Merano ~ Bosom of the Dolomites

A fascinating aspect about Italy is what it represents to people, what they think it is. Aside from the usual misunderestimations about Italian food (spaghetti and meat balls) or wine ( Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio), it goes to a deeper level. Italy is the four cities: Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan. Doesn't anybody ever talk about going to Torino or Palermo? Italy has such wonderful countryside in Tuscany. The Amalfi Coast is so picturesque. As if getting to the Tuscan countryside or the Amalfi Coast weren't strewn with unbelievable beauty along the way?

So it was with me, when I arrived in Merano at the base of the Dolomites, 70 miles from the Austrian border. In a store back home, I ran into a local person, and they asked me about where I had just been. When I told them the Merano Wine Festival, they remarked, “Oh, don’t you just love the colorful glass from there?” Why, yes I do. Especially when they get it from Murano.

I don’t get as worked up over those encounters anymore. I find them bewilderingly amusing. I tell myself, at least they are appreciating something Italian. Oh, and pass the meatballs, please.

Merano must be wonderful in the summertime. I’ll not likely get there in that period. I prefer large bodies of water, the Pacific or the Adriatic or some lake, somewhere. But I can imagine its attraction, with those long days and moderate temperatures, especially when I am in Texas in July. Which is more likely the case than not. What an oasis it must be.

We arrived at Merano in time for a little snow flurry action in the higher elevations. Nothing to wreck the leather-soled shoes, rather a light dusting that one could admire from a distance.

Here the wines have names like Kerner, Schiava, Lagrein, and Zweigelt. The last three are red wines. These are wines that are more well known coming from other countries, say Germany or Austria. But because they are technically grown and made in Italy, they can be marketed in the US in Italian restaurants and wine bars. Still a bit of a tough sell, because the names are as difficult to pronounce as Falanghina or Granaccia, which are also not household names.

Gestalt at Ristorante Laubenkeller: wine & wall

Again, this is the beauty of things Italian: not to be pigeonholed into the same old fiasco. The awe of this Italian wine labyrinth is in the complexity, the diversity, the seemingly endless variation. Want something simple? Go to France, or Germany. Those countries are infinitely easier to grasp.

This side of Italy can be a comforting change from the chaos of Southern Italy, or even the maddening laissez-faire of places like the Marche. Here in Merano there is order. One friend remarked that it was the worst of both worlds, the irrationality of the Italian with the inflexibility of the Teutonic. I see it another way: The creativity of the Italian is tethered and brought into a workable state by the rational determination of an ordered society. Brightly painted walls, but with a paint to last through winter snow storms.
Still, there are madmen wandering out of the asylum. Who else will pay €149.00 (that’s US $225.00) for a pair of jeans that looked like they were fished from the bottom of the pile in a thrift store? Oh yeah, someone drinks a little too much Die Jäeger in these parts too.

I spent evenings with Calabrese and Sicilian winemakers - my tribes. It was interesting to see this part of Italy through their eyes. To them, it was another world, more removed from their experience than New York. I could only imagine what my Tuscan-countryside-loving, Amalfi-coastline-hugging Americanos back home would think of this.

For my part, sitting under a heated patio lamp, sipping wine and looking at the snow falling on the mountaintops was as natural as watching waves nuzzle the sand down in the Gargano. As I thought about the days I was spending in the Val Passiria, here in the bosom of the Dolomites, you wouldn’t hear any complaints from me. I was lapping it up like mother’s milk.

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

There Are No Sick Bees Here

I have been back in Texas less than a week. During the first half of November, I visited six regions in Northern Italy. These were wine producing areas that were mountainous. There was usually a temperate valley included, for the grapes. We visited wine producing areas such as the Valle d’Aosta, Valle de la Roya, Valtellina, Valpolicella and the Valle Isarco.

Today I worked in my garden. It is past mid November and the figs on the trees are ripe, the basil is still growing and I harvested a 5 pound cucuzza squash. There are dozens of baby cucuzzas that probably won’t survive the coming cold spell later this week. The oregano and the rosemary will, though.

I don’t know how to go about telling stories about the wine valleys we visited. They were intense visits, lots of climbing and probably too many appointments. But what diversity there is between the regions. Is this Italy? Happy to report, it is, although it will be difficult to find many of the wines, and the food to go with it, in Italian restaurants here in the US.


One place that captured my heart was Airole in Liguria. Positioned in the Italian Riviera, this is a little known area, but what a treasure. Stark landscapes, dramatic inclines, awesome vistas, heroic spirit of place. On the trip into Liguria, and specifically to Airole, we had an appointment with Dino Masala, whose A Trincea property makes a wonderful olive oil from the Taggiasca olive. The oil is a dense, prehistoric kind of primordial slime that is worth fighting over. Brilliant yellow, cloudy, dense and desirable. If an olive oil can be sexual, the oil from Liguria is a symbol of that kind of sensual quality one normally associates with a person. It is an elixir, a medicine, an antidote, a vitamin, mineral and vegetable, a full meal and an anointing potion.


