The Taste of Four Cities

There are four cities in America that I am fond of. Each of them represents something of America that I am drawn to, although these four do not constitute my sole fascination for this country. They are simply four cities I have lived in. My birthplace, Los Angeles. The place of my university education, San Francisco. The first city I went to live in as a young man in search of fame and fortune, New York. And the town I raised my son in, Dallas.

If I could live anywhere, it would probably be in the Los Angeles of the 1930’s. But that isn’t possible. San Francisco is a source of inspiration for me, as it has been since the late 1960’s. New York is the high mountain that I jump off my horse for and attempt to climb, from time to time. But the wild beast and the wide open spaces have a greater pull on me than any long term commitment to the center of the universe. As long as I get 3 or 4 days every so often, I am happy. And Dallas? I really don’t know what I have been doing there half my life. Dallas, for me, was always a place that had the sense of opportunity, to make oneself over again, to clean the slate and to even live an inner life that isn’t weighted down with any sense of outer expectation.

So what little wines do these cities represent for me, on the wine trail in Italy? Let’s have a look…


Dallas. A place where all possibilities are in play. Dark, light, good, evil, a microcosm of the society at large. Dallas is green and flat, at the edge of the Northern Plains, skirting the East Texas Piney Woods, bordering the West Texas badlands and leaning south to the Hill country beauty. The trains met here. Dallas isn’t any one thing, nor would it be if it were a wine from Italy. It would have a little oak; it would have a fruity character. It would have to go with red meat, like a thick T-Bone steak, the Texas rival to bistecca Fiorentina. It would be good if it could age but probably wouldn’t spend that much time in a cellar anyway. It would have a sense of place, but the wine would have a larger purpose. It must be important and have bluster. And it would be very fashionable and graceful. An order as tall as Texas is large? Perhaps.

The wine – Il Borro. Owned by the Ferragamo family, frequent visitors to Texas for the wine and the fashion business. Il Borro is a blend of 50% Merlot, 40% Cabernet Sauvignon, 10% Syrah and Petit Verdot. It’s a wine that I quite like. Whenever I pull it out of the rack I know it won’t disappoint. Yes, it is Tuscan, and there aren’t the usual indigenous grapes that folks are stumbling all over themselves these days. It is a balanced, elegant, juicy red wine which walks without tripping, looking straight ahead, eyes on the road.


New York – While it is a multi-layered city of old and new, New York is not just glitz and glamour. My days living there in the 1970’s were far from the New York we know today. It was brooding and dark. It was dangerous. It was inhospitable to strangers. It is after all, an island. An island of powerful people, with something under the surface of all that money and majesty, something of the raw, the isolated, the individualistic. And for some reason it brings to mind a wine from Sardegna. Cannonau red wine, without wood, raw and powerful. Alessandro Dettori said it better than I can make up, “I don’t follow the market, I produce wines that I like, wines from my territory, wines from Sennori. They are what they are and not what you want them to be…singing of Sardinia, which is powerful and vehement, but at the same time sweet and harmonious, just like our wine.”


San Francisco - to me is a dream place, a place of my youth, a place I can never move away from. In the city there is an energy, a vibration of life that I have always felt there. It excites me, it re-invigorates me. I love to walk in San Francisco until there are blister on my feet. Tired, dead, exhausted, only to fall into a little Italian trattoria and sit at a little table by the window, with that light, almost like the light in Greece, but even brighter and sharper, to me. Wine wise, it’s an earthy, gutsy, lively wine. It’s a wine that when the cork is popped, the wine flows out as if in relief of its escape. Or is it to mock the volcano under which the grapes are born? The wine, from Gragano near Naples is a Penisola Sorrentina DOC. Grapes of Per’ e Palummo, Sciascinoso and Aglianico, how’s that for going native? What it does well is match itself with the liveliness of the place and the adventurous cuisine of San Francisco. But it also captures those innocent days of youth when a frothy red and a loaf of sour dough bread, a little salami and, if one were lucky, a pretty gal to sit by the bay with and watch the sun set.


