Showing posts with label Fantasy Island. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fantasy Island. Show all posts

Sunday, October 09, 2022

Italy's "Miracle Harvest" for the 2022 Wine Crop

"Un Miracolo!"

Get ready, for here it comes! The long-awaited (and inevitable) treatise tsunami over the 2022 Italian grape harvest. Just like the ubiquitous dissertations on the perfect Thanksgiving wine or the vaulted Springtime piece on the gaggle of new rosé wines. Why do we love these so? Too many scribes today are looking for the easy-layout, the slam dunk, the no-brainer, when it comes to content. The 21st century has broken everything, and the internet leads the way, always and in every way. So, let’s get ready for a plethora of boilerplate and an avalanche of cliché, with regards to the 2022 harvest. It will be epic!

Sunday, April 12, 2020

Life on the Island - Love, Sex & Death in Sicily

From the archives
Una Favola
Mozia 

Quali volti nell’aria?
Pirati o mercanti, maghi o scienziati
con formule e amuleti scendono sulla riva?
Quale incantesimo ferma a Mozia
il fluire del tempo?
Forse un vento del Libano
senza memoria ridesta visioni
di un sogno d’Oriente.

Nel Tofet bruciano incenso e timo.
Tanit splende con vesti di porpora
e seni di lino.
Caste fanciulle danzano sulle brezze del mare.
Pan ha sepolto il passato con vigne, alberi e capre.
Nelle luci, nelle ombre tra vasi, anfore e steli
riaffiorano sempre canti orientali.

Oh tu,
feniceo o plebeo, che adagi i tuoi passi
nella piccola isola sospesa e sognante
in remoti millenni,
volgi il pensiero a Colei, fanciulla,
che forse bruciò per te in sacrificio a Tanit.
- Vittorio Cimiotta

“Don’t go to Mozia looking for answers,” my Sicilian friend advised, “You’ll only find more questions. But by all means, go.” Those were her parting comments to me as we hugged goodbye. It would be a world far from the hazy blur of Vinitaly. But it was a must see.

Sunday, December 01, 2019

A late-night dispatch from a tired and wary Italian wine export agent in China

[ Imagine a scenario where Italian wine exporters, winemakers and their agents make their twice (or thrice) yearly pilgrimage to China in search of trade and success. And imagine, if you will, one of those agents sending a note in the middle of the night. It has happened many times, and as such, this one emanated from one of those cold, dark, lonely rooms, overlooking a pop-up city of millions in the middle of the night.]


Dear A,

It’s 3 A.M. and I got into my room two hours ago. I’m writing to you because it’s afternoon where you are, and back home in Italy people have sat down to their Sunday dinner. They have other, more important things on their mind than my travails in the Middle Kingdom.

I’ve just come in from another wine banquet, this time in Zhengzhou. Course after course, some recognizable, some as foreign as the Chinese characters on the signs. And wine, Italian wine. Multiple vintages of this wine or that wine. In my case, it is our Brunello, which goes back many years. How our hosts found the 1955, I’ll never know. We don’t even have it in our cave back home. But that seems to be the way it is in China. One can find things seemingly lost to history. On the other hand, one can find that here the past is shunned, forever lost. At least the truth of history. But that’s what it must be like when you live under the rule of a leader who had himself voted ruler for life. God, what I’d give to have a plate of spaghetti con peperoncino aglio olio right now, to settle my stomach and to rid my palate from the taste of smoked duck and soy.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

The Elite Cabal and Their Conspiracy for the Future of Wine

90 was the first one to arrive, always early, always ready to please. He took a seat, at a table set for twelve, and waited patiently.

He always did well in school, and afterwards, in graduate school, he didn’t finish because he wanted to get right into the swing of things. 90 is action oriented, favorite quote is, “Let’s make something happen.”

