Sunday in Italy ~ La Vendemmia Comincia

Harvest is in full swing in Italy. Gianpaolo Paglia from Poggio Argentiera is picking and crushing, and the rest of the country is doing so as well, or are getting close. Some pictures follow. Buon Lavoro tutti!




And then we can enjoy the fruits of their labors!

T.G.I.F. ~ Thank God It's F...

... F i n a l l y starting to come alive again in the business. A short posting today. Mostly pix. But the signs, though mixed, are encouraging.

First, a stack of blue sheets means the trucks are full, and it's been this way, all week !

September has taken what August kick-started right into the end zone.

Wine tasting glasses waiting to go into the dishwasher

The sales people are back and tasting the new wines, the suppliers are crawling all over the market (good thing), and we even have some good old-fashioned college football and Pinot Grigio tailgate party promotions! We're back for more, baby!

Also check out this ad one of our talented "millenials", Julie Tijerina, did for an Italian winery, Illuminati ...Right on stuff ! Hey Wine Rock Star, is this getting closer to your age group and audience? Lemme know, we're listening to you!

Eugenio Spinozzi ~ Buon Anima

Sept 7, 2006 the Full Corn Moon~
Slated to be the brightest full moon of 2006, and I’ve got a house full of ones from the other side. They let themselves in when I went out to run, but they left calling cards (a dead mockingbird and an “unusual” mushroom). And they messed with the alarm and the hard drive, and the batteries are acting wacky. But these are my friends and family, and I love them, till death does us unite.

In memory of Eugenio Spinozzi, who died one year ago today. He was from Italy, I live in Texas. I was in Sicily, and he died in Texas. He was a dear, dear friend. His sister wrote to me today, “I like to imagine he is on one of his trips to the States and that one of these days he will come back.” She in Italy, imagining he’s in the US, and those of us in The States are thinking about his retirement in Italy. That’s how some of us cope.

I'm making dinner one year later, the buon anima meal. There's a full moon, the brightest of the year. I have Pachino pomodoro sauce from Sicily, oil from Tuscany, cheese from Emilia-Romagna, and pasta and wine from Abruzzo.

The mushroom from the garden, I knew I wasn’t going to touch. The wine, though, found me in the cool room, looking for an old one. A 1985 Illuminati Zanna fell into my arms, though the cork was near term. All the while the water is softening up the pasta, Eugenio is yelling, "don’t overcook it." The house is filled with so many spirits, but all of them enjoying the show, no one helping. Take a photograph, what, you aren’t going to open that bottle? Oh yes, you are! We will breath in the wine, you will open it. OK, OK….

I do really mean a moment of somber reflection, but for some reason these spirits want to have fun. Look, I’m not on the other side, I don’t know what they know, but I am outnumbered. Like the week starting September 9, 2001, when my bedroom was filled with every known and unknown relative, floating, hovering above my bed, for nights and nights, until that terrible Tuesday.

For those who don't know, Eugenio brought the wines of Abruzzo, and Illuminati, to America, literally, in his suitcase. A young man, when he started, looking to find himself and his way in the world. For 25 years he traveled endlessly, crisscrossing America with his wines and his stories. He made a million friends and was one of the postwar Italian wine ambassadors who brought the good news from the vineyards. He wasn't perfect, but he gave all he had for the cause. And he is missed.

In the first picture above, we are back in Venice, it’s 1987, and we are going to visit Girolamo Dorigo. He has a few wines, old and new, he wants us to try. A diversion into Venezia, my young son is with us. Eugenio is young, I am young, and the world is ripe like a cantaloupe. And we’re digging in.

The Zanna is ready tonight, it’s 21, it’s legal now. In those days the producers couldn’t use the term Riserva, so they substituted the word Vecchio. Aged. Now it’s really vecchio. The soil in Controguerra, when it rains, picks up the aromas of the deep dark soil, the fig leaves, and the funky barnyard rustic wonderfulness. There’s no animal on the label, the animal is in the bottle. Zanna, the fangs of the wolf, Howl Mountain.

No duxelles, no confit, no fois gras, no wobbly kneed Italian here.

Grab some vines, and let’s roast us some meat.

No cream, no balsamic reduction, no coulis.