Los Angeles – my tribal grounds. The place where my coyote spirit lingers, fleeing from the fires in the hills. Wind and heat, October, a time when the town catches fire. Running to the water to escape the slap of destruction that is sweeping the land as it has for millions of years. Los Angeles is a town with apocalyptic blood in its veins. A beautiful and terrifying nature, awesome and imminent. What town is this? Not the cruising down Sunset Blvd in a convertible, but rather a place that one is fearful of, one that destroys and scars? Yes, that side of Los Angeles is very much a part of this scenario. all the while they line up around the corner to eat Pizza at Mozza or producers squat in the private dining room of Celestino Drago’s place to suck up plates of Carpaccio al Salmone just moments before the Big One hits. But with the courage to face the unknown and to go forward, undaunted, possibly to ones death. Not before the last sip from the chalice. And what is our little Italian surprise? What would cool and refresh, extinguish and exhilarate? What can help to overcome the fear and the terror? And what goes with that last meal? It isn’t a red wine, and it isn’t a still wine. So as Wall Street slows like lava coming down the side of Etna, Angelinos celebrate their 21st century march towards annihilation with a bottle of Franciacorta Rose’. If your last meal is pizza or a crudo of salmon, a macrobiotic rice bowl or an East LA burrito, or a humble plate of bigoli with pancetta, The soothing presence of the Northern Italian sparkler is its own force of nature. Oblivion? Or perhaps, nirvana?

Lest we forget, great cities have come and gone, along with their civilizations. All through this pageant the winemaker and the wine has been there, with the tyrant and the poet alike. Wine is a great civilizer, and while we have amongst us dark hearted ones who would rather destroy than build, we have countless reminders of their misplaced ambition, strewn across the deserts of forgotten lands.


Whatever city or country you are living in, open up a bottle of wine and enjoy it with someone. Soon.

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

Selling the Sizzle

Looking up to the moon tonight, I wondered about when it would be full. It's about a week before the Blood Moon arrives. My son, the one in the picture above, fires up the grill and cooks a steak during the full moon. Something about his inner bio-dynamic.


Celebutantes with their bio-accessories newly re-tuned, and nillionaires alike, rushed the original Neiman Marcus last week, for their 100 year gala. Pursed lips and hip-replacements, manicured hands caressing flutes of Veuve Clicquot, not Prosecco. Shadowed by men in black with platinum cards, in case there was something they had forgotten to buy for their cottage closets in Highland Park.


“Go to this town, ask for the Chiavennasca.” I was mindlessly channel surfing, when I heard these words on the “Dirty Sexy Money” program. Fifteen years earlier I heard someone order a glass of Pinot Grigio on “Seinfeld”, and knew that was the moment. When I heard the word Chiavennasca, I was startled. What was really odd was the guy who was pouring the glass of Chiavennasca looked like Stanley Marcus. Worlds colliding. Probably not the next Pinot Noir, though.


“Loosen up baby, it’s grappa,” I heard a moment later on the same program. Chiavennasca and Grappa in the same evening, on netwreck TV? Meanwhile back at Cadillac Raunch, Dallas was blazing on Main Street. I really thought all those women disappeared after the 80’s. But then again, it is the 100th anniversary. Some of the partygoers looked like they were celebrating a few of their own milestones in time. It’s an interesting town, not a lot of introspection but a lot of glitz. Lots o’ sizzle, even if the meat on the bone has been dry aged a little too long. Money, money, money. God, I love the smell of this town.
So even if the TV program doesn’t kick start Gattinara or Grappa, it was fun just hearing the words Chiavennasca and Grappa. Or in the words of Bob Dylan:

Now you're probably wondering by now
Just what this song is all about
What's probably got you baffled more
Is what this thing here is for.
It's nothing
It's something I learned over in England.

Harvest is winding down, people in the fields are gathering spent branches and vines and starting bonfires. Wine from the north is coming on down the through the foothills and chilling the nights and fogging the morning. The cycle is completing as we wind through another revolution around the sun. The little glass of grappa warms the insides and loosens the door of the mind that stares out from behind this screen.

