Villa Cialdini, Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro

Villa Cialdini is the main house of Azienda Agricola Castelvetro, an estate southeast 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, which would be ambitious today, let alone in 2002, was to build a state-of-the-art winery and produce top-quality Lambrusco. They spent a year renovating the winery and began production using the property’s old vineyards in 2003.

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

From the same vineyards comes the local sparkling white, Pignoletto, an ancient grape variety from Emilia Romagna, also known as Grechetto Gentile. This variety produces a fruity, refreshing sparkling wine.