Italy · Lambrusco Country (Modena & surrounds)

Poderi Fiorini Soc. Agric. S.s.

Modena family estate founded in 1919, farming organically across three vineyard holdings to produce Lambrusco di Sorbara, Grasparossa, and Colli Bolognesi still wines.

The producer

Poderi Fiorini is a family estate with roots in the Modena plain going back to 1919. Its wines are anchored in Lambrusco di Sorbara, the most aromatic and lightest of the Lambrusco denominations, grown on sandy, river-influenced flatlands north of the city. The Sozzigalli holding sits in the heart of the denomination, with thirty-year-old vines on soils shaped by the Secchia River. A retained five-hectare parcel near Ganaceto, the original flatland site, supplies fruit for the signature Corte degli Attimi alongside Sozzigalli.

The estate also produces wines under the Torre dei Nanni label from a ten-hectare hillside holding straddling the Modena and Bologna production zones, adding sparkling Pignoletto and barrel-aged Barbera and Cabernet Sauvignon to a range otherwise built around sparkling red. ICEA organic certification covers both vineyard and cellar from the 2019 harvest. All vines are hand-worked and hand-harvested. In the cellar, gravity moves crushed must directly into autoclaves, avoiding machinery contact at the stage when oxidation risk is highest.

Known for

Lambrusco di Sorbara DOC, Corte degli Attimi

Notable facts

The story

The Ganaceto Parcel

In 2011 the Fiorini family moved its entire production operation from the Modena plain to the hills, building a new cellar at Savignano sul Panaro and shifting its focus toward the Torre dei Nanni range and the Colli Bolognesi. It was the kind of move that in other families would mean the old flatland vineyards get sold off or let go: too far from the new cellar, awkward to manage from the hills, tied to a denomination that had not yet found its wider audience. Instead, the family kept five hectares near the historic Ganaceto site. The vines there sit on the same sandy, river-influenced ground that defines Lambrusco di Sorbara, and they still supply fruit for Corte degli Attimi. No announcement accompanied the decision. The vines stayed, and the wine kept coming from the plain.

From the atlas

Poderi Fiorini Soc. Agric. S.s.

At A Glance

Founded1919
LocationSavignano sul Panaro, Modena, Emilia-Romagna
Grape FocusLambrusco di Sorbara, Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro, Pignoletto
CertificationICEA organic from the 2019 harvest
Signature WineCorte degli Attimi Lambrusco di Sorbara DOC

The Producer

Poderi Fiorini is a family estate founded in 1919 in Savignano sul Panaro, in the province of Modena. Its wines are anchored in Lambrusco di Sorbara, the most aromatic and lightest of the Lambrusco denominations, grown on the sandy, river-influenced flatlands north of the city. The estate also produces wines under the Torre dei Nanni label from a hillside holding that straddles the Modena and Bologna production zones, extending the range into sparkling Pignoletto and still reds from the Colli Bolognesi.

Farming is certified organic under ICEA from the 2019 harvest, covering both vineyard and cellar. All vines are hand-worked and fruit is harvested by hand. The cellar uses gravity from the crusher to move must directly into autoclaves, avoiding machinery contact at a stage when oxidation and bruising risk are highest. Sulfur dioxide use has been deliberately reduced across the range.

Place

Lambrusco di Sorbara is a denomination carved from the Modena plain north of the city, along the corridor between the Secchia and Panaro rivers. The soils here are sandy and clayey, deposited over centuries by river sediment, and they drain freely in ways that the heavier clay south of Modena does not. That drainage shapes the grape: Sorbara grown on these lighter soils tends toward high natural acidity, pale ruby colour, and pronounced aromatic lift rather than the darker pigment and firmer tannin of Lambrusco Grasparossa di Castelvetro, the denomination anchored in heavier clay further south.

Fiorini's Sozzigalli estate sits in the heart of the Sorbara denomination, with the Secchia River close enough that its alluvial influence is visible in the soil texture. The Torre dei Nanni holding, roughly ten hectares on the hills south of Modena, sits in different geology entirely: mainly clayey, silt-rich ground that the estate associates with more body and weight in its still wines. Two distinct places, two distinct wine identities, held under a single family.

Soil And Site

Sozzigalli, the historic Sorbara estate, has vines around thirty years old growing in sandy and clayey soil directly shaped by the Secchia River. The sandy fraction dominates drainage and keeps the root zone from holding excess moisture, which limits berry size and concentrates aromatics. The Ganaceto parcel, five hectares retained on the Modena plain after the family moved production to the hills in 2011, sits on comparable river-influenced ground and still supplies fruit for the Sorbara range.

Torre dei Nanni, the hill holding joining the Modena and Bologna production areas, carries mainly clayey, silt-rich soils. Where Sozzigalli's sandy ground favours delicacy, Torre dei Nanni's heavier soil supports the ageing of still wines made from Barbera and Cabernet Sauvignon.

Story

The estate dates to 1919, a founding year that predates the formal Lambrusco appellations by decades. For most of that early century the Modena plain was wine country farmed for local use and bulk trade, and Sorbara was a grape before it was a denomination.

The critical modern turn came in 2011, when the family moved its entire production operation from the historic Modena flatlands to the hills, building a new cellar at Savignano sul Panaro. The hill move gave the estate access to different soils and appellations, making the Torre dei Nanni range possible. But rather than walking away from the Sorbara plain entirely, the family kept five hectares near Ganaceto, the original flatland site. That decision kept the Corte degli Attimi rooted in the denomination and the river-influenced soils that give Sorbara its character.

