Villa Cialdini Lambrusco Ross (Italy)

Try to ignore your memories of Lambrusco from the 1980s – this sparkling red is absolutely top notch, with a tangy redcurrant flavour. Lovely with hard cheeses and charcuterie.

This is ruby red in colour, with plenty of bright bubbles. On the nose, it has a fresh and very fine fruity scent. On the palate, the wine is delicate, tangy and well-balanced, with pleasant refreshing acidity, floral notes and forest fruits such as redcurrant on the finish.

Villa Cialdini is the main house of the Azienda Agricola Castelvetro, an estate south-east of Modena that has been owned by the Chiarli family since 1860. Brothers Anselmo and Mauro Chiarli, who manage the family company, started the Castelvetro project in 2002. Their idea – ambitious today, let alone in 2002 – was to build a state-of-the-art winery to produce top quality Lambrusco. They spent a year renovating the winery and then, using the property’s old vineyards, began production in 2003.

The estate comprises 70 hectares, of which 52 are vineyards on the undulating alluvial deposits typical of the Padana plain. The main grape variety planted here is Grasparossa, the lower yielding and most concentrated clone of Lambrusco. The resulting Lambrusco is deeply coloured, frothing, dry and structured, while retaining the typical pronounced fruitiness cut by lovely acidity that has made Lambrusco such a mainstay of the restaurants of Modena and Bologna.