Croci and friends – fizz misunderstood

Now that Lambrusco is no longer unequivocally dismissed as cheap and nasty (see Tam's recent enthusiasm, for example), I can finally come out of the closet and admit I love the sparkling white and red wines of the Colli Piacentini and Gutturnio. In the last 40 years these wines have experienced a fall from grace similar to that of Lambrusco, even though the best examples are so very different from insipid industrial examples. That makes it particularly hard to distinguish between the good and the downright awful as, without intimate knowledge, you never know what you'll end up with...