The Guile of the Private Label

A cautionary tale, jettisoned from the vacuum of commerce

Back in the early 1980’s I decided to make wine. It started out as a way to identify with the winemaker and their task. I was fortunate and made some wine that I liked to drink. The problem was I made a lot of wine.

Nothing wrong with it, but I was just getting into wine collecting and tasting on a regular basis and my education wasn’t going to be served well by drinking my daily drek.

Eventually I gave away or drank most of the wine and went back to sampling wines from all over the world. I still have a case or so of wine, some in large format bottles, to see how well they age.

A few nights ago I was talking to a friend who is looking to open a little Italian wine and gift shop. One of the first things that came out of his mouth was "Giuseppe is going to help me get my own private label together." This friend was still a friend and not yet a client so I opened my unfiltered mouth and let it fly. "Jerry, who in the hell do you think you are? You are not an Italian. You don’t live there. You are not a winemaker. You are a merchant. Why not stick to what you do best and source wine from the people who do what they do best? It isn’t just a label, man; it’s a way of life!"

I guess I scared him off a little, although I doubt I talked him out of some future folly. But it got me to thinking about private label wine from Italy and what a bizarre proposition it is.

Imagine a wine shop owner or a restaurateur sitting at their family thanksgiving table with an ever-present bottle of private label wine. Every day they schlep the stuff and because their pride is such that they have convinced themselves that they are a "wine producer" they expose themselves to their family, friends and clients, on a daily basis, with these endless bottles of wine. They cost $5 and they sell for $20, $50. They're genius in their own mind, but they have also become prisoners of their own making. They have hypnotized themselves into believing that this is the best wine and no other wine comes before it and because of silly notions like that they risk cutting themselves off from the community of winemakers all over Italy and the world. What did you say? Isn’t his wine made by winemakers somewhere in Italy too? No doubt there is a hand of man involved in the project. But it is a recipe, a formula, another product from the catalog of someone who has planned his life in terms of profit and gain. And in reality one loses out to so much the world of Italian wine, and culture in general, has to offer. All for the sake of a dollar?

To do so undermines their credibility in other areas. Where do they get their fish from? Are those really black truffles? Is the Pecorino truly from Italy?

I wish restaurants could serve the food on the table that I have had in the kitchen of the winemakers. From Puglia to Valdobbiadene, Controguerra to Suvereto, in the homes of wine makers; not only their wines, but their tables have been shining examples of the best and the brightest from Italy.

So how does it get turned around, when the Italian experience is represented in America, that we have, from single storefront restaurateurs to mega big box chains, telling us what Italian wine must be?

There is no provenance in profit, or abracadabra to artisanship. It comes from the soul, not the spreadsheet. It isn't a game, it is someone's life. And that is, dear listeners, why private labels are often a pitiable surrogate for the genuine article.

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

One Upon a Time (again) in America

One never knows what a day will bring on the wine trail. Yesterday started out with a snow flurry in the morning followed by a lunch with my wine men's group in a local restaurant. The food was good, but I managed to get in an off-kilter mood by looking at the wine list. For some reason salespeople in large companies just aren’t getting what these small account are looking for. They keep pitching the same old things and the chef who drives the restaurant is looking for more engagement from their purveyors. Passion, not program, fuels the owner-operators of these boutique restaurants in most towns.

Towards the evening, Marilisa and Maria, the angels of the local Italy American Chamber of Commerce, were expecting me and my wines at their holiday bash. I had no idea where I was going or what would await me there.

The snow had disoriented folks in this flat little town which had grown up on the high grass prairie. As I made my way through the toll way toward the center of town, I nearly passed a 23 story building that I had never noticed. The party was at the penthouse way up top.

Once up and inside, Italian antipasti and wines filled the room with warm aromas. People filtered in and the wine started flowing. Outside on the chilly patio a pizza oven was throwing off heat. I made my way outside to see what was going on.

