pais together made up more than a third of the vines planted in South America. Its high yields and prolific growth encouraged its spread, and around 40,000 hectares were planted by the 1980s. Since then the area has steadily shrunk, falling by nearly a quarter by 2003 to about 30,760 hectares.
Over centuries the vine adapted to the hot, dry climate, and with irrigation it became a dependable producer. Although it was once grown across much of Argentina, it is now concentrated mainly in San Juan province and eastern Mendoza.
Culture
Compared with Criolla Grande, its red-skinned relative, Cereza has a noticeably lighter pink skin and larger berries that contribute very little colour during maceration. For that reason its wines are almost always white, though some rosés are also made. They are deeply coloured and meant for early drinking. The wine expert Jancis Robinson notes that they can be fairly rustic and of basic quality, especially when yields are high, sometimes above 200 hectolitres per hectare.
In Argentina's wine life the variety now plays a more modest role than it once did. Beyond wine, it is often used for grape concentrate, which goes into winemaking elsewhere. It is also known by the synonyms Ceresa, Ceresina, Cereza Italiana, Cerise and Chereza, a range of names that shows how widely it has travelled under different labels.