The Autostrada Interview

"An organism that is too greedy and takes too much without giving anything in return destroys what it needs for life and dies out." - Peter Wohlleben - The Hidden Life of Trees

“Do you mind if I record our conversation?” my fellow traveler asked. “I guess not,” I reluctantly replied. It was going to be a five-hour drive to our next appointment. I really was hoping my companion was more interested in listening to a podcast or an audio book. But Fredo is a chatty fellow, an extrovert to the max. “It’s just that I recently lost a friend. He was only 39. I wish I would have something of him, his words, to remember him as I drive down the lonely corridor of life.”

Why is it extroverts see the corridor of life as lonely? Maybe because they are screaming down the autostrada of life at 180 kph? Just maybe. Regardless, I was strapped in, he had the recorder on, and we weren’t getting out of this car for awhile. So it went.

Intervista nel Futuro

#TBT - from the archives


From the 23rd Century, near a place in Tuscaremma, called Montalcinapaia.

Q. Montalcinapaia has changed, so it seems. What is the most important change, in your opinion, in wine in the last 200 years?
A. For one, we are a dry area, very arid now. Ever since the Wind War of 2059-69, this area has relied more on natural species for their survival skills than for their elegance. But we have found out that if we work in this minimal environment, we can coax a lot out of the soil.

Interview with the Ancients

#TBT - from the archives
Imagine taking a walk in a quiet place. In it, there were many souls from ancient times. They were from Greece and Italy, Sumeria and Egypt, Persia and Etruria. The voices were silent but the souls were coming through loud and clear, on a Friday afternoon on the eastern edge of Central Park.

I had just interviewed a gentleman about his life, his book and things Italian. But we didn’t quite make a connection. How could you do anything in 15 minutes, except perhaps to size each other up like two bulls in a ring? Not that it was that kind of encounter. I left feeling the need to reconnect with my roots, so I hopped on a subway and headed back a couple of thousand years, to interview the ancient ones.

