Klaatu Burrata Nikto

Funny, some of the convergences in life. Just a few observations from the road. Maybe it’s all the high- sugar, high-acid wine I’ve been trying from Kracher. But when I got an email today from Sausage Paul that the burrata was in, and I’m not, I stared into the sky and asked, why me?

Yeah, no, life is rolling along pretty well. I’ve got with me a road warrior selling-machine as we waltz the show across the Texas; no guitars, only corkscrews, when needed. So far, so good. Let’s see, any other clichés I can cram in here?

Tasting high-sugar, high-acid wines from Austria has been an education. It helps to take along an expert, in this case my buddy and colleague, Damon Ornowski. Life ain't too bad.

These days, on the road, our conversation has taken us in and out of wine, Italian and otherwise. I feel like I’m taking a rolling master class with a man who is a class act. From Wachau to Etna and back.

Speaking of acts, what was Kermit Lynch thinking? We rolled into Austin on Monday to taste some of his wines at Vino Vino and for a CD release party, which turned out to be a “Listening Party.” Austin, the live music capital of Texas, and Kermit, and his buddy Ricky, sitting up there together and staring out at the crowd, smiling and waving, while the CD played? I gotta say, it had an unearthly feel, a slight-disconnect. The young ones in the crowd just looked at each other with that "so old-school" expression. Or maybe it was the Bourgogne Rouge on the table that was sulfuring in silence? Old man, I love many of your wines and your first book, and you seem to be a good egg, but I don’t know about these here musical meanderings of yours. You should have brought your guitar - after all this is Texas.

While on the subject of music, Jay-Z was playing in Austin last night. I saw the spectacle unfold from my hotel window. Lots of Lamborghinis lolling around the parking lots. Now we’re talking L.I.V.E. music.

After the show a group of us were sucking down some fruity Nebbiolo and noshing from the perch at Trio in the Four Seasons. As we poured out of the door to our chariots, a young rapper and his entourage rolled in.

When the young lion stood by his Lambo to take a private call, I observed him. Young, wealthy, famous, lots of stuff to play with.

He seemed so alone. The fame, yes, he had sought it and it stuck to him like the orange paint on the exotic Italian roadster that he cozied up to. But as he walked farther away into the darkness, chatting on his cell, I felt an other-worldy weight on his shoulders.

Or perhaps it was the sugar coursing through my veins from a long day on the wine road?

I pray he doesnt have a vineyard.

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

Italian Wines: This is Your Moment to Shine

Bordeaux is in the tanks, Australian wines are on the decline. Elite California wines are having an identity crisis, and Spanish wines suffer from not having a large enough base. Argentina is emerging because of their affordable and drinkable wines. So Italy, where does that leave you?

I get a call from a restaurateur. He wants me to come to his restaurant to taste wines and meet a winemaker. For years he has wanted to show in his place the wines from his region, Emilia-Romagna. One time I worked for a company that brought in wines for him, from Predappio. Predappio was where Mussolini came from.

Well, Predappio was a sad little place that had some imposing Mussolini era architecture which had fallen on hard times. The wines were a work in progress. So I was expecting more of the same.

Happily, the winemaker is someone who is grounded. I could tell by the way he took a piece of focaccia and placed the tomato and mozzarella on top of it, making his own impromptu pizza Margherita. He wasn’t waiting for someone to bring it out, he was taking charge.

Did I mention that he was born in Friuli? We talk about wine as symbol and wine as sustenance. He pronounces Gravner correctly (Grǒwner). He knows how hard we all have tried to sell those wines, but he also knows that we also have to buy braces for our kid’s teeth. And he also knows we want to love the wines we sell.

The wines? Only three are tried, from Emilia-Romagna, all Sangiovese based. The basic wine, selling in Italy for about € 3.00 is our first glimpse into the heart of this young winemaker.

I was inclined to like this young winemaker. We have a mutual friend. And he isn’t wearing loafers (suede or shiny). He is a working guy, his hands are big; the kind one needs in a vineyard and around a winery. I can tell that we also are probably more aligned politically than the conversation at the table is going. Yeah, I like him alright.