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

Neiman Marcus gala photographs by Elizabeth Lippman

Changing the Rules

“Italy is a mess”, a Sicilian friend told me in a recent conversation. “It is like the 1970’s, with more potential for an explosive revolution, sitting below the surface, like a volcano ready to erupt.” As we proceeded through the evening I pressed my colleague further. What is the motive, who is doing this, what will we see? “They are changing the rules. It has become a society of Dottores, minute people with large diplomas and important connections. It is just like it used to be, but now instead of a mafia alone, now they have their fraternal organizations, their unspoken unions, their society of entitlement.”

We talked about the education in Italy. I learned that, with all the education I have received in the United States, in Italy I would also be called Dottore. I howled. We were shown the gates of hell those years at the University. One teacher opened up the future and laid it all out. Oh he missed computers in the pocket and instant communication, but he got all the rest. The inability to assimilate all the information that is being thrown at us. He was prophetic.

I hear that Slow Food and Gambero Rosso might be parting ways soon. Being more of a Slow Food’er than a Gambero Rosso’er, I don’t know what to make of that. One more Italian wine authority climbing on that Tower of Babel?

I have my doubts about the legend of how Slow Food got its inspiration. The story has it that Carlo Petrini inadvertently founded the international movement when he joined in a protest against the opening of a McDonald's Restaurant at the foot of the famous Spanish Steps in Rome in 1986. However, a distinct memory has it that that McDonald's was there back in 1971 when I first went to Rome. I remember going into it because it seemed so strange to see it there. I also remember buying a hamburger for the curiosity of it all. The bun was a hard crusty bread and the “burger” was leaner, maybe a lower fat content meat. Probably grass fed. Somewhere I have a picture of it. Curious that a movement, called Slow Food, would find a fast food joint after it had been there for 15 years. They were a bit "slow" on the uptake.

The matter of another wine guide, though, is just too much.

I get emails, all the time, from wineries, from importers, from everywhere, touting this wine or that, and the rating they got. The selling world, however, sees those things as bullets without the rifle. One must still load up the blunderbuss and go out hunting. Bring ‘em back, dead or alive. But get an order. Get an order.


The reality is that there still have to be those folks out there on the front line. There are enough REMF’s putting their heads on their comfortable pillows every night. Teachers who don’t know how to teach something as simple as a follow up letter after an interview. Because they never had to do it. The ranks of the unqualified aft are growing faster than the price of a barrel of oil.

Scrambling for the gold and the silver, whether it be wineries or lap dancers. That’s the mantra of the day. Go for the gold, get your silver buckle, get yours, get it, go get it, fetch, retrieve, bring it back, dead or alive.


And by the time you get your gold medal or your 95 points or you exceed your quota, then what? Will the rules change again? Will things be what they appear to be? Will it all be worth it?

Italy has never been what people think it is. It isn’t spaghetti and meat balls. It isn’t California wines on the list. It isn’t Caesar salad. It isn’t Porterhouse steak. It isn’t any one thing, for it is a world in motion. And it is a world that you really need to slow down and pay close attention to, using your mind and your heart and your soul and taking it one heartbeat at a time.

Things don’t always end up being what they seem to be. But try telling that to the experts.

Photo by Chema Madoz

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

Square Meals

Aunt Mil at the dawn of the Roaring Twenties

This has been an eating weekend, starting Friday night with a visit to the Texas State Fair. Corny dogs, Fried Avocado and Frito Pie, along with cold beer and even a little Texas wine. The old neighborhood near the state fair was my mom and her sister's growing up place.

Saturday we married San Marzano DOP tomatoes from Italy with a 27 inch cucuzza from my yard. Well, I married them in my mouth. After a day of preparing a Slow Food event about wine from ancient grapes, I just fell into the couch and tried to stay awake. The aroma of the slow cooked vegetable stew was enough to keep me going. Really my soul food, these squash and tomatoes, rice and more vegetables.

This morning we fashioned pecan pancakes from our state fair shopping spree. The mix was made in San Antonio. We had it with some wild bacon, from some poor little pig that never made it to the state fair. But he did make it out of the pen and able to breathe fresh air and drink clean water and not be crammed up its whole life.


