Gone Hollywood

A. How can we believe a man who would sell out his friends?
B. Who else are you supposed to sell out? You can't betray enemies!

I must admit, there is something about the persona of Luca Zaia that lends well to a merry pasquinade. Maybe it was the Chianti I had tonight. Or maybe it was the fava beans.

When I read a recent post, for some reason I just got into a riff and before you know it, we were breaking out the Time Machine and Photoshop and having a fine old time making light of the latest developments in Montalcino.

You can read all about it on Vino Wire. I'm taking the road less traveled to investigate the strange coincidence of similarities between Dr. Zaia and some famous folks from Hollywood. After all, he is loving the limelight, so why not cast him in the true light of celebrity and exult his magnanimousness?

Being born with a pair of beady eyes was the best

thing that ever happened to me. - Lee Van Cleef

Whether it's threatening winemakers or tending to mad cow disease, celebrity-heroes always have to be seen in action, doing things, making decisions. Don’t forget to bring the blackberry along in case something more important needs to be dealt with, like altering the nature of Brunello or making specific wine more universally nondescript.

Thank you Dr. Zaia, for going after weak insipid Brunello in Montalcino, rather than looking for tainted milk from China in Italy.

The Lone Ranger: Only you, Tonto, know I'm alive. To the world,

I'm buried here beside my brother and my friends... forever.
Tonto: You are alone now. Last man. You are lone ranger.
The Lone Ranger: Yes, Tonto, I am... the Lone Ranger

No, Dr. Zaia, you are the Lone Ranger.
Um, that right, Kemosabe.

I have hunted you so long, I have become you.

Dr. Zaia, you have become a modern day Zed
Zed: What is it you want?
Zaia: Sweet death. Oblivion.
Zed: For yourself, or for the whole Vortex?
Zaia: For Everybody. An end to the human race. It has plagued this pretty planet for far too long.
Zed: You stink of despair. Fight back! Fight for death, if that's what you want.
Zaia: I thought at first you were the one to help. But it's hopeless. All my powers have gone.

I think what I think. I hate you all.

I hate you all. I hate you all. Including me...

Zed: We've all been used...
Zaia: ...and reused...
Zed: ...and abused...
Zaia: ...and amused!
Zardoz: Zardoz is pleased.

How many times do I have to tell you?

Wear your gloves when you handle humans!

Zaia: A planet where rich red wine evolved from light,
delicate Sangiovese grapes? There's got to be an answer.
Zaius: Don't look for it. You may not like what you find.

Zaius: Have you forgotten your scripture, the thirteenth scroll? "And Proteus brought the upright beast into the garden and chained him to a tree and the children did make sport of him."
Zaia: Green grapes are good, all grapes are good, all grapes are Brunello.
Zaius: The Forbidden Zone was once a paradise. Your breed made a desert of it, ages ago.

Well, Clarice - have the lambs stopped screaming?

Sangiovese, blood of Jove. Isn’t that enough to make Brunello a winner?
"I do wish we could chat longer, but I'm having an old friend for dinner."

Never send a monkey to do a man's job.

