LAMBRUSCO AND GASTRONOMY

It is well-known that the Emilia region and the territory around Mantua love good food, which influenced the taste of the whole country. Their famous dishes have become popular also abroad, where they are easy to find in the menu though with unsuccessful outcomes. Lasagne, tortellini, agnolotti and much more. Lambrusco combines with these dishes perfectly, as it was established in this way by both sentimental and rational grounds that are mentioned below. The dishes we talked about and many more like sausage meats to be eaten cold, such as salami, Bologna sausage, hams, salted pork and so on, being evidently full of fats, are to be combined with a rather sour wine with well-balanced tannins in order to lighten them in some way and help digestion with its freshness and youth.

Undoubtedly the features of Lambrusco meet these requirements and if it is served with boiled sausages of every kind, zampone and cotechino, it combines great.

Even with stracotto d'asino and yellow corn-meal polenta or with sea-bass and catfish it combines perfectly. Any creative and traditional cooking always finds the exact place for Lambrusco, considering its various and different typologies that meet all needs. The colour range, varying from the light-red Lambrusco di Sorbara to the garnet ruby-red Salamino and Reggiano of the Modenese and Reggian hills or of the Mantuan plain, characterizes its well-proportioned fullness. Not to mention "grana", the king of the cheeses, taking its root in this area, combines with it perfectly.

In addition, this kind of wine can be also combined either with the most delicate dishes or everyday dishes. It can be steadily served at table or rather reserved, in its more prestigious labels, for important gastronomic appointments.

It is a modern wine, whose features are reminiscent of a rural and natural world, that is now difficult to be found.
In the original area there are still small country taverns, where Lambrusco is served with a simple dinner based on "gnocco fritto" or "torta fritta", rhomb-shaped oil-fried pasta made with strutto in combination with dressed pork of any kind, or based on "crescentine" or "tigelle" that look like small flat round-shaped loafs leavened and cooked on special cast-iron plates combined with a kind of filling made of strutto, dressed pork and spreading chese.

In many Italian areas the sweet Lambrusco is very much appreciated, where the contrast between its always present rather sour taste and its sweet flavour creates an extraordinary and special marriage. It is served in combination with the most refined pastry or for instance with "sbrisolona" a very famous cake of the Mantua area.