Today at the Slow Food event one of the top chefs in this town, and a guy who “gets” Italian food, brought his salumi to the event. I read stuff on some of these supposed serious eating food websites, from famous chefs at that. But this guy, David Uygur, just has the incredible knack of making out of this world, cured meats. And this coming from one who would rather go out into my back yard and forage for something green. Especially intriguing was the testa he brought. Something particolare, something meravigliosi. Ottimo, Davide.

Ok so after all that, what now? Sunday night with a beaker of some distilled potion while a storm rages above.

We eat some really stupid things out. I have been looking at new menus lately and reading old books about Italian food, what a difference. If only some of the famous chefs would look into these older books, they might see something special, food that is interesting, complex, but not affected. Simple,simple...

My aunt Mil, like my second mom, she passed away this month 8 years ago. She was born on Nov 11, 1911 at 11AM. That would have been 11-11-11-11. She was a happy gal, she was my friend, she was a grand lady in the kitchen. She could boil water and make it taste good. Seems she started early on, the picture of her is from 1919; she would have been about 8. Baking a cake. Darn, do I miss her cooking, and her, a million times more.

Ladies in the kitchen. We were in a Sudanese restaurant in the neighborhood, recently. Ladies running the food there. Just like the little place in the Veneto above Valpolicella, pictures of them line the stairway up to the dining room. Pristine food, served slow, cooked as ordered, no one in a hurry to eat and go somewhere else.

Roasted meats, potatoes from the oven, wild greens tossed lightly so you could taste the place them come from. Pasta made earlier in the day, just a taste, all one needs. Why complain that we seldom see it like this in The States? Forget about it. Go there. You can.

Tasting wine today, talking about it, people sitting at tables waiting for me to say something. The wine, the way it tastes, what it does to one who tastes it, where it is taking one. Here we are in a little room with fans and pressed tile ceilings and we are space traveling to Piedmont, to Calabria, to Trentino, to Umbria, to Puglia. All together, with our fears and our hopes and our plates of testa and bufala mozzarella.

I think about these Sundays, with family, some still here and those who are just there in the dream space. My aunt and my great grandfather, my wife Lizzie and all those souls we shared a table with in this life, looking for a square meal and a full heart.

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

The Scent of Possibility

Il Profumo della Possibilità


Four from Italy, six from America and one from Lebanon. Today will be about the Italians in remembering one of their countrymen who made it over so long ago. However you feel about Columbus, today is a little moment in history that will soon be forgotten. Thanks to the generosity of many of those seated at the table, we broke bread, tasted wine, told lies and enjoyed each others company, if only for an hour or so. The dream of America; a moment of calm, of peace, of prosperity, of hope.

Some of these guys I have known for almost 30 years now; some of us are getting older. All of us. But the possibility of America burns in the Italians and also in those of us who still remember our grandparent’s stories. The wines on the table came from the Italian Wine Trail; Piemonte, Veneto, Friuli, Campania, Calabria, Sicilia.

The Italian characters came any way they could get here:

Adelmo – From a noisy little Maître d' to his little eponymous trattoria. A gathering spot for so many good memories. After I proposed to my wife on her birthday, Valentines Day, we went to lunch at Adelmo’s, that’s probably my favorite memory. But there are more. Adelmo is a firecracker; everybody knows Adelmo and Adelmo knows everybody. Follow him around at Vinitaly and it’s just a block party extension of his lunch service back in Dallas. Everybody knows Adelmo. And we can poke fun at him and make jokes at his expense and he laughs along with us. He will laugh at all of our funerals, too. Adelmo is fron from Tuscany, though we make fun and tell him he is one of Napoleon's bastards from Elba.

Alessio – Adelmo’s old buddy, with his little trattoria on the east side of town, in the “ghetto”. Still smiling, though time has weathered his body, inside and out, with a grittier block of sandpaper. And it has also smoothed out the rough edges, he is now a round pebble that sails upon the surface of the water, playing dodge ball with Phantom Crane flies. He can still cook like a sonofabitch. From Piemonte.

