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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

The 2017 Harvest in Umbria and Tuscany - Fear and "Global Weirding" - Pt.III

"What do you get when you fall in love? A guy with a pin to burst your bubble."

There are parts of Tuscany that evade Brunello and Chianti Classico’s snares. They don’t get the attention, and sometimes the respect, but nonetheless, people set up their vineyards, their castles and their dreams in these places. After all, it is Tuscany, how bad can it be?

America Under Fire: An Open Letter to the Italian Wine Community

Click here NOW to donate and have your donation matched - SGWS CA Wildfire Relief Fund

Caro amici e colleghi,

It seems every Sunday terrible news comes from America. And lately yes, it has been one disruption after another. From floods in Texas, Louisiana, Florida and Puerto Rico, to fires in California, the country of my birth has been travailed upon in the most severe terms. And that is just the acts of God, not to mention the hand of man, which has challenged our notion of democracy, liberty, equality and justice. Suffice it to say, on the social and political end of things here in America, we are in a virtual civil war. From the carnage in Las Vegas of concert goers to the massacres of little children in their schools, our civility and our moral core is faltering. And through this, families and friends who no longer talk to one another, for we are a nation of passion and opinion. We are also a young nation, showing our folly for all the world to see.

"I have no words..." - Calling on our global wine community to support Tony and Lisa McClung's Napa Fire Rebuild fund

Click here NOW to support Tony and Lisa McClung's Napa Fire Rebuild fund (organized by Claire Casey Brandani)

The world is filled with sorrow. But when it hits home, it hits home. One of our Italian trail-mates lost his home this week in the Napa fires, which are still raging. Tony McClung and his wife Lisa and their two young daughters lost most of their worldly material belongings, car and home.

Tony wrote this on his face book page along with the video above:

I managed to make it into our neighborhood yesterday, it was heartbreaking. Our house was completely destroyed along with 10 of our neighbor’s homes. A firefighter still on the scene said the fire came in very fast and very hot. Ash is all that is left. We were only in this house for 2 1/2 years but they will remain great memories in my mind.

Thank you to the many friends that have called and text during the fires, I wish it were better news. Thank you to the local friends for the physical and mental support. My community far and wide fills my heart.

It was a house... my home will always be wherever my family is together... we are together and safe.

Tony hails from Houston. And he is a dear friend of many of us in the wine trade. Natalie Vaclavik said it best:

When Houston was hit by Harvey, the first person to call to support was Tony McClung, his generosity & acts of kindness have been so instrumental in helping our city rebuild.

Today he lost everything. His house is gone and all his family's belongings were destroyed in the Napa Fire. Let's band together to help his family rebuild as he has helped us as fellow Houstonians.

People always ask "what can I do to help," directly making change is the way to impact. You probably don't know Tony but just giving the smallest donation can help build a new future for his family.

Please – here is something you can do directly to help someone with a face, a family and an urgent need.

Click here NOW to support Tony and Lisa McClung's Napa Fire Rebuild fund (organized by Claire Casey Brandani)

Give - Give - Give

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

wine blog +  Italian wine blog + Italy W

The Navelgazer’s Last Tour of Italy

Swept away by an apoplectic American destiny in a red plane in October

Nothing above me, nothing below me - So I jump off

One more time, I’m on a plane going from Rome, Italy to America, and the young Gen-Z narcissist sitting next to me is being a dick. The latest generation of Ugly American to emerge from this isolated piece of land, which for the last 100 or so years has dominated the world’s attention. He and his family just spent a vacation in Italy. They bought the posters, bought the t-shirts (probably also bought the coffee mugs) and now he couldn’t wait to get home and see if his Buffalo Bills won or lost. This is going to be one helluva long flight…

The 2017 Harvest in Umbria and Tuscany - Fear and "Global Weirding" - Pt.II

Chianti Classico - O Brother, Where Art Thou?

We’re all struggling to seek, explain and unfold Chianti Classico in today’s world. Not a “cool” wine in the wine world, though a wine that millions of people know and love – hence the Catch-22 moment we find ourselves in.

And as well, our crew found ourselves within the Chianti Classico zone on a recent pass through Umbria and Tuscany. Here’s what we found at a few “classic” estates.