Dino Masala charges €18 Euro for a 1 Liter bottle of his oil. That’s precious enough. He also makes a variety of white and red wines, but it is his signature wine called Roccese that was one of the most interesting finds of the trip. Made mostly with the famous Rossese of Dolceacqua and blended with other indigenous grapes of the area. That could mean Italian or French varieties, as we straddled the two worlds on these mountaintops, shared between vines and olives, thyme and ruta. The wine is this rich, fleshy, ride in the back seat of a '55 Chevy - smooth, comfy and pleasurable.


Dino Masala is a man with a tan from working on his land, not from a tanning machine or a bottle. He is less about the wine and more about the land. Here is a man who, when he puts his head on a pillow, sleeps so soundly, so deep, that when he awakes, resurrects himself everyday as a new man. An entrepreneur who has made several fortunes, but who sees his bees and his vines and his mules as his real wealth. As we were walking though his property, which looks and feels like something out of Cervantes and the Douro, the bees were buzzing so loudly as to be the dominant hum of the world around us. “There are no sick bees here,” Dino remarked as we walked through a wall of the busy little creatures, intent upon gathering as much of the precious nectar that they could find, or steal. Yes, the air was filled with the sound of bees with the music of Leonard Cohen playing in the valley below.


Maybe it is just that I haven’t been here that much. For me Liguria is a wonderful find. It is rustic and wild, far from cities and frescoes. It is a wild side of Italy. At the end of the day I smelled like a bouquet of herbs - ruta, thyme and rosemary. From the top of A Trincea I remarked to Dino that his place is the Macchu Picchu of Italy. He nodded, as if that hadn’t been the first time someone had said that to him. To the old Roman bones inside this soldier of the vines, it was like coming home.

The Macchu Picchu of Italy

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

Finding Your Wine

Vallee d'Aoste ~ Vigne de Torrette

One day on the highway in Liguria, it hit me. We were driving up and down hills, into one valley and then on to another. All along the way I was meeting people, some who were winemakers and some who simply liked to drink wine. In Italy, it is easier to find a single wine that you can enjoy over a lifetime. A visit to a winery in your neighborhood, and there you go. It might be a crisp white wine or a mellow, rich red. But along the wine trail in Italy, I keep meeting people who have found their wine. So what is wrong with us in America? Or maybe the question should be, have you found your wine?

Merano ~ Südtirol

Tonight, as I write this below the base of the Alps in Merano, I think about the day 10 years ago when I married my wife. We spent a lifetime finding each other, had a dozen or so years together and then she was gone, taken back by the Creator. We had found each other and drank from each other's heart of a wine as sweet as the latest harvest. Tonight in a small trattoria, I watched a young couple sitting beside each other drinking their wine. Have they found in each other a wine for the rest of their lives?

Vallée de la Roya ~ Airole

Days before, I had been on steep hills plunging down to a rough river, ragged with the bones of ancient mountains. On the schist-laden slopes, vines struggle to break open the concrete soil, pushing towards the sun, holding their breath until the flowers bud and the fruit forms. A summer of heat and night takes over, like making love, then falling back on the pillow, only to disappear into a dream world. Day after day, for four, maybe five, months. Then the love children pop out and are ready to be picked. Anxious workers huddle under the canopies of the vines, picking this cluster and that one. All the offspring are sent to the winery to be nursed and made into precious liquid, so young couples can drink them and fall in love. A cycle that will be repeated until none of us are around to have these thoughts and urges.

Finding your wine. What can it be? How will you know? Does it need to be only one wine?

I met this winemaker in Liguria, Fausto he was called. Fausto has a gray torrent of uncut hair, covering ears that have still black hairs around the openings. An Italian surf bum, but not a lazy guy. Behind the furrowed brow, two eyes peer out, full of life and not a little mischief. Fausto has found his wine. It is a Pigato, an unlikely wine he makes, but one that works very well in his life. As he jumps into his little 2-cycle utility truck (really a glorified scooter), he grabs a bottle of white and heads off to his sister's sports bar. At a table, a plate appears, tiny piquant sausages in a fiery broth that only a Pigato can quell. Fausto teases one of the cook's daughters, and one can see his life is carefree and happy. Almost every day Fausto goes there, to eat his lunch and drink the wine that makes his life lighter and brighter.

I am not sure I have found my wine. And while there are some wines that I prefer over others, what could be a better wine to have with Fausto's sausages than a Pigato?

Valtellina ~ Sondrio

Some of us are outsiders, wandering the trails, in search of our tribe or even our moment. Some of us can never settle anywhere long enough to find our wine. We are poorer for that. For to enjoy a simple dish that our sister has made alongside a wine we have made with our own hands, well, that is such a special circumstance. Haven’t those souls won the big lottery of life? For along with finding their wine, they have also found their life and their place on this earth.

written Nov 9, 2007 by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy