Sunday, October 12, 2008

Marfa ~ We Say Chianti & They Say Chinati

My faith has been restored. In Texas. In Italian Wine. In Italian wine in Texas. In Restaurants in Texas. And in the whole chasing after windmill exercise that we do when we attempt to bring the Word of Wine to the outer edges of civilization. I finally got my groove on, and in Marfa, Texas, no less. Word to Sancho: Flyover country has been secured and made safe.

There’s something about the simplicity of the desert that cuts right to the essential. Maybe it’s the access to ingredients. Or perhaps it is just that once you strip it down to what you really need, you really don’t need all that much. When you’re staring at yourself in the mirage and you are forced to look at whatever you can manage to make from your memory and your imagination, then one is compelled to stare down the demons and make sense of it. Here in Marfa, they call it A.R.T.

My background in the arts didn’t have me getting all wiggly and wobbly as we spent some free time strolling among the buildings at the Chinati Foundation. There is something about the way an artist can challenge you to look at your own doodlings in life and ask you if what you have been doing these past 20 years has any more relevance than what he has put up on these walls.

In that sense, the art on those walls forced me to think about these things. And with the unsolicited quiet of the desert, the lack of distraction, this created an unavoidable encounter with my “inner” Marfa Lights.

Cochineal (no web site, don’t Google it, you wont find one) was a perfect launching into the future of food in Texas. Not cutting edge, no not-that-in-your-face. More like simple ingredients without towers, truffle oil or turpitude. Take it or leave it.

We met Chef Paul Peterson, of the Gage Hotel in Marathon, at Cochineal. He and his wife had managed to get a night off and left offspring with family in Alpine, half way between Marfa and Marathon. Paul is one of those chefs that, if you dropped him in Austin or Park Slope, would easily transition toward the top of the scene. Easy going and mellow, with an edge. Kind of like a Chianti from Querciabella. In fact, we opened a few bottles that night, thanks to Cochineal owners Tom Rapp and Toshi Sakihara. Eventually they sat down with us as we worked late into the night. Among other things, we had a Carbonara that anyone, anywhere, would be proud of.

Walking out into an early autumn night in the desert, stars are jamming the skies; rush hour in Rome is light by comparison.

Maybe we should start a Chianti Foundation. Because of the interest in Italian wine in this little west Texas town. It would fit right-tight into the matrix of Marfa.

A new day, and we find ourselves in front of Chef Maiya Keck of Maiya’s. While we were talking about wine, I was thinking, “She really likes Italians.” The restaurant is Italian inspired and along with a perfectly delicious looking high ceiling dining room straight out of the WPA, I couldn’t wait to come back in the evening.

In the meantime she sent us across the street to the Food Shark, a mobile food stand at the farmers market. It seemed everyone in town was heading for the Food Shark, as scads of young people were working their way through the interesting menu.

As I was cogitating what I would order, a woman stepped up to get her to go order. When I heard her voice I said to myself, “That is the voice of Isabella Rossellini.” I then looked to her and made eye contact. Were those the eyes of Isabella Rossellini? It wouldn’t be out of the question that someone like her would be here, seeing as this was the week for the Marfa annual Open House. I looked her over and she seemed to resemble Isabella from one of the scenes of Blue Velvet. I would encounter her later in the day, when perhaps that little mystery would be solved.

The falafel at the Food Shark was one hellatiously good lunch choice, though the Falafel Forage might be a little more difficult in these parts.

A block away was the Pizza Foundation, Maiya’s sister, Saarin, runs it. Thin pizza, not over worked. I asked Ronnie the pizzaiolo how it was to make pizza at this elevation (appx 4800) and he explained that he had gotten the recipe down to deal with the elevation, the heat and the dry conditions. He did.

That evening we had a wine tasting/ reception at the old bus station , home of Shelly and Harry Hudson. Shelly’s son, Jules, runs a neat little place in Dallas, Nonna. The family has the good taste gene in spades.