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

The Joy of Selling

Last month at the Illuminati estate in Abruzzo, I had lunch with my people. No, they weren’t Sicilian or Calabrese cousins. They weren’t my co-workers or clients meeting me in Italy. It was much more visceral than that, almost tribal in the connection. I was invited to have lunch with a wine sales team, guys who sell to wine shops and restaurants in Rome. Over the years I've had many meals at Illuminati. In the early days we had meals on the second floor of the old house, sometimes outside. If it was cold we’d invade the dining room. As the winery grew and the Illuminati family redesigned the old stable on the main floor, we settled into the space they called the Luperia, a space with a kitchen and an open hearth. And a larger dining room. Many great memories exist in this room, but I had never sat down to eat with my own regiment. And during those years, friend and cellar master, Agostino, has opened many a bottle for us to enjoy. We’ve grown into the job together. I was really excited about this meal. I was prepared to pick the brains of rookie and veteran alike. Who would know better the travails of selling wine than a salesman from Rome? What kind of kickbacks did the Roman restaurateur demand? How did one go about getting control of the wine list or selling a wine from Abruzzo to a Sardegnan? I was hoping for all mysteries to be revealed. Dino Illuminati, the patriarch of the estate, motioned for me to sit next to him. Lunch is serious business for Dino and he didn’t want anyone to get too near him with idle chat. He wants to eat and drink first. I know the drill. When Dino and I sit down we both go after food and wine pretty well much in the same way. Except Dino has a capacity that I will never be able to match. One of the older veterans sat across from me. He reminded me of one of the salesmen back home. This gent had a peaceful air about him, he was the elder statesman; he grew up in Amatrice in northern Lazio. I asked him how his route was. Was it competitive? Cutthroat? Was it hard to collect money? Did you get resistance with all the new wines coming out? What about the prejudices of owners from one region against the wines of another region (i.e. Piedmont vs. Tuscan). I was surprised to be reminded that they don’t go around tasting wine, sampling as we call it. Now they just carry their list, with maybe some Gambero Rosso review (very big in Rome) and the price list. Pretty cut and dry. Rome was a city that was prepared for all comers, and has been this way for hundreds if not thousands of years. Anything goes. I was looking for their “hook”. How did they catch the big fish? Figuring Rome would be like NY or LA or Houston, there was always the particular technique that worked for the peculiarity of the particular city. He was a thoughtful guy. And we were starting to drink pretty well by then. The big slurpy purple stuff they make in Abruzzo that they call “Montepulciano in purezza.” All the while the young salesmen would come over to him and bear hug him or jostle him around. You could tell these guys liked working with each other; there was camaraderie among them. “Alfonso, what really works best is the rapport we build with our customers. Trust, time and relationship.” Ah, the “R” word. So the secret was, there is no secret; daily treading, pressing the flesh, and being reliable. Showing up. Building trust. Just like almost everywhere else. Look at these people. They’re having fun. They’re enjoying their lives. They’re enjoying each other. I told some stupid story, trying to be funny, about a sales experience here in The States, but I don’t think the experience translated so well to their frame of reference. No matter, platters of grilled lamb, sausage and pork were pulling up to the table and we soon were diverted to the main course.

Dino, me and Spinelli, back in 1988

The Luperia is a wellspring for me. I come back here to re-connect with those souls who are manifestations of the timeless energy that travels through the vine. Daniele Spinelli was one of the early winemakers I came to admire. I loved hanging out with him. When we would sit down to eat, as the night progressed, and as we went into red wine, the stuff he made, his head, shaped appropriately like a grape, would turn redder and redder. My Italian would get better and he would bestow his bodhisattva-blessing on me as a way to replenish me for another year. And send me back out to the outer regions to spread the word. It worked. And we came back every year or so, like pilgrims.

Luigi, me, Stefano and Claudio

Now, Dino isn’t so hands on. Spinelli passed away in 1992. But the next generation is upon us and there are more of them. As it is in the streets of Rome, so it is in the vineyards of Abruzzo. This is something that has been happening for hundreds of years and will continue, hopefully, for many hundreds more. After lunch we went outside for espresso and cigars and fresh air, what a combo, eh? The sales crew had to get back to Rome. It was only three hours we’d had to sit down and break bread, but in that time I felt like a huge gift had been dropped in my lap; An afternoon with my selling tribe; with the young ones, the veterans, the crazy ones, the calm ones. Its not a closed brotherhood but it is a deep connection, to capture what is growing right out there in the land and transform it to wine and take it to Rome and NY and Austin and try and share with all those folks in those places these amazing miracles in bottles. Not just wine, but the lives, of Spinelli and Spinozzi and Illuminati and you and me and anyone that wants in on this. This is the joy of selling. This is why I am on the wine trail in Italy and anywhere else the road takes me.

Thumbs up from a couple of Romans? I'll take that as a good sign.

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

Marfa ~ We Say Chianti & They Say Chinati

My faith has been restored. In Texas. In Italian Wine. In Italian wine in Texas. In Restaurants in Texas. And in the whole chasing after windmill exercise that we do when we attempt to bring the Word of Wine to the outer edges of civilization. I finally got my groove on, and in Marfa, Texas, no less. Word to Sancho: Flyover country has been secured and made safe.