As we move on to the second wine, a Superiore, a duo of pizzas arrive at the table. We have launched into eating at this point; the wine is supporting the food, not outshining it with its brilliance. So far, so good.

And then we arrive at the point when the next level red is opened, also a Superiore. Mostly Sangiovese, but interloper grapes are involved, Cabernet and Merlot vying for our attention. As if they didn’t get enough from Napa, from Bordeaux, from the Maremma. A plate of tagliata with arugula appears; let’s drive this wine around the dining room, shall we?

I go back to the first wine, the simple Sangiovese. And then to the second wine, the Superiore of solitary Sangiovese. And then back to the last wine. Back and forth, eating, talking, sitting in the middle of a little trattoria in flyover country, enjoying a simple meal, with a beacon of light from Italy, this messenger from Bacco. Magnificent in its simplicity; perfect wine for the time.

The winemaker is going back to the base wine, pouring himself another glass. “So tell me, Stefano, about this wine. It is simple. It stands up to the other two wines above it. It is inexpensive. And it is so well balanced.” (He had me, didn’t he?)

“Well, Alfonso, this is the wine we make in Emilia-Romagna. Even at this level the terroir comes through, as it should in any wine. I love to drink this wine. Everyday.”

Of course he does. Because this is really the mission of wine, isn’t it? To give pleasure in a simple and uncomplicated way. And this is something the Italians have done so well, for so many years. Before the bright lights of the scores and the designer clothes and cars got in the way of the mission of all the millennia leading to this present time.

Italy, take heed. The time is over for spoofulated, manipulated, overly oaked and alcoholic wine at high prices. Oh, you’ve heard this said too many times on these posts? Well, that is the word, once again, from the trenches. Get back to being real about what wine is in this world. It isn’t a Hollywood starlet with plastic surgery. It isn’t a 500 horsepower roadster that gets 10 miles to the gallon. And it isn’t a Sangiovese or a Merlot, or any other wine, at 15% alcohol in medium toast French barrique that is destined to be a wine of meditation, whatever that even could begin to be in this world today.

Get back to wines we can drink everyday, at lunch, and go back to work afterward. Wines that we can afford to drink everyday. Wines that are simple but wines that reflect their sense of place. Do that, and do it consistently, and then you can have all the designer clothes and watches and cars and plastic surgery your little heart desires.

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

"We'll get on it right away and 'get back' to you"

From the " they keep lobbing softballs like this at me, I just had to hit it" department.

In my inbox I get these kinds of notes all the time. Seeing as I am not very busy this time of the year I wonder if I should pursue this inquiry. Read on, I do not make these things up.

Good morning Sir, Madam

We are an estate situated in _________________, Fattoria di ________ in _______.

We produce the following products:

_________________________ (white wine) docg: 5 months in french barriques, middle toast, fine-grained, first and second passage in wood.

_________________________ (white wine) riserva docg

_________________________ (red wine) docg: only stain steel, typical _______ with old cepages of the old disciplinary

Two kind of I.g.t.:

___________ ______________ (fantasy name red) i.g.t 100% Sangiovese, 8 months refining in tonneau of 5 hectolitres. Maceration of the skin for 20 days. Refining in bottles for 6/7 months.

______________ (fantasy name red) i.g.t 70% Cabernet,25% merlot,5% sangiovese.

The Cabernet was plant(ed) in the year 1960 from the grandfather. Now, they replant new vineyards with the old clone.

Separate vinification and added in french barriques for 18 months. Strong toasted, fine-grained, international taste, the wood does not dominate the power of the wine but exalt it. This kind of wine is consider: "MEDITATION WINE".

The perfect food matching is with aged cheeses, wildboar etc..

two kind of Doc ___________ ______________ (actually docg white)

I would like to know if could be interesting for you receive more information about the Estate, products.

Feel free to contact us.


