Cacciatore D'Uve
Cacciatore D'Uve, Wandering Lambrusco, 2024
Crafted for enthusiasts of bone-dry, ancestral-method sparkling wines, this aromatic and youthful sparkling red (frizzante) delivers exceptional energy and vibrance. It balances a lively, playful effervescence with an ultra-dry profile featuring just 0.3 g/l of residual sugar. The palate is wonderfully fluid and smooth, offering expressive notes of fresh cherries, wild strawberries, and blackberry jam that are layered with hints of violets, sweet toffee, and citrus zest before wrapping up on a delicate touch of tobacco. Perfect as a festive, high-spirited aperitif, it pairs beautifully alongside cured meats, rich stuffed pastas, traditional northern Italian starters, and savory broths.
Integrated Viticulture focusing on highly sustainable, minimal-intervention agriculture, adapting dynamically to the specific climatic shifts of each unique vintage.Embracing an artisanal, small-production philosophy, all essential canopy work and the final picking of the Lambrusco Marani, Maestri, Salamino, and Ruberti varieties are done entirely by hand using small 15 kg crates to avoid crushing the berries before they reach the cellar.
Hand-harvested grapes are 100% destemmed and subjected to a brief, gentle maceration on the skins for 2 days to capture optimal fruit character and soft tannins before pressing. The primary fermentation occurs spontaneously in stainless steel tanks using only indigenous yeasts. True to the ancestral method, the wine is bottled where it undergoes a natural secondary fermentation (rifermentato in bottiglia) triggered by the addition of reserved Lambrusco Salamino must, and is left completely undisgorged (senza sboccatura) on its fine lees to develop complex texture and vibrant, live carbonation.
The 2024 growing season opened with a cold, dry winter, followed by an unusually warm February that initiated an early vegetative cycle. Spring brought regular, heavy rainstorms that crucially replenished the deep water tables before a sudden drop in early spring temperatures temporarily delayed budbreak. A remarkably wet May required intensive, hands-on vineyard management to protect the young clusters, but the weather turned beautifully with a warmer-than-average June. Despite facing several localized, tense hailstorms through July and August, a fine, stable, and sun-drenched late summer held firm directly into the September 10th manual harvest, allowing the grapes to achieve optimal phenolic balance and a crisp, low-sugar profile ideal for bottle-fermented sparkling wine.
Medium-textured, loamy-clay soils (terreni di medio impasto franco-argillosi) situated within the low-lying plains of the Oltrepò Mantovano in Lombardy, just north of the Po River. This specific alluvial and clay-heavy matrix provides excellent water retention and a rich nutritional profile, lending a distinctive structural depth, deep color extraction, and a rustic, savory mineral foundation to the native Lambrusco varieties grown outside their typical Emilian stronghold. .