For a whole generation of American drinkers, the word Lambrusco conjures a specific memory, a sweet, cheap, fizzy red wine that flooded the United States in the 1970s and 1980s, the stuff of screw-top bottles and undemanding parties. It was, for a time, the best-selling imported wine in America, and it left behind an impression that has stuck for decades, that Lambrusco is sugary, simple and not to be taken seriously.
That impression is a shame, because it is based on one narrow, sweetened export version of a wine that, in its Italian home, is something else entirely. The real Lambrusco, the wine as it is drunk in the Italian region that has made it for centuries, is not sweet at all but dry, a bright, lightly sparkling red that is one of the great food wines of Italy and the beloved house wine of Emilia-Romagna.