Umm, let me meditate on this. I'll get cub reporter, Jimmy Olsen, on it right away and "get back" to you.

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

One Last Night Under the Moonlight

Farewell, my little Mexican Pepperleaf

Under the full moon I walked outside to spend one last moment with her. All summer she spent with me, content to lounge around the pool and this little isola, swaying to the symphony of the sounds that flung about. Occasionally the flock of parrots would screech by, looking for anything that reminded them of their tropical home. She did, and they would fly low as they would try to comfort each other in this land of the Norteños. I tried to spend as much time with her as I could, but it wasn’t enough. Last night, under the full moon, we said farewell.

Earlier in the day, there was a reminder at the luncheon for the Italian chef. The salad course, right in front, she cavorted delicately with her dancing partner. Everyone at the table commented on how light on their feet they were and how well they complemented one another. I couldn’t be jealous, they were right. But I knew it was over for us, again.

This happens every year. She shows up at my back gate, nearly climbing the fence to get in. She re-arranges everything, but I don’t protest, she makes it look so easy. And calm. And she’s really no trouble at all. She asks for nothing but to be loved and shared. She is authentic and thrives without any kind of toxins. She is pure and simple, her perfume is delicate and spicy, sweet like a balsam. To all whom she comes into contact with, she improves them and is improved by them. She spends most of her time alone, but is best in the presence of company. She is unique and she is no trouble at all. And all she encompasses she does with proliferate ease.

But when the summer comes to an end, she yearns for warmer places, brighter things. Even though I have shown her another world, New York, San Francisco, all over Texas, she yearns for her home, where she has been revered all her life. What can one do? This is the way it is with my little Mexican mistress. She belongs to an ancient world, even as a bigger world calls for her.

I understand her wanting to be someplace where she fits in better. Only the parrots, who are slowly going insane with the onset of winter, could remind her of her dear home.

This morning I went out to see her before she left. It was a dewy morning, she was by the roses. So bright, so strong, so delicate, among the thorny creatures. They didn’t want to let her go, they held on to her as well.

The rabbit, silent and stoic, was frozen. It was as if we were all losing a piece of ourselves. I remember as I was helping her into the car to take her to her next stop, I started to cry. Dolce pianto, the Dottore reminded me, sweet tears.

All'afflitto è dolce il pianto
è la gioia che gli resta…

The reaper had reaped, it was blood he wanted and it was blood he got. There was nothing, save the shrieks of the parrots circling the sky above. The sun had risen, but it was a dark moment as she who had filled the world with darkness was now silent and gone.

The days are shorter and the nights are colder. She cannot suffer, though, because she has flown on to her new life. As I stand among the ruins of our time together, I can only hope someday she will return and fill the life of this little isola with her beauty and her calm joy and her music and her vigor, di nuovo.


Buen viaje mi querida, Hoja Santa

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

With thanks to Gaetano Donizetti for the midnight inspiration

On Any Given Sunday: A Three-Tier Crusaders Gamebook

Oh yeah, it’s like, Sunday in the Fall. Meet the Press, Football, World Series, all kinds of diversions. What it is for us three-tier crusaders, though, is one down, two to go. The traditional O-N-D (October-November-December) holiday season is 1/3 over. And we’ve got miles to go before we sleep. All across the country, the wholesalers, retailers and their customers are gearing up for a season of festive cheer. To the three-tier machine, it’s just one big party, festooned with real pirates. Arghh!

I called my 95 year old mom tonight when I got home at 6PM. It was dark here, but in California she was looking at a sun setting over the golf course outside her home. “Oh, honey, are you working today? Did you put up your displays?” My mom has always been “into” whatever her kids were “into.” She used to sit there and listen to baseball games and we’d listen to Vince Scully and Jerry Doggett announce the Dodger games, back when Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale and Larry and Norm Sherry were on the team. Scully announced the Dodgers when they were in Brooklyn and is still on the job after 60 years. Now that is a crusader. Anyway, where were we? Can you tell I am dead tired?

Like I was saying, I met up with one of the old-timer salesmen, Joey the Weasel. We were heading over to Sausage Paul’s, to help clean up the shop after his year end sale and inventory. As I walked in, Paul was firing up a triple cream latte for me, and he had a big grin on his face. His brother Mike was already out the door, a couple of eggplants in his arms and what looked like a pair of tickets to Hawaii or Tahiti. Whatever. We still had work to do.

I polished off the latte and Joey the Weasel walked in with the biggest vacuum cleaner I had ever seen. He was going to get all the dust. Joey was still smarting from his Italian harvest “boy’s trip” to Tuscany. But if anyone is a third-tier warrior, the Weasel is a future Hall-of-Famer. So while he was sucking up dust, I amused myself with re organizing Piedmont, then the Veneto and then Puglia. Federico II, Garibaldi and Il Duce couldn’t touch me; I was burning through regions faster than Berlusconi in a Ferrari. Even Luca Zaia would have been amazed by my ability to regionalize Italian wine regions in such a fast and methodical manner. “No Pineapple, No Zaia”, that’s my motto.

I spied a Lacrima di Morro d’Alba squatting in the Piedmont section and proceeded to return it to Marche where it belonged. A day earlier I had corrected an over-confident wine salesman about the provenance of the wine, but I reckon he, or someone like him, scoffed at my expertise and placed it in the Piedmont section. He had also lectured me on the EU DOP (or PDO, which is more proper). “Now, there will be a Barolo DOP and all the DOC wines will be under it. So you will have Dolcetto and Barbera and Moscato and Gavi and all of those wines under the Barolo DOP.” Oh really? And we wonder why the regular folk think Italian wine is so hard to figure out? Well, I am here to tell anyone who wants to know, that just ain’t gonna happen. Jeesh.

So where were we? Yeah, we got the placed vacuumed, and searched out any wines that needed to be “red dotted” (50% off, and it’s out of the park!) so Sausage Paul could make room for the wines that will work in the new economic reality. And besides, he also needs room for Panettone and Burrata. It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas.

After all that, we hastened to a local trattoria for some pizza and to get the order written. Over a bottle of Insolia (which was heading South, fast) and some calamari, Sausage Paul started handing Joey the Weasel sheets of paper with marking on them. Joey was typing furiously away, trying to get everything in before a 4PM cut-off. Meanwhile a pizza was being placed on the table, and we all had to stop what we were doing to eat the pizza in its perfect state- fresh and hot.

Mission accomplished – re: the pizza. But the cutoff deadline was looming. A hearty espresso kicked Sausage Paul and Joey the Weasel into high gear and they started tearing through the pages, ordering left and right. It was pure poetry to see how those boys worked so beautifully together. And those mean-spirited bloggers who knock the good old tried and true three-tier system, what do they know? They are all sitting on their keisters drinking God knows what (but we’ll hear about it on their blogs, I am so sure) sitting in front of a big screen TV watching football and if they are still sober (or awake) maybe a little of the World Series. The Boys of November, they are a so formidable faction.

Not to sound like I have hubris on this matter, but even in the back row of this kerfuffle, I know the team I am on has a deep bench. We have been called a conspiracy, and blah, blah, blah. Go turn on Fox News if you want to hear the talking points, they’re close enough. The world I live in is competitive and it is constant with change. Don’t like it? Don’t get into the ring. This isn’t a place for whiners and short-timers.

Oh, and for those who say it’s about choice and it’s about giving consumers wines that they couldn’t get in the stores or through the established (three-tier) channels, let me invite you to the store we just spent all Sunday in: there are two tables of Red-Dot close-out wines that consumers didn’t choose – and now those wines have to go away. No conspiracy, no lobbying, no dark passage, no envelope with unmarked $100 bills – just wine that didn’t make it in the real world of commerce. The wineries made their money, so did the importers. The mom and pop store? He's just trying to make room for something that will work.