Straight, simple, pure. Italian as it was and is meant to be, by God.

Good soul, good memories, good place.

Good Bye Eugenio, Buon Lavoro!

WWWW ~ Wagons Without Wheels Wednesday

Six Degrees of Separation

The photograph above is from April of 1972, San Francisco. I was there, behind the camera, my trusty Canon VIT. The scene could be now, Anywhere, USA.

Where am I going with this? Well, I look at those souls in that photograph, and have been thinking about them now for 34 years, wondering what those 6 people represent, symbolically, in these degrees of separation.

Contrast it with the picture Nick Ut took barely two months later of Phan Thi Kim Phuc. Odd that I am noting this, seeing as I wish to mention a blog I just read, from a photographer who was at that place on that day in Vietnam. Accounts have him changing film during the peak moment . The photographer is David Burnett, whose work I have admired for some time. His latest work is Aftermath, New Orleans and Mississippi after Katrina. Please go to his link, look at those images. Take your time, let it sink in.
David & Iris write a “blob”, We're Just Sayin, which I read, enjoy and recommend. It’s very personal and real.

There were two postings especially that I liked, one dealing with women, wine and perception, Subtle Differences , and one about Death and Loss, Four Funerals and No Wedding. I am a fan, of the images, of the words. Thank you both!

Well, I came upon David’s Aftermath and Iris and his blob through a link on William Gibson’s site. So the 6 degrees started with :
1) William Gibson
And moved to:
2) David Burnett
Who was in Vietnam with:
3) Nick Ut
Who were both photographing over there in 1972 while I was in San Francisco photographing those 6 people

But that’s only 3 .

So it got me to thinking about my next 3:

4) New Orleans and the loss we have all had in so many ways. But as I am supposed to bring wine and food into this somehow, the focus, in this moment, is on the loss of a heritage and respect for food and wine that is not only lost in New Orleans but also closer to home. Which brings me to:

5) The Italian wine dinner that has French food names.
Seems I got signed up to do a wine dinner, down the road, with an Italian theme. Sounded good. The Italian place had a good review, and I talked to the manager. He’d email me the menu, and I’d choose the wines. Small detail in the world of really important life and death issues. I know that. So days pass and more days pass, and then an email shows up with the menu and the wines. I was in NY at the time and remember emailing and mentioning it to Alice Feiring, who said something like, “That’s nuts, lucky you.”

Do you ever get one of the spam emails from Russia or Africa that have a stream of words that almost sound like they make sense? Something like, “The missionary said he’d stick it out for five more years but the illness was wiping out the natives. When the boat returns Adolfo will send for his beloved Belinda to restore the country to its former glory…”, stuff like that. Well the menu read like that. In fact, I wrote another friend and asked him if he could recognize anything Italian about this menu. His reply was, "The menu is Nouvelle Cuisine. They’re trying to be sophisticated.” Oh.

So I imagine if the missionaries who established themselves in that area in 1718 have only just succeeded in converting the population, I shouldn’t be too impatient. Yeah, they didn’t want me to choose the wines, they already did that too. OK, I get it.

Maybe I should just catch a plane back to LA or NY instead of going to this wine dinner. Anybody got any ideas? It is part of my day job, so I imagine I could just take it as an assignment, like David Burnett would. Would you, David? Alice, I think I know what you would advise. Anyone else, David A., Regina, Mom?

Which leads me to:

6) The French wine hater.
Just when I thought it was safe to go home and get out for the weekend, I went to my favorite refuge, Mr Wok. Not like it sounds folks, this is serious stuff. Peking Duck (special order 24 hours in advance), BYOB, and some great folks, Amanda and Jack and his dad. Anyway, I love these folks! So we’re in for a Friday night meal with a bottle of Texas wine, a Grenache/Syrah Rose from buddy Kim McPherson , who just happens to be going to do a stint at the New World Wine and Food Festival in that town where the Italian Nouvelle Cuisine dinner is slated. So, see, it all connects. But I digress. Back to the French wine hater.

