Review: Lini 910 Lambrusco Bianco

Every now and then, a wine seller will try to push a Lambrusco on me. I'll be surprised to see a bottle on the shelf and ask something like "Lambrusco? Really?" And the store owner will go into some tap dance of "Yeah, I know, most of them are so insipid. But not this one! This is a really good Lambrusco, the way the wine can be. I wouldn't have it in my store if I didn't think so."

And, being fairly gullible, and always fond of an unlikely buy, I'll take one home. Then I open it, drink it and think, "Lambrusco. Eh." It's fizzy, it's simple, it goes with food, it's uninteresting. Leave it in Emilia Romagna.

Well, I got talked into a Lambrusco again last week, this time at Dry Dock, the new Red Hook, Brooklyn, wine store that is going a long way toward filling up the hole left by LeNell's. I was intrigued because the store had a Bianco, Rose and Rosse Lambrusco, all by the same producer, Lini 910. (The white and rose are achieved by having little contact with the skins of the grape which, in this case, is actually Pinot Nero.) The owner who talked me into it also confessed she loved the white best, red second and rose not so much. I like a bit of honesty in my sales pitch.

So I took the white home and, for once, didn't regret it. This wine is easily the best Lambrusco I've ever had, with an unlikely complexity that robs the wine not a whit of its refreshing sparkle. There are fruit and herbal notes and a slight oxidized character. The bottle barely lasted through dinner. Lini 910 is a 100-year-old vintner, having been founded in 1910. The producer is Alicia Lini, and she also makes a white version called metodo classical, which is bottle fermented like Champagne. Now I'm curious about the Rosso and Rose.