91 followed, looking a bit dazed and confused. She looked like she hadn’t slept in days, but she arrived in starched blouse and pressed trousers, no slouch was 91. Her biggest problem was that even though she excelled among her peers, she didn’t rise to the level of excellence that she was once thought capable of. But really, this was the same with 92, 93 and 94. They were good, very good. But not great. And great is what the world of premiumization is looking for. 92, 93 and 94 arrived and sat down on the other side of the table.

Sunday, April 01, 2012

The New Symbol of Excellence

The biggest news that came out of Vinitaly 2012 last week was the announcement of an agreement the Italian government reached with the EU in Brussels to accept the proposal for a level of wine similar to the DOCG within the European DOP protocol. Giuseppe Martellino, President of the Com.Media Nazionale Vini had this to say, “Italy produces wine at the highest levels and it is only right that we continue to reward and recognize those wines of greatness in the organization of our wine laws, not only in Italy but in the European community. Today Italy and her wine industry have seen that recognition by our neighbors and colleagues. This is a great day for Italian wines!”

Thursday, February 24, 2011

Adaptation

Was it a dream or did it really happen?

Outtakes from a storyboard imagining the direction a recent dinner might take in honor a member of a somewhat famous Italian winemaker family

The first course was a spinach salad, lightly dressed, and served family style. I am a shy person and know no one at the table save a few colleagues. Thankfully they were there. The winemaker was at another table. Really, really nice person.

Backing up first. I called the host and asked when the event would be over, as I wanted to stop by a friend’s restaurant and have a glass of wine with him. We talk food, he is on the cutting edge of Italian things in town, and I hadn’t seen him since December. The host said, wed be through about 9:30 tops. Great.

Wednesday, November 05, 2008

For Your Pleasure

It doesn’t seem like eight years has passed since we entered the new millennium in 2001, but it has. It was the beginning of a very difficult time; my wife Liz passed away in Feb 2001, the political process started to change and the world changed with it. September 11 showed up on the world’s doorstep, and many of us have been taking it one day at a time, hoping for better days to come.

As I was jogging this evening by the high school, a speaker announced over the stadium address system, that there were refreshments in the concession stand. He described the available items: candy, popcorn, hotdogs, and then he said three little words, “for your pleasure.” It sounded like a throwback in time when things were so much simpler and in its uncomplicated message I thought back over the last 40 years and what some of our cinematic dreamers and Italian wine visionaries thought the world would be like in 2001. And while it sure wasn’t all that they projected in the movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey, it sure has been a heck of a trip. So, at this time I’d like to jump into the WABAC machine, back to 2001 and see what wines I would have predicted for the past, here in the safety of the future. Of course the wines are from the Italian trail, and beyond.

Ever since the time I attempted to simultaneously sell a Tuscan Novello and a Vernaccia di Serrapatrona, that would have been about this time in 1984, I have wondered why Italian wines chose me. Not just me, but for some of the hard stuff, I sure have had my share of those assignments. Driving around with a delivery van full of baby Sangiovese alongside a quirky, dry, foamy red wine made by a madman in the hills of the Marche. What was I thinking then? Even now it sounds bizarre. Don Quixote, only this time we weren’t looking for windmills. We were looking for space stations for these special travelers. And in honor of those two wines, in the 2001 of our little story here, we have an homage: Novello Di Ascoli, a modern wine about reincarbonation.

Chianti: 2001 was a little project that went beyond Chianti 2000. I’m not sure if people realize the first Italian in space was Sangiovese. A little known experiment resulted in growing and harvesting the grapes aboard the International space station. Limited release, only about 20 cases, hydroponically grown. It was intended to test the ideas of extra-terroirestrial winegrowing. It is an amazing red wine, without the pull of gravity and ratings. No, only the influence of the astro-agronomist-winemaker, an American of Italian descent. It challenges the limitations of the Italian wine trail that we terrestrials put on it. Buckminster Fuller said, “Whatever nature lets you do is natural.” I wish all of you could have tried it with me. But alas, a quick trip to Washington D.C., some time ago, was the only opportunity any of us will have. But there will be more. Watch for a sparkling wine to come, made in zero gravity, called Zero-Zero. No dirt on their space-boots, but lots of ardent advances orbiting above us.

