♫ I’m just average, common too
I’m just like him, the same as you
I’m everybody’s brother and son
I ain’t different from anyone
It ain’t no use a-talking to me
It’s just the same as talking to you ♫
♫ I put you high up in the sky
And now, you're not coming down
It slowly turned, you let me burn
And now, we're ashes on the ground ♫
We snuck in between work gigs, needed a low key place for a business-cum-pleasure moment. Unbeknownst to us, FT33 had just gotten a 5 star review (the highest possible) from Leslie Brenner of the Dallas Morning News.
I know how I feel when I read about other folk’s food and wine experiences. It’s difficult to digest another picture of someone drinking a fabulous bottle of wine. I find it hard to absorb another post about someone’s magnificent Italian (French, etc.) harvest trip. If I see another fabulous meal from some amazing restaurant that provided a once in a lifetime experience, that’ll be one more than I really need to see. So with that said, all I am going to do is offer a brief view of a couple of wines that married well together with two entrees. Read the review if you want more info on FT33. The wine list is a great read. And GM/Wine Director Jeffrey Gregory was spot on in his suggestion and in his meticulous attention he paid to our table.
So let’s talk about my orange wine affliction.
About 10 years ago I visited Gravner. I love the place. I understand the wines. I’m sympathetic to his philosophical yearnings. I even tried for years to sell the wines. I ended up drinking more of them than selling them. Maybe that isn’t such a bad thing. But for some reason, I couldn’t find the hook.
A few years later I was in Austin, at Uchi, and we ordered a bottle of Coenobium from the Monastero Suore Cistercensi. The wine was golden, not quite sunset in color. It reminded me of the first time I made wine. It was a time trip. By the way, I was 13. Yeah.13.
The Coenobium spoke to me. Ahh, so this was what orange wine was all about. Got it.
The one day, I was up in Padua and a bottle or two of Zidarich Vitovska made its way to the table. Again, I was lit up. I was beginning to get this orange wine thing.
Fast forward to 2013. Two experiences, a month from each other, one on Etna and one in Napa. Yeah. I said that.
Etna. Now all the young cats, the hipster sommelier crowd, they love to talk about Frank Cornelissen and his Etna experiment. I haven’t met Frank; got real close once. Hope to someday. What I have had from him has been a mixed bag, but I really need to meet him on the mountain, La Muntagna, see what he’s doing. I don’t quite grok him. Yet. Salvo Foti & Co. have set the bar for me on Etna wines. And they lay claim to a natural non-interventionist style of wine that I find intellectually interesting and overwhelmingly delicious. Yes, I still like things that taste good to me. Who doesn’t?
Napa. Just like opening a door, real easy. There she was. The underground movement was no longer in the shadows. Massican, Schoener, Ryme, Matthiasson, it seemed all up and down Highway 29, new wines folks were pretty excited about. Hairy armpit connotations no longer the identifying marker, orange wine had entered the mainstream.
That said, I’m open about orange wine. I don’t crave it like I do a glass of Carricante or any number of crisp, acidic Italian whites. But I’m not in hater mode. I just want to love the wine I drink, most of the time.
This week at FT33 the two wines we tasted together, Abe Schoener's Scholium Project Midan Al-Tahrir 2010 with Coenobium 2011 from the Monastero Suore Cistercensi was a Bob Dylan/Miley Cyrus moment. Not quite a twerk team. A little more cerebral. But like the words of her latest hit, Wrecking Ball, “We clawed, we chained our hearts in vain. We jumped never asking why.” Meanwhile Zimmy is responding, “Well, I don’t know, but I’ve been told, the streets in heaven are lined with gold.”
ricotta gnocchi, butternut squash, fall greens, wild mushrooms, ham broth |
sunburst trout, littleneck clams, fermented pickle, radish, carolina gold rice |
Then it hit me. Not always are wines about pleasure. Sometimes they are meant to be evocative, meant to be a catalyst for other explorations. Cornelissen might be crazy. Or he might be Obi Wan.
I just knew, sitting there in a comfortable banquette, sipping on wines, one from a philosophy teacher and one from Trappist nuns, that life was indeed a series of coincidences. In this case it was quite marvelous.
References
FT33
Abe Schoener's Scholium Project Midan Al-Tahrir
Monastero Suore Cistercensi Coenobium
Zidarich Vitovska
Frank Cornelissen
Salvo Foti
Josko Gravner
Brian Cronin
Bob Dylan
Miley Cyrus
written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy
wine blog + Italian wine blog + Italy W