How do you solve a problem like Maremma?

For years, the aura of the Super Tuscan has reflected a masculine, testosterone-laden persona, depicting a “Magnificent Seven” persona. The world was presented with a portrait of the tall, dark and handsome Italian cowboy, an outlier, albeit with perfectly matching boots, belt and cape. It was a Kodak moment, riding off into the sunset with their luscious, masculine, amped-up rosso in search of a Maremmana to wrestle, rope and quarter and serve over an open fire - the perfect accompaniment to that big ,juicy Super Tuscan.

But there is a problem with spiked-up Super Tuscans today: they’ve become collector’s items for the super wealthy, locked away in secret cellars, occasionally resurfacing on an auction block in Hong Kong, London or New York. Some have gotten far removed from the emerging tastes of the upcoming generation (and those whose palates have evolved towards wines with less volume). They’ve become Bubble Boys, living in their own rarified orb.

The 2017 Harvest in Umbria and Tuscany - Fear and "Global Weirding" - Pt.I

Italian wine often arrives in a van loaded with emotion. Call me moonstruck from day one. As an observer over the years, there’s something about Central Italy that gets under your fingernails and into your bloodstream. And it ain’t in the usual places.

This year marks a cycle of sorts for this observer. Moved by the floods of 1966, I made my way to Florence five years later. In the summer of 1971 there were still signs of a deluge of Biblical proportions which ravaged the largest town in Tuscany. I spent days walking the narrow streets, huddled in the cool galleries of museums, and sampling the food and wine, on the streets. I fell in love every ten minutes.

Thank You, Italy

Echoes from the archives - Posted Nov 24, 2011

1) Thank you for the wonderful variety of your sparkling wines, especially the ones from Lombardia, Trentino and the Veneto. Franciacorta is a delicious wine for food, for pleasure and for more than just special occasions. Thank you for not thinking you have to be Champagne and forging ahead with your own sparkling destinies.

2) Thank you for the bright and mineral rich white wines of the Alto Adige and Friuli. I love your whites, whether it be Sauvignon or Kerner, Friulano or Sylvaner.

3) Thank you for the fruit driven Montepulciano wines from Abruzzo. For many of us who cut our teeth on field blends from California, Montepulciano is a taste that hearkens back to the roots of many of us reared in the West. And thank you when you let Montepulciano be Montepulciano; not Cabernet, Merlot or Pinot Noir.

As you age does your taste in wine change?

Echoes from the archives - Posted May 20, 2012

That was the question I posed on a Facebook months ago. I have been thinking about it for some time now, and doing active research.

In my life, I have to say, my tastes have ranged all across the board, like waves of appreciation. For a while I would taste all the Bordeaux reds I could get my hands on. And I developed a taste for them. But my diet, which ranges from low to no red meat, really doesn’t complement them. I also was into Rhone reds as well, and again, aside from the occasional spicy chicken on the grill or holiday repast, I found them hard to take on a regular basis. Not that I didn’t like them, it was more that I just didn’t have a lifestyle where these wines fit on a regular basis.

Stripped, Shocked and Surprised - Is There a Unicorn in the Cave?

Over the lifespan of this blog, I’ve written a post, on average, once every three days. For those who aren't familiar, they’ve developed into essays, around 800 words. With over 1,300 posts written, over twelve years, there are several blog posts that have surprised me in the way they have been received in the oenosphère, these unsuspecting Unicorns in the cave.

Making Wine Your #Life - And Making It Matter

We are now officially in the post-ferragosto dog days of summer. The kind of days where, if you walk outside to get the paper or the mail or jog around the block, when you come back inside you are soaked to the bone – and not cold soaked. A warm, mushy, oatmeal kind of smotheriness that doesn’t abate for several hours. There are reasons why grapes do not grow so well here in North Texas.

What does grow well, though, is the wine community. In the past week, 1,000 or so have braved the heat of North Texas to witness, during a long (ponte de ferragosto) weekend, a full-immersion of wine!wine!!wine!!! at Texsom 2017. Texsom has become a Big Thing, now entering the terrible teen years from its natural birth in 2005. There are many interpretations as to how it got here from there, but the reality is that there are hundreds of people who come to the event, and there are hundreds more waiting to get into the event. It is three days of critical mass, an introvert’s dread, an extrovert’s frat party, and for the rest of the folks, a time to soak up all they can about wine, reading about it, tasting and drinking it, rubbing shoulders with masters (and not just the ones with the letters after their name) and gazing into the light of aspiration. A dream, perchance to become someone who can make wine a Big Thing in their life.

The Sunset Somm – Tinkering Forever with Chance

“Start as a dishwasher. Become a salesman. Exit as an accountant. Sunset as ambassador. QED” – Joseph Spellman, M.S.

I read the quote above, from a most distinguished Silverback in the wine/sommelier world, and experienced déjà vécu. No, it wasn’t an allergic reaction to some Grands Vins sans sulfite or the newest, petulant Pét-Nat. It was the mirror of time – sans Dorian Gray. And it was strikingly accurate. So many of us who started out in the wine trade took this path. The progression was very much like a well-executed double play, performed once-upon-a-time, on a field of dreams. Loving wine, selling wine, mastering wine. Tinker to Evers to Chance.

Reflections on (almost) turning 50 – it’s the little things

Festina Lente

Steadfast upon this sweltering little orb in the universe, rotating in 24 hours at 1,000 limes per hour, moving around a sun at 66,000 miles per hour, in a solar system that is moving at 450,000 miles per hour, and in a galaxy that is barreling at 1.3 million miles per hour, one can't help but wonder what's the big dust-up over turning 50. 50 years is infinitely less in magnitude than a quark or an elementary boson. But it seems significant to humans here on an Earth propelled with an unthinkable velocity from the Big-Bang, billions and billions of years ago.

And so it was, one cool evening in the Pacific Northwest in July, surrounded by towering fir trees and observed by a family of Cooper’s Hawks, that we celebrated the almost 50-year-old’s life and death.

An Encounter in the Bardo - The Mentor and the Longtimer

Ex ante

Walking along a hiking path, on the edge of the continent and from the neighboring country to the south, the longtimer came upon a narrow valley. The temperature was a cool 66° F. The breeze blowing from the straits that separated the two countries was refreshing but brisk. The glen offered a perfect lull from the rigors of hiking and the possibility of a little, stolen nap. After all, the old hand had worked many years and this was kind of a vacation. It would also be a point of reckoning.

Once ensconced upon a picnic blanket, and after a light meal and a sip of fresh rosé wine, he slumbered. And the dream came. And inside the dream the messenger appeared. And as with all messengers, there was a dispatch. It was meant to review the old timer’s working life, this life in wine, and deeper inside the world of Italian wine than all the other wines. And as it was a dream, there would be no escape, until all the material had been transmitted. It was more like a Grand Jury.

The courier took the form of a mentor, long gone, but one who had a similar trajectory, only the generation before. So, while it was meant to be unfiltered, it wasn’t unkind. But it was frank, this review of one’s life in work.

Insights into Life and Wine ~ While Hiking Among the Old Growths

There’s a bit of the old Zen when walking among the ancient living ones on our continent in the Pacific Northwest. One is that we humans, as old as we can get, aren’t always the oldest ones in the room. Something has lived longer, experienced more of life, and even though they might not be able to out-and-out talk to us, they speak. Oh, do they speak.

Gone Fission...

Going off the grid for a week. Nothing's wrong, just need to step away from the world and dip my pole in cooler waters - the rods have heated up and we're approaching critical mass.

...on vacation - back soon

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

wine blog +  Italian wine blog + Italy W

Back to the Basics in Basilicata

Americans still want to go to Italy – in fact more of them are going than ever before. And so I have been getting more than my share of queries from fellow travelers about what to see when they go to Italy. In most cases they are making the grand circle – Rome, Venice, Florence, maybe with Pisa thrown in, and if they are really packing every moment of their week (yes, 7 days!) with non-stop tourism, even the Amalfi Coast. Try as I do to encourage the hopeful visitors to pare down their stop to two (or one) I am usually not so successful. So, please feel free to cram it all in, with 90°+ F weather, and with all of the thousands of other folks, walking the hot, humid, streets of Rome, traversing the steamy, crowded alleys of Venice and enduring the long lines of Florence. After all, when you are finished, you will be rewarded with a hair-raising bus ride along the Amalfi Coast and deposited in an overpriced hotel room next to a window overlooking a fetid dumpster. You think it doesn’t happen? You just haven’t made all the mistakes I’ve made in my 50+ trips to Italy. But go ahead, don’t believe me – find out for yourself. Or…

The Angry White Man’s Guide to Italian Wine

Un po' pasquinata, per piacere

God, Guns and BBQ - That's what makes America Great!

