The Lambrusco-Fueled Italian Holiday Party of Our Dreams

In the hills of Emilia-Romagna, a Lambrusco-making family uncorks the holiday season with a joyful meal—and plenty of great sparkling wine.

"Anyone makes a sarcastic comment about Santa Lucia tonight, I will have to kill them," Alicia Lini says cheerfully as she folds the pasta wrapper of a tortelli. This will come as a familiar sentiment to anyone with young children who’s ever tried to keep loose-lipped relatives from inadvertently (or intentionally) revealing that Santa Claus is ... Well. You know. Here in Emilia-Romagna, instead of a fat fellow with a white beard, the tradition is that Santa Lucia, riding a donkey and accompanied by her escort Castaldo, visits homes the night before December 13, bringing presents for children to find the next morning.

One tortelli neatly folded around its filling—a mix of butternut squash, Parmigiano, crushed amaretti cookies, and nutmeg—she moves on to the next, and the next, and the next. Midstream, her daughters—Alba, 12, Azzurra, 10, and Atena, 8—show up to help: It takes a lot of tortelli to feed 12 people. And of course the tortelli have to be right. There’s no more critical an audience than one’s own family. “It’s all about the proportions of the ingredients in the filling,” Alicia explains, fingers moving deftly. “In Mantova, they are more aromatic, Correggio a bit sweeter, plus every family has their own recipe, too, from grandmother to mother on down.”

Lambrusco Feature
Credit: Cedric Angeles

每年,整个Lini一家人都会在圣卢西亚日(Santa Lucia Day)的前一天晚上聚在一起参加节日盛宴。总是有胡桃南瓜tortelli;总是有牛s,鸡肉,鸡肉和cotechino香肠慢慢地煮至柔和的毛毛虫。总是Erbazzone Reggiano,是该地区典型的酥脆,美味的菠菜派,总是淡淡的水果和坚果饼干来完成这顿饭。世界回合,家庭度假晚餐与庆祝活动一样多。一如既往,要享用Linis的晚餐,他们会有很多自己的Lini 910 Lambrusco。晚餐在他们的酿酒厂举行,就在艾米利亚 - 罗马尼亚小镇C亚搏电竞orreggio之外,现在有100多年的时间,一家人制造了一些最好的lambruscos。

Flavorful and filling with a light, almost cracker-like crust, this rustic spinach pie relies on simple ingredients for an impressive finish. Because the spinach gently steams within the crust, it retains its fresh, verdant flavor even after cooking.

Credit: Cedric Angeles

To some people, it might come as a surprise that thereis好的我ambrusco. The wine’s image has long battled against the impression that it’s a slightly sweet, innocuous, fizzy pink drink. (Try googling “Riunite on ice, that’s nice!” if you want to travel back in time to when this problem all started.) But traditional Lambrusco is dry and crisp, an excellent foil for the rich food of Emilia-Romagna. Alicia’s father, Fabio, who makes the Lini wines, says, “If you drink a glass of 15% alcohol wine, you get drunk on one glass. With Lambrusco, you can drink more glasses—quality with quantity!—and not feel bad. Balance and drinkability is our goal. And that the day after, you feel good.”

Lambrusco | Emilia-Romagna
Cousins Alessio Pibe (right) and Alberto (left) enjoy Lini Lambrusco rosé
| Credit: Cedric Angeles

法比奥·阿布利尼也一直绝对公司t making top-quality Lambrusco. He and his siblings, Massimo and Anita, bought out the rest of their family’s interests in the winery years ago, at a time, Alicia Lini says, “when the entire Lambrusco market was for ‘red Coke.’” The first years were tough. “My dad and uncle and aunt were always reaching into their pockets,” the three of them trying to sustain a belief in quality Lambrusco against what was essentially a tidal wave of industrially produced sugary fizz. Alicia, who had finished a business school degree and gone into the family trade, confronted her father at one point. “After three or four years trying to sell our wine, I came back to my dad and said, ‘No one understands your quality. You have to make something easier for the market. Our competitors are killing us.’” She laughs. “He said, ‘OK, you can go work for Prada or Max Mara then if you don’t understand what we’re doing.’ And my brother’s joke is that I applied, but no one hired me, so I stayed at the winery!”

