Images flash across the screen of my inner all night movie show. Prone, staring at the ceiling, waiting for the wine or the tequila or the sleeping pill to take one away for a few hours. The stuff that the waking hours produce seems like the dream; the dream seems like the reality. And then the phone call comes.“Our appointment with Chef Mark has been canceled, he has another emergency.”
That has been happening more frequently lately.
It is like a see-saw of good-bad news. Digging out of this one is going to take longer, I fear.
Last night, sitting around the table with a group of guys I taste wine with regularly. One of them, Hank, throws out the question, “What are some of your memories of food from your past?” We go around the table, everyone with their wonderful memories. Hank’s was especially poignant for me; maybe it was because we share the Italian-American experience. “There were eight of us, and we had dinner at six every night.” Hank is the same age as my older brother-in-law, so there are some early post-WWII memories there. He got to talking about a recent meal he had with his family, I think to celebrate his dad’s 90th or 91st birthday. “When we go to sit down, all of us took our places at the table exactly as we had done as kids, all those years ago. It was like we had muscle memory.”Ahh yes, muscle memory.
All across the world, the Italians who settled in new lands shared their customs. Meals with the family, picnics, baptisms, first communions, it didn’t matter if it were Pittsburgh, Cucamonga, Sidney, Australia or Maracaibo, Venezuela. Maybe we didn’t have the best wine in the world, surely not like the rare vintages we were sipping last night, but what we had, it took. And deep inside we kept stretching, trying to find it in this new world we planted ourselves in.The chef never called back. I’d rather not talk to him anyhow. He’s just going to want to shake me down for a bunch of free wine and an ad in the paper to prop his sinking ship up. I don’t have the heart to tell him the truth, that he isn’t going to get it from me or the company I work for. I want to share with him some thoughts on how we can move his business forward; I've been talking to all kinds of people for ideas. I even have a few of my own, after all these years in the biz. But I reckon they will ultimately fall on deaf ears. He wants to do what he wants to do, even though it ain’t working.
So what to do? Johnny Appleseed or George Washington? Plant seeds or chop it down?
More and more, it seems like folks are parading around in their fine new clothes, and nobody can get through to these insulated emperors that they just aren’t quite ready for the big tent. And so we go through the dance, trying to lead, but always picking partners who want to go in their own direction at their own speed. People who don’t listen, tone deaf to the new reality that has plopped down right in front of their empty valet stand.And so we return to our memories, our dreams, about our family meals with our wine and our friends and our good times. The restaurants that get this, the ones that want to feed our dreams, not their pocketbooks, are winning out there. They know how to listen; they give the customer what they want. And in return for making our dreams last a little longer, they get to live another day, only to wake up and return to the line and start all over again.
The pace of life after Vinitaly has been brisk. The Italians have been flooding the landscape to work with us in our hand-to-hand combat. Welcome to my weekly round-up. Alfonso has gone from ranting to mommy-blogging today.
Lionello worked one whole week across Texas, week before last. Dinners in Dallas and Houston, showing his Chianti, Morellino and Brunello and telling his riveting rags-to-riches story. Lionello understands American marketing and he is, at 72, one hard working son-of-a-gun. Lufthansa had to create a new category of frequent flier as he smashed all records for accumulating miles. By the way, did you know that Lufthansa frequent flyers can trade miles for wine through 
In one of those seemingly all too often après-wine dinner moments at Adelmo’s, Lionello hosted Paul and some of the local guys for a lunch. Adelmo made his famous steak tartare, which went exceedingly well with Lionello’s Morellino di Scansano.
This week wine luminaries were lining up to work like jets at DFW airport. Monday, Seth Allen, the founder of 
Paolo 
Wednesday Pio Boffa from 
Pio spoke to a throng of fans at the 
Thursday - Daily-Double. 
Later that evening we had to “gear up” for another sold-out dinner at Jimmy’s, this time with 
The lineup of wines was eclectic, from Franciacorta by 
One of my favorite gals who I like to talk wine with brought her beau. I snapped this shot of them and told him not to screw up or he’d be dealing with the Italians if he broke her heart. I think he got the message.
