EMILIA'S WINEMAKING HERITAGE: EXPRESSIVE AND REFINED
Emilian wines, especially Lambrusco, possess a charm unlike any other. Their vibrant aromatics, brilliant freshness, and moderate alcohol content make them effortlessly drinkable. Because these wines have a naturally graceful structure with light tannins, they are the ideal canvas for creating uniquely expressive sparkling wines. For centuries, Lambrusco was crafted exclusively through the ancestral method of secondary fermentation in the bottle—an artisanal tradition that produced beautiful, if sometimes unpredictable, results. This changed in the 1950s when Chiarli revolutionized the region by introducing the Martinotti/Charmat method to Emilia.
Crafting the Wine: Step by Step
An essential process requiring great skill and experience, to enhance the characteristics of each grape variety.
Rapid pressing
The grapes from family-owned farms are pressed quickly after harvesting.
Immediate refrigeration
The whole must is immediately cooled in low-temperature tanks to prevent premature fermentation.
Maceration on the skins
Brief contact with the skins enriches the must with the natural aromas and sugars of the grape.
Decanting
Only the clear and most prized part of the must goes into the holding tanks, always at a low temperature.
Single or double fermentation in autoclave
The must undergoes its slow and unique fermentation in an autoclave, until it becomes a sparkling or fizzy wine.
Sterile bottling
Bottling takes place under total sterile conditions, to best preserve the wine over time.
Our path to Lambrusco: selection, care, expression
A wine's character is formed long before bottling.
For Chiarli Modena wines, the winemaking journey starts well before the harvest. We foster a close dialogue with our local growers to set our quality goals together, overseeing the grapes' transformation into musts and base wines from the very beginning. We don’t just buy a product—we craft a standard of excellence.
From this rigorous selection of sweet filtered musts, raw musts, and base wines, our technical team chooses only the components that meet Chiarli’s exacting standards for aromatic profile, structure, and potential. The selected batches are then clarified and blended to create the cuvée, which undergoes secondary fermentation in temperature-controlled stainless steel pressurized tanks using carefully selected biotechnologies.
Once fermentation is complete, the wine is stabilized at sub-zero temperatures on the lees. This resting period refines the texture and integrates the wine's components, prior to adjustment, filtration, and bottling according to the Martinotti/Charmat method.
Every Chiarli Modena bottle is the result of precise choices, made at each stage of the process.
