Appears in
Oxford Companion to Wine

By Jancis Robinson

Published 2006

  • About

Lambrusco, central Italian varietal wine based on the eponymous red grape variety, or rather varieties, that was enormously popular with the mass market in the US and northern Europe in the 1980s. So successful was it that special white, pink, and ‘light’ versions were somewhat perversely created, the colour and alcohol often being deliberately removed. In spite of, or perhaps because of, this enormous commercial success, Lambrusco is the most scorned and least understood of all Italian wine styles.