Red wines? Teroldego, Brunello, Barolo and Amarone, followed by a late harvest Moscato from Sicily. We ran out of wine, sold so much Mike Di Carlo ran out of register tape. More good times!
Guy and Paul, now here are two fellows I’d like to have with me in the dark alleys of life. Nobody’s gonna mess with these boyz. That night we broke records for wine sales, as Jimmy’s is a retail store and we made everybody a deal they couldn't refuse.
Speaking of swinging, the weekend brought me my afternoon meeting with my Italian guru, the iconic 
What does one do if they think the Italian wine industry is going in the wrong direction? And if one has a rather large interest in the success of the Italian wine industry, how does one go about letting one’s thoughts, opinions and feelings be known?
Still, I wasn’t sure he really wanted the truth. Something from the last twenty years gnaws at me, a little voice on my shoulder that whispers in my ear, “Don’t show it all, just show ‘em a little. Let them guess what is underneath.”
A week later, I am talking to a producer from Piedmont. Over the phone it can be easier to convince winemakers to change. But now I have an anecdote. And over the phone they don’t see my face, so it is my little voice inside of their head this time.
It’s been one long 
You’d think these folks would want to know. After all the business I follow in America represents 8% of all Italian wine coming from Italy to the USA. That’s a fact. But often I feel more like I am the Invisible Man.
No, the key is to plant the idea, water it occasionally and then let ‘er grow. If it grows, then we all win. If it dies, hey, it’s a big wine world out there. Someone will get it. Every dog has his day.
I’d had it. One more over-oaked, alcohol soaked Tuscan wine and I was going to go bonkers.
Bava sat me down and showed me his latest sparkling wines, 
A plate of crackers with fois gras appear. No heavy cheese or home made salumi. This was my tongue's Betty Ford mini-clinic moment. I was feeling better. The depth of the Toto Corde with the snack was one of the perfect matches I had during Vinitaly.
Bava is passionate about cacao and chocolate. He has a 
So many crazy things happened during Vinitaly this year that there is no place to turn to but sophomoric humor. I can’t change the way the Italians think about the current “crisi” but I can change the way they look. So to lighten things up a bit on these pages (something folks have been telling me I “need” to do lately) I thought I’d call on my Hollywood make-up artist friends (actually they are friends with Bea) and see what we could do to update the look of some famous Italian wine personalities that are instrumental for turning the ship around. After all, modern wines call for modern looks; that is the essence of bella figura, no?
Dino Illuminati and long time client Adelmo Banchetti, from Dallas, Texas, are always clowning around. These guys know how to have a good time. And while both of these gents have made huge strides in their wines and their food over the years, their “look” has gotten old. So if Adelmo and Dino aren’t going to Twitter and Text, they can be at least entertaining to the young folks who are. For the makeover, we have given Adelmo his fondest wish, to be the clown with the funny nose, the flaming red hair and a hickey. Kind of a mixed message, but Adelmo likes edgy. For Dino, we have gone a little mad professor with the hair and the beard, but with the cool edge that only Jackie-O Ray-Bans can transmit. So we have fun and edge and cool and now they’re ready to embrace further modernity and the future. Avanti ragazzi!
We’re going Western with the next two gents. Think Westworld. Riccardo Cotarella had done traded in his Porsche Cayenne for a Vintage American pickup. Along with that he is ordering a slew of American oak barrels to make the complete transition for one of his special wines from the Maremma. The man is a cowboy and a driver at heart and now the vision is complete. Bravo, Riccardo.
Piero Antinori is going a little more raffinato on us. Maybe it’s the time he has been spending with his Franciacorta project and the proximity to George Clooney’s lakeside manse. In any event, Piero is kicking back, enjoying his status as the Marshall of the Maremma. Nothing gets by Piero, nothing. He sees everything and knows where all the bodies are buried. He is a Superior Tuscan.
