We’re on a food tour with Italian Culinary Adventures. At dusk, we find ourselves skittering along the rural strip of road in the Modena hinterlands in a minivan. The van doesn’t seem so mini on these narrow strips of tarmac winding serpentine around hills. Wine hills. The best hills.

I’m about to continue my Lambrusco education, which started years ago at our village’s annual saint’s day eat-and-drink-to-excess day. My neighbor and best friend in Italy, Armando, had popped the cork on some bubbly.