The 2019 harvest marked ICEA organic certification for both vineyard and cellar, formalising a commitment to farming without synthetic chemical plant-protection products, herbicides, fungicides, or insecticides, and reducing sulfur dioxide in the wines. The new cellar, a 1,000-square-metre facility at Savignano sul Panaro with an adjoining barrel room for still wine ageing, gave the estate infrastructure to pursue both sparkling and still wines from organic-certified fruit.

Vineyards And Cellar

Hand harvesting across all three holdings means fruit arrives at the cellar in better condition than mechanically harvested grapes: berry integrity is higher, oxidation starts later, and sorting decisions happen at the vine rather than on a conveyor. For a sparkling wine built around aromatic delicacy, harvest method has direct consequences in the glass.

After crushing, must moves by gravity into autoclaves without further machinery contact. In autoclave fermentation, which is the standard method for Lambrusco production, the secondary fermentation that creates the sparkle happens under pressure in sealed tanks rather than in bottle. The advantage over tank-to-bottle transfer is minimal handling; the advantage over traditional method is speed and the preservation of fresh fruit character over biscuit and yeast complexity.

The barrel room at Savignano sul Panaro is used for ageing the still Barbera and Cabernet Sauvignon from Torre dei Nanni. These wines follow a different cellar path from the Lambrusco range: oak contact and slower development in the barrel room.

Wines

The range divides along geographic and stylistic lines.

Corte degli Attimi is the signature Lambrusco di Sorbara DOC: a lightly sparkling red with vivid violet colour, very fine perlage, and strawberry-forward fruit from Sozzigalli and Ganaceto parcels on sandy, river-influenced soils. Secondary fermentation runs in autoclave. The wine is light-bodied with high natural acidity, a characteristic of the Sorbara denomination that separates it from the broader Lambrusco family.

The Grasparossa range draws from the denomination south of Modena, where heavier clay soils and the Grasparossa grape produce sparkling reds with deeper colour and more tannic grip than Sorbara. These are fuller, darker wines where the fruitiness runs toward black cherry rather than strawberry.

The Torre dei Nanni label covers the Colli Bolognesi hill range: sparkling Pignoletto, a white grape native to the Bologna hills with floral lift and lively acidity; still Barbera, which on clayey, silt-rich soils builds the kind of mid-weight body and cherry-fruit depth the grape is known for across northern Italy; and still Cabernet Sauvignon from the same hillside ground, aged in the barrel room.

In The Glass

Corte degli Attimi opens with strawberry and violet aromatics, lifted and clean, the kind of nose that reads as fresh fruit rather than fermentation. In the mouth, the perlage is fine and persistent enough to carry the wine without overpowering the fruit, and the acidity is the defining palate note: bright and high, balancing the light sweetness of the Sorbara grape and keeping the finish short and clean rather than cloying. The colour is a vivid violet-ruby, which is characteristic of the denomination and signals the light tannin and low phenolic extraction that Sorbara typically delivers.

The Grasparossa wines move into different territory: darker in colour, firmer on the palate, with black cherry and plum replacing the strawberry register of Sorbara. The tannin is present and gripping compared to the near-absent tannin of Corte degli Attimi.

The Torre dei Nanni still reds are a different pace entirely: the Barbera and Cabernet Sauvignon are built for the table, with oak from barrel ageing rounding the edges of the hill-grown fruit and giving the wines enough weight to sit alongside food.

A Bottle To Understand It

Corte degli Attimi Lambrusco di Sorbara DOC is the right first bottle. It comes from Sozzigalli and Ganaceto on the Modena plain, made from varietal Lambrusco di Sorbara grown in sandy, river-influenced soils near the Secchia River. The wine is lightly sparkling, violet in colour, with fine persistent bubbles, strawberry and violet aromatics, and a palate driven by high acidity rather than body or tannin. There is no oak. The wine finishes clean and short, which makes it work well with food: the classic Emilian pairing is with cured meats, Parmigiano-Reggiano, or the fatty, rich pasta dishes of the Modena plain. Start here to understand what sandy Sorbara soils and autoclave fermentation deliver, and why this denomination sits apart from every other Lambrusco.

Anecdote

In 2011 the Fiorini family moved its entire production operation from the Modena plain to the hills, building the new cellar at Savignano sul Panaro and shifting the focus toward the Torre dei Nanni range and the Colli Bolognesi. It was the kind of move that in other families would mean the old flatland vineyards get sold off or rented out: too far from the new cellar, awkward to manage from the hills, tied to a denomination that had not yet found its wider audience. Instead, the family kept five hectares near the historic Ganaceto site. The vines there are on the same sandy, river-influenced ground that defines Lambrusco di Sorbara, and they still supply the fruit for Corte degli Attimi. No explanation was offered in a press release; the vines simply stayed, and the wine kept coming from the plain.

Final Word

Poderi Fiorini is a Modena estate holding two geographies and two wine identities at once: the sandy Sorbara flatlands, where the Corte degli Attimi gets its violet colour, strawberry fruit, and high natural acidity from river-influenced soils; and the Colli Bolognesi hills, where Torre dei Nanni produces Pignoletto and barrel-aged still reds from heavier clay and silt. Organic certification from 2019, hand harvesting across all sites, and gravity-fed cellar work link the two halves of the range. The Sorbara is where the estate is most itself.

Sources

Open Poderi Fiorini Soc. Agric. S.s. in the interactive map →