Out there, Enrico and young Raffaele were making all kind of pizza. Margherita, Calzone and a flat bread filled with caponata, prosciutto and mozzarella, Raffaele called Pannuozzo in his Neapolitan dialect (it was very similar to something my Calabrese Grandmother and my mom made when I was a kid). Raffaele fascinated me; he was animated, filled with wonder, with the energy of a child who sees everything for the first time. I immediately took a liking to him. So we got to talking.

Twenty four years old, in America for one year. Married, starting a new life and a family. He made his way from one restaurant to another before he went to work for an educational institution. Health insurance, a possibility to pursue a college degree and a piece of the American pie. It reminded me of another southern Italian who came to Dallas 100 years ago, my grandfather.

100 years ago, Dallas was a little more wild west, and for an Italian, back then, I can barely imagine what he and my grandmother must have had to deal with. Leaving their culture behind. Family, friends, a way of life that was familiar. All for the promise of a dream called America.

My grandfather wasn’t one to pursue higher education, but he had street smarts. And Dallas forged his way into the American dream that was to take all of us off the wine trail in Italy and onto the trail of dreams we call America. And young Raffaele, up on the patio of the penthouse, tending the pizza oven, told me a little about his dream for America.

“I want the possibility of an education that will let me have a family and a life here in Dallas. When I first came here and married my American wife, someone told me my life was like the story of cosi fan tutti.”
What is it about these opera-archetypes? I remember seeing La Boheme at the Met in 2001 not even a year after my wife died and saw the parallel story between the stage and my life. And here we have this young man from near Naples who also has his opera-archetype. The patterns we recognize and bow prostrate before.

The pizza was looking done. Enrico had walked into the warm hall while Raffaele prepared more dough. I stared into the oven and thought it was getting quite done. Confession: I like burned bread, it settles my stomach. Italians from the mainland look at me as if I had just blasphemed Jesus Mary and Joseph when I say that.

We were in this building and there was this pizza oven on the patio of the top floor because one of the tenants, Renato Riccio, lived in this building. Renato has made his life and fortune building pizza ovens all across America. Funny that we had never met all these years.

I went inside for a moment; some folks needed a sip of wine.


I like to stand in front of a few bottles of wine and have people come up and try them. You never know what is going to happen. Oddly, I often get people who want to tell me what they think of the wine. It is like they feel they have to tell me what the wine is. To them. But the impression I get from them is that what they think is what is the final word on it. And it being wine, I have found out that there is no final word on a living thing. Not while it is in this ever changing state. None the less, people love to name something and set it inside their little gift boxes, compartmentalize it and move on to the next thing. I have no quarrel with it, as I know it is harmless, even if it is misdirected. It is wine. It can be a simple quaff. That is perfectly fine for it to be that way. It can be fruity, it can be light. It can even be mellow. It is only a glass of wine, not the Kyoto treaty.

A woman comes up to me and asks me about the Sicilian wine, the Nero D’Avola. “What is it like? Is it like a Cabernet?” Is anything like a Cabernet? I tell her if anything it is similar in weight to a Shiraz. A few minutes later she returns with an aging man who has done something very wrong with a hair product to his hair. “Try this syrah,” she tells him. I ask her why she is calling it a Syrah.”I want him to know what it is.” I want to stick my head inside the pizza oven. But I take a deep yoga breath and say,” It is Nero d’Avola, not Syrah. It is Italian, not French. And it is time for you to know that and accept that.” She looks at me as if I have just landed from another galaxy and just walks off.

A couple come up to me and ask for a glass of bubbly. I pour it in a regular wine glass, like it is done in Italy. “What are you doing? Why are you putting it in a wine glass?” More experts trying to train me to do it the right way. Pizza oven. Deep breath. One more time. “This is the Italian way.” I know of what I am talking about. I walk on the fiery road of the Italian wine trail every day, my whole adult life. But in this town that my grandfather plopped us down onto 100 years ago, we still have more battles to bring the truth and the light and the way of things Italian to even those who have this Italian thing in their DNA.