We set up the wines, Italian and otherwise. As the folks rambled into the tasting we were able to talk to folks a little more in depth. Isabella came up to me and we had a little talk about opera. She was from Germany: not Isabella. Or was she in some kind of character for the evening. I‘ve seen too many David Lynch films.

One lady, Virginia Lebermann, who has all kinds of things going on in Marfa, was in the process of building a new venue for art and music with a lounge attached. “How would you like to curate the wine selection?” she asked. We set a time to visit the next day. Curate a wine list, they never asked me to do that in Dallas or Houston.

That evening, after the reception, we headed over to Maiya’s to meet a client for dinner. We walked into a warm room with enormous ceilings; the place was inviting and hopping. Plenty of the young folks from the arts foundations were settling in at the bar, just like NY, LA or Firenze. In this little old west Texas desert town. All very Rod Serling-like.

Maiya sent out plates of food; grilled radicchio, tartlettes, frisée, plates of pasta, profiteroles, and dense chocolate tortes. And we brought out wine after wine to taste with the client and Maiya. They liked us, they really liked us. I wasn’t in New Orleans or Napa, where I do get treated like I actually know something about Italian wine. I wasn’t in Dallas or Houston, where I have to often deal with a lowest common denominator routine. We were in Marfa, Texas, and they got it, from Kerner to Taurasi to Brachetto.

Next morning we met up with Virginia Lebermann to look over the new Thunderbird Lounge. Fire pits and adobe, tongue-and-groove and sharp, clean lines. They want me to curate the wine selection here? Let’s give it to them, see just how far we can push the envelope with Vermentino.

After all, we don’t come here looking for some worn out windmills. We came out to see what was in store for us in the future, here in flyover country. In a bright, stark, clear-cut way, we were shown what might be in store for us. If we keep our eyes, and our minds, open.


In the words of Bobby Z, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wine blows."



Friday, October 10, 2008

Who Are You Doing This For?

After a few days in the rarified air of Marfa, Texas, I have had a few moments to do a little navel gazing. Take this one or leave it, as it applies to you. Or doesn’t. That being said, don’t we all have, at one time or another, moments where we look around our environment and notice the world that we have landed in and ask ourselves if this is what we intended to do?

Mind you, this isn’t a crisis post. I’m not telegraphing back to home base that I won’t be returning. Well, maybe a part of me won’t ever be back. But every time I get on the wine trail a part of me is left behind and a newer segment grows in its place.

One of the fascinating aspects of being in Marfa during the run up to the Chinati Foundation annual hoe-down, is this congregating of intellectual and artistic energy that appears to have broken away from the bubble of the everyday reality we all seem to get trapped in. The Dow drops to 8500? Where is the wine for the governor’s dinner? 159,000 jobs lost? An installation for an artist is previewing in the desert today. The G7 is meeting in emergency session with the IMF? Artist Eugene Binder on the main street is moving his three vintage Porsche Speedsters out of his gallery so he can make room for the folks coming to town.

After a visit to a handful of accounts ( El Cheapo, Pizza Foundation and the Thunderbird Lounge) we headed out to Alpine, Marathon and Midland. In Marfa I had been invited to “curate” a wine list for one of the local patrons, who also are big wine fans. They are also looking at a property in Montalcino to invest in, land and a winery. The wine trail winds and turns and points towards many destinations.

This week I had a Carbonara that folks anywhere would be proud of. Pizza that merited a second piece. Restaurants like Cochineal and Maiya's, with a passion for food and wine. And saw a love for Italian wine from the artists and intellectuals of a small west Texas town that I could only wish larger urban areas would aspire to. Go figure.

Maybe it is something about the confluence of a zone that attracts art and intellect that also is amenable to things Italian? I know this to be the case all over Italy, maybe Marfa is a vortex that squeezes a drop of Italy onto the canvas and exposes the native energy to the ancient? Or maybe I am just a kook?

Lesson learned this week: Do what you love, even if you don’t sometimes know why you do it or even what it is.


Repeat as needed.
Repeat as needed.
Repeat as needed.




