Lambrusco is a light, sweet, sparkling wine, usually red but also white or pink, made all across Italy's Emilia-Romagna region a little south of the Alps. It's made of the red lambrusco grape, and its most common commercial name in America is Riunite. Unless you settle on just a couple of substitutes, to find a wine comparable to lambrusco you'd have to decide whether you want to drink something sweet or fizzy, or red or white. Lambrusco's exact taste profile can be hard to replicate.
Best matches
There are two almost exact potential matches for a red lambrusco. One is another Italian wine called a Brachetto, a spumante (sparkling) wine made from Italy's heavy-duty barbera or nebbiolo grapes. Banfi's Rosa Regale is a well-known brand name. Another red sparkling wine would be an Australian sparkling shiraz like Paringa, something many people are not familiar with. Neither a brachetto nor a sparkling shiraz will be as sweet as a lambrusco, but they are delicious in their own way.
Sweet Sparkling White
A whole category of sweet sparkling wines, which happen to be white, not red, are those wines derived from the muscat or moscato grape. Karen MacNeil in "The Wine Bible" says this grape, which has many clones and cultivars, may be the oldest wine grape that mankind has ever grown. It's known for the very fresh, "grapey" and deliciously sweet wines it produces. Moscato can be either sparkling or still; the popular Asti Spumante, and the less known, more expensive Moscato d'Asti, are both sparkling moscatos.
Sweet Still Wines
Sweet still wines, especially whites or roses, can sometimes seem a little effervescent even though they are not technically sparkling. This is particularly true of wines that have a bit of acidity in their aftertaste, so they don't seem cloying. Gingery gewurztraminers and light, inexpensive rieslings from California or Australia have some of a lambrusco's refreshing quality. Another good option is a rose d'Anjou, a well known French rose that is very simple and thirst quenching in summer.
Sparkling But Dry
Lambrusco's light, simple sweetness means that you couldn't really replace it with the very dry, complex Champagnes, cavas, and sekts of France, Spain, and Germany respectively. Other sparkling wines which come closer to lambrusco's style, although still most often dry, are Italy's prosecco and France's Cremant de Loire wines. Cremant de Loire may be white or rose.
Make Your Own
One more option, in the search for a sparkling, sweet red wine, is to make your own--that is, to make a batch of sangria. Sangria, red wine flavored with fruit juices, has been sold commercially since the 1960s, but traditionally, Spanish families simply mixed an inexpensive red wine with whatever citrus fruits they liked, plus soda water and brandy. If you base your mix on a red fruit wine like pomegranate or rhubarb, you will have an entirely new taste experience.
Tags: sparkling wine, Cremant Loire, Lambrusco light, sparkling shiraz, sparkling wines, sparkling wines which