There’s something about the simplicity of the desert that cuts right to the essential. Maybe it’s the access to ingredients. Or perhaps it is just that once you strip it down to what you really need, you really don’t need all that much. When you’re staring at yourself in the mirage and you are forced to look at whatever you can manage to make from your memory and your imagination, then one is compelled to stare down the demons and make sense of it. Here in Marfa, they call it A.R.T.

My background in the arts didn’t have me getting all wiggly and wobbly as we spent some free time strolling among the buildings at the Chinati Foundation. There is something about the way an artist can challenge you to look at your own doodlings in life and ask you if what you have been doing these past 20 years has any more relevance than what he has put up on these walls.

In that sense, the art on those walls forced me to think about these things. And with the unsolicited quiet of the desert, the lack of distraction, this created an unavoidable encounter with my “inner” Marfa Lights.

Cochineal (no web site, don’t Google it, you wont find one) was a perfect launching into the future of food in Texas. Not cutting edge, no not-that-in-your-face. More like simple ingredients without towers, truffle oil or turpitude. Take it or leave it.

We met Chef Paul Peterson, of the Gage Hotel in Marathon, at Cochineal. He and his wife had managed to get a night off and left offspring with family in Alpine, half way between Marfa and Marathon. Paul is one of those chefs that, if you dropped him in Austin or Park Slope, would easily transition toward the top of the scene. Easy going and mellow, with an edge. Kind of like a Chianti from Querciabella. In fact, we opened a few bottles that night, thanks to Cochineal owners Tom Rapp and Toshi Sakihara. Eventually they sat down with us as we worked late into the night. Among other things, we had a Carbonara that anyone, anywhere, would be proud of.

Walking out into an early autumn night in the desert, stars are jamming the skies; rush hour in Rome is light by comparison.

Maybe we should start a Chianti Foundation. Because of the interest in Italian wine in this little west Texas town. It would fit right-tight into the matrix of Marfa.

A new day, and we find ourselves in front of Chef Maiya Keck of Maiya’s. While we were talking about wine, I was thinking, “She really likes Italians.” The restaurant is Italian inspired and along with a perfectly delicious looking high ceiling dining room straight out of the WPA, I couldn’t wait to come back in the evening.

In the meantime she sent us across the street to the Food Shark, a mobile food stand at the farmers market. It seemed everyone in town was heading for the Food Shark, as scads of young people were working their way through the interesting menu.

As I was cogitating what I would order, a woman stepped up to get her to go order. When I heard her voice I said to myself, “That is the voice of Isabella Rossellini.” I then looked to her and made eye contact. Were those the eyes of Isabella Rossellini? It wouldn’t be out of the question that someone like her would be here, seeing as this was the week for the Marfa annual Open House. I looked her over and she seemed to resemble Isabella from one of the scenes of Blue Velvet. I would encounter her later in the day, when perhaps that little mystery would be solved.

The falafel at the Food Shark was one hellatiously good lunch choice, though the Falafel Forage might be a little more difficult in these parts.

A block away was the Pizza Foundation, Maiya’s sister, Saarin, runs it. Thin pizza, not over worked. I asked Ronnie the pizzaiolo how it was to make pizza at this elevation (appx 4800) and he explained that he had gotten the recipe down to deal with the elevation, the heat and the dry conditions. He did.

That evening we had a wine tasting/ reception at the old bus station , home of Shelly and Harry Hudson. Shelly’s son, Jules, runs a neat little place in Dallas, Nonna. The family has the good taste gene in spades.

We set up the wines, Italian and otherwise. As the folks rambled into the tasting we were able to talk to folks a little more in depth. Isabella came up to me and we had a little talk about opera. She was from Germany: not Isabella. Or was she in some kind of character for the evening. I‘ve seen too many David Lynch films.

