Gelisi Antonio Sangue di Giuda Dolce

Grapes: Croatina (60 percent), barbera (30 percent), uva rara (10 percent)

Region: Pavese, Fiuli-Venezia-Giulia, Northern Italy

Vintage: 2008

Price: $9.99

In the glass: This wine is a very deep purplish-red color with an opaque dark violet core, going out into a dark red rim definition with purple foam and some bubbliness, thereafter very high viscosity.

On the nose: Gelisi Antonio Sangue di Giuda Dolce is an unusual wine that exudes massive amounts of berry crush and jam, black cherry sorbet, dark chocolate phenolics, violet pastilles and just a touch of liquid minerality underlying. The sparkliness of the wine carries the pleasant scents.

On the palate: It is the very definition of a fruit bomb, but instead of the usually concentrated and extracted kind of fruit, this is all naturally sweet from the dark grape must, and overwhelms the palate with fizzy black cherry meat, crushed blackberries, marionberries and raspberries. There’s even blueberry cobbler here and excellent balance, so while there’s sweetness, there’s also acidity and some tannin structure behind it. It naturally has a long and soft finish.

Odds and ends: Sangue di Giuda or Blood of Judas wine is certainly an interesting addition to any dinner party or pre-summer celebration. Sporting only 7.5 percent alcohol, it won’t knock your socks off, as so many big red wines tend to do nowadays. The sweetness in the wine is from the low conversion of sugar to alcohol during the first fermentation. If the degree of sugar is naturally high and the fermentation stops before it has all converted using the naturally occurring yeasts, then you have a wine that has low alcohol and higher residual sugars. It is a wine that can be chilled to about 50 degrees Fahrenheit and simply enjoyed as an aperitif or even liquid dessert. While it is from the 2008 vintage, wines with this level of sweetness can last a long time and it should drink well through 2020.

Gil Lempert-Schwarz’s wine column appears Wednesdays. Write him at P.O. Box 50749, Henderson, NV 89106-0749, or email him at gil@winevegas.com.