On the Wine Trail in Italy: TEXSOM

Showing posts with label TEXSOM. Show all posts

Sunday, February 26, 2017

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.

TEXSOM through the ages

TEXSOM and On the Wine Trail in Italy have something in common - we both started about the same time - and hopefully those who noticed such things have seen growth in both of them. I for one, now have a reason to enjoy August in Texas. That's more than enough. But as well, the conviviality, the friendships, the dedication to wine and the people involved make this a must-attend event for me.

10 Years of Texsom ~ 2005-2014

It was the winter of 2004-5. We were sitting at a table, myself with Guy Stout, Drew Hendricks and James Tidwell. I hadn’t yet started this blog. Guy, Drew and James were months away from becoming master sommeliers. And they were kicking around this idea about starting a conference to encourage wine professionals from around Texas to become more involved in wine, in attaining certifications and in being better at their trade. That’s how I remember it all starting. Ten years later, Texsom is huge. Drew and James are still running the thing, but there has been a quantum leap in the quality, the engagement and the momentum of Texas wine professionalism and, indeed, wine professionalism from all over the country. Now there are scores of master sommeliers, masters of wine and other highly engaged folks from the wine trade who invade Texas at the peak of summer, to teach, to learn and to enjoy what it is about wine that attracted us to it in the first place.

Texsom 2008 ~ Session Notes

There never seems to be enough time for it all. Put a handful of master-somms and an ersatz Italian together and give them 90 minutes to talk about 8 wines? Not enough time for disambiguation. No time for the bang, not even for a whimper. Press on, press on.

There is something exhilarating about being in a room with a set of high energy wine gurus. Rising tide kind of thing. We had two sessions on Italian wines, Italy being a darling of the mutant set of somms currently working their way around the airports and boardrooms of the halls of power in the wine biz. Make no mistake about it folks, the big boys in the industry know what is at stake and they have lined up some of the best and the brightest to sell the message down to the platoon level.

In our sessions, day one (Northern and Central Italy) we had:
Moderator: Brian Cronin MS

Panel:
Laura DePasquale MS
Brett Zimmerman MS
Larry O'Brien MS
Joe Spellman MS
Alfonso Cevola CSW

Day two (Southern Italy and the islands) we had:
Moderator David Glancy MS

Panel:
Laura DePasquale MS
Reggie Narito MS
Larry O'Brien MS
Brett Zimmerman MS
Alfonso Cevola CSW

I would love to accompany a couple of these folks on a wine blast through Italy, or anywhere for that matter. Guys like Larry O’ Brian (above) always seem to be working through the wine, constant students of the grape. Brett Zimmerman, working for a small importer, his path on the Italian wine trail, treading and tasting, working his way up that insurmountable mountain we call Italy. How about that new salesperson in the audience looking at this and wondering how they’ll be able to get to base camp? I’m telling you, sons and daughters, we’re all trying to get to base camp. And on to the ascent.

Teaser: The article in the latest Sommelier Journal from my last trip to Piemonte just a little avvinare (taste). Subscribe and support David Vogels valiant effort to bring intelligent writing about wine to the young sommeliers and all the rest of us.

On one of our sessions, The Central Italy part, we had two wines from Tuscany. I hadn’t realized it until I tasted the wines but there was some thread of similarity, even though the two wines were as different as concrete and balsa wood. The wines, Castello dei Rampolla’s Chianti Classico 2004 and the Argiano Solengo 2004, both had the imprimatur of Giacomo Tachis, albeit from a now historical whisper. Time, time, bang, bang, whimper, whimper.

The Rampolla spoke to me in a simple, pure and direct way. The spirit of the place, Panzano, was erect and present. Wild horses tied to a wagon heading towards a sunset on the coast, in no particular hurry. Gorgeous, golden, wild, velvet, young-first-love-Michele-in-1965. Holy mother of God, how did they do this?

The Argiano, with those gypsy grapes of Cabernet, Merlot and Syrah (aren’t these the grapes that could get a winemaker in trouble in Montalcino?), preening and prancing about the glass. “Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain.” I’m at a loess for words. I don’t want to like this wine, want to prefer the Sangiovese in purezza. But the two wines have this astral thread that connects them. Is it the Dali Lama of Italy, Tachis, from his cave in Sardegna, sending out his influence over the waves, out-Milarepa-ing Milarepa?

Soil, servitude and the fortune of territoriality. Two wines, two apparently different styles. Our house is a very fine house, with two cats in the yard. Dottore Tachis, now everything is easy ‘cause of you.

And this is the way the week ends. Not with a bang, but a conga line.

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

Photos courtesy of Texas Sommelier Conference 2008

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Texsom 2008 ~ Hill Country Ho-down

Julie over at D-Magazine is doing a live-blogging feed, for more information. She's even got a Quicktime dance video of the Master Sommeliers in action. Too much going on to put it all down right now. Ray Wylie Hubbard, Shiner Bock, ribs, cobbler and dancin'. See some pix after the jump.