One lady, Virginia Lebermann, who has all kinds of things going on in Marfa, was in the process of building a new venue for art and music with a lounge attached. “How would you like to curate the wine selection?” she asked. We set a time to visit the next day. Curate a wine list, they never asked me to do that in Dallas or Houston.

That evening, after the reception, we headed over to Maiya’s to meet a client for dinner. We walked into a warm room with enormous ceilings; the place was inviting and hopping. Plenty of the young folks from the arts foundations were settling in at the bar, just like NY, LA or Firenze. In this little old west Texas desert town. All very Rod Serling-like.

Maiya sent out plates of food; grilled radicchio, tartlettes, frisée, plates of pasta, profiteroles, and dense chocolate tortes. And we brought out wine after wine to taste with the client and Maiya. They liked us, they really liked us. I wasn’t in New Orleans or Napa, where I do get treated like I actually know something about Italian wine. I wasn’t in Dallas or Houston, where I have to often deal with a lowest common denominator routine. We were in Marfa, Texas, and they got it, from Kerner to Taurasi to Brachetto.

Next morning we met up with Virginia Lebermann to look over the new Thunderbird Lounge. Fire pits and adobe, tongue-and-groove and sharp, clean lines. They want me to curate the wine selection here? Let’s give it to them, see just how far we can push the envelope with Vermentino.

After all, we don’t come here looking for some worn out windmills. We came out to see what was in store for us in the future, here in flyover country. In a bright, stark, clear-cut way, we were shown what might be in store for us. If we keep our eyes, and our minds, open.


In the words of Bobby Z, "You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wine blows."

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

Who Are You Doing This For?

After a few days in the rarified air of Marfa, Texas, I have had a few moments to do a little navel gazing. Take this one or leave it, as it applies to you. Or doesn’t. That being said, don’t we all have, at one time or another, moments where we look around our environment and notice the world that we have landed in and ask ourselves if this is what we intended to do?

Mind you, this isn’t a crisis post. I’m not telegraphing back to home base that I won’t be returning. Well, maybe a part of me won’t ever be back. But every time I get on the wine trail a part of me is left behind and a newer segment grows in its place.

One of the fascinating aspects of being in Marfa during the run up to the Chinati Foundation annual hoe-down, is this congregating of intellectual and artistic energy that appears to have broken away from the bubble of the everyday reality we all seem to get trapped in. The Dow drops to 8500? Where is the wine for the governor’s dinner? 159,000 jobs lost? An installation for an artist is previewing in the desert today. The G7 is meeting in emergency session with the IMF? Artist Eugene Binder on the main street is moving his three vintage Porsche Speedsters out of his gallery so he can make room for the folks coming to town.

After a visit to a handful of accounts ( El Cheapo, Pizza Foundation and the Thunderbird Lounge) we headed out to Alpine, Marathon and Midland. In Marfa I had been invited to “curate” a wine list for one of the local patrons, who also are big wine fans. They are also looking at a property in Montalcino to invest in, land and a winery. The wine trail winds and turns and points towards many destinations.

This week I had a Carbonara that folks anywhere would be proud of. Pizza that merited a second piece. Restaurants like Cochineal and Maiya's, with a passion for food and wine. And saw a love for Italian wine from the artists and intellectuals of a small west Texas town that I could only wish larger urban areas would aspire to. Go figure.

Maybe it is something about the confluence of a zone that attracts art and intellect that also is amenable to things Italian? I know this to be the case all over Italy, maybe Marfa is a vortex that squeezes a drop of Italy onto the canvas and exposes the native energy to the ancient? Or maybe I am just a kook?

Lesson learned this week: Do what you love, even if you don’t sometimes know why you do it or even what it is.


Repeat as needed.
Repeat as needed.
Repeat as needed.

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

Marfa on the Fly

I’ll keep this one short, the sun is rising, and we have many miles to cover in these next few days.

Flyover country is a big swath of land and today’s episode of On the Wine Trail in Italy takes us to Marfa, Texas. From Dallas, St. Louis is closer. But Marfa is a piece of Texas that is part Old West, a dash of Soho and a suggestion of The Twilight Zone. Arriving just in time for the Chinati Foundation’s annual celebration, this week artists and intellectuals from all over the world have descended upon sleepy little Marfa to inspire and be inspired, from art, earth and conviviality.