I thank the powers that be that they just keep sending us Raffaele’s who are fresh off the boat and haven’t been dulled and lulled by the sleep and who still have their dream and their life in front of them. Maybe we might just get it right in this town, once upon a time in the 21st century.

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

The Good Mentor: On Wine Buying

A few years ago, one of my wine mentors passed away, leaving me with a pile of wine books with notes placed inside them. Every once in a while I come upon one; they are like my continuing education from the other side. This weekend, while I was placing some of the books, finally, on my shelves, this one popped out. It looks to have been written (and mimeographed) in the late 1950’s or early 1960’s when he lived and worked in New Orleans. For what it’s worth, these suggestions still seem to have relevance in today’s wine world. Hence I am sharing them with any people who might be interested in them.

Wine Institute training sheet for wine buyers in restaurants – How to get what you want and have everybody like you.

1) Don’t overestimate and under deliver. Don’t bite off more than you can chew. Consider the scale of your operation and work within the parameters. There will be plenty of time to become emperor of the wine world. Start with getting your wine list working for the times, the clientele and the economy.

2) If a salesman gives you a price sheet, and there are wines of interest on it, for God’s sake, file it and keep it handy. They don’t have time to be your personal secretary.

3) Take what you order. And take it when it comes in. Get it in your cellar as soon as you can. Those wines are your babies, take care of them. If you change jobs and the wine comes in that you made a deal for, find a way to make good with your supplier, it will pay off in spades.

4) Do you have a wine you like better than the one the salesperson is showing? Give him a bottle to try, don’t say anything; let him be the judge. He lets you evaluate his wine; why not confer that reciprocity on the salesperson? No one likes to continually hear about other wines that are better from a wine buyer or a sommelier. It gives you the reputation of a fickle wine buyer and shuts you out of special deals in the future. The salesman is only human; keep him close and you will get some of the cherries. As Dale Carnegie says, “If you want to gather honey don’t kick over the beehive.”

5) Take someone else’s word for a change, especially if they have experience or proven results that will make your business more money or more successful. The notion of ego Freud has been talking about lately.

6) Buy for your clientele, not for your palate, and when an advisor who might know more about your clientele or your business gives you counsel, listen to it and give thanks. And while you’re at it, keep your margins sane. If you buy a bottle of Chateau Lafite for $3, don’t gouge the diner by trying to get four times what you paid for it.

7) Stop trying to buy wine that isn’t available, wine that is in another storehouse, another state, another country. There is plenty to sort from. Take your opinion of yourself out of the equation and everyone will be much happier.

8) There is no room for lofty thinking in the buying room. You’re negotiating the sale of an agricultural product that is meant to give joy – not pain. Learn to integrate not just your expertise but your kindness. Think of your work as your neighborhood and your colleagues as your neighbors.

9) We have a saying here in New Orleans, “Danse à la musique.” Take your place in the ballroom and make the best of it. Everyone will benefit from it, especially you.

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

The World of Italian Wine in 2009 ~ So Far

Looking at Italian wine sales, compared to France and Australia (their nearest world competitors on a case and dollar volume level, it is looking like Italy has taken the lead. Not to say all three categories aren’t below past years performances. However, Italy looks like it could pull it out this year and press on ahead.

Why? First, the wines are neither too expensive (Bordeaux and Champagne) or too cheap (shiraz and other cockfighting varietals)

Another reason? The ambassadors in the Italian restaurants, the interest in Italian wines by sommeliers (Italian wines, the final frontier) and dedication by wine and food shops who see the tie in to the ascending culture of American food and drink. We are becoming more Mediterranean by our eating habits. Good news for Italy.

And all this from a country that many people are still confused and mystified by their wine categorization and the sheer volume of choices. I have only one thing to add: Vive la différence !