There’s this ol’ boy I’ve seen a time or two in Mr. Wok, and I said hello, in my idiot-friendly way. They had wine, we had wine. Come to find out he’s from the east coast (like the manager of that Eyetalian restaurant down river from here, the one who has gone all wobbly and nouvelle on us). Anyway, this ol’ boy launches in about how he hates French wine. Anyone who has read this far knows I’m all about Italian, but really more importantly I think wine, made well from anywhere, is something to behold. Even from Texas, yes, I am here to tell you!

Now I'm just in a surreal enough of a mood (channelling the energy of one of those 6 people in the photo above?) to ask him why.

Why? I ask him. Come to find out he doesn’t like those French politicians. Then comes my Bucky Fuller story. I heard him tell it to me when I was a student back there in California, when I was younger and he was breathing. Bucky said this, and I relayed it to the French wine-hater person. “You take a spaceship and load up all the politicians and take them on a round trip around the sun, no one back on earth skips a beat. You take that same spaceship and take all the farmers on that same trip and guess what, we all starve in 6 months!” Bucky said it. I wasn’t 6 feet from him when he did.

And I told the dude that, and he looked kind of strange at me and said, “I’ve got a magnum of Australian Shiraz I got on closeout for $3.33, want to try it?” That was right after he told me his prized possession was a 1967 Chateau Citran and that his favorite wine was from Tuscany, especially the Barolo.

The wheels have fallen off the wagon. And we are careening like way out of control, full circle.

What a ride. A real E-ticket.

And tomorrow we get the full moon.

It doesn't get any better than this.

The Reach of the Grape

I was looking at the previous posting and the picture of my family, before I was born and wondering: What did they eat, what songs did they sing, what were their dreams? New immigrants with such high hopes for their America. What would they make of our America now, 70 years later?

My grandfather in his backyard with his brick bar-b-que and his grape arbor, lots of good times, always with the wine flowing, probably the first place wine touched my lips. Those grapes, their reach, always somewhere, on the wine trail, in those early California days.

It isn’t the same for me and my son. Those traditions of gathering and sharing a meal and a flask of wine are now changed, it seems, forever. Now we roll out the custom grill and fire up some exotic hardwood charcoal and throw on a couple of grass fed or organic steaks. The wine is better, the food is healthier, but it just isn’t the same, is it?

I was remembering some of my favorite wine moments in the past. Many of them had nothing to do with fine wine as we know it today. An ancient memory has me looking in the refrigerator of my dad’s spec house in the desert, the one next to Sinatra’s home near Thunderbird C.C. He drove a Thunderbird. Odd, I thought, at the time, because in the fridge was a bottle of Thunderbird. It was a Thunderbird world! It was summer in the desert and hot, and the water tasted antiseptic and chlorinated. In contrast, the "T-bird" was citric and spritzy, refreshing on that hot summer day, not quite as cool as those starlets swimming in the Chairman of the Board's pool. But a glimpse, a peak, over the fence into adulthood, and wine. I still remember that encounter. What's the word?

There was a hike on a trail I once took up to Tuolumne Meadows in the Upper Yosemite Valley. I hauled in a couple of bottles of Almaden Mountain wines, one red and one rosé. In those days 750ml bottles were available. At 8,000+ elevation, a little went a long way. But over the course of a few nights with friends, the soft, fruity, almost innocent naturalness of the wine has never left my memories. Not a great wine, but a great memory of an experience which wine played a part in.

I once brought home a bottle of 1975 Souverain Cellars Petite Sirah. Bill Bonetti, later to become famous for his role in the branding of the Sonoma-Cutrer wines, was the winemaker at the time. I remember pouring it in a glass beaker that was better suited to beer or water. But the aroma of the wine in that glass was so intriguing and so delicately perfumed that, to this day, I still look for it in other wines, what that wine gave me that night. It was a marker, something I will never forget.

One day one of my colleagues, with the authority to do so, decided to open a magnum of 1911 Lafite. It was a low fill, and we couldn’t sell it for much anyway. So he hauled off to Sonny Bryans BBQ, when Sonny was still alive and on the line, and gathered some brisket and ribs for the lunch back at the office.
The Lafite was interesting. It was 75+ years old, same age as the U.S. president at the time, without the benefit of lighting and secret service. It was brown and losing its fruit in the glass. But the elusiveness of the fruit made it precious. Here was a wine that was dying, and we were allowed to sip its last drops, breath its last perfume before it said adieu. Wonderful moment.

