Cantina della Volta

Christian Bellei knows how to knock the socks off even Lambrusco sceptics. In his opinion, the basis of an outstanding sparkling wine begins with the manual grape harvest and a particularly gentle pressing of the grapes. The passionate oenologist shares his views with us in conversation: "Nowadays, everyone makes a sparkling wine, but for the classic method, the grapes have to be harvested and pressed in a certain way."

Christian inherited his talent for sparkling wine production from his father Giuseppe, who was one of the pioneering winemakers to use the classical bottle fermentation method for Lambrusco production. It was he who regularly took Christian to the Champagne region and thus familiarised him at a young age with the charm of the elaborate but very rewarding technique of classical bottle fermentation.

No wonder, then, that Christian's winery has never been equipped with an autoclave pressure tank. In order to express the versatility and potential of Lambrusco, he, like his father, ferments it according to the techniques of Champagne. In what is perhaps Italy's most culinary region, fascinating and lively Lambrusco interpretations are thus created in his Cantina della Volta in Bonporto, a small town in the province of Modena.

He is particularly passionate about the local pale with high acidity, red berry fruit flavours and low residual sweetness, Lambrusco di Sorbara. Together with his two friends, the lawyer Umberto L'Astorina and the marketing strategist Angela Sini, the talented winemaker has been bringing the highest quality and most complex Lambrusco di Sorbara repertoire of the entire region to the market since 2010.

The vineyards, sustainably cultivated for this purpose, run along Modena's beautiful hills, which are made up of clay, limestone and chalk soils. The noble Sobara grapes are transported from there to the Cantina della Volta's wine cellar, which is located near the Darsena - the harbour basin where ships have to make the turn ("la volta") that gives the company its name, in order to resume their journey towards Modena.

Under meticulous quality controls, each base wine is bottled after the first fermentation in sparkling wine bottles, where the second alcoholic fermentation finally takes place. Afterwards, the sparkling wines mature for five to forty-one months on their own yeasts and become fine, frothy Lambrusco di Sorbara wines that wink gleefully at sceptics in particular. Not only since tasting these refined sparkling wines, which are so indispensable for the region, should Lambrusco finally be freed from its dubious reputation, because Christian's selected Metodo Classico have absolutely nothing in common with the once sweet mass-produced sparkling wine of the 1980s. SUPERIORE.DE