Daniele – Our young turk from Palermo. He is always roaming around somewhere, if it’s on his Vespa or out West in Ft. Worth or Scottsdale or the beaches of Southern California. Sometimes back to the hidden kitchens of La Vucciria, gathering recipes from his pop or an aunt. He’s our pretty boy, we send him out to bring the girls in. He is our Siculo. Always smiling, never too morose, always ready for a smile and a hug. America is wearing well on him; his two boys are real American boys.

Massimo – Our representative from Abruzzo, today he was working the tables, but he should soon be sitting at the table. Massimo is newly arrived, so he must perform the Catechumens of a newly anointed resident of The USA. A good guy, with an almost Sicilian face and smile, but with the soft happy eyes of one who grew up in the countryside of Abruzzo. Lots of fresh air and plenty of breathing room. Massimo, our enigmatic Sphinx.

Those are our four hopeful ones. And the wines?


Some of the wines at the table were from:
Sicily
Almerita Brut Contea di Sclafani DOC 100% Chardonnay
Tasca d’Almerita Cygnus 2002
Calabria
Librandi Efeso Mantonico Bianco 2006
Librandi Magno Megonio 2003
Campania
Terra di Lavoro 2004
Molise
Di Majo Norante Don Luigi 2004
Friuli
Jermann Dreams
Piemonte
Giacosa Barbera d’ Alba 2005
Veneto
Maculan Acininobili 2001


And some killer Calvados from Comte Louis de Lauriston


Everyone knows I’m not a wine notes guy; that’s not why you come to these posts. Read the links; buy the wines if you want. I’m not here to sell them to you. That’s part of my day job.

Parting shot: Friends, food and freedom aren’t worth a damn if there ain’t any good wine to go with it.

Thanks to Paul Di Carlo for hosting us and bringing some great wines.

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

Gambero Rotto ~ True Biach-ieri

Blog Advisory: Snarky sentiments, cribbed quotes, men in diapers and women wearing codpieces.

I’m not my normal, happy-go-lucky, Pollyanna self today. Maybe it was the garlic. Perhaps it was that over-oaked Barbera. Thank God for Inferno. The wine. A great cure for wood flavored Barbera and dyspepsia. On to the G.R.- garlic rant.

Gambero Rotto – is the plate of uncooked garlic sitting before me. Good potential but to this Sicilian stomach, in it’s raw state, a pile of switch-blades, the likes of which we haven’t seen since the dance scene in West Side Story (yeah I like some musicals, got a problem with that?).


Did anyone ever see the B-movie called Zardoz? A campy cult movie by John Boorman and starring Sean Connery and Charlotte Rampling. Zardoz (wiZARD of OZ, clever, huh?).

The story, set in the distant future, involves a group of immortal intellectuals who lives isolated from a outside reality of unbridled savagery and brutality. One of the people on the outside (Sean Connery) manages to sneak into their utopia and ultimately causes all kinds of havoc inside the intellectuals' utopia. (http://www.scifimoviepage.com/zardoz.html)

Sounds just like the Emerald Citta del Gusto, eh?

Some of the riveting dialogue:
Zed: I want the truth.
May: You must give the truth, if you wish to receive it.
Zed: I'm ready.
May: It'll burn you!
Zed: Then burn me.

Similar to how they talk at GR, when they decide on how to give awards?
Gacha: I want the gold
Churnilli: You must give the gold, if you wish to receive it.
Gacha: I'm ready.
Churnilli: It'll burn you!
Gacha: Then burn me. Burn me hot and burn me often.

How to get your Gambero Rosso

And… This is more dialogue from the movie, but what the hey, it sounds just like a bunch of whacked out Italians deciding who to give awards to, no?

Zed: What is it you want?
Friend: Sweet death. Oblivion.
Zed: For yourself, or for the whole Vortex?
Friend: 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.
Friend: I thought at first you were the one to help. But it's hopeless. All my powers have gone.