I was in Galveston once upon a time, working in a building on the Strand. Someone in our office decided we should open and try a bottle of the 1964 Giacomo Conterno Monfortino. At the time, the wine was young, not quite 20 years old. As we initially tasted it, the person who opened the wine decided we should go to lunch and come back to try the wine. Two hours later we returned to a wine that had opened all its petals and was waiting to show us its flower. Inside the glass I sensed a deep red rose and a pink one, too. There was also a bittersweet chocolate and a reduced, almost balsamic, intensity. It was thick and juicy and wonderful, and I’ll never see wine again quite like that.

Last year in Portugal we came upon a 1945 Dows Vintage Port. I have been very fortunate to taste a lot of great wine and a serious amount of Port going back into that beginning of that last century. But to be in Villa Nova di Gaia in the house of the producer tasting a wine that only came down the Douro once in the last 60 years, that was memorable. To taste the wine in the place where it spent its youth and all of its life is to give a sense of place to a wine that relies so much on that place. It is like being part of the wine in the glass when one has that kind of experience. The wine was still young and hopeful, having been born only a few years after the gathering of my family mentioned in the beginning of this memoir. Wine made before I was born by people who no longer are alive.

That is as close as I will get to being with my family on that autumn day in 1939, celebrating my oldest sister's 1st birthday, with my mom and dad and grandmas and grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins.

T.G.F.F. ~ Thank God For Females

At a recent family gathering, there were 3 male and 13 female members of the family.

At the recent Texas Sommelier Conference, 40% of the attendees were women.

In a NY restaurant, there are 19 women and 3 men.

In the picture above, of my family before I was born, there are more females than males.

I come from a female dominated culture.

My mom, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, cousins and nieces have been a source that has made me feel like something I belonged to. I wish my son could feel that, but sadly, times have changed.

So today, I just want to thank those who are still here, those who have been here and passed on, and those coming up in my world who represent that female side of the family I love. That sense of be-longing.

Cent'anni!

5 Blog day Links
The Wine Life
Vivi's Wine Journal
Alice e il vino
Alice Feiring - In Vino Veritas
Genevelyn Steele Swallows

Onward Through the Fog

It’s the 30th of the month, and again I’m writing this from New York. A seminar on Nebbiolo by Seth Box, the MHUSA Italian Wine Director. Seth is young and high energy, a winemaker and a tastemaker. He gathered Italian wine specialists from all over the USA for this event. We all met at Fiamma, the first night in Soho ( Menu here)
Ceretto is a traditional winery, or as Charles Curtis said, an updated traditionalist. What he meant by that was to imply they have a great respect for the uniqueness of Nebbiolo in the context and assisted by technology and healthy winemaking practices. Seth could attest to that as he was there, as a winemaker, for 3 vintages.
Our full immersion into the heart and soil of Ceretto’s wines was accompanied by some great commentary by these two young professionals. Wonderful work, gents. (Tasting Flights here)

A brief walk to Union Square in a light rain and a meeting at the Italian Wine Merchant with an importer friend, Andrea Fassone of Tricana. We headed over to one of his favorite spots and one I can recommend highly when you are in or near the East Village, In Vino.

Italian wine marketers, take note: Go here and look at the clientele. 75% are young women. Here is your future.
The wine prices are marked up 2 times plus $5.00 per bottle. New York. High rents. USA, California, Texas, Florida, they are moving wine here and not overcharging…solid trattoria food…3 girls for every boy.
In Vino 215 e 4th St. in the East Village (NY)

A couple of the young gents who work there, Galil and
Keith (also a blogger, East Village Wine Geek), are there to help. Keith said it best, “We don’t want to scare people, we want them to enjoy wine.”



Some new vintages tasted there with Andrea:

• Poderi Capecci San Savino estate Pecorino 2005, called Ciprea and the
  
• Rosso Piceno 2003 , Picus.
  
• 2001 Barbaresco Bric Mentina from La Ca Nova (3 glasses from Gambero Rosso)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

And a dessert wine at the end from Di Majo Norante, Apianae, an exotic moscato from Molise. Very nice.

Long days and lots of travel... more when I get back home later this week... Be safe....

