I know a trick question when I hear one. “Red or rosé?” Gabriele Cristini asked as he proffered a plate of slow-cooked beef on a bed of polenta. The answer was so obviously, so screamingly “red” that I smelt a rat. Then he whipped out a bottle from behind him — not just any rosé, but sparkling! — and popped the cork alongside my prejudices. Turns out melt-in-mouth meat and palate-cleaning fizz is an unlikely but heavenly match.

Italy is notoriously a land of food rules: no cappuccino after midday, no chicken with pasta, no parmesan on fish — and certainly no pink bubbles with a juicy slab of manzo. But here in Franciacorta, in eastern Lombardy, about an hour northeast from Milan — where Cristini is the chef at Corte Lantieri, a family-owned winery, restaurant and elegant B&B — the normal rules don’t apply. This is the land of sparkling wine and, because this is Italy, there’s a sparkling wine for every course, feeling and every occasion.