Valentine’s Day: a “sinfully delicious” red for chocolate

“Sinfully delicious” is usually a term we reserve for chocolate, but it’s a wine from Italy that’s making me think of it tonight.  It’s the  Lambrusco Grasparossa from Medici Ermete’s Le Tenute Bocciolo, a sweet (but not too sweet) slightly sparkling wine that will  be an absolutely gorgeous match for dark chocolate cake this Valentine’s Day. The wine is from the Emilia-Romagna region in Italy’s north, specifically the Colli di Scandiano e di Canossa zone between Parma and Modena.

This deep red wine is a true quaffer, a sublime, low-alcohol (7.5 percent) grape drink that brings to mind Welch’s on a very basic level but that offers beguiling sweet blackberry, plum, earth and subtle herbal notes. The finish is actually dry and slightly tannic. The current vintage is 2007, which you’ll find stamped on the very bottom of the back label. Once opened, make sure you pour yourself a healthy glass of this because you’ll find others gulping it down. The suggested price, $20, makes it a steal. This one gives the largely out-of-fashion Lambrusco a good name and, beyond chocolate, I can easily see it with prosciuttos and and salamis. Imported by JK Imports, Pasadena, California. (Received as a press sample.)