The lawn chairs are gathered, the Roman candles have been foraged from the local fireworks store (just outside the city limits). The AR-15 is all ammo’d up and the P938 is locked and loaded, safely holstered and at the ready. We’re coming up on the Big One – Yessir – Independence Day – and aside from Beer and Bourbon, you might need to get “liquored up” with a little bit of Vino. And that Italian immigrant family who just moved into your gated community - you want to show the refugees some of that good ‘ol American hospitality? Offer them up a nice bottle of Chianti or Prosecco or – STOP!

Forget what they want – let’s show them what they need – and what you need to be a better balanced man, when it comes to Italian wine. Here’s your Million Dollar Primer – your screaming eagle guide - to the most important, best Bang! for your Buck!! wines from Italy. That is, until they get religion and switch over to “America First!” wines.

Do old Italian-American restaurants hate new Italian wine?

For those whose families emigrated from Italy over 100 years ago, it is a secure bet that we still identify with our roots. In the U.S., we’re Italian-Americans, although many of us prefer to be seen first, as Americans, with Italian heritage. If anyone doubts that, all one would need to do is get on a plane, go back to one of their family towns and see what they call you. Here comes the “Americano,” they would call. And that’s if you were born there and had only been gone for five years, let alone 100.

When one delves into the complicated mesh of food, especially from Italy, there are snags. First of all, where you came from. If from Trento or Alba, you will have your specific traditions and foods. And if you came from south of Rome, you will have another. And, seeing as many of the Italians that came to America 100+ years ago came from the south, their influence on how we perceive Italian food, historically, has been overarching.

Puglia's Rosé Conundrum - Through a Glass Darker

How is it a trait that a place is known for, even famous, shuns the quality in favor of fashion? It happens all the time - take a walk through Times Square and feast your eyes upon all that which is desirable. In the case of Puglia, today, the place has an identity crisis. And it centers around the color of their rosé wines.

Rosé wine is all the fashion today. And this is cause for celebration from those of us who never thought we’d see this day. From every nook and cranny of the wine producing universe, someone is bringing out another rosé. Germany, Spain, California, France, Texas, Argentina, Australia, Lebanon, yes Lebanon! Rosé wine is no longer this impossible dream of wine lovers, that someday we might find ourselves in a world where the pale red isn’t shunned.

I couldn’t be happier. But I also am concerned. I like deeply colored rosé wines and some of my favorite wines are starting to look pale and anemic.

“You are trying to be Brigitte Bardot when you are Claudia Cardinale!”

40 Years - On the Wine Trail in Puglia

What a difference 14,520 days makes

It seems to be unimaginable for someone young today to digest a span of time like 40 years. And when older people, for whom time has stretched farther than one might like to admit, relate a long-past thing, for those who did not live in that time, in today’s Instagram-gratification culture, it’s insufferable. “I didn’t live it, old, man. It doesn’t affect me.” Yeah, I get that. But it does - the wine we tasted then and the wine you are now enjoying - they are universes apart. And it is important to know what happened, and how we got here, so that you can better enjoy your Nero di Troia, or your Negroamaro Bianco or your Susumaniello rosato.

...on vacation - back soon

from the archives: How Puglia saved my life

Italian Wines – Multifaceted, Bright, Complex and Confounding

I see it all the time – like Groundhog’s Day – people are interested in Italy, the cultures, the food, the fashion, the design, the statues. But Italian wine is just too darn complicated!