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

Trick or Treat – The archetypal Italian wine press release

From the "I couldn't make this up" department.






_______________ launches _______________!

___________is the name of the latest vinous creation from historic ________ wine producer, _____________, based in ________ , Italy. The wine was first launched in ______, is classed as a ______ and made as a fascinating blend of ________, ________ and ______.

Owner of the company, _________ ________ explains the name. “In _______ dialect,” he says _______ means “_______” or ‘_______ ________’, the bit on an estate that’s the most protected and most loved.” Or in other words, what the French would call “___”. In fact, the base grapes for this wine come from a ____hectare vineyard in ______, planted at a density of ______rootstocks per hectare and trained in the ______ manner.

The grapes selected for _____ are those that are really super ripe. The ________ and_________ grapes are given a slight appassimento after picking, while the ________ is soft-pressed immediately and temporarily kept at a low temperature to prevent fermentation. Once the ________ and __________grapes are pressed, the _______ first run musts are combined and run into stainless steel tanks for fermentation. The resulting wine is matured in small ______ oak casks until the late spring, and then bottled and given bottle age until the end of summer.

“The actual blend we use,” ______________ explains, “was arrived at in a very pragmatic manner. We experimented on the ideal composition for some time before arriving at something that we thought really interesting. The result is an important wine: powerful, structured, and something for connoisseurs. It has the characteristic mineral notes on the palate, truly reflecting the soil of _________, which is usually made up of a type of ________ soil.”

On the nose there are hints of style that could be described almost as similar to Montrachet in Burgundy but the final result, ____________ says, “is a faithful and unique expression of the local terroir, not the least but intended to be a copy of one of the world’s classic wines. It could almost be used as a wine to drink after a meal, a meditation wine, but it goes really well, amongst other things, with rich fish, chicken and pork dishes.”


Happy halloween ya’ll!

[photo by Arbus]

Paralyzed in Paradise

El sueño del Día de los Muertos

“Italy is falling apart from within and they cannot even see it.” I dreamt that I awoke in my bed at 4:00 AM, as the parrots outside were screeching from the bitter wind and cold that was driving them insane. At 8:30 there would be a meeting I had to be at, and the month was finishing up disappointingly. “There is too much wine. It is too expensive. It has too much wood and Merlot and Syrah in it. And every time another email from Cinderella wine shows up in the inbox there’s another Super Tuscan for $20 that the wineries had been asking $80-90-100, a year ago.” I kept hearing these voices from the waking-working moments, from wine lovers, wine buyers, people who once cared. But the Italians had already turned their backs on their advocates in pursuit of an unsustainable life style. Newer cars, larger wrist watches, pointier shoes, and these incessant barriqued wines. They were killing their country.

Before I awoke I started by finding every last barrel salesman and sending them on a trip around the sun. Then I dug up the scientists and the agronomists and the consultants and took away their Porsche Cayennes and their GPS and put them all on a severe ego-restriction diet. And then I tracked down everyone that had had their winery designed by an architect from Spain or Japan or Norway and made them watch films by Ettore Scola and Buster Keaton and Orson Welles until their eyes bled.

Then I turned all of the power down in Italy in the winter, so that when it got cold they had to hold bonfires with the barriques until all the small, tightly grained monsters of their vinous vanity were gone from the face of Italy.

I then collared every P.R. firm who used the words “employing modern techniques with respect to tradition” and sequestered them all in the wineries that had been designed by those architects from Spain or Japan or Norway and made them sit there eating zibibbo raisins and yoghurt from Greece until the diet leeched out all the poison from the lies they had been telling all these years.

If Italy was redeemable perhaps they could have reclaimed their wines. As it was, we witnessed the curtains closing on a period when they let greatness slip from their grasp. The Italian culture was clouded with their sense of self importance, their self-possessed narcissism. And it killed the natural wine culture that had thrived in Italy for aeons.

Italy, you blew it up. The world no longer could endure your barrel-tormented dramas and your international wines stripped of their Italianita and sacrificed on the altar of short term commercial success. La commedia è finita.