Wednesday, October 08, 2008

Marfa on the Fly

I’ll keep this one short, the sun is rising, and we have many miles to cover in these next few days.

Flyover country is a big swath of land and today’s episode of On the Wine Trail in Italy takes us to Marfa, Texas. From Dallas, St. Louis is closer. But Marfa is a piece of Texas that is part Old West, a dash of Soho and a suggestion of The Twilight Zone. Arriving just in time for the Chinati Foundation’s annual celebration, this week artists and intellectuals from all over the world have descended upon sleepy little Marfa to inspire and be inspired, from art, earth and conviviality.

The terroir of Marfa.
It attracts people from New York, London, Paris and it’s kind of like the dishwasher; everything fits in the racks together. Local folks, hippies who hit the edge of town a generation ago and stopped to rest, you never know who you’ll be talking to. The land does influence, as does the light, which is crisp and bright and razor-edge.

There is an oasis of chefs and food lovers, from Marathon to Terlingua to Marfa, and this is my annual check-up to make sure they get all the Italian wine they will need for the winter months.

Because of the high altitude (4800 ft appx) this is a great place for a garden in Texas. Warm days, cool nights, and lots of rays. And critters. My uncle the geologist from Midland told me about the way this region was formed millions of years ago, and there is some serious ‘minerality’ working in the soil. Over by Ft. Davis there are a few vineyards, Cabernet and such.

As with many places in Texas there is a recognizable effect of the terroir on the people who live and come to live in these places. There is a concentration of energy that is brought to the surface slowly, like the thousands of oil wells that populate the territory. Pumping slowly, constantly, until every last drop is captured.

Last night we opened up bottles at a local place, Cochineal, and sat with owners Tom and Toshi to taste through a few things from Italy. Chef Paul and his wife from The Gage Hotel in Marathon joined us. Tom, seeing we had just opened a 2004 Radici from Mastroberardino, went to his wine cellar and brought back a 1995 Taurasi from Salvatore Molettieri. It drank quite well through the night.

I like the mixing of terroir, from a bottle of wine, to a bowl of garden fresh vegetables, to a table of folks from all over the world, sharing wine and food and ideas. Terroir as a global force, uniting. Ok, so I’m getting pensive.

Looking forward to visiting many of our accounts today, especially El Cheapo.







Sunday, October 05, 2008

Retribution and Restitution

Today everything is different; there's no action... have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food - right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody... get to live the rest of my life like a schnook -Henry Hill, Goodfellas (1990)

I feel soiled. I was just going in to break bread with old and new colleagues, nothing too earth shattering.

After obligatory appetizers during a reception period (unripe melon and over salty “S.Daniele” prosciutto, caprese salad with mealy, mushy, tasteless tomato, meatballs that tasted more like sawdust than meat) I opted for something simple, “Spaghettini al Pomodoro”. Well, the spaghettini was spaghetti and it wasn’t imported, tasted like some off brand from China. The sauce, which this time of the year should be fresh and bright, was brown and lifeless, the overcooked noodles lying listlessly in a pool of the bloody soup. Good thing I asked them to forgo the garlic, eh? I really showed them.

I was sitting with the CEO of a major import company, with his managers arranged around the table with our people. The CEO, in the business for 40 or so years, told a story of a mid-western retailer that they had opted-out of doing business with. Seemed it was cheaper to not do business with them than to bow to their unusual demands and slotting fees. After a few years the retailer wanted the CEO to take a meeting with him so they could discuss their future business. Now, the CEO can tell a pretty good story and he told it like this.