Down in the Cilento National Park, there is a colony of Italians who speak Esperanto. They escaped the area around Vesuvius many years ago and decided to leave behind their dialect. But they took their grapes with them and started making a red wine for the new millennium, to coalesce their past with their future. It is a cult wine on the islands around Naples and further south. I have only seen and had it once, from a private cellar in Panarea. The wine reminded me of the reds made by Galardi. I have heard people say they have traded two bottles of Le Pin for one bottle of “Vulkano” Campania Ruga. I have tried both wines. I would say two bottles of Le Pin for one from the Esperantani’s is a fair deal.

About 11 years ago, in a place near Colfiorito, there was a terrible earthquake. When they got to digging out some of the buildings, rescue workers found a lab book from a vineyardist, describing a project code-named “Il Grifi”. The project, like its name, had as its goal to combine three grapes to make a new wine. Here the vineyardist had been researching, via recombinant DNA, the creation of a wine that had as its parents, Sangiovese, Sagrantino and Montepulciano. And yes, for many years in Umbria and the Marche, winemakers have blended these grapes together to make various wines. William Sylvester, who starred in the Stanley Kubrick film, had made a film in Italy and was fascinated with this area and with wine. So he funded this little known experimentalist. Italy loves to resuscitate ancient things: statues, grapes, legends. In this case, as we headed back to 2001, we discovered that the wine had finally been made, in minute quantities. An amazing wine, combining the ephemeral verve of Sangiovese, the tannic and alcoholic power of the Sagrantino and the lubriciousness of the Montepulciano. Joy upon joy, an almost perfect wine in time for the new age. But alas, only one year was made and only 1113 bottles. They were mostly served at an autumn Sagra in Colfiorito for the special red potato named after the area, which makes the most wonderful base for the local gnocchi. The wine disappeared into memory, along with the best gnocchi I had ever had. The wine? Sangrapulciano.

Two wines, Navicella and Passeggiata, were “good soul” efforts to make right the promise to reach the moon before the end of the decade. In the Italian’s efforts, though, it managed to arrive about 30 years later. End of decade, end of century, end of millennium, hey it’s only time, no?

Navicella was the wine intended for the first course, something from the aquaculture tanks. Passeggiata was created for the second stage, more experimental than the first wine. It was a sci-fi way of twinning tradition (Navicella) with innovation (Passeggiata) and for those who experienced the wine, I've been told it was a magical. Again, this was eight years ago when the Italians were embracing the next big thing. Now we are earthbound again, arguing this time over tradition vs. innovation. There are a few of these wines available on the auction circuits. A large enological school in Northeastern Italy was in incubating site for these wines. The Lega Nord, and a then unknown party operative, put an end to it. That little known operative would someday, in the future, join with Berlusconi and attempt to influence events in a larger and more important wine producing region, with near cataclysmic results.

Out last find caused a little flap among the retro-futurists in the room. Paraspruzzi was proposed to bridge the workers in the fields, those who tromp through the primal slime in their waders, with the elevated shapers of fashion. Originally the marketers wanted to call it “Chiaccerone”. Another on the board wanted to name it “Lo Scroccone”. But it was felt that normal wine lovers wouldn’t know how to pronounce it. Not that Paraspruzzi is that easy, but it sounded like the celebrity photographers who were known to frequent all the “in” places looking for those same nine beautiful people to snap up.

This was actually one of the most successful of the wines; it had a run of three vintages. Later as it was being packaged to sell to one of the large Euro-spirit-lux corporations, there were a string of lawsuits. As it turned out, everyone spent more on lawyers than the plan could ever return in ten years, so the project was jettisoned. A real shame, because the wine had a bona fide grip on the cognoscenti of the Italian wine industry. The bloggers never found out about it, this was buried deep in Puglia under the cover of an ancient Masseria. The remaining wine fetches a pretty Euro.