Storms & The Fog of Wine

Aug 28, 2005 ...I wrote down the date one year earlier, as I fly into NY. Katrina on my mind. Wine, food, heritage. Aaron Neville, he and his family, their existence defined by New Orleans, having to move to Nashville, because of the toxins in the air that caused his asthma to flare up. Not to be able to live where your life is. What kind of cruel joke is that?

I choose not to live in California, because the California I knew no longer exists. Residents of New Orleans cannot return because it was wiped from the face of the map by the hand of God. There is a difference.

Storms return to the south, it’s that time of the year.
It’s also time for the Nebbiolo, time to lift the fog on my understanding of this wine. Is this my Burgundian moment? Is this what Eco talks about in his books? Is it time to put aside my Montepulciano and Nero d’Avola and face the fog? Well, maybe for a while, for these few days, it is.
The Nebbiolo Seminar at the Texas Sommelier Conference was interesting. The wines were exceptional.
Ceretto was center court, with their Barbaresco Bricco Asili and Bernardot, their Barolo Prapo, Brunate and Bricco Rocche and the Gattinara from Travaglini and Sfursat “5 Stelle” from Nino Negri. Nice lineup, older and current vintages, to compare the years, the land, the crus. Later this week, in NY, this will be elaborated upon.

That was followed by some other seminars on Burgundy, Spain, South America and Washington State.
Later that evening, several of the Master Sommeliers and a Master of Wine and those of us invited went to York Street for a Master class in tea and a meal matched with wines and tea. The Gong Fu ceremony was explained. Parallel world to our Intensive Wine weekend. The floating world compared to the fog of wine.

I can offer pictures and more descriptions, but that really isn’t why I’m here. Nor you. You had to be there. Or not. And that is alright.

What I learned about over this weekend was that there are all kinds of folks in search of understanding some process, something mysterious, that they want the fog lifted on for their education, for their passion, for a chance at mastery.

Last year, Portugal was that for me. I saw some part of my unknown self there in the schist on the hills overlooking the Douro. Not unlike the ancient part of my Sicilian being or the Calabrian man on the donkey. A way to see how one can fit into the patterns of their life, how they are woven into their work, their community, their friends, their loves.

Looking at my bookshelves a few days ago, wanting some information about Italian wine. Some nugget. Something to make me feel unique. I really had a start when it seemed I had more books about French wine than Italian. What I had a lot of were Italian travel books, books about the land. The information about wine came from going to Italy and from popping corks. Not the Italian Wine Trail to mastering wine. My path, 30 years now. The travel books just gave me an idea where to look, my own treasure hunt. Yours, too, if you’d like. But just like what I can smell and taste in a wine will be determined by my experience, my individual set of markers, my likes, my abilities, so will your path be unique.

I respect the way of the wine masters. And I also know I will cheer them on as they head out in their vessels to spread the word. I will toil in the fields of the insane poet, the sunburned monks standing on top of a column in the Aragonese deserts. There is soil for all, and seas to sail on as well. And air to live off of when that is called for.

Sure, this is a rationalization for not taking the 7 years it takes to pursue the course of mastery. Time, time, time.

It will be cooler on the east coast, and the Frappato is ready to be harvested in Vittoria. The water off the coast of Chile is cooler than all of it, and one can drown in a cup of tea. One doesn’t need a hurricane to face the task.
Courage, courage.

Texas Sommelier Conference & York Street Tea and Wine Dinner

Texas Sommeliers Phil Natale and D'Lynn Proctor

A long, but good day, with many great seminars. This one by D.C. Flynt, M.W., about Burgundy.


Guy Stout, M.S. and York Street Sommelier, Brandan Kelley.

Water, Wine and Tea


Tea Master Kyle Stewart, partner with Phil Krampentz of the Cultured Cup

Charles Curtis, M.W., Robin O'Conner, Bordeaux Wine Council, and Rob Costantino, Sante Magazine, learning about the Gong Fu tea ceremony.

York Street entree, a masterpiece.
Slow roast loin of berkshire pork, horseradish bacon jus, buttered rice puree, wax beans, tomatoes, chanterelles
(full menu here)


Sharon Hage, chef, owner, national treasure.