We are entering into the time when more people will travel to Italy for vacations, for tourism, for cultural renewal. I heard it last night in a little café, people talking about Venice, Pompeii, Rome. I saw an older couple in a department store buying comfortable clothes for their “trip to Italy.” And when they get there, when they sit down to eat, they will, most likely, drink Italian wine. So why do they get so hung up about Italian wine here in America?

Who cares what wine bottle you post on Instagram?

PTI – ME!

"It’s all about your brand!"

"Why be a follower, when you can be an influencer?"

"Make your mark (BIG!) for enhanced career opportunities!"

As a visual junky, I have a confession to make – I love looking at pictures on Instagram. Call it an introvert’s tendency to stand in the corner and observe. Or the realization, that at a certain age, you (ALL OF YOU!) will become invisible to the ascending generation that is full of energy and spunk – they want the world and they want it NOW! Whatever. There are millions of images flooding the site and young professionals are now being told that being active on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and, yes, even LinkedIn, is a strategy to strengthen your professional career! Funny, I was suggesting this to the executives (where I work) almost ten (10!) years ago. The teenagers (then) are now in the work force, and they are a force (ASK THEM! Ask their media coach!). And it is now de rigueur to lather up one’s bandwidth with a plethora of visual droppings to mark one’s fire hydrant in the race for influence and relevance. After all, you’re BUILDING YOUR BRAND!

Wow, all those exclamation points (AND UPPERCASE WORDS!) are so exhausting! But we live, now, in a world where so many people are clamoring for attention. And unless you climb over that HUGE wall and get your advanced certification (and maybe even become some kind of MASTER!) how can one differentiate who they are, and how influential they can be, in the short term? Hey, how about posting AWESOME pictures of unobtainable (to the rest of us) bottles of AWESOME wines? Sounds like a plan!

The Fortunes of the Times - Great Italian Vintages from the “Noughties” - 2012-2016

Frequent readers already know this little secret – Italy is in a full-blown Golden Age for wine. Never have we seen more great wine coming out of this land once called Oenotria. After thousands of years, we have arrived to the Promised Land. And the last five vintages have bestowed a largess upon wine lovers almost to the point of excess. Before one thinks this a protestation, let’s examine our collective fortune.

While on this last trip to Italy, covering Tuscany and Piedmont with a dollop of Vinitaly in the middle, we tasted through many wines from these five vintages from 2012 to 2016.

Piedmont’s controversial 2014 vintage in the Langhe

How important is vintage? Does terroir prevail over the wind and the rain and the sun? Does a farmer, who works the land for 40 years, have special tools to overcome the vagaries of the land? Or is it all a cosmogonic crap-shoot?

Those are questions people, far better connected than me, have been grappling with for aeons. But nonetheless, those were the questions I too asked as I stood on the tower in Barbaresco, overlooking one of the dearest wine producing spots on earth. And 2014 was the vintage in question.

Rare and precious – And other unlikely juxtapositions

It started last night while I was looking for a bottle of wine to go with the lasagne. I wanted something a bit rustic, not too heavy, maybe with some age on it, and red. Isn’t that how everyone does it? Go to your wine closet and pick out something fabulous?

Earlier in the day, at the nearby supermarket, I noticed a display of wine and saw the word Rosatello. Once upon a time, that meant a lightly dry rosé wine from Tuscany, long before “that” was famous. Now it means sweet, red or rosé, still or fizzy, depending on which bottle is presented. But someone shopping in this supermarket would probably get a bottle of either, to go with their lasagne.

Is the World Ready for New Italian Wine?

When Jon Bonné penned his groundbreaking book, The New California Wine, he caused a lot of us to look at wine in a different light. It wasn’t so much that all of a sudden winemakers in California were doing something different than they had done before, for in California, experimentation is always part of the gambit. No, it was that he caused us to perceive, from a different perspective, how some winemakers in California were going about the art and craft of winemaking in a totally unfettered way. In fact, these revolutionaries, some of them, have also become part of the mainstream for wine in the Golden State.

There will always be a large commercial aspect to wine in California and other places in the world where wine is part of the commerce of the country. France, Spain and Italy come to mind. Italy has had, for some time, a robust commercial side of wine. A recent visit to the 51st edition of Vinitaly showed just how vigorous that business still is.

