What is Cleto Chiarli best known for?

For being the oldest bottling winery in Emilia-Romagna — a Lambrusco house with roots in the mid-19th century, from around Modena — and for making the dry, food-serious style of Lambrusco that has almost nothing to do with the sweet mass-market fizz the name is unfairly known for. The Lambrusco di Sorbara bottlings are the ones to know.

Is Lambrusco actually dry?

The good stuff is. Lambrusco is a family of red grapes and a family of wines, and while cheap versions are made sweet and industrial, the traditional Modenese style is dry (secco), lightly sparkling, savoury and made to cut through the region's rich food. Chiarli sits firmly in that serious camp. Sorbara is the palest and most delicate; Grasparossa the darkest and fullest.

Where should I drink it?

In and around Modena, at the table. This is Emilia's food capital — Parmigiano, prosciutto, tortellini, balsamic — and dry Lambrusco was built to partner exactly that richness. Base in Modena, book the estate ahead where visits are offered, and drink the wine cold, fizzing, alongside a plate of cured meats. It makes instant sense.

Cleto Chiarli

Here's the wine everyone thinks they know and almost nobody does. Say "Lambrusco" abroad and people picture a sweet red fizz in a screw-cap bottle, the stuff of bad 1980s dinners. Say it in Modena and people reach for a cold, dry, savoury glass to go with the best cured meats in Italy. Same word. Completely different wine. Cleto Chiarli is the house that's been making the real one longest.

Founded in the mid-19th century — reportedly the oldest bottling winery in Emilia-Romagna — Chiarli has spent well over a century making dry, food-serious Lambrusco from the vineyards around Modena, in the heart of Italy's greatest larder. This is the flat, fertile Po Valley country of Parmigiano-Reggiano, prosciutto and traditional balsamic, and Lambrusco is the wine that was raised at that table. Cut, fizz, acidity, and a savoury edge to slice through all that richness — it's not an accident the two grew up together.

The two Lambruscos worth knowing

The trick to Chiarli, and to Lambrusco generally, is that it isn't one wine. It's a family.

At one end sits Lambrusco di Sorbara, from the low ground north of Modena — pale, sometimes barely more than rosé in colour, bracingly high in acid, delicate and fine. This is the connoisseur's Lambrusco, and it's the wine that made Chiarli's name among people who take the region seriously. Fresh, tart, mineral, almost weightless — it drinks like the last thing you'd expect from a red.

At the other end is Grasparossa di Castelvetro, from the hills to the south — darker, deeper, fuller-bodied, with a touch of tannin and real vinous grip. Where Sorbara is a whisper, Grasparossa is a proper red with the fizz turned down and the body turned up.

Sorbara is the ballerina, Grasparossa is the boxer. Taste them side by side and you'll never again think Lambrusco means one thing.

The wines

Chiarli runs a broad range, and the smart move is to climb past the everyday tiers to the serious, traditional bottlings where the house shows what it can really do.

Start with a good Lambrusco di Sorbara — dry, pale, electric with acidity, ideally an ancestral- or traditional-method version where the fizz is finer and the flavour more savoury. This is the single bottle that recalibrates what you think Lambrusco is. Serve it cold, with a plate of Modenese salumi, and watch the whole prejudice fall apart.

Then reach for the Grasparossa for contrast — the darker, richer counterpoint, better with the heavier winter dishes and aged cheese. Between the two you've mapped the whole appellation in an evening.

Confirm the current lineup before you shop — the house makes everything from easy everyday fizz to more ambitious single-vineyard and ancestral-method cuvées, and the top bottles are the ones worth the search.

The setting

This isn't hill-country wine tourism. Modena sits on the flat, hazy plain of Emilia, and the vineyards spread across low ground to the north for Sorbara and up into gentle hills to the south for Grasparossa. The romance here isn't the landscape — it's the food. You're in the town of balsamic and Ferrari and some of the finest cooking in the country, and Lambrusco is the local wine woven through all of it.

Visiting

The play is simple: make Lambrusco part of a Modena food pilgrimage, not a standalone wine trip. Base yourself in Modena, one of Italy's great eating cities, and build the days around the table — a traditional balsamic acetaia, a Parmigiano dairy at dawn, the market, the trattorie. Where the estate offers tastings, book ahead and confirm the current arrangements before you go; access at Emilian wineries varies.

The wine will make more sense here in one lunch than in a year of reading about it. Order it dry, order it cold, and let the salumi do the arguing.

What to buy

Match the bottle to the plate. For the revelation — the wine that proves dry Lambrusco is a serious pleasure — reach for a good Lambrusco di Sorbara, ancestral-method if you can find it, and drink it cold with cured meats. For the richer, darker side of the family, and for heartier food, the Grasparossa di Castelvetro is the one. Buy both, open them together, and you'll finally understand why Modena has been drinking this wine happily for a hundred and fifty years while the rest of the world got the wrong idea.