Ca’ Montebello Sangue di Giuda 2024

The Land

Read this part before you buy: Sangue di Giuda is a sweet, lightly sparkling red, low in alcohol, and meant to be served cold. That is the traditional style of the wine, not a defect and not a novelty. It comes from the Oltrepo Pavese, the southern lobe of Lombardy's Pavia province where the region meets Piedmont and Emilia-Romagna, with vineyards draped over Apennine foothills near the Po. The soils sit on Messinian terrain, yellow marl with limestone lenses, along with terraced alluvial deposits running along the foothills from Broni to Stradella. Ca' Montebello farms roughly 27 hectares of low hills at Cigognola on clay and calcareous marl, with both eastern and western exposures. The river tempers the microclimate. More than half of all Lombardy wine is made in this zone, and almost none of it leaves Italy.

The Wine

Barbera, Croatina, and Uva Rara, the three grapes that define Oltrepo reds. The DOC has been autonomous since 2010, having previously been a type within Oltrepo Pavese DOC, and it requires 25 to 65 percent Barbera, 25 to 65 percent Croatina, and up to 45 percent other local varieties, Uva Rara and Ughetta among them. The fizz comes from fermentation rather than injected carbonation, and the sugar is what remains of the grapes' own rather than anything added, which is also why alcohol stays low, around 7 percent. Deep ruby with violet at the rim. Candied raspberry, blueberry, kirsch, violet. Abundant foam, sweet and soft through the middle, and a clean short finish. This is not a sticky dessert wine. It is cold, fizzy, red, and light, closer in spirit to Brachetto d'Acqui or a good Lambrusco dolce than to anything fortified.

The People

The Scarani family have grown grapes at Montebello, in Cigognola, for generations. The site appears on antique maps as part of the Arnaboldi holding and was long counted among the area's more valuable vineyard land. Today Luigi Scarani makes the wine, his wife Ines and son Alberto handle the commercial side, and daughter Cristina works as enologist, which makes this a family operation in the literal sense rather than the marketing one. The estate produces roughly 250,000 bottles a year across a range that includes Bonarda, Buttafuoco, Pinot Nero, and Moscato. Sangue di Giuda is the wine it is known for. The name means blood of Judas, and local legend has Judas returning to the town of Broni, where townspeople forgave him after he cured their vines of disease, and in gratitude they gave his name to their sweet red.

Food Pairing

Serve it at 50 degrees, cold enough to sharpen the bubbles. Dark chocolate torta with raspberries is the traditional close to a meal in Lombardy. Poached pears with Gorgonzola dolce set the sweetness against salt and funk. Pepperoni pizza with chili flakes is the unexpected one that works, because sugar and carbonation handle capsaicin better than any dry red will. Same logic makes it good with General Tso's chicken or anything sweet and spicy out of a takeout container. This is the bottle for the end of a long week, no ceremony required.