Across the world of Italian wine and beyond, industry observers are decrying the looming demise of our trade.

Young people are drinking less and less wine, they note. People are consuming fewer alcoholic beverages in general as they focus on health and wellness. Climate change is reshaping and perhaps demystifying our notion of terroir. Italy alone has an abundance of unsellable surplus wine destined to be distilled — despite diminished production levels owed to global warming.

I spent last week in New York with my longtime friend and client Alicia Lini, producer of Lini 910 Lambrusco. We were there to meet with media. At each of our appointments, our interlocutors spoke of our mission and duty — as producers of wine and chroniclers of wine — to share the values and joy of our work with the public.

It was at one of our highest profile meetings that a young colleague, an assistant to one of the most well known wine writers in the U.S., suggested that Lambrusco could be the category to save Italian wine.

They had just returned from a trip to Emilia and had been thrilled to taste Lambrusco in its natural habitat.

Lambrusco is a great wine for young people who are just getting into wine, they said. It’s easy to understand; it’s fun and unusual for people not accustomed to red sparkling wines, a conversation piece; it’s food-friendly and low in alcohol; and — most significantly — it’s not prohibitively expensive.

All of my friends love Lambrusco, they told us.

It reminded me of what another Lambrusco producer once told me, using a ¢75 but on-point word: Lambrusco is propaedeutic, they said. As per the young professional’s notes above, it could the perfect wine “to get people into wine.”

Some believe that Lambrusco is the world’s oldest grape variety to be continuously vinified since antiquity. And some of a certain age will remember a time when Emilians served nothing but Lambrusco with the culinary treasures of their region.

Maybe our quest to “save” Italian wine would be well served by getting back to the basics.