There lies my time and space odyssey of 2001, following the wines of the future back to the past. Submitted for your pleasure.





Post #400

Friday, October 31, 2008

O Soave Fanciulla

I’ve been passing an evening thinking about the Italian man and his obsession with women. Older men with younger women, younger men with older women, young men with young women, mature men with mature women. You name the combination; there are scores of Italian men this very moment obsessing on a woman somewhere.

One of the attractions is the sheer pleasure of thinking about this subject. Whenever I talk to my fellow friends, it seems that whatever the age, and whatever their marital status, the conversation eventually heads into woman territory. Maybe the Italians are oversexed or just easily aroused, what does it matter? It just is.

When venturing along the wine trail in Italy, sooner or later, wine runs into women. And vice versa. After all, wine is romantic. Wine is a catalyst for love. Or a lubricant for lust. Maybe that is why wine is so doggone indispensable.

Look at a young couple as they are falling in love. What do they do? They linger over a bottle of wine, or two. Lubricant or catalyst, wine has a place in the course of romance.

What are some of the wines we men see as more effective than hormones? Which are the corks to pop that lead beyond the barrel room to the boudoir? After a scientific polling of a handful of male friends (the committee), here are a few wines that have been very successful in their pursuit of amorous adventures. Mind you, this is research and as such has been carefully compiled and recorded for posterity.

The first step is bubbly. Be it Champagne or Franciacorta, Prosecco or Cava, nothing succeeds faster than bubbles. Our committee has chosen a rosé Franciacorta for the sparkling representative. And while Champagne is ultimately a very classy choice, Franciacorta suggests subtlety and the slow dance to the “chambre”.

Rosé for the light onion skin color, similar to the object of one of the groups’ fascination. Dim lighting, soft music, little or no food (keep the senses alert) and moving the object of affection closer to the web. Not yet time for Rossini, patience. Just a little light chamber music, maybe a twelve string guitar with slow, calm melodies. And let the wine fill the emptiness and prepare the way.

For the second act, my consulting group suggested we move towards red wine, higher in alcohol and a little headier stuff. The dew is off the lily, the excitement of newness is behind us now. And while we must still act like we are interested in romance, are we not men? We want one thing. Always. One way or another. Or so the women always tell us. Embrace the archetype, is the counsel of the committee. And nothing embraces the archetype better than a bottle of Chianti. We’re in stage two, not time to bring out the big guns, the Aglianicos and the Amarones. Just a little classico, sans fiasco.

Act three, we wander into la donna è mobile country. Time for power, richness, whelm and overwhelm. Long arias, lengthy and more time-consuming. So we will be needing something from Piemonte. A blend of Nebbiolo and Barbera or possibly even some of the dreaded Cabernet. Coppo in Piemonte makes a red wine called Alter Ego, a Cabernet/Barbera red which is plush and concentrated. More than a sipping wine, so have some food for the poor dear, don’t starve her. Don’t worry; there will be plenty of time for Brachetto and dessert, after midnight. Just let Verdi work his magic along with Coppo’s concoction.

Too late for an overture, but maybe time for a sorbetto. Freshen things up a bit. Spruce up the place. Nothing too sweet, maybe slightly bitter, something that will move into the romantic realm, but not too blatant. Time for a white wine? I would go with a Fiano with a little age on it, that way you could be a little philosophical while you are spinning your web around your little drosophila. And with something like a Fiano, or even a higher level Soave, there will be ample alcohol to divert the object of your attention from the main objective. All the while the parties are experiencing a wonderful wine and so if the finale doesn’t result in what you had planned, all is not lost. But most likely you will succeed. And still not veer too far off the wine trail in Italy.

