Retrieved from my spam file 😉*
I made my way to the cellar. Cool stone underfoot, a single light carving shadows from the darkness. My cousins were already there, not doing much of anything. Just present. Just attending. We didn't talk much. Didn't need to. The wine was holding court - that gentle gurgle and hiss of wild yeast doing ancient work in wicker-wrapped demijohns that might have held our great-grandparents' wine.
Not literally. Not yet. But the vines are telling a story that contradicts oodles of years of wine history. Barolo is sweating. Chianti is scrambling. Prosecco is looking nervously at the thermometer. Meanwhile, on a volcano in Sicily and in the forgotten hills of Basilicata, indigenous grapes that have spent millennia dealing with heat and drought are suddenly looking like the smartest bet in Italy.
For the first time in modern wine history, the center of gravity is shifting. Not because of fashion or critics or investment. Because of physics. Because southern Italy—the part that was always too hot, too rustic, too other—turns out to be the part that already knows how to survive what's coming.
But here's what you won't see: the unspoken contract. The implicit understanding that this week in Chianti, these meals, this business-class ticket, comes with an expectation. Not a requirement, mind you. Just an... understanding. You don't bite the hand that flies you first class and puts you up in a restored monastery. That would be ungrateful.
Is this journalism? Marketing? Or something murkier that we've all agreed not to examine too closely?
Ten years I wrote 5 Italian Wine Regions to Watch in 2015. Ten years - long enough to age a Barolo, to see a vineyard replanted reach maturity, to watch trends rise and fall like the tides at San Benedetto del Tronto. So what did I get right? What did I miss? And what does the murky sphere tell me now?
I've spent forty years navigating Italian wine in America, and I still find myself circling back to these fundamentals. Not because they're complicated—they're not, really—but because understanding them changes how you see the entire Italian wine landscape. It's like learning to read the grain in a piece of wood before you start carving.
"A fascinating wine showing flower stems, orange peel and bark with some dried mushrooms. The structure and length are exceptional with a medium to full body and tight, focused tannins. Ends with a persistent, polished and refined finish. Caresses in every sense. Better in five years but if you get the chance to drink now, go for it!" 98/100
So wrote James Suckling in 2024 about the 2022 Terre Nere Etna Rosso 'Prephylloxera' La Vigna di Don Peppino/ Caldera Sottana
Last week, a few of us friends gathered for a long, laughter-filled luncheon—one of those radiant affairs where time bends, stories sprawl, and the corks keep popping. Among the bottles opened that day, one stood out—not just for what it was, but for what it promised to become.
The 2022 Terre Nere Etna Rosso 'Prephylloxera' La Vigna di Don Peppino is a wine forged in fire—literally, born on the volcanic slopes of Mount Etna, where ancient vines dig deep into ashen soil. It inspired something more than just notes and ratings. It begged for a myth.
So I decided to trace this wine’s imagined evolution over a hundred years—through time, memory, and metamorphosis.
To help, I enlisted my clandestine consigliere, ÅïΩfonso—an arcane ignis fatuus who whispers tweaks, nudges metaphors, and occasionally channels the Ancient Greeks. ÅïΩf claims to see the long arc of a wine’s soul. I'm simply the relayable messenger.
Who better to guide such a journey than Empedocles, the 5th-century B.C. Greco-Sicilian philosopher-poet who believed all matter arose from the eternal dance of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water—and who famously dove into the molten mouth of Etna in a bid for godhood.
The chef noted ironically, “We have a lot more of what people consider traditional Italian,” but also admitted, “we couldn’t skip the opportunity to put chicken parmesan on the menu.”
Distilling it down into three areas - Devotion, Direction and Dissent - let’s dive in.
So, I went into the kitchen and took my knives to some skin-on, bone-in chicken breasts. With the oven preheating at 325°F, and the outside approaching 100°F, I took off my shirt. And put on a cooking apron, the one I got from Petra winery in Tuscany. I love that grease-stained smock. It’s army green and has seen a lot of skirmishes in this kitchen. The cats started to come around, for they have long sensed that when someone is in the kitchen hustling about, there might be treats in it for them. They are well fed. They could be Roman street cats.
