The First Lambrusco with a Vineyard on It

Lambrusco has spent fifty years living down the sweet, fizzy, export version of itself, and Medici Ermete is the house most often credited with the repair. The family has been at Gaida, outside Reggio Emilia, since Remigio Medici founded the business in 1890; his son Ermete gave it his name, and the fourth generation, under Alberto Medici, runs it now across two estates and something under eighty hectares.

Concerto was their argument. It was conceived in 1993 and first released from the 1994 harvest as a Lambrusco from one vineyard and one vintage — the first of its kind — grown at yields well below what the appellation allows. It was also the first dry Lambrusco to be given Tre Bicchieri by the Gambero Rosso guide, and it has kept the award every year since, which by the mid-2020s meant a run of seventeen consecutive editions. The vineyard is Tenuta La Rampata, on clay, and the grape is Lambrusco Salamino, the small-bunched variety named for its resemblance to a salami. Second fermentation happens in pressure tanks, the Charmat way, and the wine is meant to be drunk within a year or two of release.

The neck seal of this bottle says vendemmia and millésime around the year — a vintage-dated sparkling red from a category that mostly does not bother.

Frost, Then Lucifer

2017 in Emilia-Romagna began with an early budburst and a hard frost in April that cost some growers close to half their crop. What followed was one of the hottest, driest seasons anyone could remember — the heatwave that peaked in early August was nicknamed Lucifer, and the region asked for a drought emergency. Rainfall between March and October was less than half the norm. The crop was small and, for the same reason, very clean.

In the Glass

It came out of an ice sleeve on a home dinner table, alongside a New Zealand Pinot Gris and the Fontodi Chianti Classico from the same year, a second bottle of one opened in December.

Deep ruby with a purple rim and a fine, quick mousse that settled to a gentle prickle. The nose was all small red fruit — strawberry and raspberry, a sour cherry underneath — with a floral, slightly earthy note that Salamino tends to carry. The palate was dry, properly dry, with the fruit and the fizz doing the work that sugar does in the other kind; there is a little residual sweetness in the technical sheet, but on the tongue it registered only as roundness. A touch of tannin and a fresh, savoury finish, quite short, entirely appropriate.

It is a wine for the table rather than the glass, which is what Reggio Emilia has always known about it. Beside a Sangiovese from the same hot year it was the lighter, cooler-seeming wine, three and a half years on and still fresh. For another Italian red built around acidity and a meal, see the Mascarello Barbera ‘Scudetto’.