T.G.I.F. ~ Weekend Wine Wound-up

Just a few notes, rounding out a challenging week. On to the good news.
Robt. Parker has shuffled his deck. Pierre Rovani and Daniel Thomases are gone or going. Thomases gave me a whole new appreciation for Robert Parker, relative to Italian wine. Another story for another time.

Next, a good review for a wine that I like a lot, as does my buddy, Guy Stout.

Soletta Vermentino, reviewed by Rebecca Murphy of the Dallas Morning News.
Italians Insight, also has some kind words about the wine.
Soletta Winery in Sardegna (Flash-free)

Good stuff , Maynard…

The Texas Sommelier Conference will be happening this weekend in Dallas. Looks like it is Sold Out.

The two young guys in the middle are responsible. Drew Hendricks and James Tidwell.

Restaurant week ( now 3 weeks long) is almost over. One restaurateur, Adelmo Banchetti, can hardly wait.

And Felice Pastore, too, though he is in the luxury side of the biz.
Hank’s Corvette is finally restored. Hey Hank, when are you gonna take me for a ride in it?
I like this picture, but I kinda like forks.

Monday, escape to NY. Nebbiolo matriculation. It's all legal. And sanctioned.

And then we gotta figure out what to do with all these new wines.

Flash Point ~ Note to Italian Wineries about your WebSites

Stop setting up your websites with FLASH!

We don't need the whole story of your beginning, your mission statement, everytime we go to your site.

We don't need to hear your music and we don't need to have you take 1/4 of the viewing screen to make for a small little presentation.

We need to get in and get on with it!

Most of your Italian connections are still dial up.You lose them, too.

We cannot use your information to share with our clients
(i.e., your customers)

It's gotten old...It's not cute...Stop it!

Go back to a simple presentation....

S-I-M-P-L-E

Not P-A-R-T-I-C-O-L-A-R-E....

....S-E-M-P-L-I-C-E

Life's a Beach

Nearing the end of the Italian summer. Those of us who haven’t been there the whole time, all of August, have missed the miracle of summer in Italy. It is a special time when the world lets down its hair, puts the socks and the long pants and the ties in the drawer, and heads for a stretch of solitude, by a stream or by a sea, in search of a moment outside the compressed container of daily life.

And summer life responds. Tomatoes are bursting with flavor and their quintessential redness. Squashes are showing their stretch marks, as if their birth gives birth to another unique creation, which, in the hands of a food lover, will be not just another side dish. Watermelon slips into salads, appears in evening surprise fruit platters, shows up on the kitchen counter as if magically transported from another dimension. All of life is dancing and singing by the edge of the coastline.

Along a small strip of land in Tuscany, near Grossetto, a politician commits young men and women to pack their swimsuits and head to lands to protect people from each other. No more fear of the jellyfish or the sunburn, September’s reality calls. Minefields need to be cleared, towns need to be guarded, women and children must be cared for, their fragile bodies dangling from the line like so many beach towels.

It is becoming hard to imagine a holiday season of wine-selling with these unresolved items. It’s not like we can just redo the menu for the fall, rewrite a wine list, and everything will be OK.

Yesterday, in one of the offices I fall into, a high-level manager, says this: “Holiday time is upon us”, speaking of the march to Christmas and New Year. Yes, we will sell lots of red wine and Champagne, cordials and Cognac, beer and water, from all over the world. One holiday ends, and another looms. One war doesn’t end, yet a handful flare up, spring back into life, like the zucchini and the tomato. Another conflict pops up like the watermelon on the counter. It’s the stuff of life and the people in it. The cycle, the endless pattern of birth and death, seasoned with the salt and pepper of love and hate.

In ancient times, the wine trade often helped to fund someone’s dream to conquer a land far away. Today, that glass of Pinot Grigio or Sangiovese tamps down the daily anxiety after a day of hearing the chatter, the drums, the endless beating of the drums, near and far. And the jets, landing, taking off, flying low, dropping leaflets; buy my wine, read my blog, follow my dream. Read my lips.

Something seems to have fallen off track.

And yet the Italians take one more plunge into the Adriatic, grill one more fish over the open fire, draw one more bottle of wine from the rack, wish one more wish for love and peace and the hope for another summer in Italy.



Links -
Room to Read
Adopt a Minefield