Bulli Colli Piacentini "Julius" Frizzante, Emilia-Romagna, Italy NV

I'm drawn in by wine labels the same way I'm drawn in by book covers. Old things always lure me in. And the result is that I spend a lot of money on wine with old school labels and books with old-fashioned covers. Bulli got me with its delightful old world look. Roman numerals. Obscure coin sketches. Bookish, all-caps serif font. Keys to my art historian heart.

Born five generations ago in Colli Piacentini in Emilia-Romagna, Bulli makes sparkling wines in a style that has been around forever: Rifermentato in bottiglia or "refermented in bottle." Capped before fermentation is finished, the bottle traps the carbon dioxide, creating a bubble that is more frizzy than sparky. The phrase is on the bottle along with senza solfiti aggiunti or "no sulfur added," which—though in vogue with the natural movement—has appeared on the label since the 1950s.

This wine, made by La Signora Bulli and her son Leonardo, is a bolle macerato or macerated bubble. Unusually, it's 100 percent malvasia di candia (harvested by local retirees), an aromatic white grape that most often appears in blends. It's macerated with the skins for five days and goes through malolactic fermentation which gives it body and fruit. It's fresh but with depth—the perfect wine for a Thanksgiving aperitivo spread or for sneaking off to the back porch solo with seconds of apple pie.

In review, here we have an organically grown, skin contact, ancestral method sparkling, harvested by Italian retirees, made by a mother and son with no added sulfur—all in the package of a classic Italian wine. I needn't remind you that before "natural" was a thing, it was already a thing.

I wrote about Bulli for PUNCH’s Inaugural Wines of Right Now list if you want to dig in a bit more.