Romano dal Forno has been talking to his son. Time to spruce up the place. Done. Now, what to do about all those years that have passed, how to upgrade the look? How about a little bad boy rocker, a cross between liev Schreiber and Sammy Hagar. Red hair is all the rage in Italy for men these days, and Romano isn’t immune to the lure of the fiery red. Yes, he has capitulated to the pressure of fashion, but with that Jim Croce ‘stache, he makes for a dashing vision of the modern winemaker in the modern times.
And finally, this wouldn’t be complete without a chime in from dear old Luca Zaia, the dashing Minister of Agriculture. Some think we don’t like Luca on this blog, by au contraire, we love Luca. And he loves us. Keeping with the musical theme, our fashionistas have chosen to give Luca a modified Beatle look, in homage to Ringo, the underappreciated one. Instead of drumsticks we have given Luca farm implements in which he can drum home his message. Doesn’t he look fab? How do we get his autograph? He is saving Italy from pineapple and kebab and giving Prosecco its rightful place alongside Champagne as one of the greatest bubblies the world has even known. And he does it all by acting naturally. Auguri, Doctor Zaia.
Dream fragment: A great hall filled with people. Two men who must pass through the crowd to the other side of the long, narrow hall. From a distance above this appears to be set in a Gothic cathedral. Is this a ceremony? As the men make their way, they walk directly through the people, who have become formless but not invisible. They have no presence, no corpus, they are all ghosts. Except for the two men, who advance towards the other side of this great passageway.
As I walk the great halls of Vinitaly, I see people I know. Sometimes I don’t recognize them, sometimes they don’t recognize me. Some of these folk I have known now for almost thirty years. Some I have just gotten to know in the last few years. All of us, living our lives, how much this collective honey gathering has been done for the sake of making Italian wine a greater expression of the culture and people and land of Italy?
Over the years I have had passionate, lively and sometimes explosive polemics over the direction Italian wine is going. I remember in 1985 talking to a producer of Barolo about his exclusive use of French barrique for the aging of his wines. I told him then that I thought the wine would suffer under all the weight of the wood, not to mention how much more it would raise the price of the wine. He responded by telling me that I was a young American and that the world is a large place, larger than the way I learned about it in school in America. Yes, I was young and inexperienced and an American, all sins which I was guilty as charged by my more learned and experienced farmer colleague in Castiglione Falletto.
I have had more than my share of passionate discussion about Italian labels. I was an art major at the university, design was my background, coupled with an intimate feel for American marketing. Over the years, I have seen labels that had as much appeal as a mullet haircut. But as we have recently seen, in Italy the mullet is enjoying a renaissance. Wonderful step forward for all of humanity. Why is it a label is so important? I imagine Caravaggio or Simone Martini looking forward several centuries from their time to see their work and how it had survived the fashions of time and wonder why the label designers don’t understand this. But it is after all a product, to be opened and consumed and then to be sent to the trash bin. It isn’t art, no matter how much we want to imbue it with nobility and grandeur. It is sustenance; it is a measure by which we get through the day. Art? Art is not essential for survival of the species. Nourishment is. And perhaps it is because our farmer knows that we will ultimately need the fruits from his harvest, that a misplaced label, or too much wood won’t really matter all that much in the greater scheme of things.
When I was younger the older wine producers would listen to my thoughts, about their wine, about their labels, about their expensive barrels and they would make this barely perceptible grimace on their foreheads. The tell on their face was that I was young and inexperienced and that they were Europe, they were Italy. They knew what would be better for all of us, especially gli Americani. So I would pack my luggage and head back to America to spread the word as they so ordered.
A generation later, the younger wine producers hear an older man rant, about their wine, about their labels, about their expensive barrels, and this time the frown on their forehead is more pronounced. What it tells, without words, but without doubt, is that they know better. They are young and this is a different world, and one must be positive about all of these changes. Or else. So I pack my luggage and head back to my post, the one from which I will never be called back, and ponder on all these “changes”.
