This week finds me in Louisiana, starting in New Orleans, one of my great-great-grandfather’s haunts. Meetings in the morning and an afternoon tasting of French wines, mainly Burgundy, at the Windsor Court Hotel. A chance to see old acquaintances and make some new ones. And a great showing of wines.
I headed straight to the “other” table, where Moxy Castro was pouring wines from Alsace, Bordeaux and the Rhone. After a dash of white Bordeaux (to calibrate the palate) she poured me a few precious drops of the 2002 Trimbach Cuvee Frederic Emile Riesling. I know I shouldn’t have gone there so early, but how many times does one get to taste a great wine like that? Mea maxima culpa.
Afterwards I set off to try a few Burgundies before making a late afternoon appointment. Jerome Hasenpflug, the GM and national sales manager for Esprit du Vin (a Palm Bay company) was manning that table. A little Bouzeron from Domaine Michel Briday, some Chassagne from Domaine Coffinet-Duvernay, and some mighty fine Meursault and Puligny from Domaine Henri Darnat.
Tugged for time, I waved at the reds and sorrowfully headed back to the world of commerce and the warm streets of New Orleans.
Warm indeed, pizza oven warm and into
Ancora, in the recently refurbished
New Freret district in Uptown. Talk about energy, this is one little neighborhood to hang in. Several good eating places, one specializing in cocktails,
Cure, who pay homage to traditional libations. I first fell in love with the area years ago when we stepped into the wonderful time machine,
Gautreau's, one of my favorite restaurants on earth.
But tonight we stumbled into
Ancora and pizza. And an all Italian, make that, an
all Campanian wine list. Heaven, what I, rather, we, have to do to get folks in places to just put Italian wines on the list? And these folks have the stones to do
only Campanian wines? Note: ( i.e., folks I have been talking to for years) it's not all about the mighty dollar.It is about passion and perfection. Chapeau, Ancora amici
Palagrello (Bianco and Nero), Biancolella, Piedirosso and more…Gragnano on the way guys, I promise.
All this while trying to stay on my Weightwatcher allocation of 36 points a day? Thank the Lord for bonus points, I have not yet strayed. But I got pretty close to the devil and the fire, mamma.
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| Ancora's Diavolo ( homage to Hockney) |
Lots more to come, on the wine trail in Italy, err, New Orleans…