胡桃南瓜烤直到变软成金棕色,为奶油黄油酱提供了甜美而泥土的平衡,披着面食。压碎的Amaretti饼干为奶油馅中增添了欢迎的杏仁风味和浅脆的质地。这个慷慨的食谱很容易减半。要获得快捷方式,可以将馄饨包装替换为新鲜面食,并根据需要减少烹饪时间。

获取食谱:冬南瓜Tortelli

Credit: Cedric Angeles

Brothers are like that. When her brother, Alessio, arrives that evening, he greets her with, “Alicia! You look so beautiful for 50!” She is, in fact, 41. It’s clear they’re used to giving each other a hard time, in an affectionate way. Soon, the rest of the family arrives, everyone gathering in a bottle-lined room off the main winery, drinking glasses of rosé Lambrusco poured from magnums, chilled down in a punch bowl full of ice cubes into which holly berries and leaves have been frozen. The talk is of the mundane—the kids’ schools, how traffic has changed, whether a new painting of Alicia’s great-grandmother looks too stern—and the less so; COVID has cast a pall over much of the year, as Emilia-Romagna was one of the regions hardest hit in Italy. But no one in the family got the virus, and because the Italian government considers winemaking a vital industry, production never stopped. (“Our team was already working meters away from each other even before the pandemic,” Alicia says, “so even after having adopted every safety measure, everything we do was still viable.”)

将牛ket,短肋骨和鸡肉煮熟的水混合在一起,直到完美嫩,形成深深的风味,易于脱脂的肉汤或Brodo。将Cote-Chino分开,使其可以更轻轻地烹饪,保留其一致性并保持最终的肉汤清晰。服务Potato-Parmesan PureeCaper-Cornichon Salsa Verde.

Bollito Misto食谱
Credit: Cedric Angeles

Soon it’s time for dinner. Alicia’s brother and her cousin Alberto pop the corks on bottles of the winery’s nonvintage Labrusca rosé and its 2006 Metodo Classico Rosso, the family’s top wine. There will be the nutty-creamy, lightly sweet butternut squash tortelli; falling-apart brisket; succulent chicken; savory, fatty rounds of cotechino sausage, each bite accompanied by a salsa verde tangy with cornichons and capers; and more. But first, at each place, there lies a fir twig and holly leaf tied to a little paper tag. On one side it says in red pen, “Santa Lucia ti porterà ... ” and on the other, what the saint will bring each guest this year: union, harmony, money, perseverance, ambition, love, satisfaction, truth, creativity, energy. Alicia gets truth. Her cousin Alberto gets creativity, which provokes laughter; he works with logistics and sales for the winery. Her mother, money. “I will?” she says, archly. “Well, where is it?”

她的父亲法比奥(Fabio)坚持不懈。“很伤心,”艾丽西亚说,给了他一个拥抱。“当您想要的只是放松并度假时。”但是,努力工作的酿酒师是核心,他只亚搏电竞是耸了耸肩,倒了另一杯家庭的葡萄酒。

Not to be confused with the pasta of the same name, these classic Emilian Christmas cookies are made from a tender, flaky dough filled with a sweet-tart trio of fruit: cherry preserves, rich saba (cooked-down grape must), and candied citron.

tortellini dolci al forno
学分:Christine Keely的Victor Protasio 亚搏电竞/ Forie Cox / Prop Styleling摄影

The Lini Family's Wines

Lambrusco | Emilia-Romagna
Credit: Cedric Angeles

Nv Lini 910 Labrusca Lambrusco Bianco ($18)

Fabio Lini uses 100% Salamino for this apple-scented white Lambrusco. The Salamino grape itself is red, but by crushing the fruit and then removing the skins before they have time to affect the hue of the wine, it stays a pale gold color.

Nv Lini 910 Labrusca Lambrusco Rosé ($18)

Rosé Lambruscos are becoming more and more popular, and Lini’s version is one of the best: full of red cherry and strawberry notes, with a faint floral hint in the aroma and fine, persistent bubbles.

Nv Lini 910 Labrusca Lambrusco Rosso ($18)

Deep purply-red and fullof lively effervescence, this earthy red Lambrusco makes a fantastic dinner- party-main-course wine, whether for the holidays or any other time of year—it’s equal parts surprising and delicious.

2006 Lini 910 Metodo Classico Rosso ($40)

Fabio Lini employs the same process as Champagne for his top bottling, allowing the wine to gain its sparkle by means of a second fermentation in the bottle. Its wild blueberry and dried herb notes are surprisingly vivid for a 14-year-old wine: proof that top-notch Lambrusco ages brilliantly.