The Hill Country Interview

Guest interview by Beatrice Russo While Alfonso is finding his bliss on his very little own island, he has given up the blog to me, once again. Before he left, we sat down in the Texas Hill Country, where I interviewed him. BR: Did you start out wanting to be in the wine business? AC: No actually I wanted to be a gypsy-freelance photographer. I went to New York in the mid Seventies, lived in Chelsea, did a little part time work at the New School and assisted for a photographer. BR: What happened? AC: I am a westerner, like to see the sunset and the horizon. New York in 1975 was pretty depressing. I moved back to LA. BR: What was the wine scene like when you arrived in LA in the late Seventies? AC: It was fresher, cleaner than where I had just been. I started working in a restaurant in Pasadena, called The Chronicle. It had a fabulous cellar, mainly California wine at the time, but I was exposed to some of the great winemakers at the time. Pasadena was just a little too conservative in those days. I remember the night Jimmy Carter won the election; some of my customers were pretty upset. They looked at me with my longish, curly hair and started blaming me that the country was going down. BR: What did you do? AC: I realized I was in an environment that wasn’t healthy. My son had just been born and I was full of hope. The prospect of serving up Ridge and Georges de Latour to a bunch of miscreants motivated me. So I worked in Hollywood across from Paramount studios on Melrose. It was a happening place. Wine was coming down from Napa we had French wine on our list, there were a lot of stars coming in. It was just a brighter place. BR: So you opted for Italian wine. AC: That came after a while. I was living in Dallas, working at a great old Italian place, Il Sorrento. They had this little room up in the attic that was tem-controlled and had all kinds of old bottles of Barbaresco, Barolo, Gattinara, Amarone and Vino Nobile in there. I was tired of selling Piesporter and Bolla Soave so I asked the sommelier to give me a list and some prices. I went to town. Folks like Stanley Marcus and Terry Bradshaw came in, along with the wealthy set in Dallas, looking to have an experience. It was the Eighties and oil and money was flowing. BR: Were you surprised by the public reaction to Italian wine, or by their eventual mass acceptance? AC: A lot of people travel to Italy. So they are looking for a way to recreate that experience. After a while Italian wine just seeps into your bloodstream and it becomes a natural part of your life. I am constantly surprised and disappointed at the same time. BR: Half-full, half-empty, which one is it? AC: Both. I was recently in a new Italian spot; they had spent millions on the place. But when I looked at the wine list, I wanted to puke. I saw wines on the list that were marked up five times. I mean, who’s gonna spend $170 on an ‘03 Brunello in these times, especially when they can go down to Cost-Co and pick it up for $49. There still is an imbalance out there. That’s the half-empty part. BR: So what did you do? AC: I told my server that I had to leave, personal emergency (it was, to me) and we went back into town. Walked into a little place that makes great pizza and pasta and uses some great locally sourced produce. Sat down ordered a bottle of a cool red, a dry, real Lambrusco for $34, and got back on track. Twenty years ago we would have had to just buck up and drink the Bolla. Not these days, even here in flyover country. BR: Yeah, what’s with you and that flyover comment? I read it on the blog lately. AC: It’s a reference the East Coast folks make to where I hang my shingle. The midsection of the country. You know, where we can still see sunsets and horizons and have a back yard and a garden. BR: You have a unique style of writing. How did this blog thing come about? AC: I have written stuff all my life. I wrote a novel (unpublished) in 1979-80. When I was in Palermo in 1971, I remember writing poetry on the typewriter in my uncle’s library. In those days Italy only used 22 of the 26 letters, I think. So my poetry was a little strange. After my uncle took me around the streets and ruins of Sicily, I read everything I could get from Sicilian authors. This is my basis in blogging. It uses wine as a buoy but launches out as far as I can go, even sometimes in to Borges country. BR: You lost me there, AC. AC: I’m not surprised. BR: Did you ever feel that you had tapped into the Zeitgeist in some special sort of way? AC: This is starting to sound like Dylan’s Rolling Stone interview, Beatrice. Are you talking about the way the blog has been going? BR: Yeah. AC: As I look back on it now, I am surprised that I came up with so many of them. At the time it seemed like a natural thing to do. Now I can look back and see that I must have written those posts "in the spirit," you know? Like "The Endless Italian Summer" or “The Meltdown” -- I was just thinking about that the other night. There's no logical way that you can arrive at posts like that. I don't know how it was done. BR: It just came to you? AC: It just came out “through” me. D.H. Lawrence wrote a poem called “We are Transmitters,” that said it all. BR: You have been doing posts, as far as I can tell, three times a week for two years now. What's going on here? AC: Well, The tail is definitely wagging the dog on that one. I don't know what to say; I'd love to slow down, but the tap is on and the stuff is flowing. So I'm just going with the flow. BR: Have you ever considered moving to Italy? Where you might feel more at home? AC: I considered that back after my wife died. But then I thought about being in Italy, where they’d always treat me like a stranger on a Sunday night. I’d rather not have any illusions about my isolation. Texas gives me space and I like the out West places well enough. No, I’m not bound for Italy, not looking for a convent in the Marche to redo anytime soon. BR: So, tell me a secret, AC, something that you have been keeping all to yourself. AC: I don’t know about that, Beatrice, how about a little dream? BR: OK, yeah, sure. AC: I’d like to slow down on this blogging thing, ‘cause it just seems to have a bit too much of a hold on me. I have other stories in me, like my science fiction side. All those years I spent throwing the baseball in my backyard with the old Italian who used to work for Rod Serling and the Twilight Zone, I guess. I also would like to write a book about a wine personality. I mean one of the John Steinbeck, larger than life people. The kind of person the common man could identify with. BR: You got someone in mind? AC: Look around you, here in the Texas Hill Country; vineyards, Bar-B-Q, all kinds of people running around here. There’s at least two or three books scattered around this crowd. Three that I know of. But there is one I am working on. Wait and see, Bea. You gotta practice your patience, young lioness. BR: Thanks, AC. Comments to me here:Beatrice

Lessons From Our French Cousins

Texas is very much like France, in that it is of similar size and very independent thinking. California and Italy share similarities in land mass, climate and lifestyles. Nothing exact, but some parallels to think about.