“So I go into this office with this big shot retailer, who thinks he’s the only game in town, and it was a big town. And these guys were used to getting their way. This was a city that had very few rules, and the way to do business in this place hadn’t changed since before prohibition. Someone always had their hand in your pocket, it was just a matter of how deep you’d let them go. I look at this retailer and I ask him why he called this meeting. He looks me over, a cigar in the corner of his mouth, and tells me it was time for my company to make retribution and restitution. He figures he lost so much money not doing business with us and he has it figured out to the dime. This galumph wants me to hand him a wad of money, thousands and thousands of dollars, to be able to get back in the ring. That was the retribution part. Then, if I go along with that he would be expecting me to come up with, in addition to that, more dough to sweeten the pot on going forward in the future with him on the deals. That was the restitution part. I gotta tell you, I was flabbergasted that this guy had the stones to think he could dictate the terms to me. After all, I come from a big city too, bigger than his g*ddam meat-packing town. And I was gonna have nothin’ to do with this clown. So I walked away from it, and saved my company even more thousands of dollars and untold grief in dealing with these kinds of shake-down characters.”

I had heard stories like this from the older guys, but this one seemed so timely. We were sitting in the back room of a restaurant eating overpriced and inferior food, with little or no chance of doing business with the restaurant. Seems after all these years of doing business in good faith, hot shot deliveries at all times of the year and special favors, now this restaurant owner wants the suppliers to come to his place at the end of every month and run their credit cards for $5-10 a case for every wine he buys from them. Very illegal, but no way to actually catch anyone in the act. It’s a business we run, not walk, away from. And don’t look back.

All that and a crappy plate of spaghetti al pomodoro? Say, it ain’t so, Joe.

In my home base, there have been a bunch of so-called Italian places failing lately. Some, for reasons of high rent, some because they just haven’t had the traffic. I think more than a few of them just haven’t gotten it yet. If you’re a place with a $4.99 all-the-spaghetti-you-can-eat place, you’re going to go looking for the cheapest ingredients, because the folks coming into that kind of spot don’t care. But if you’re charging $20 for a plate of pasta, there is no excuse for using inferior ingredients. I had one restaurant owner argue with me that people here don’t know the difference. And he came from a place where pasta and pizza reach their highest expressions. He argued with me, as if I (or the poor lugs that came in there) didn’t have a shred of a clue as to how the real food should taste. Lots of sauce, lots of garlic, lots of (Argentinean) cheese. The place is shuttered. He claims his wine business was too demanding and he had to spend more time on it. Yesterday, I saw a display of his wine being closed out in a store. Guess he’s not batting so well these days. But what do we know? We’re all just a bunch of idiots. Or maybe that was retribution for his pride and arrogance?

It’s not that hard. Last month, all over Italy, we didn’t have a bad meal. From the little buco of an osteria in Rome to the one star Michelin in the Maremma. People in Italy have a higher regard for their palates and they have developed a higher sense of taste and more specifically, the quality of taste, and have higher expectations.

Perhaps one of the reasons is that cooking at home in Italy is at a very high level, and for the restaurant in Italy to survive, they have to meet or exceed the standards of the home kitchen. Here in the US, while it is changing, the home kitchen still hasn’t developed so evenly. In recent years, it has slid backwards in many households with pre-made foods invading the freezer and the microwave substituting for the range and the hearth.

But a simple bowl of pasta, how in the name of Mary can they screw it up here so often?

These same folks we were having dinner with, a few weeks ago, they had a winemaker in town, making the rounds. One of the places we stopped in , they invited us back after we did our day, come in for dinner. I bowed out, was preparing to go to Italy the next day, but a handful (5-7) folks went on over to the place in the late evening. Seems the chef talked to them, said he would prepare a few things and bring them out. A few hours ( and plates) later, when all was said and done, they asked for the bill. $1100. Maybe $150 of that in wine.

Now that night, I was told, the dining room was not too full. But that night, the restaurant made their number. Unfortunately those folks will never, ever return.

About ten years ago in another city I had a winemaker and his family in town. We were supposed to do a winemaker dinner, but the restaurant didn’t promote it. So the owner, said, no problem, he’d invite a few friends and we’d all have dinner. And we did, about 12 of us. At the end of the night they presented to the winemaker a bill for $1700, including the meal of the owner, his wife and their friends. Even charged them full mark-up for the wine, which was “donated”. Or maybe that was restitution for all these years of supplying well made, honest wine to the restaurateur? I haven’t spent a penny in that place since then.