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

Vintage photo by Vittorio

A Timeless Tranquility in Tuscany

The road to Querciavalle ~ June 1987

One of the great things about being on the wine trail in Italy for all these years is the precious opportunity to see the baton passed from an older family member to the younger generation. The first time I met the Illuminati kids, they were young teenagers. Now they run the winery and are my colleagues. One of my longest watched wineries in Tuscany is a little family winery, Querciavalle in Pontignanello near Castelnuovo Berardenga. Run by the Losi Family, the first time I went there was in 1987 with my friend Eugenio Spinozzi and my son Rafael, who was 10. It was June, the area was cool and sunny, and we sat on the second floor overlooking the valley all the way to Siena. The family brought out food, and I remember a little girl who was usually asleep in the arms of a mother or an aunt. Her brother was about the age of my son, and I remember they played around with a soccer ball while the adults tested the wine.

Querciavalle is one of those wines that I have never done justice to in my work. It is really a pretty wine, and it reflects the nature of the family. They are very unassuming, almost shy. They are Tuscans, but not the kind that forgot the land and their duty to it.

Yesterday I got an email from the little girl, who is now helping run the winery with her brother. Valeria wanted to let me know about the olive oil harvest, and she sent several pictures of the process with her short note:
“We have just pressed the new extra-virgin olive oil: people can taste the olive - fruity, bit of grass and leaves; it is a little bit bitter and spicy, but with a peculiar elegance and harmony. Finally, this is a really good year!!!.”


Every year when I go to Vinitaly I make sure to stop by and visit the family at their booth. Some of the original old brothers often show up; they are getting very old now. But the memories of them and their sons and now the young generation are a wonderful little piece of history in the making.

The wine is like a history lesson in the evolution of Chianti Classico. When I first encountered this wine, it was in the governo style, where fresh must is introduced into an already fermented wine. This was one of the original methods. White grapes were also used, Malvasia and Trebbiano Toscano, added to the Sangiovese and Canaiolo.

Over the years the family restricted the use of the white grapes for their Chianti Classico, although they now make a Rosso del Cavaliere Tranquilo IGT, which has the four traditional grapes in the blend. They also make an unparalleled Vin Santo and a priceless DOP extra-vergine olive oil.

Several years ago, they were really excited about some old vines they found in their property. The grape, which they called Grand Noir, was a teinturier, and the flesh was pigmented. We tasted the wine out of the tank and it was cave-dark and full of aroma. Could this be related to the Gamay Noir in Ricasoli's time?


Some of the older bottles of their Chianti I have go back into the 1980’s, when the wine was still made in that style. The wines are perfectly fine, reflecting the time and the temperament of the people at that moment in history. They are calm, bright, light and perfect. But they don't shout, they whisper.

What endears this wine to me is that it is not a blockbuster wine or a show boater. It is a wine that turns from the fashion and the noise of modernity. It has a timeless serenity about it. For that, it sometimes gets ignored. It doesn’t get regularly reviewed, and when it does by the likes of the writers who like beefy, jammy red wines, usually the reviews aren’t beneficial for broadening the base of their American clientele. Of course there are Italian writers who do praise the wine, but Americans have yet to read or take the time to plunge into the various levels of Italian wine-writing that is so much more intense than what we are offered in the States. But I am getting off course.

Valeria recently “friended” me on Facebook, so we stay in touch via FB and email. From the little farm in Pontignanello to the big cities in America, we are just a stretched-out neighborhood. I actually see Valeria and her family more often than some of my own cousins in my own town. But this thread of the vine life that stretches from her grandparents through her parents and now to her and her brother is a wonderful thing to witness. It is a relationship that shouldn’t be taken for granted. Nor should the wines be forgotten.