An introvert’s guide to surviving Vinitaly

Amor litteras ad Vinitaly

My dear mom was an extrovert. Being around people recharged her batteries, not that she needed them to. She was a perpetual motion machine. But as a child of hers, who came into the world as an introvert, the opposite happens when I am around a crowd. Thus, when I visited Vinitaly after a year’s absence, I imagined all the other people who might have to brave the endless pavilions of Veronafiere and are also introverts, and thought to make a plan for all of us.

Perpetuating a Legacy in the Modern Day Business of Wine in Italy

In recent days, in Tuscany, there were some terrific thunderstorms. Along with the rain, hail fell from the heavens. Not exactly an “under the Tuscan Sun” moment. But just as I wrote these words, the sun poked its head out through the steel gray clouds.

Over the period of 30 hours, with full immersion (and submersion, as the case may be), I had the opportunity to sit and talk with three Tuscan families about their wine business. And the overriding (if not overtly intended) dilemma they all expressed to me was that of their family legacy in the business of wine.

Valpolicella at a Crossroads in the New Millennium

Outside a storm is passing over, the sky rumbling in a way that is at once ominous and reassuring. Texas in April is not for the faint of heart. Storms of Biblical proportions, hail, wind and torrential rains often put a damper on what only hours before might have been the most perfect of Spring days. But it is also a blunt reminder that none of us are really “in charge.” As someone much wiser than me once said, “We strut and point, pontificate and strike, but, rest reassured, there are always larger forces of destiny in play.”

As the world of wine turns from Bordeaux to Italy and Verona, there will be plenty of bottles opened in the coming days and weeks. None the less of them will be local bottles, in the various trattoria and bars around the city.

Who are the Future “Thought Leaders” for Italian Wine?

With harvest behind us and winemaking for the year finished, Italians in the wine trade are living out of their suitcases. Traveling to markets around the world, attending portfolio tastings and working with salespeople in the trenches. Last week there was Prowein. This week all eyes turn to Bordeaux for their annual UGC 2016 vintage tastings. But soon there will be Vinitaly. Emails are being sent to round up prospective new clients and export markets. Seminars are being scheduled. Dinners, which will go late into the night, are being planned, in and around Verona. And there are all the people planning travel to Italy to visit and taste, before and after Vinitaly. All this eating and drinking and tasting and talking, what will come of it?

The Secret Life of a Gateway Wine - Coming of Age in a Life of Wine

Living in a country that is geographically isolated from much of the world by the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, many in America tend to live inside their heads. It’s funny that for those of us who love wine, the head is the receptacle for the precious liquid. If only it could occasionally be utilized as a way to flush our system and give us a more outward perspective. For some, I am sure it does. But the monkey brain inside of us, it chatters away.

I was talking to a group of young wine professionals last week, just relating the differences between now and then - then being the time when I was their age. Maybe younger. I was talking about wine and what my gateway wine was, a path which eventually led me to tables where an obscene array of aged and (often) great Barolo and Barbaresco were there for pure enjoyment. By chance, my gateway wine was a bottle of Thunderbird.

Italian Wine in the Second Decade of the Third Millennium Gets Off to a Shaky Start – 2011 and 2014 - Analysis, Expectations and Opportunities

With absolutely little or no pragmatic devices, and relying on instinct, I have hit a wall in the second decade of this new century, with regards to Italian wine. Two vintages, 2011 and 2014, are beginning to feel like other vintages, 1972, 1973, 1981, 1983, 1991, 1992 and more recently, 2002. I say this, not as a collector, for I have tasted wines from Piedmont and Tuscany from some of these vintages and have been happily surprised and rewarded. But as one who looks at these wines on an inventory spread sheet, week after week, and year after year, I have noticed alarming trends over the perception of vintages. From whence do these views emanate?

A Good Horse - And an Even Better Saddle

The other day I got a late-pay notice from a government agency. I fretted over it for a while, imagining all kinds of economic burden to my little world. And then a picture popped up on the screen, of some crazed leader laughing with his generals in front of a high powered missile, capable of potentially sending a nuclear payload into my back yard. And I forgot all about my little problem.

There are many ways to look at things, in this age of disruption. We can bemoan the loss of freedoms we once took for granted, we can activate socially and make our voices heard and we can celebrate for our side. And that is what is being done in various quarters around the country and indeed, in the world.