Looking around at America and the Western World, I have to wonder if this economic crisis doesn’t stem from a personal vacuity that seeks to fill the void with things; money, fame; recognition, or just being the one on the top of the dunghill. It’s too simple to just call it greed, because it is also ignorance, and lack of respect for one’s livelihood and one’s community.

And then we wonder why the young ones walk around with their cell phones, texting invisible friends instead of interacting with the world in front of them. Or maybe, is it just an instinctual repudiation of an industry that no longer has a valid place in their, or our, world?


Or maybe it's all just going to hell in America.



Saturday, October 04, 2008

Why Brunello Fell

As they say in Italy, behind every great man there is a woman. Or two. Or three, in the case of Dr. Zaia.

Doesn't look like Brunello had a fighting chance, from the looks of this image, dated in the right bottom corner, March 22, 2008, taken in Venice, just a week or so before the Brunello scandal broke (click on picture to see it full size).




By the way folks, this is a spoof, just in case you didn't get it by looking at it.
Now, if we're talking about Rivella, that might be a whole 'nother story.

And yes, there is a Miss Brunello

Friday, October 03, 2008

Revisiting the Familiar

There are so many things that we all take for granted, from our jobs and our place in life, to our health and our age. When you’re 20, you’ve been young all your life and there is nothing to tell you that it won’t be like that all your days. When you’re 40, you begin to feel little pains, and start getting some of those big-life experiences that reshape what was once recognizable and predictable. Sixty comes close and, who knows what is coming? One thing for sure, change will come.

My last trip to Italy was a revelation in the way that I see the country. No longer do I think all Italians are honest, wonderful artistic, kind people. Sure there is still a huge percentage of the population that does meet those standards, maybe even more than in the U.S. Not that there should be a comparison. But now I see Italy in a state of perpetual change. Places that I thought years ago were immune to the big city pitfalls are now giving in to some of those temptations.

20 years ago on a trip to Genoa, outside my hotel was a spot where young kids would go to shoot up heroin. I was staying at a four star hotel and it wasn’t in a bad part of town. That was just what was on the menu in those days for young folks living in a port. I would see hundreds of used needles on the ground, and the hollowed out faces of kids, their expressions blown out from the intensity of the drug they had just injected.

Driving in the countryside on the way to one of the wineries, we joke about the highway being the United Nations for hookers, because you see women from many countries standing on the side of the road at all hours of the day, soliciting for sex. A few years ago there were more Ukrainians and Albanians. Now there are all manner of African women. Years and years ago it was home grown Italian women from the south.

So things we see in an everyday context take on different hues when we revisit them year after year. And it seems that Italy, too, is becoming a coarser society. My last driving experience in Rome, when we were heading back to the airport, was a lesson in just how base it has become. But that is another post.

What does this have to do with wine? Or at least a wine blog? I cannot answer that. And while I am at it, I have been thinking about wine blogging. I am not all that interested in wine blogging. Folks stare out into their screens with their tasting notes and their wishes and their hopes and they pour them out and we are all supposed to drop everything we are doing to read someone’s blog? I have had too many people tell me lately that they can’t and they don’t care to keep up with wine blogs. I understand. For sure, I am not interested in mommy blogs about wine; don’t care what they ate during their trip to Cancun. And those existential quandaries that I have been sent lately by friends of bloggers, people who think I’d like to know about their crisis in Chieti. And so it probably goes with many of my ramblings as well.

I have been thinking for some time about cutting back or at least giving folks a breather, time to catch up with all these posts. But that would assume there are all kinds of folks laboring through these thrice weekly posts as though it were the NY Times or the BBC. They better not be.

I don’t think I want to slow down, the discipline of writing this much is getting close to what is needed to complete a book in a year. And though this is more free form, it still is an established discipline. So, I’ll probably keep up the pace. And folks can come and go as they have been doing.

Italy has been that way with travelers, letting them establish their own pace when exploring all that the country has. There is always that next village on the hill, the remote vineyard in a faraway region, a dish made at a little unmarked osteria near a seaside that draws one back.