The terroir of Marfa.
It attracts people from New York, London, Paris and it’s kind of like the dishwasher; everything fits in the racks together. Local folks, hippies who hit the edge of town a generation ago and stopped to rest, you never know who you’ll be talking to. The land does influence, as does the light, which is crisp and bright and razor-edge.

There is an oasis of chefs and food lovers, from Marathon to Terlingua to Marfa, and this is my annual check-up to make sure they get all the Italian wine they will need for the winter months.

Because of the high altitude (4800 ft appx) this is a great place for a garden in Texas. Warm days, cool nights, and lots of rays. And critters. My uncle the geologist from Midland told me about the way this region was formed millions of years ago, and there is some serious ‘minerality’ working in the soil. Over by Ft. Davis there are a few vineyards, Cabernet and such.

As with many places in Texas there is a recognizable effect of the terroir on the people who live and come to live in these places. There is a concentration of energy that is brought to the surface slowly, like the thousands of oil wells that populate the territory. Pumping slowly, constantly, until every last drop is captured.

Last night we opened up bottles at a local place, Cochineal, and sat with owners Tom and Toshi to taste through a few things from Italy. Chef Paul and his wife from The Gage Hotel in Marathon joined us. Tom, seeing we had just opened a 2004 Radici from Mastroberardino, went to his wine cellar and brought back a 1995 Taurasi from Salvatore Molettieri. It drank quite well through the night.

I like the mixing of terroir, from a bottle of wine, to a bowl of garden fresh vegetables, to a table of folks from all over the world, sharing wine and food and ideas. Terroir as a global force, uniting. Ok, so I’m getting pensive.

Looking forward to visiting many of our accounts today, especially El Cheapo.

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

Retribution and Restitution

Today everything is different; there's no action... have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food - right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody... get to live the rest of my life like a schnook -Henry Hill, Goodfellas (1990)

I feel soiled. I was just going in to break bread with old and new colleagues, nothing too earth shattering.

After obligatory appetizers during a reception period (unripe melon and over salty “S.Daniele” prosciutto, caprese salad with mealy, mushy, tasteless tomato, meatballs that tasted more like sawdust than meat) I opted for something simple, “Spaghettini al Pomodoro”. Well, the spaghettini was spaghetti and it wasn’t imported, tasted like some off brand from China. The sauce, which this time of the year should be fresh and bright, was brown and lifeless, the overcooked noodles lying listlessly in a pool of the bloody soup. Good thing I asked them to forgo the garlic, eh? I really showed them.

I was sitting with the CEO of a major import company, with his managers arranged around the table with our people. The CEO, in the business for 40 or so years, told a story of a mid-western retailer that they had opted-out of doing business with. Seemed it was cheaper to not do business with them than to bow to their unusual demands and slotting fees. After a few years the retailer wanted the CEO to take a meeting with him so they could discuss their future business. Now, the CEO can tell a pretty good story and he told it like this.

“So I go into this office with this big shot retailer, who thinks he’s the only game in town, and it was a big town. And these guys were used to getting their way. This was a city that had very few rules, and the way to do business in this place hadn’t changed since before prohibition. Someone always had their hand in your pocket, it was just a matter of how deep you’d let them go. I look at this retailer and I ask him why he called this meeting. He looks me over, a cigar in the corner of his mouth, and tells me it was time for my company to make retribution and restitution. He figures he lost so much money not doing business with us and he has it figured out to the dime. This galumph wants me to hand him a wad of money, thousands and thousands of dollars, to be able to get back in the ring. That was the retribution part. Then, if I go along with that he would be expecting me to come up with, in addition to that, more dough to sweeten the pot on going forward in the future with him on the deals. That was the restitution part. I gotta tell you, I was flabbergasted that this guy had the stones to think he could dictate the terms to me. After all, I come from a big city too, bigger than his g*ddam meat-packing town. And I was gonna have nothin’ to do with this clown. So I walked away from it, and saved my company even more thousands of dollars and untold grief in dealing with these kinds of shake-down characters.”

