Lambrusco feels equally at home in a fancy restaurant as it does in a veal sandwich shop.
Apero
Torn between bubbly and red? It happens. Thanks to the recent revival of Italy’s Lambrusco, though, there’s an easy solution. Unpretentious and food-friendly, the wines ushering in the resurgence of fizzy, chilled reds have just enough pop and plenty of depth to bridge the gap. Which is why so many somms are keen on it.
“Since it used to have a really bad reputation, it’s a really fun thing to talk to guests about,” says Alexis Kronwald-deBruyn, operations manager at Toronto’s La Palma, “Especially if they’re old enough to remember the really sweet Lambrusco. Ours is bone dry, with a crisp acidity, so it’s fun to show off the difference.”
The conversation usually begins with the wine’s checkered past, circa 1970, when Riunite Lambrusco was top of the pops. But before we explore how far the varietal has come, we need to give Lambrusco’s first wave its due. That sweet, mass-produced red bubbly was way more than plonk; it was, in fact, the juice that taught an entire generation of North Americans how to drink wine.
Primo
Lambrusco’s story begins in postwar Italy with Walter Sacchetti, a young anti-Fascist from Emilia-Romagna who had spent most of the war either fighting with the Italian resistance or in jail. After the war, despite the deep scars and bleak economic prospects left behind, Sacchetti was ready to get to work. He ran for office, worked with trade unions and, most importantly (for the sake of this story, at least), helped establish a winemakers collective in Campegine, a town in north-central Italy.
Formed so that members could pool their meagre resources to invest in technology, the collective was named “Riunite,” meaning “united.” At first, wine was just Senator Sacchetti’s side hustle. In the mid-1960s, though, he retired from politics to help the collective expand. Under the guidance of an American importer, Riunite tailored its wine to suit the North American palate circa 1967. It dialled up the sugar and clarity of the wine and toned down the oxidation by adopting the Charmat method.
Riunite also put a lot of energy into its marketing strategy and, over the next 15 years, wine consumption in America more than doubled. “My father always reminds me that on his first trip [to the U.S.], he saw people mostly drinking beer and spirits. Any wine was made from Concord grapes which, in Europe, wouldn’t even have been considered wine,” says Giovanni Giacobazzi, export manager at Gavioli Vini near Modena. “Lambrusco appealed to all the young consumers who learned slowly how to approach the wines of Italy.”
Well, maybe not that slowly. According to a New York Times piece from 1982, Italian wines accounted for an estimated 60 per cent of all wine imported into the U.S. – up from 18 per cent in 1970. Chiefly, this was because of the “Lambrusco phenomenon,” which saw Lambrusco score five of the six most popular spots. Riunite eclipsed its competitors with 11-million cases sold in 1981. Gavioli Vini was sixth with 1.39-million.
Segundo
Almost 40 years later, the Giacobazzi family is still in the Lambrusco business. It’s buzziest new wine, though, Gavioli Lambrusco, a rifermentazione Ancestrale, is totally different from the bottles that climbed the charts in the 1970s and ’80s. The fourth generation of Giacobazzis is part of a regional movement away from Charmat method and towards Ancestrale, a more traditional approach.
“It’s the wine of our grandfathers,” Giacobazzi explains. “In the beginning of the production of sparkling wines in our area, before the modern technologies of stainless steel and temperature control, the only way you could make a sparkling wine was to keep the yeast inside the bottle for a second fermentation.” Anti-modern philosophies like this are underwriting Lambrusco’s second act, a perfectly timed pivot since all the wine pros are now into the unique and varied flavours that come from small parcels, traditional methods, biodynamic agriculture, bizarre varietals and non-interventionist wine. The new Lambrusco has all that and more.
“I study wine every day and, even for me, getting into Lambrusco is going deep,” says Jayton Paul, a sommelier at Vancouver’s Hawksworth. “It’s not just the area and the people, but also the techniques, varietals and blending. It can give you a headache for sure.” There are some 60 varieties of Lambrusco, a halfwild, indigenous, often intensely tannic grape that some people insist needs a little sugar to tamp down its boldness.
Paul, though, helpfully edits the Lambrusco field down to the ones Canadians are most likely to encounter today. Lambrusco di Sorbara, for example, is usually light pink, refreshing and tart (think brut rosé but with less roundness and lower in alcohol). Ruby-coloured Salamino is creamy, frothy and intense. Big and bold Grasparossa pairs well with rich, meaty main courses.
The paradox of Lambrusco is that, as complex as its diversity can be, drinking it is not intimidating. Most bottles are capped, not corked, which tells us that they’re meant to be enjoyed right away and wherever you happen to be. It feels equally at home in a fancy restaurant as it does in a veal sandwich shop. And given the quality and care involved in making it, Lambrusco may be the best wine bargain out there, something that hasn’t gone unnoticed among millennials.
“Young people that are truly in the know and want something that isn’t going to ruin their bank account and is also going to give them some intellectual value know that Lambrusco’s got it going on,” says Paul.
Finale
The second coming of Lambrusco then, isn’t so different from its first. A generation of young people have been won over by an easy-drinking, unpretentious and relatively affordable fizzy wine borne out of the idealism of winemakers in Emilia-Romagna. Will we scoff at our youthful taste for fizzy red in another 40 years? Maybe. It’s sort of hard to care, though. That’s tomorrow’s problem. Today, we drink.
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