And then the alarm rang out in the early morning fog of autumn.

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

The Dance of Deliverance

For weeks it seems I have been slumbered over a computer, studying trends, making spread sheets, eating dust. Bound to this place by time of harvest and holiday. Setting the stage for the big show.

Around midnight, outside, a dog howls. He is new to the neighborhood and every little noise spooks him. Last night, a storm cracked the sky wide open and doused the land. A day later everything stunk with the smell of dirt and roots, perfect for the birth of a mushroom, but an olfactory Chernobyl.

In the dusk, bent over, harvesting the last of my crop, I thought about my escape. I am still hobbling from my last one, but the slumbering volcano calls. I need to go to Basilicata and dance.

From early days I remember listening to my grandmother hum soft rhythms in dialect, inherited from the Albanian diaspora that dotted the lands of our ancestors. Tribal dances that dyed our DNA with a dark mysticism, an allure, a danger behind the veil. And now I can neither resist nor ignore the dirge that has been driving the blood through my veins. Aglianico, my mistress, who is caressing you, who is neglecting you? Who will defend you against this molestation by modernity, couched with the mind numbing mantra of the shape shifters who chant “We aren’t hurting anything, we aren’t changing tradition. We are just making the wine better.”

Better? With yeasts developed in Torino, from factories provided by funds that grew from the wealth brigands stole from these very places? Has television and mobile phones done in a few short years what Hannibal and Caesar and Federico II and Napoleon weren’t able to accomplish in all the ages before? Why would you mingle the yeast for panettone with the grano duro of Barile?

Aglianico, don’t go with them. Aglianico, don’t let them carve you smooth and fatten you up. For thousands of years you have been the blood of the volcano, the dance of the harvest moon, the swoop in the cantine where so many marriages were made. How can you give it all up for the sake of a fancy new name and a small toasted barrel? You will sit in lonely places in faraway lands, with a high price tag, only to be forgotten, come una vecchia lampada in soffitta, when the fashion changes.

Look how they have mucked it up in Piemonte, In Toscana and in the Veneto. Fancy new styles, everybody getting a facelift; hiking their skirts up and letting the scores and the stars and the swollen shrimp determine your fate and their future. To be timeless is to take back the power the land bestowed upon you.

I’m coming to Basilicata, as fast as I can, to stop this false dance with i truffatori.

The essentials, in a life not limited by impulse, are bread, love, dance and wine. They are dearer when we answer the call from the Ancients. And cede not to ease or fear or whim or pain.

Padrona, vengo giύ subito.

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

Chronicle of a Three-Tier Crusader

When I got out of college, our country was in the midst of a serious economic downturn. In addition, my nuclear family was being torn apart limb by limb. I couldn’t go home again, because there was no home to go to. For a time I was homeless. My sister rescued me from annihilation, until I got grounded. And then I proceeded to go to New York, in what was possibly one of the worst economic periods that city had ever experienced. My timing was impeccable.

As my East Coast education ran its course, I headed back to The West, where I could see sunsets and horizons, stars and mountains. My father had a little studio apartment, where I squatted for a few months.

It was shortly after that I started on the course that has led me along the wine trail. I started in the three-tier wine industry, in Hollywood, working in a restaurant across from Paramount studios.

When I moved to Dallas (which I recently heard it characterized as “provincially clueless”) I imagine I was the clueless one. Little did I know I would be embarking on a career in the three-tier industry that today is being demonized by some as "stupid”, “conspiratorial”, “corrupt” and “mafia”. The last one is particularly repulsive to me as I consider the use of the word mafia to be as racist as the pejoratives used to belittle African-Americans or Jews.

After I got my footing in little old Dallas, a "flat", "dumb" "flyover" "rail-stop" (other vituperatives I have recorded), I looked around and kind of liked the place. There wasn’t a lot of wine business, but what there was, the people in it were embracing of this tenderfoot and within a few years, I had a place, a career and a community.