The Trophy Life - Did you come this far to be somewhere else?

There’s this natty new watering hole with a wood burning oven on Washington Street in Yountville. I’m waiting there to meet a friend and colleague, to have a drink and go over some Italian business. As I am early, and the bar is overflowing with revelers (it is Napa Valley Premiere week), I stand outside and catch up with emails from back home. Two large multi-person vans are parked in front. Black and shiny, with quirky license plates, monikers of someone’s idea of wine country chi-chi. In reality, these vans are peripatetic conveyances for the moneyed set, with their black and shiny boots, and black pressed jeans, and their tall blonde wives with their tight faux leopard stretch jeans, long-legged, with long, shimmering hair. “Come get in this one with us,” one of the older single men yelps to someone else’s wife. As if she was going to get in and on their way to dinner at Press, something was going to happen inside that van? She just gives him a desultory sniff and climbs into a smaller, more intimate vehicle with her curator.

Oh, the trophy life, it ain't no good life,

But it's my life.

How do you solve a problem like Prosecco?

How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Julie Andrews as Maria von Trapp (L) and Sergio Mionetto (R)

It’s one thing to try and grow a wine category into a monster. It’s another thing to hold onto it once it has grown so big that it’s impossible to wrap one’s hands (or mind) around the giant it has become. Prosecco has become such a monster. And now Prosecco is at a critical crossroads.

Italian Wine and its Truth-Adjacent Death Spiral

I was making my rounds in the wine job circuit. Serving tables. Sommelier. And now (1981) I was managing a wine bar in Dallas. My son was nearing school age. I needed a day job, being a single parent. A wholesale wine manager, sitting at my bar, told me I’d do great in the distribution side and offered me a job. And so I took a leap.

Over the years, it has been a good ride. I took a few years in between, working for an importer. I loved that side of it as well. But it was always distribution that called to me.

Showcasing Italian Wine in the USA – 3 Events to Put Your Best Foot Forward

Slow Wine – Vino 2017 – Gambero Rosso

February has been a busy month for Italian wine in America. The Italian holiday vacations, for the most part, are done with. Vinitaly is a couple of months away. And Italians, as 21st century road warriors, have their engines revved. The race has begun. And not just for the wine business. This week I huddled in a snow-bound hotel in lower Manhattan, during Fashion Week, amidst a gaggle of Italian designers, photographers and models. The spirit of Marco Polo, Amerigo Vespucci and Cristoforo Colombo, is well and alive, in the hearts and constitutions of Italian artists, merchants and craftsmen and women. And Italian wine is right there with them - all new, shiny and pretty.

What will happen to Italian wine if America enters into a trade war with Europe?

The Italians never thought it would happen. They, led by the French, were marching into a huge new market, China. In that moment, they turned their gaze from America, seeing a new, emerging market filled with hundreds of millions of potential customers for their wines. Every farmer’s daughter was going to Shanghai, Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan, Taipei, Chengdu and Hong Kong with their Barolo, Brunello, their Prosecco and their Moscato. All along, China was developing cheap solar panels, racing to find a way to fulfill their own country’s need for cheap, clean, sustainable energy. And with that came the temptation to import those solar panels to their trading partners in Europe. But trading with China in the solar sector could cost thousands of jobs in Europe, where the solar energy industry had a foothold and was growing at a rapid pace. The EU threatened a steep tariff on solar panels imported from China. And China threatened to retaliate on wine with a tariff of up to 47%. A trade war loomed. And while this threat was greater to France, and even Spain, Italy also felt the slap from the big hand of China.

Survivalism for the Shattered Tribe in the Fog of Winter

Could this be the week we will look back, someday, with the realization that our wine collecting days are over? For one, the span of my life, or anyone’s life for that matter, might not exceed the time it will take to open and drink all the wines we have amassed. For another, the idea of wine, in the age of disruption, just doesn't seem that high on the list of important things to concern oneself with. Or am I wrong? Perhaps this is the perfect time to open up anything, and everything that matters. We’re not getting any younger. And the asteroid is still light years away from impact, isn’t it?