Lambrusco Love

Tomorrow may be a holiday for red wine, but I tend to be finicky about them. For one, I’m not so into its stamp: purple lips and teeth. And super tannic wine is like drinking sand.

In Lettie Teague’s “Educating Peter” series in which she turns the film critic from The Rolling Stone into an “intelligent [wine] taster” Peter Travers calls these super big tannic numbers “nightmare reds.”

For starters this Valentines Day I’ll be having lambrusco– a departure from big reds, but surprisingly serious.  Like prosecco, it has been undergoing a makeover from its dubious ’70s reputation.  Joe Bastianich has had something to do with it; you’ll find it in just about every Batali place in New York. On his Italian Wine Merchant site, lambrusco is described as “no longer all about the untamed bubblies, however….the sparklers have gotten pretty serious in the last several years, joined by some still renditions that are standing out. . . .” And on The Pour last year, Eric Asimov notes that it’s “No Joke”:

Good lambrusco is indeed fizzy, but it’s dry, lively and somewhat earthy as well. And after a really long day, when the perfect dinner was chunks of cured Italian sausages, peppery and fragrant, with perhaps a green salad and maybe some cheese tortellini with olive oil, nothing could have gone with it better than chilled lambrusco.

Haven’t heard of it?  No wonder. It’s been tucked in with other articles in the local mainstream press, so you’d have to go out of your way to read more about it.

Thankfully, PS7’s serves lambrusco at the bar.  I have my own for tomorrow.  Outside of home, where else can we find lambrusco?