Over the years, because of my ties via the three-tier industry, I have had access to some of the great wines and wine people in the world. One day when I was building a display of Glen Ellen Chardonnay, my boss called me and asked me to lunch at the Mansion on Turtle Creek. He wanted me to meet Jean-Pierre Moueix, the proprietor of Petrus.I went from sweating an end-cap of Proprietors Reserve Chardonnay to enjoying a glass of 1966 Trotanoy. I was on my way to willingly being corrupted.

I have met many of the great Italian winemakers living and dead. I have dined in their homes and they have dined in mine. You see, we are a world community, not a world conspiracy. Oh yes, we do plot to persuade people to drink better wine. Sometimes we even slink so low as to just get people to switch from iced tea to any kind of wine. We figure that once we get them hooked, they’ll never go back.

Those of us crusaders of the three-tier system aren’t put off by the one-sided arguments of folks who slam the system. Everyone has an agenda. And it is fashionable to find a bad guy, to demonize a standard or a status-quo. It plays into our 21st century drama of hoping people will share our viewpoint because we are victims. Often people look into the drama, not because they feel sorry, but because they crave the joy from the schadenfreude that the drama creates. Everybody loves a winner, especially if they aren’t witnessing it from the losing end. The argument that the three-tier system is bad will always backfire on the people that use the argument because it diminishes their power and it essentially emasculates them. Rather than cursing the darkness, there are those of us happy warriors who have made a life of building brands and bringing wine to the cities and the provinces, to the wealthy and the workers, day by day.

Competition has been steep. The industry has been consolidating since 1987. So those of us in the fray don’t fret over our enemies or our problems too much. It’s part of the landscape. If we lose a line to another distributor, we don’t cry that it is unconstitutional and bawl till crocodile tears flood us out of our accounts. Many of us just know that it isn’t a fair world and sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. All part of being a grown-up.

I have really enjoyed all of it; working until 2 or 3 AM, building displays that looked like the leaning tower of Pisa or the Eiffel Tower, out of corr-buff (corrugated cardboard). I have spent countless evenings doing wine dinners for restaurants, wine classes for universities, wine training for new colleagues and much, much more. I have been part of the army that has grown the American wine drinking population so that online retailers and bloggers could have a platform for their projects.The wine business is changing, as it has been ever since it has been a business. From the time when the Chaldean winemakers negotiated with the wine brokers of the Pharaohs, 4,500 years ago to now in the 21st century. Nothing is easy, and nobody is going to get a gimme every time. The vines struggle. Why do people think they don’t have to? That’s what I call “stupid.”

When I see how many people I touch, handing them a bottle of wine on the floor of my favorite Italian wine store on a Saturday, and then having them flash me the thumbs-up sign as they open it and enjoy it with a handmade sandwich, I know my crusade is a fulfilling one. And while my life hasn’t been filled with non-stop happiness, it has been a good life. And I know my work has been good work. And the naysayers cannot demonize my good work or my good intentions with their glass-half-empty rhetoric.

Some years ago, I got another call from a boss. Again, it was an invitation to come to lunch to meet a winemaker. The winemaker was heading back to his vineyard for harvest and was stopping in Dallas to meet with clients. His vineyard was in the Bekaa Valley, and a devastating civil war was waging at the time in Lebanon. I asked him how he did it, how was he able to pull the grapes and get them to the winery, while tanks rolled through the fields. He answered that some of us are called to make war and some of us are called to make wine. But all of us are called to be warriors in one way or another. And the grapes are growing and they must be harvested. Just as it was done, some 800 miles away and 4,500 years ago, in Chaldea.

The winemaker, Serge Hochar of Chateau Musar, and his world, became part of my world that day in the early 1980’s, along with so many of the happy warriors who do the work of their lives, knowing that their livelihood is right. And anyone who has experienced right livelihood, and the excitement and passion that accompanies it, knows that the wine trail isn’t for everyone. But for those crusaders who get on it and get with it, it is a life full of meaning and wondrous expectation.

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