I had heard stories like this from the older guys, but this one seemed so timely. We were sitting in the back room of a restaurant eating overpriced and inferior food, with little or no chance of doing business with the restaurant. Seems after all these years of doing business in good faith, hot shot deliveries at all times of the year and special favors, now this restaurant owner wants the suppliers to come to his place at the end of every month and run their credit cards for $5-10 a case for every wine he buys from them. Very illegal, but no way to actually catch anyone in the act. It’s a business we run, not walk, away from. And don’t look back.

All that and a crappy plate of spaghetti al pomodoro? Say, it ain’t so, Joe.

In my home base, there have been a bunch of so-called Italian places failing lately. Some, for reasons of high rent, some because they just haven’t had the traffic. I think more than a few of them just haven’t gotten it yet. If you’re a place with a $4.99 all-the-spaghetti-you-can-eat place, you’re going to go looking for the cheapest ingredients, because the folks coming into that kind of spot don’t care. But if you’re charging $20 for a plate of pasta, there is no excuse for using inferior ingredients. I had one restaurant owner argue with me that people here don’t know the difference. And he came from a place where pasta and pizza reach their highest expressions. He argued with me, as if I (or the poor lugs that came in there) didn’t have a shred of a clue as to how the real food should taste. Lots of sauce, lots of garlic, lots of (Argentinean) cheese. The place is shuttered. He claims his wine business was too demanding and he had to spend more time on it. Yesterday, I saw a display of his wine being closed out in a store. Guess he’s not batting so well these days. But what do we know? We’re all just a bunch of idiots. Or maybe that was retribution for his pride and arrogance?

It’s not that hard. Last month, all over Italy, we didn’t have a bad meal. From the little buco of an osteria in Rome to the one star Michelin in the Maremma. People in Italy have a higher regard for their palates and they have developed a higher sense of taste and more specifically, the quality of taste, and have higher expectations.

Perhaps one of the reasons is that cooking at home in Italy is at a very high level, and for the restaurant in Italy to survive, they have to meet or exceed the standards of the home kitchen. Here in the US, while it is changing, the home kitchen still hasn’t developed so evenly. In recent years, it has slid backwards in many households with pre-made foods invading the freezer and the microwave substituting for the range and the hearth.

But a simple bowl of pasta, how in the name of Mary can they screw it up here so often?

These same folks we were having dinner with, a few weeks ago, they had a winemaker in town, making the rounds. One of the places we stopped in , they invited us back after we did our day, come in for dinner. I bowed out, was preparing to go to Italy the next day, but a handful (5-7) folks went on over to the place in the late evening. Seems the chef talked to them, said he would prepare a few things and bring them out. A few hours ( and plates) later, when all was said and done, they asked for the bill. $1100. Maybe $150 of that in wine.

Now that night, I was told, the dining room was not too full. But that night, the restaurant made their number. Unfortunately those folks will never, ever return.

About ten years ago in another city I had a winemaker and his family in town. We were supposed to do a winemaker dinner, but the restaurant didn’t promote it. So the owner, said, no problem, he’d invite a few friends and we’d all have dinner. And we did, about 12 of us. At the end of the night they presented to the winemaker a bill for $1700, including the meal of the owner, his wife and their friends. Even charged them full mark-up for the wine, which was “donated”. Or maybe that was restitution for all these years of supplying well made, honest wine to the restaurateur? I haven’t spent a penny in that place since then.

Looking around at America and the Western World, I have to wonder if this economic crisis doesn’t stem from a personal vacuity that seeks to fill the void with things; money, fame; recognition, or just being the one on the top of the dunghill. It’s too simple to just call it greed, because it is also ignorance, and lack of respect for one’s livelihood and one’s community.

And then we wonder why the young ones walk around with their cell phones, texting invisible friends instead of interacting with the world in front of them. Or maybe, is it just an instinctual repudiation of an industry that no longer has a valid place in their, or our, world?


Or maybe it's all just going to hell in America.

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