How are they tended? This is a family that has been stewards of the land for generations. They live in the land, are of the land and they depend on the land for their life and their future. Do they harvest by the moon and restrict poisons and artificial augmentations? I’m not sure they do the lunar cycle thing, but they do understand the ecosystem and work very hard to not damage the land. But they don’t make any claims to be biodynamic or even organic, at least not overtly. That is not the style of the Losi family.

If you ever have the opportunity to taste these wines, they are true Tuscan wines. No pretensions, nothing over-promised, nothing under-delivered. Wines, and friends, for life.

The road to Querciavalle ~ October 2006

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

A Moving Experience

This afternoon I was standing in the aisle of a super market looking at a stack of Italian wine. A good looking woman in her middle 40‘s, with a plunging neckline, motioned to the Sangiovese and suggested I try a bottle. “It’s delicious. And it’s Sangiovese. How could you go wrong?”

Indeed. She was making my job easier. In the rush to the holidays, folks are trying to be helpful, get those bottles of wine into hands, any hands, even if they sound like a pickup line. It got me thinking about what we do to get the wine to that point. There are a lot of hands that touch the wine that bring it to the front lines.

Indispensable is the hand of the winemaker. Young or old, male or female, the caretakers of the grape bring the wine into birth. With the help of nature and the sometimes unnatural persuasion of humankind, the humble grape tumbles into a life of wine and then on a journey across a planet to give joy and happiness to the global village of wine lovers. The winemaker is finishing their initial harvest work about now, except for a few late harvest projects in the northern hemisphere, maybe some ice wine in the northern regions. But in Italy, the wine has been put to bed, preparing for the next set of hands.

If it comes to the US or anywhere outside of Italy, usually an importer is involved. The classical importer is a person of discernment, one who knows Italy intimately and also has a working knowledge of the world he is trying to place the wine in. Some live in Italy, some in the US and some commute between the two countries. One of my dear friends, Eugenio Spinozzi, had dual citizenship and lived half and half. He was a global villager. But many people do this. The closer they are to the end-user, usually the better connected they are to the ever-changing realities of the marketplace.

Italy is unique, in my experience, from other countries, in that there are so many opinions and ideas on how to go about advancing wine. In some cases it is simply a matter of turning on the tap, filling up bottles, boxing them, getting a good price and that’s all she wrote. There is plenty of that. The good news is that those wines have gotten better and have helped bring more wine drinkers into the fold.

But then there are those forces of energy that look beyond a warm meal and a dry bed and consider the history, the finesse, the legacy of what they are doing in their daily lives. Those people inspire those of us who see this wine world as a lively and passionate way of life.

History has a place in all of this. In these times, it seems times past have been shuffled to an out-of-reach shelf on a cabinet, away from the sights of most people. And without history, especially in the last 60 or so years, the story of Italian wine is folklore and legend; many just stories with little or no anchor to the truth.

When people sit at a table over a bottle of wine it is like a drum circle, a bonfire, a tribal bonding. Every year at the wine fairs, and all through the year, this happens in Italy. All the time. Right now it is going on, this constant weaving of the story of wine, over a meal, maybe a fire, always another bottle showing up and conversation, endless conversation. Wine is the glue of the constantly evolving culture. Such a vital heartbeat it is.

And then there is the middle man and his retinue of colleagues, which help husband the wine closer to the user. I know the newer people in the business have little or no regard for that segment of the business, but without them Italian wines wouldn’t have gotten this far in America. Some of the giants who blazed trails, like Tony LaBarba of American Wine in Texas. I moan and whine about the flyover syndrome in these parts. Could you imagine what it must have been like in the 1950’s or 1960’s when there were few good restaurants, little to no wine shops and a population that was still under the spell of Prohibition? I cannot.

Ultimately the retailer and the restaurant owner are the ambassadors of these objects of good will that a country sends halfway across earth to share their bounty. And there are many, many kinds of people, with all kinds of ideas of how to go about proceeding forward. Today, in the supermarket, someone had to make it happen that a case stacking of Sangiovese was able to get to the point when a stranger could remark to another stranger about how nice that wine must be. It didn’t just magically appear.