Sometimes it just seems that it will never lead to what you have been desiring, like going to see La Bohème and arriving to the opera on the night they were staging Gilbert and Sullivan. But if you should persevere and be patient, then you will be rewarded. Life, love and loss, all part of the cuvee of a grand wine. For this act, we thought it could only be staged with a sultry Amarone. And not a small player but something that makes a statement, like a Viviani or a Le Ragose, Cavalchina or if possible, a Dal Forno. One in the group thought a night with a bottle of Amarone could persuade even the most bitter and cold-hearted woman. Not that any in that group would ever attempt to scale a peak in the depths of the Underworld. Call it overkill to overshoot the mark and reach the goal. Sound cynical? Cold? Calculating? Were not talking vodka martinis, that would be cold and calculating. No, Amarone is powerfully persuasive but classically romantic.

Wild passionate one night stand? Bizet’s Carmen and a powerful and volatile Sicilian red, what else? Something like the Lamuri from Tasca or the Cadetto from La Lumia. This is wine to drink in a moment of passion before the sun rises, and to be gone before she awakens. Brandishing swords and swashbuckling and a climactic though far too soon lowering of the curtains.

Next, mixing it up. Some in our group had variations on a theme in mind, so to propitiate them we team-worked the wine for that occasion. Sexy but not vulgar. One of us really wanted to propose a southern dessert wine, a passito. Another suggested keeping it a little lighter, maybe a moscato d’asti. But neither of those ideas really clicked. And then one of the geniuses in this brain trust hit upon the idea of a little known white wine from Lazio. Coenobium, a blend of Verdicchio, Grechetto and Trebbiano, organically farmed and made into wine by Cistercian nuns. Sexy? Oh yes, this is a white wine masquerading as a red wine of little color, a pigmentless wine with plenty of stroke. Did I really say that? And while there is the monastic craft of the wine, there is a communal pleasure that the wine delivers. Nuff said? Now I’m really going to hell.

Where is Puccini when you really need him? Waiting in the wings, for the finale with that sweet little bottle of wine? But this is no time for Moscato or just any passito. This might be the last time, so why not take down a bottle of the stuff legends are made of? I will need to go back to one of my posts and plagiarize myself (and Coleridge).
“Sagrantino passito from Antonelli San Marco in Montefalco. It is one of the primal wines of central Italy."

"Lights down, music to a low chant, with only the heat from the candles. Once inside, the wine turned my palate towards the pagan. We had landed in Xanadu: the sacred river, the pleasure dome, the caverns measureless to man and the sunless sea. The milk of Paradise. "

"What to do with such a wine? if a dessert is needed, go to your local church and pilfer some of the communion hosts, pre-sanctified. Dip them in a wild honey and dust them with cinnamon. If you must have the Body to go with the Blood.”

All the while Verdi’s Nabucco plays into the morning towards its meeting of destiny with the rising sun.



Romance is so exhausting – Nessun Dorma – Bona Notte


Wednesday, September 17, 2008

The Meltdown

From the Archives ~ Aug.22, 2007


Annabella and her friend Lily were waiting for us at the airport. A small car, but ample enough for the four of us with our carry on bags. I had met Lily when she was married to Roberto. That was several years back at Vinitaly. They seemed happy enough then.

Lily was somewhere between 38 and 42, a dangerous time for an Italian woman, married or divorced. She can become anxious and unsettled, like a wild cat in a cage. If married, her husband’s friends can be suspect. If divorced her ex-husband’s friends can be considered provocateurs. Fear, superstition and uncertainty, with life and the future looming ahead, all add up to a powder keg of tension and explosive emotions. Perilous times.

“The first summer a newly divorced Italian woman spends is a test of how she will spend the rest of her life,” a saying goes. Here on Pantelleria she would be removed from the scrutiny of the local people who know her in Sicily. But her inner sentinel would still be on guard. For now it appeared her primary goal was getting as tan as she had been when she first blossomed into a woman at 16.