Tonight, after a wonderful outdoor concert by the lake, I decided to pose questions to an Italian who is very adept at getting to the French people and obtaining what she wants, to give us some insights into their way and their successes. And quite possibly, how we can learn from our French cousins, things that can make us stronger and more nimble in today’s changing world. Of course, the answers come from the same place as the questions.

Q. Carla, you have adopted France and French ways. In fact you have married the most powerful French man in our time. Can you give us some insights as to how the French mind works and how we as Italians could approach the world in this new time, in ways that would be relevant and appropriate?

A. First, there are more similarities than differences. The macro view is to tear it apart and see how different we are. But if you look at how the two countries live, we are much more alike than not. We enjoy fresh food, prepared in a simple and clean manner. We like our wines fresh and unadulterated with not too much alcohol or wood. We like our clothes fashionable but well made and in a timeless manner. And of course we both are passionate and obsessed with living life with all seriousness and devotion.

Q. Lets talk about the wine. France has a long tradition of winemaking that is famous all over the world. So does Italy. What can Italy learn from their neighbors?

A. For one they should keep their private business behind closed doors. Both countries have a saying that goes like this: If it is meant to be done in the bedroom, then it should be kept behind the bedroom doors. There are private passions that shouldn’t be paraded around for the world to see and judge.

Q. How so?

A. Lets take wine scandals. There are laws and then there are those who think they can make something better than the law will allow. This is all a matter of opinion, unless the aspect of safety enters into the discussion. But when Bordeaux has a conflict, they discuss it in chambers and seek to fight it out, hammer out the points and come to a compromise. It isn’t perfect, but after all the discussion, there is consensus. They arrive at a solution.

Q. And Italy differs in which way?

A. Italy treats these matters like an opera, like a public forum, not realizing that their image, the perception, is altered and sometimes to the detriment of the overall goal of the community.

Q. France is struggling though, recently, with dock strikes and work stoppages. Right now as we speak in the port of Marseilles, there are 29 oil tankers prevented from entering the port. How much more public than that can one be?

A. I cannot speak for the politic, except to say the workers are striking to protest privatization, the inevitability of the modern global world economy. That is more a problem of short sightedness and also the French aspect of pater-familias, whereby the state takes care of their citizens. In the US I believe they call that entitlement programs, and that is no longer economically viable. But it is human nature to try and get as much as one can for as little as they are willing to pay for it. The economies of the world now make that kind of attitude and position obsolete.

Q. That’s a pretty heavy statement from the first lady.

A. One thing the French have long realized is that the world is a stage and to be players on it one must take risks. The Italians do as well, but is usually for a shorter term goal, at least in recent history. But like Catherine di Medici and Napoleon Buonaparte, who both had roots in Italy but shaped so much of the modern history of France, the French understand borrowing and adapting other notions into their culture to make it better and brighter. And then to claim it as their own invention. That’s why they do so well with wine; they understand the art of self promotion.

Q. Restaurants in the US claim to be French or Continental and then you go inside and they have pasta and simple fish dishes and everything seems more Italian than what is proffered.

A. Also in France. Robuchon in Paris makes a wonderful Carbonara, and Savoy has a chicken that Tuscan has inspired. Gagnaire, well he is still very French, but his food is not without their Italian influence and sensibility in terms of bright and simple perfection.

Q. One last question. Where are you planning on going this year for vacation?

A. As you know last year the vacation was in America. But this year I am hoping for a little time back in Italy, perhaps an island like Panarea or Sardegna. My friend Carol Bouquet has a nice place on Pantelleria and Giorgio (Armani) is also there in August. I also like the Isola del Giglio. But Corsica is also being considered, especially since that region is so sensitive and suffers from their loss of identity with France. But we shall see.