For as often as one walks a street or visits a town, there is always something there right in front of you that has been staring right at you, and for some reason you might not have ever been able to see it. And that is the allure of Italy, why so many folks think it is such a romantic place. Because Italy also has an interest in the visitor, and one that, to those who can open their eyes and their hearts to it, will return your gaze or your caress with one that is bigger than life. All you have to do is look straight into the heart of Italy.






photos of graffiti taken @ San Benedetto del Tronto, September 2008

Wednesday, October 01, 2008

Here Today, Gone to Merlot

There are those magical places that make a wonderful wine weekend destinations. The combination of L’Andana with their sister winery, Petra is an elegant, simple retreat from the everyday realities. In this fantasy escape from those realities, the wonderful luxury of L’Andana, and the simplicity that is woven in the resort, can recharge one very well. As written before, this is Alto-Borghese living. But the stars shine bright in the nighttime sky, and the breeze that sifts through the curtains is pure Maremma. And so if there is a Ducasse donut with the cappuccino in the morning, is that such an infraction? There will be time for more rustic experiences on this 2008 harvest trip, they are coming. For now, we are living in lapland, that space between where you have come and where you will be going. Someone else’s everyday world, opened up for a few days by the wine gods.

The ride from L’Andana in Castiglione della Pescaia to the Petra estate near Suvereto is a pleasant 45 minute saunter up the coast. My travel companion and I easily slipped into a California state of mind. And this is not to diminish anything that Tuscany and the Maremma has to offer; it is simply lagniappe for the wine traveler.

We are in a time when the fruits are all ripe and dripping their honey. Fig trees droop from the weight of their bounty and the grapes weigh the vines down, waiting for their appointment with the portable guillotines, those hand held harvesters that pick the clusters and send them to their miracle moments.

Much has been written about Petra. It is one of those architectural statements that seems so unusual for Italy, but not for the Maremma. Not too far from L’Andana is another architectural gem, Rocca di Frassinello, a partnership between Chateau Lafite and Castellare. The smart money sees something happening and they know what it is and they have gotten in before the rush. At this point it is probably too late for the rest of us. But there is something about the Maremma that is still undiscovered and quiet in its revelatory being. It isn’t crowded like Napa Valley, for one.

Beautiful land, olives and grapes, wheat and figs. Merlot has a wonderful summer home here. As we arrived in mid September, the Merlot had already been brought in at Petra. What we sampled was still fruit juice, but it was bright and rich and healthy. Like we all want to be, no?

Petra has a cellar and sometimes dining area that has been hewn out of the rock underneath the vineyards. It reminds me of Sinsky or many other Silverado Trail showcase wineries. Still a fairly small production, at this point just about 25,000 cases of wine. Smaller than Chateau Lafite. I hesitate to put down my tasting notes here, as they will be needed for an article in Sommelier Journal. In any event, most folks don’t come to On The Wine Trail in Italy for tasting notes. Or gossip. I’ll leave that to those who are better and more interested in those things.

I am pretty knocked out about the mineraly-stony thing going on under the vines at Petra. Some pictures show an other-worldly aspect to this ancient craft.

We had been told to expect lunch. What I hadn’t expected was this wonderful woman who prepared a simple meal with many fresh vegetables from the Petra garden. As we ate we could look out onto the garden where much of our lunch came from. Zucchini, peppers, tomatoes, grapes. A little porchetta, not too much, just enough to show off the wines. Especially the Merlot.

Folks who know me are aware that Merlot, like Chardonnay, doesn’t thrill me. Except when it comes from areas that I think they should come from. Merlot from the right bank, Chardonnay from the Côte d'Or. That kind of thing.

I am intrigued by the interest by French winemakers in this area. And Merlot, while resembling more their California cousins than their Pomerol ones, still has a liveliness and an appealing quality. Ok, so I can learn to love Merlot from Italy too.

Just as long as I also get to enjoy it in a rustic pie at the end of a meal during the 2008 harvest, on the wine trail in Italy.





Real Time Analytics