The airport in Trapani was unavailable for landing. Umberto had a friend in the Italian military, so he called ahead to Pantelleria for the unscheduled landing. The airport in Pantelleria is busier in August than most of the year, but it wasn’t really a problem of traffic. As the private plane touched down the temperature reading outside was 38°C. It was 10:00 AM.

A short drive to the resort went smoothly enough. A little idle chatter and gossip, nothing to sink the teeth into yet. Lily was a student of music and Marsala, her father was a winemaker, mother an opera singer. We were going to taste some of his older wines along with a few others from some of the luminary winemakers of the region. Marco de Bartoli was up in Bukkuram. Salvatore Murana was harvesting his Zibibbo at Mueggen. Donnafugata’s Ben Ryè was being harvested and taken over to Khamma Fuori. So at once a busy time for some, and a time of relaxation for others. And at night everyone would gather and eat and drink and enjoy each others company.

This time of the year they don’t do too many primi's or secondi’s. But being Sicily there was an abundance of dolci; in liquid, in solid and in other guises.


And the cards games. Ever since I watched my grandparents playing Scopa or Briscola, I was fascinated with people spending time playing cards. As a young boy I thought it odd that these old people would spend what few remaining moments they had on earth in pursuit of winning a card game. While my grandparents seemed ancient to me I knew somehow that they wouldn’t always remain so. It frightened me for them that they didn’t realize their folly.

Now I see it was a way for them to relax, unwind, stop the daily chores and duties and take a few breaths.
Umberto seemed to enjoy playing with Lily. Both of them were alone, and while Umberto always has this sense of self-sufficiency, someone like Lily would be a match against his hard stone; something could ignite.

Lily was in her post meltdown sequence, according to Annabella. Not interested in men, but definitely interested in parts of them. Conflicted, angry, hurt, vulnerable, cautious. A true Sicilian.

The party at Giorgio’s that Friday. I can’t tell you anything about it, I’m sworn to secrecy. I can tell you what we tasted though.

The wines
Marco de Bartoli Marsala Superiore Dieci Anni- 10 years in big oak barrels with the Solera method. 50% Grillo, 50% Inzolia

Marco de Bartoli Marsala Vigna la Miccia Cinque Anni- The wine is aged in small oak barrels for 5 years. 50% Grillo, 50 % Inzolia

Marco de Bartoli Vecchio Samperi- 20 years in old barrels. 70% Grillo, 30% Inzolia

Marco de Bartoli Bukkuram Moscato d`Alessandria (Zibibbo) Passito di Pantelleria


Donnafugata’s "Ben Ryè" 2004 Passito di Pantelleria

Salvatore Murana "Mueggen" Moscato di Pantelleria

Lily also brought some of her fathers aged Marsala wines from the 1960-1970 era. Definitely Vecchio, some Superiore, Riserva and one Vergine.


Like the women in our party, the wines were all ages, in all stages of life. Young, middle-aged and elderly.
They all shared a common familiarness. There was an attractiveness that they all had, but in many cases it was like what one feels for one's mother or daughter, or one's sister. Once in a while the lover would appear. But we were in their milieu, their surroundings, their sea. I was just a carefree observer on a short break.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Suffering ~ Suffolk Style

Commentary by Beatrice Russo


Friday Aug 29 – 8:00 PM
Once again, the old man, IWG, has left me in charge. What an idiot! He knows there are some old bottles, standing up in his wine room, which are pretty close to my birth year. I have already texted my friend down south to see if she wants to come up and raid the room. I even saw a bunch of old Brunellos from her birth year, 1975. I think they’re both ready.

So he goes and abandons ship, says this month really kicked him in the butt, gotta get away, sun and water and wine and friends. OK, so go, nobody reads your damn blog anyway, get on down the road, Viejo, we can handle it around here for a few days wi-chout-cha.