Q. So we won’t see you in Texas this year?

A. Not in the summer, but after the elections, you never know. We shall just have to see.

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

Intervista nel Futuro

From the 23rd Century, near a place in Tuscaremma, called Montalcinapaia.

Q. Montalcinapaia has changed, so it seems. What is the most important change, in your opinion, in wine in the last 200 years?
A. For one, we are a dry area, very arid now. Ever since the Wind War of 2059-69, this area has relied more on natural species for their survival skills than for their elegance. But we have found out that if we work in this minimal environment, we can coax a lot out of the soil.

Q. Tell us in the past a little about the wine you are making in your time?

A. Interesting that you would ask, because right now we are seeing an interest in bringing back Sangiovosso to the vineyards. After LVMH's Castello Banfi was leveled by a tornado ( see picture) and the community decided to establish a wind farm on the property once owned by Banfi, Antinori and Argiano, the area had been left to go wild. The earthquake cycle of 2101-12 also contributed to re-arranging the area. The whole time we had stories of the robots who worked on the windmills telling us about a vine that would grow up on the posts of the giant rotors. But because the area is so hot we rarely send humans out to investigate in the spring and the summer.
Anyway, we have been making wine from Frappatocino and Nero D’Avellino, because they seemed more suitable for the region. But we are investigating these wild vines from around the ruins of LVMH's Banfi property.

Q. Any other developments in the past 200 years or so?

A. This area now has been active in growing the blue Agave. We can concentrate the spirit and use it sparingly. Since we learned that drinking more than 2 glasses a day of red wine was harmful, in the 22nd century, we stepped back from overproducing wine and have sought to supplement our farming and our diet with more appropriate products.


Q. Agave, that was pretty drastic wasn’t it, getting a succulent from Central America to replace a large part of your wine production?
A. You mean like the tomato and the potato? We were searching for sustainable spirits and agave was best suited to our world. We were very fortunate that the Sicilian grapes did well in Tuscany and that we were able to save them before Southern Italy was forever altered.

Q. Back in 2000, there was a lot of talk about the so called International varieties, Cabernet, Merlot, Syrah, that kind of thing. What has happened to them in your world?

A. When the Chaîne des Puys came back to life and erupted in 2076 in France, that changed everything for Bordeaux and Burgundy. And then 10 years later when Duppacher Weiher spewed, that brought Germany to their knees. We have actually been very lucky in Central Italy. Southern Italy, that is another story. What happened though was that winemakers and farmers were looking for crops to grow that were self sustaining and didn’t need fertilizers and little water.

Q. And what role does science play in winemaking these days?

A. It’s very important. Now we need ways to help the plant work on their own and since enology met nanology it has been a great boost. Now we can develop the grapes, via nanology, to notify the winery when they are ready to be harvested. We harvest berry by berry and so our yields have not really suffered. But because we are now a world population of 63 billion, the demand is still great. Another development is the birth of new fruits that we can harvest in space, the extra-terroir-estrial varieties, like Vitus Veronellus and Vitus Iacuccius. These have been heaven sent. The best (and now, the only) Riesling comes from a space station that circles the moons of Venus, from a variety called Vitus Theisus-Shiroshekar.


Q.What about the idea of alcohol in culture and society?

A. What a strange question. I'm not sure I understand the context. With the world being almost 2/3 Hinduslam and meat eating and alcohol seen as part of a life style for the privileged, this has had some social repercussions. Getting around on the land hover vehicles now is seen as a quaint but particulare’ amusement for the Gigglionaires. But really now alcohol isn’t taboo with the eastern religions, it’s more a problem that the governments still try and tax and regulate it, to fund their space colonization programs.