The payoff? For me it is definitely at the table, where friend and foe alike take momentary refuge from the travails of gathering their daily bread. This is such a special moment in civilization, unparalleled in time because of the vast opportunities we have to celebrate it often and readily. And for that we have so very much to be thankful for.

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

The Wine Week, So Far (looking for a wine of the week)

It’s just been three days this week so far but it feels like a week or more. Evening events, tastings, wine dinners every night this week so far (with more to come) along with full day’s work, working lunches even. And then there are the deals.

Two truffle wine dinners this week. I am all truffled out. Some lovely Nebbiolos though. The Produttori Barbaresco 2005 is gorgeous. I still can’t believe when Etienne de Montille was at the house recently, he was jonesing for Nebbiolo. Too much great Pinot Noir can be too much of a good thing? I reckon.

Before I head back to Austin tomorrow and before I go to bed tonight, I laid out 60 or so bottles of wine for the Becky, the wine of the week writer to try. “Can you be here at 9:00AM?” I asked her. So in a few hours after a little sleep and a caffe latte or two, we’ll get started.

I’ve written about this before, but every time it is different. Earlier in the week I took a stroll around the warehouse and looked over thousands of different wines, all crisp and cool and waiting to be adopted. I pulled out the wee gee board and chose wines from Italy, France Spain, South America, South Africa, New York and Texas. Very few of them looked familiar to me, but that isn’t the issue. We’re looking for sleepers, values and out of the choices, a gem or two. I had to laugh the other day when my friend Tom Wark was lambasting the three-tier system and claiming “What truly gives consumers in any market real choice and selection is direct shipment rights by out-of-state wineries and retailers.” Dear Tom, you certainly haven’t walked a mile in my shoes. That’s plainly inaccurate. Now whether we (or direct shippers) can sell all the wines we have at our disposal is another matter. And while I’m at it, how about this one?

An importer friend calls me and tells me a retailer has this wine that looks like it came from his import company and the customer wants to return it. My friend asks the retailer to send him a picture of the wine, front label and back, so he can determine the provenance of the wine. It turns out the wine had another importers strip label on it (grey market) and the wine had been heat damaged (possibly by shipping in warmer months). My friend mailed the retailer back and suggested they tell the customer to try and return it from where they bought it. It’s a hassle, boxing it up and shipping it back to California or New Jersey, if the retailer would even take it back. Bottom line, there still is a place for people to people business and as long as those of us in the wine business (via the traditional platform or the ones in the future) remember who the most important person is – that would be the wine end-user.

Sausage Paul was bubbly today. I went over to the shop to make sure his Tuscan wine sale was rockin’. And he proceeded to take me to the back room and show me all the great Sicilian pastries that just showed up, along with a bunch of wonderful dried pastas from Campania. Add to that the Pandoro and Panettones that arrived and the place has the Holiday feel. The only thing missing was a war bride from Calabria for Joey the Weasel. Sausage Paul was waiting around for him. Brothers in arms, they are.

As I stepped outside to go to my wine dinner, flying winemaker Chris Ringland was pulling up to go to dinner at a local spot, a BYOB place. He was in town to showcase his holiday sparkler, Bitch Bubbly. Chris, up since 4:00AM wasn’t too effervescent at that point. I’m sure the bottle of ’82 Mouton he sampled revived him a bit.

And yes, I am again officially rambling. But hey, it’s just a little blog by an obscure Italian wine guy in flyover country, what do you expect, Nossiter or Grahm?

A big shout out to Tom Maresca for jumping into the bloggy-blog world. Matt Kramer where you at, brother? Come on in, jump, Matt, jump. It won’t kill you. It hasn't killed Charles Scicolone. Yet.

So, bona notte y’all; con calma e gesso.

written by and photos of wines lined up to be tasted by Alfonso Cevolalimited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy