EMILIA-ROMAGNA


Theirs is a small outfit: 40,000 bottles


per year, 11 labels, two grapes. The vineyard started in 2008 on land once used for pigs. Samuele takes me on a tour of the 8.5-acre plot where the bluey-black Lambrusco Salamino grape thrives in the water-retaining clay soils. They prune by hand, focusing on quality


not quantity, a striking inversion of the Lambrusco way. “Usually after 15 years Lambrusco vines are replaced because the quantity goes down, quality goes up,” he tells me. “Our approach is to persevere.” There’s a focus on sustainability: Samuele shows me the solar panels that power the container fridge and the living roof on the winery that provides both insulation and a barrier to overheating. We stand for a moment, enjoying the stillness. Away to the west, the sun sets over the toothy outline of the Apennines. The subsequent tasting is an exuberant


affair, bottles popping with Grand-Prix- podium abandon. Samuele sniffs every cork heartily as it’s pulled, a little involuntary smile playing across his lips on each occasion. “For too long the good name of Lambrusco


From left: Cecilia Morandi slices mortadella at Salumeria Hosteria Giusti in Modena; fresh, handmade tortellini, a speciality across the Emilia-Romagna region


has been dragged through the mud,” he says, topping up my glass with Lusvardi Rose, the flagship sparkling, with its spirited notes of berries and green apple. “Now it’s starting to be known that good-quality Lambrusco exists.” He pauses, more emphatic now: “People have to know.” A very different style of tasting provides


the highlight of my final day in the saddle. It’s Lambrusco again — in a sense. Overnighting in the town of Correggio, where vintage Lamborghini tractors are arranged artfully


beneath the expansive, marble-paved porticoes of Piazza Mazzini, I set a course for Acetaia Giusti, just north of Modena. My nose tells me I’ve arrived before the


satnav does: a bubble of sweetness hangs over the balsamic vinegar producer’s bucolic cluster of restored 19th-century buildings like woodsmoke, and escapes down the surrounding lanes. Balsamic vinegar is Modena’s most famous


export, and this company was the royal supplier to the last king of Italy. Claudio Stefani Giusti, who greets me with a warm handshake as I crunch into the acacia-shaded courtyard, is a 17th-generation producer. The adjacent museum tells the venerable


backstory and attempts to explain the ritual and rigour involved in creating this ‘perfume for the food’; the extraction of the juice from the Lambrusco and Trebbiano grapes; the simmering, fermenting and maturing. But theory only gets you so far. Across the courtyard, in the aromatic


shadows of the ageing rooms, lie some 5,000 dark wooden casks. Each is open at the top to allow for evaporation, and arranged in batches of progressively decreasing size. Some are juniper; others oak, cherry or mulberry — each variety serving to gently infuse the maturing vinegar with a unique flavour. It’s a perpetual cycle of decanting and refilling, with the final product bottled from the smallest, most piquantly scented cask. It’s from one of these that Madalena


Gibellini draws a sample using a sharply elongated pipette. She lights a candle to check for impurities in the time-honoured way,


JAN/FEB 2024 95


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