Q. If I could have brought one thing from 2008 for you, what would you have wanted?

A. Water.

Q. If I could give you information from 2008, what would you want to know?

A. Nothing really. We have survived the Wind War, the Tornadic era and we have skirted the Volcanic era. We have been very fortunate. But there is one mystery you might be able to clear up for us. We have these ancient bottles of wine, from the 2003, that we found at the estates where the wind farms now are. One was called Brunello and the other was called Duemilatre. Could you please tell us what those wines were?

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in 23rd Cenutury Italy

Interview with the Ancients

Imagine taking a walk in a quiet place. In it, there were many souls from ancient times. They were from Greece and Italy, Sumeria and Egypt, Persia and Etruria. The voices were silent but the souls were coming through loud and clear, on a Friday afternoon on the eastern edge of Central Park.

I had just interviewed a gentleman about his life, his book and things Italian. But we didn’t quite make a connection. How could you do anything in 15 minutes, except perhaps to size each other up like two bulls in a ring? Not that it was that kind of encounter. I left feeling the need to reconnect with my roots, so I hopped on a subway and headed back a couple of thousand years, to interview the ancient ones.

Q. What were the wines like when you were living?

A. They were dark and musky, and warm. They tasted a little like sour water sometimes and at other times sweet like rose petals.

Q. Who made the wine in your community?

A. We had families who passed the trade down from generation to generation. There were families, like in Chaldea, who had been working with the grape for hundreds of years.

Q. Who among you were the first to taste wine?

The fellow in profile speaks

A. When we first tasted it, it came about by accident. One of the servants had left a vase of grapes lying around in a cool dark place and forgot about it. Several weeks later one of the porters was walking around and smelled this sweet odor. He had it brought up to the dining area and we all took bites out of this fruit we knew, but it tasted very different this time. And the juice in the bottom of the vase we all took sips of. This was something we had never experienced before. So we instructed the porters to pick more grapes and let them sit in the basement in the same manner. That was the first time we had seen it.


Q. How did the news of this travel?

A. Slowly at first, but after 400-500 years pretty much everybody in the known world had an idea of the transformative powers of the grape.

Q. And the merchants, how did they fit in?

A. At first, it was seen as a religious ritual, so the merchants stayed away. A tribe of women eventually wound their way through the empire, setting up trade with the Egyptians.


Q. Many times we hear that the Greeks brought wine culture to Italy. Who knows about that in this room?

An Etruscan princess answers

A. We had already started with the grape before the Greeks arrived. We had been going on for several hundred years. What the Greeks did was to bring some new grape types with them, but not superior to the ones we had been cultivating for 500 years.

Q. It seems Ancient Romans loved wine. Poems were written about it, buildings and temples were erected in honor of the god of the grapes.

A. That all is true, but keep in mind we had very little to eat and drink. We were often sick and food went bad quickly. Wine kept, and it kept us well and our bellies full. And it made us happy.


Q. Did the grape have anything to do with the expansion of the Empire(s)?

A. Other than it went where man went? Of course when we conquered Gaul or the Huns or the Britons, we would plant vines and keep the local people collected and subdued. Wine had a part to play in the civilizing factor of the wild tribes.

Q. Last Question. If you were around today, what kind of wine would you like to see? What would you make?

An older Roman answers

A. Listen, I would round up some of my soldiers and head to Toscanium and set that land straight. I’d bring them back to the Jovian roots and light a bloody fire under their feet. And by all the power of Jupiter, we’d bring them back to the flame of truth and all that is holy about the miracle the gods have sent down from the heavens in giving us grape with which to make this precious wine. Anyone caught disrespecting the gift of the gods would be crucified and struck down, their family sent into exile. To go against the Divine Immortals is the worst sin one could commit against the pantheon that rules our ancient souls.

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

INTER(ior)VIEWS

For the record, just so nobody gets any wild ideas, I am thinking of doing some interview type posts that are totally made up; fantasies, springboards and otherwise fictional renderings from the interior of my mind.

Ok, we got that straight?

So, in case anyone confuses these posts with fact or reality, no, Mrs. Calabash, these are fiction.