Thursday, December 28, 2017

On the Wine Trail in Italy - The Terrible Teens

Or, 12 going on 17...

In a world that pulses on a 24-hour news cycle, where we don’t remember on Thursday what happened on Monday, here we are at the birth day. For better or worse, on the wine trail in Italy turns 12 today, and heads into its thirteenth year, not officially a teen yet, but feeling like 12 going on 17.

I should have seen it coming. When O.T.W.T.I.I. was a baby she was cute and cuddly. Her toddler years, her all-about-diaper-training, her first steps, her two year-old rebellion years, and as a proud papa, I (or rather, we) weathered it all. As she grew up and became a little gangly (e.g. wordy), my friends and family remarked on what a precocious one she was. But I persevered. And now she is a teenager, and I am prepared for her to hate me in a few years.

Sunday, December 17, 2017

The Italian Wine List from a Cinematic Perspective: “I've seen things you people wouldn't believe.”

There’s something about a wine list that seems a lot like the “hand in the box challenge.” You never know what you’re going to find inside. It could be warm and fuzzy. Or it can be slimy and menacing. It can be a relief. Or it can be disgusting. Working in the wine trade, it now seems from this perspective of 30+ years that wine lists are pretty much a reflection of the sensibilities of the person (or companies) who puts the thing together. Which can be a relief. Or it can be disgusting.

Sunday, December 10, 2017

A Long Life, As Expected?

From the archives

I was passed a message. “He’s gone.” Just like that. Too young. Too much life left in him. But that was it. The End. Life over for Morro.

Another note, in a text. “She’s here!” Brand new. Just born. Ready for the world. Novella. A fresh beginning.

Non c'è due senza tre. A letter arrives. Old school. “ One year before she turns 100, if she’d only made it a little longer.” And a long life, as expected, still missed, because she was so loved. My Gaglioppa.

You really never know. It could be one long life for a wine, it could be the beginning of a life not yet unfolding, or it could be an abrupt end to a life lost too soon. How many times has it happened, corkscrew at hand, early evening, anticipation, but never really knowing until the moment of truth?

Sunday, December 03, 2017

The Province of Fine Wine in Today’s Disrupted World


Writing about wine is at a turning point. If the writing is well done, it can serve to lift us out of the constant sea of disruption, of all we see that has become the new normal, and give us a moment for fresh air and hope that the cosmic fireball truly isn’t hurtling towards us at breakneck speed. “No guarantees on that one,” said the seer in the desert, who tracks the midnight sky with her trained eye.

This past week, some fine wine writing has appeared to give me hope. Even if our celestial rendezvous with kinetic bombardment is inevitable, until then, we can cherish and celebrate that which is good about being human, even if it merely seems like building a cathedral with toothpicks.

Sunday, November 26, 2017

Selling Your Italian Wine to the US Market - My 15 Minute Talk

I’m going to take off my citizen blogger hat and don my work cap for this post. Read this as if it were a (TED) talk I would be giving to a group of Italian winemakers, hopeful exporters and importers, and young people looking to get into the Italian wine business in the United States.

Good morning,

As I look around the room, I see all manner of folks who are either devoting their life to Italian wine or who aspire to do so as a career. As one who had spent the last forty years doing just that, let me share some thoughts with you regarding the future and how you place your piece of the puzzle into it.

Sunday, November 19, 2017

Nine Reasons to Give Thanks for Italian Wine

Italy and Italian wine, during my professional life, has been an arduus ad solem. It has so possessed me that I fear that I am like the Japanese soldier holding up in the Philippines who continued to fight 29 years after the end of WWII. At other times, more recently, I have felt the task to be more arare litus, in that the waves would come and wash away much of the hard work. It could be very simple to just walk into that ocean and keep walking, to disappear in time and space. But that will inevitably happen anyway, to all of us. Better to retreat to my highland post and keep fighting, even if the war has been won (or lost). And to the homeland, for which I have been fighting: look upon all these years, where thousands of men and women have been laboring and pursuing Italian wine’s ascension as some of the great wines of the world. How not so long ago it seemed we were all fighting for our place on the stage as a legitimate wine. That battle has been won. Let us give thanks.

Sunday, November 12, 2017

Basilicata - Divining the Future of Italian Wine in a Place that Time Forgot

If you could find a window into a world, where time hasn't moved so rapidly, where things are like they were a year, five or even 50 years ago, would you climb up and through it? And if so what would you expect to find?

Basilicata is one of those places on the wine trail in Italy that has kept some of the old ways, not discarding them for the latest iPhone or Windows upgrade. There’s something about the ancient in this place that has rooted, moored and isn’t going away anytime soon. And that’s a very good thing for Italian wine lovers.

Sunday, November 05, 2017

Assessing the Controversial/ Disastrous/Fabulous Italian Wine Harvest of 2017

Here we are – November 5, 2017 – for the most part the Italian wine harvest is over. And while we’re months and years away from practically determining just how successful (or disastrous) the 2017 harvest was, that hasn’t kept journalists, bloggers, winemakers, even P.R. wonks, from shouting claims from their respective vantage points. Like nervous hens, tut-tutting over every oeuvre, we have heard that it is a “disaster,” a “perfect storm,” a “vintage the likes of which we haven’t seen since the end of World War II” and “Hey, it wasn’t all that bad!” So how bad (or good) was it? What happened? How about a 3-point harvest report pop quiz - let’s see what the experts say?

Sunday, October 29, 2017

The Necromancer's Guide to Italian Wine

It all started with the Jewish prophet from Bethlehem, that turning water into wine piece of sorcery. How could we top that? After a couple of hundred years, we finally hacked it, and decided to turn that wine back into his blood, and so it has been for the last 1,700 or so years. Take that, Yeshua!

It was a pivotal moment in Italian wine necromancy, initiated by our little cadre of immortals, filched (or interpolated?) by the high priests of the Catholic Church in Rome. This, not the wine in Campania, not the Greeks in Calabria and Sicily, not the Etruscans. No, the New Testament era of Italian wine was transmitted by the monks and priests, alchemists, all of them. And guided by our immortal, unseen hands. And that is how we got to where we are today. Winemaking, traveling through time, as a dark art. Or at the very least, invisible.

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