I bet you’re all dying to know, what’s up with the “intern?” I have long ago given up that title, even though IWG still thinks of me as his find. I am so not part of his world anymore, I’ve learned all his mysteries, and I gotta tell you, when he’s running around town saying “ I gotta get more cowbells,” I think we should “make the call", if you know what I mean.

Speaking of running around, IWG seems to think he has everybody fooled into thinking I am some figment of his imagination. He says he already set it up on some older post, just so nobody would offer me a job or a column or book deal. Well, ask the old man’s Sicilian Godfather. Every time I go over there to take him some Googootz or pomodorini from my garden, he livens up a bit. Doesn’t seem to think he’s imagining me. I don’t know why IWG thinks he can claim me as his own. Nobody owns Bea.

Saturday Aug 30 – 11:00 AMI got a text from IWG last night when he landed. I didn't pay any attention to it till now, Great, what’s for lunch and how well will it go with that last bottle of 1990 Cristal that we be chillin’ up?

He wants to talk, says he had a breakthrough. Just another latent and left-behind mid-life crisis that is haunting his oh-so never-will-be-middle-aged keister again. Look it up, he used it. Said one of his friends in the Hamptons uses it. There are very few who are worse name droppers than IWG.


Now he is torn, ‘cause he gets this call trying to bribe him to come into the city for a tasting of old wines , journalists just back from their trips, old Italian wines, ready to go. Spume-man is back in SF and the grand poobah nephew of the great sci-fi guy, well he’s still M.I.A. And that pretty well much cover all his friends. At least the ones he think he’s got left, if you don’t include those whack jobs out in Albany and Nyack.

“No, not those,” he says. “Big ones, really, really big ones. Influential in their own circles. Critics, auction houses, European folk.” Ok, so what? Go.

He said he felt like he was abandoning his hosts on the “island”. Give me a break, they’d love to see him go (I can’t believe he’s gonna let this post stay up).

I left him at that. The bubbly was ready and we had figured out how to make Croque Monsieur with some ancient Fontina and Speck he brought back from his last trip. That should go down real good with it. Now, let’s see where did he put the SPF30? The sun is high and bright.

Why is it something like a 1937 Carmignano so interesting? It’s old, like IWG, that must be it. Hell, I’m digging into old, right here in the wine room; have that 1975 Lisini Brunello lined up and am looking at a 1979 Schloss Schönborn Erbacher Marcobrunn Riesling Spätlese for sometime après swim and sol. Let IWG suffer in Suffolk, tonight friends will come over and we will par-tay.


Sunday Aug 31 – 9:30 AMI told him to not call me before 10. He said he waited until 10:30. Technically, for him, he was right. But I wasn’t ready to hear about his old wine conquests. Our party lasted until 2:30 and some folks crashed around the many beds, while others just split for more private surroundings. I have an aunt of one of the friends who has a cleaning service, he’ll never know. Like he can see anything outside of his own drama? That’s the Mother Lode of Life Theater, boys and girls. Believe me, he’ll never, ever, know.

OK, now he’s all happy, ‘cause he got them to let him take the driver to drive him into town and wait for him, in time to back for some truffle dinner in the Sound. Sounds like he double dipped the elite-class. Good for him.

So it was old Italian for lunch and old French wine for dinner. And there’s still Monday, which he says, in honor of the holiday, will be a tasting of old California wines. I hate him, truly, truly despise every bone in his body. Which is growing ever larger by the day.


Check this out and puke with me ~ His Italian lunch:

1979 Salice Salentino - Malfatti
1978 Etna Rosso - Torrepalino
1976 Morellino Di Scansano - Francheschini

1982 Le Pergola Torte
1979 Tignanello
1979 Sassicaia

1969 Barbaresco Riserve Speciale - Calissanp
1968 Monfortino Riserva - G.Conterno
1961 Chambave Rouge - Ezio Voyay

1937 Carmignano Capezzana

1936 Est !Est!!Est !!! Amabile – Lampari

His Majesty's Truffle dinner and French wine menu:

1966 Margaux
1966 Cheval Blanc
1964 Mouton Rothschild
1962 Petrus
1959 Ausone

1953 Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé Bonnes Mares ( magnum)
1928 and 1929 d'Yquem.


