Pezzuoli

Grasparossa at the family cellar

Lambrusco Grasparossa sets the daily frame for Alberto Pezzuoli , winemaker at Pezzuoli in Torre Maina, Maranello. The material is narrow by choice: a family name on the label, a Modenese denomination in the glass, and a cellar whose public date begins in 1932. Before wine, Pezzuoli worked in sports journalism, a trade of pace, character, and close reading. At the estate, attention moves to the cellar, where Grasparossa di Castelvetro is the defining center of his practice. The family property presents itself through history, territory, and its wines rather than through a large hospitality stage. That matters here. Pezzuoli is a Lambrusco house before it is anything else, and its language stays close to the denominations that shape the work: Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro, Lambrusco di Sorbara, Lambrusco Salamino di Santa Croce, and Pignoletto. The estate also carries an organic line, with ConBrio and SuDiGiri set apart from the classic Pezzuoli range.

Three Lambrusco DOC Modenesi

The program is built around the Modena frame, with all three Lambrusco DOC Modenesi present alongside Emilia Romagna DOC Pignoletto. Within Grasparossa di Castelvetro, the house works across named sweetness and texture registers: Morbido, Amabile, and Secco. Those words are not decoration. They mark the cellar’s attention to how Lambrusco changes at the table, from softer fruit and residual sweetness to a drier, more direct line. Sorbara brings a different register to the bench, including a rosé D.O.P.; Salamino di Santa Croce completes the Modenese triangle. Pietrascura gives the portfolio its clearest public recognition, placing first in a Vinitaly 2022 ranking for best vino frizzante. Alberto Pezzuoli also received a gold medal at the XIX Concorso enologico internazionale città del vino di Castelvetro di Modena in 2021, a distinction tied to the same Grasparossa ground.

The cellar above Maranello

The place reads as a working winery in the hills around Maranello, not a room designed to pull attention away from the bottles. The cellar, the vineyard, and the tasting room sit within a family-run landscape of Lambrusco vines, with the functional atmosphere of a property still organized around production. The public face is direct: labels, denominations, bottle names, and a range that can be read from one wine to the next. In that setting, the craft is comparative. Grasparossa beside Sorbara. Morbido beside Secco. Pignoletto against the red-fruited pressure of Lambrusco. The visitor’s eye goes back to the same few words because the estate has kept them central: Pezzuoli, Lambrusco, Maranello, 1932.

Pietrascura as a marker

Pezzuoli’s importance rests in this continuity, not in spectacle. A third-generation Lambrusco specialist in the Modena foothills carries a regional method through a portfolio that still names its place first. If there is a bottle that fixes the current chapter, it is Pietrascura, the Grasparossa di Castelvetro DOP that placed first at Vinitaly 2022.