The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - Travel
Where to savour the essence of Italy
Xanthe Clay heads to Emilia-Romagna – a region of slow food, fast cars, gelato, balsamic vinegar and a superior reincarnation of the much-maligned Lambrusco sparkling wine
Despite the fact that Alessandro Medici looks like a Renaissance portrait, all flowing locks and brooding good looks, he is no relation to his namesake the 16th-century Duke of Florence. The 28-year-old winemaker is a thoroughly modern Italian: one of a new community of young lambrusco makers in the vineyards of Emilia bent on restoring the reputation of this undervalued wine.
Lambrusco has a venerable history. Made since Etruscan times, the wine was named by the Romans, joining the words labrum, meaning border, and ruscum, meaning wild, for the wild grapes that grew at the edges of fields. But in recent years lambrusco has become a laughing stock, considered cheap sweet fizz, the WKD of wines. It didn’t help that a dodgy brand of perry is called Lambrini, another blended word, but this time a cheeky elision of lambrusco and Lamborghini. The two drinks are inevitably confused.
Back on the covered patio outside the slickly modernised tasting room of VentiVenti wines, run by Medici and his father Alberto, we sip glasses of cherry-red lambrusco, admiring the lively sparkle, the notes of berry fruit and the relatively low alcohol content. To eat alongside – in Italy, aperitivi refers both to drinks and the snacks served with them, and the Italians would not countenance wine without food – there are trembling, thin pink slices of mortadella and rough nuggets of parmesan.
This elegant, bone-dry lambrusco is one of a new wave of wines being championed by Medici. Most lambrusco is made by the Charmat method, a cheap and reliable way of getting bubbles into wine by fermenting it in steel vats. This is how most prosecco is made, but it is a relatively new method for lambrusco.
Until well into the last century, lambrusco was made by allowing it to ferment in vats until most – but not quite all – of the sugar had turned to alcohol. It was then poured into bottles, topped with a crown cap like a beer bottle, and left to finish its fermentation while also developing a fizz.
This method – the oldest way of making sparkling wine – predates the methode traditionelle used in Champagne for 200 years. It is sometimes called “pet nat” (short for pétillant naturel), or the ancestral method, but in Italy was known as col fondo until a few years ago, when the name was changed to sui lieviti.
Medici, who also makes lambrusco by the methode traditionelle or metodo classico, would love to see a surge in popularity in the wine, similar to that seen for prosecco in the Noughties. But, he says, it may take a while for people to come round: “The problem is that lambrusco comes from a negative position, while prosecco was neutral: no one knew what it was.”
In the meantime, travellers can head to Emilia and rediscover the forgotten pleasures of il vero lambrusco, and a plethora of deliciousness besides. It is hard to imagine a region more imbued with iconic foods.
But first, a little geography. Although almost always spoken of in one breath, in fact Emilia-Romagna is two areas. To the west is the inland region of Emilia, encompassing the districts of Reggio Emilia, Piacenza, Modena and Parma. Romagna, to the east, includes the coastal areas of Ravenna, Forli Cesena, Ferrara and Rimini. In the middle is Bologna, the capital, belonging to both regions, and home to the handiest airport for visiting the area.
I started my trip in Bologna, an ancient university city of colonnaded pavements which has a food culture so fabulous that it is known throughout the land as La Grassa or the Fat One. My first priority was ice cream, or rather gelato, the Italian style made with less fat and sugar than other ice creams, and generally more intensely flavoured. Florence might self proclaim itself the capital of gelato, but here in Bologna is the world’s only University of Gelato (0039 051 6505457; gelatouniversity.com).
I hopped on a bus to the location on the outskirts, just past the Ducati motorcycle factory. Run by the revered ice cream machine-makers Carpigiani, it is located in the factory building and encompasses courses for both professionals and amateurs serious about the science of frozen desserts.
When I arrived, two dozen students from around the world were busily taking notes during a lecture on the physics of the freezing process. A huge lab next door houses a range of machines for testing, but for the less studious enthusiast there is also a gelato museum (0039 051 6505306; gelatomuseum. com), open to the public and packed with fascinating antique equipment, interactive exhibits and displays covering the history of gelato and ice cream.
As I tested myself (could I spot the difference between a natural vanilla ice cream and a fake?), an Australian family of adults and pre-schoolers was deep in a two-hour hands-on ice cream making class. I have vowed to remember to book a place in advance next time.
Denied the opportunity to guzzle my own gelato, I bussed back into town to an unassuming little shop called Sablé Gelato (sablegelato.com) where the young gelataio Alessandro Cesari makes gelato with obsessive attention to detail, from the ingredients (listed in a file that customers can leaf through) to an insistence on using a vintage Carpargiani machine which churns vertically, rather than the modern horizontal versions. The list of flavours is intriguing, and I settled on a Sicilian lemon and almond, and a Bolognese saffron and rose water, produced with locally grown ingredients and both exquisite.
Replete, it was time to head for nearby Modena, another historic town with an exquisite Romanesque basilica and a penchant for motor vehicles. The Maserati, Lamborghini and Ferrari factories are all nearby, and Emilia is fiercely proud to be known as “The Home of Slow Food and Fast Cars”.
Where these ley lines of food and cars converge is in a small hotel outside Modena. Casa Maria Luigia is the country pile of chef Massimo Bottura and his wife and business partner Lara Gilmore. Bottura’s restaurant in Modena, Osteria Francescana, has twice been winner of the World’s Best Restaurant Award (for which I am part of the judging panel). In the hotel “playground” – the converted garage – is the couple’s collection of modern art and sports cars. One caught my eye: a Lamborghini given to Bottura by the company and decorated in a homage to his famous “Whoops I dropped the lemon tart” – a dish created when a chef really did drop the dessert. He doesn’t drive it, though. “It doesn’t feel appropriate when people are struggling around here,” he told me, aware of his status as a local hero. Instead of taking a spin in a sports car, we tucked into sharing plates cooked in the wood-fired oven from the hotel’s informal Al Gatto Verde restaurant.
Modena is about more than restaurants and cars. It is also the home of some of the best balsamic vinegar: Balsamic Vinegar of Modena DOP (Protected Designation of Origin). Made from start to finish in the area, the DOP vinegar is produced by a complex process of transferring grape must from barrel to barrel of a set called a batteria, and aged for a minimum of 25 years. The syrupy, intensely flavoured elixir is sold in distinctive bulbous bottles, which legally can be used only for DOP vinegar. It is the perfect treat to bring home – and yes, it comes in 100ml hand luggage-friendly sizes, too. You can also buy balsamic vinegar IGP, cheaper but still good, which has had only part of the process carried out in the area.
Nor is Modena the only place for vinegar. I also visited Reggio Emilia, which has its own DOP for balsamic vinegar. At the historic Pasticceria Boni (0039 0522 437367 pasticceriabonireggioemilia.it), I sampled the local rice cake, torta di riso, with my morning coffee, not forgetting to pay the elegantly coiffured nonna behind the till first.
There was time for a stroll round Reggio Emilia, quieter than Bologna but with the same exquisite architecture of terracotta-roofed houses in every shade of tawny from buttermilk to treacle toffee. In a bar I stopped at, the sleekly combed barman asked what I would have. “Uno bicchiere di lambrusco, per favore.” Make mine a lambrusco. I fancy Alessandro di Medici, the Renaissance Duke of Florence, would have ordered the same.
Bologna has a food culture so fabulous that it is known throughout the land as La Grassa or the Fat One