I’m so glad we drank his freekin' 1990 Cristal, sister.

Thursday, July 03, 2008

Which Island?



Where is this island? (otherwise referred to as "Isola da Cevola")




Sunday, April 13, 2008

Love, Sex & Death in Sicily

Una Favola
Mozia

Quali volti nell’aria?
Pirati o mercanti, maghi o scienziati
con formule e amuleti scendono sulla riva?
Quale incantesimo ferma a Mozia
il fluire del tempo?
Forse un vento del Libano
senza memoria ridesta visioni
di un sogno d’Oriente.

Nel Tofet bruciano incenso e timo.
Tanit splende con vesti di porpora
e seni di lino.
Caste fanciulle danzano sulle brezze del mare.
Pan ha sepolto il passato con vigne, alberi e capre.
Nelle luci, nelle ombre tra vasi, anfore e steli
riaffiorano sempre canti orientali.

Oh tu,
feniceo o plebeo, che adagi i tuoi passi
nella piccola isola sospesa e sognante
in remoti millenni,
volgi il pensiero a Colei, fanciulla,
che forse bruciò per te in sacrificio a Tanit.
- Vittorio Cimiotta

“Don’t go to Mozia looking for answers,” my Sicilian friend advised, “You’ll only find more questions. But by all means, go.” Those were her parting comments to me as we hugged goodbye. It would be a world far from the hazy blur of Vinitaly. But it was a must see.


I am an island lover. So to go visit an island one can walk over the water to see, was like something out of an ancient fantasy. That they had vineyards there was lagniappe to me. It being light wine was even better.

Looking back now, the only lightness on this visit would be with the wine.

Flying over the country in the late afternoon, in a small plane, as one approaches the island, the handiwork of the Phoenicians is still evident. At the South gate was the Cothon, a small rectangular harbor with an outlet to the great sea. At the North gate, the ancient causeway over the water from Mozia to Sicily still remains.

On landing in Marsala, the way to Mozia was hindered by haze over a waxing moon. “Walk to Mozia,” was the suggestion. Fortunately the tide was low, this being the Mediterranean, which had long been banished of any emotional swells. The humans were in complete control of those urges.

“You will love this island,” she told me. “At one time over 40,000 people lived on it in ancient times.” The Phoenicians chiseled this little plot of 40 hectares with ten times the population, per square meter, of modern day New York City.

Now it is empty and solemn, an urn for the lives of those who struggled for their daily bread thousand of years ago.

As an island one can walk to, there is a sense of something once forbidden now available. Some of my married friends talk about this to me, often. In the wine sense, it is more of a surprise, in that this land, over-farmed for hundreds of years, is now once again fertile and capable of producing a delicate and sensual wine. The grape is Grillo, but not in a steely, nervous high pitched manner. This first release, the union of the Whitaker estate and the Tasca D’Almerita dynasty, is an oboe in a sea of piccolos.

Am I awake or still dreaming? So close to Sicily, actually protected in a harbor, but Mozia is a universe away from my daily concerns.

Yes, it is a dark jungle, but womblike. A sense of shelter, of safety, of illusion.

The rhythm between ancient and present is hard to grasp, this island has its own magnetism, drawn from a core other than the earth. Perhaps it is the collective energy of all those followers of Tanit. The wine takes its cues from these messengers. I go back to the wine; it grows deep in the glass. Music seems to emanate from the wine, along with dense fruit and a splash of salt. There is no intervention by the winemakers in this instance. None necessary, or possible. I am smitten by this wine; I am 20 years old once more, first time in Sicily, again. This wine is a time capsule and this island is another world.

Unlash me from the mast. I must probe the abyss.





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