Yes there are some very fine wines, and yes I am happy to see more wines from the south ( besides just Planeta) getting recognized. So ultimately it is probably a good thing. But it’s like looking at a Wine Spectator and wondering who this has been written for.

A conversation the other day with a family member. Subject: letting things go (you folks in apartments in NYC already know about this, just look at your kitchen and your closets).
You just reach a point when it doesn’t make any sense to carry around these heavy books with all these pictures of three glasses in them with words that talk about the wines ( hey bloggers – at least all we are doing is jamming up bandwidth, not landfills!)

So I am just breathing in and letting go. Or as they say in Zardoz-land:

May: Friend, I cannot sanction this violence and destruction.
Friend: It's too late, May. There's no going back.
May: Don't destroy the Vortex! Let us renew it. A better breed could prosper here. Given time...
Friend: Time? Wasn't eternity enough?
Zed: This place is against life. It must die.
May: I have my followers. Inseminate us all, and we'll teach you all we know. Give you all we have. Perhaps you can break the Tabernacle. Or be broken.
Friend: An end to eternity.
May: A higher form.
Zed: Revenge.

Think what you like, but wherever Charlotte Rampling goes, there go I.

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

Perception is Reality

The picture above is a favorite of mine. It hangs in my bedroom. Shot by James Evans, who lives out west in the Big Bend area of Texas. It is of a bull snake on a couch. I love it for the texture and the movement and the hint of danger.

But the bull snake isn’t lethal. It just looks that way.

Things are all mixed up these days. We seek local and pummel the word sustainable about, like a swordfish being cut up for the seafood counter. But what are we really looking for? Are we looking for the truth? Do we want to fear something that really isn’t worthy of such trepidation? How does that relate to this Italian wine thing?

Let’s look at these words: local, unique, safe, affordable.

Local- Unless you are in Italy, Italian wines aren’t going to be considered local. So one must consider the trade off. You can get a local wine in most places, and it should be good enough for your needs. You could also drive a car (If you are in the US, a Chevy, for instance) and it will get you where you want to go. One doesn’t need a Maserati anymore than one needs a Brunello. Oh, but, you say, you like the Maserati and the Brunello? Because it is unique. OK.

Unique – Just like Bar-B-Q is unique in Texas, or Ruby Red grapefruits from the Big Valley down there, things unique have a way of endearing themselves to folks. They are dear and often precious. Taste, texture, feeling, scent, many facets of the jewel that one is attracted to. Italian wines are unique and so because of that people are drawn to them for pleasure and enjoyment, stimulation, physical as well as intellectual. And because of this we can be reasonably assured that the product is good for us. It is safe.

Safe- very much buzzing about this lately. People are inventorying their possessions and jettisoning things made in China. Clothing made in Bangladesh or Costa Rica, are the conditions for the workers safe? Or would their lives be worse off if they didn’t have that job? Meat packers in the US, in the early 1900’s, children in factories in the late 1800’s, scenarios that played out for cheap goods but at the expense of the health and welfare of the humans, or other living creatures, involved in the production of these materials. Today not many of us make our own clothes, and fewer and fewer are making their own meals. Italian wines, while not all have been always safe, have a record as good or better than much of the world wine producing areas. And often affordable.

Affordable – Up until recently Italian (and European) wines and other goods have been a good deal for those using the US dollar. There is a pause, at this moment, because, we are seeing the erosion of the US currency. The Canadian dollar is climbing over it, the Euro has left it behind, the Yuan is a rising red sun. An Italian Chianti now sells for about US$12.00, on average. Yellow Tail Shiraz sells for US$8.00. Now there is a difference; the region, the grape, the experience. But the challenge in 2008 and 2009 will be large, and marketers and wine lovers will be challenged to make sure they don’t sacrifice unique and safe over affordable.

The snake is in the living room, settled and comfortable on the couch. It will take plenty of effort and courage to look it straight in the eyes and determine if it is dangerous or not. The challenge, of our perceived view of things, will be to generate a reality that will still honor the local producers (even if they are thousands of miles away) and encourage them to retain their unique qualities along with continuing to make them safe and wholesome and if possible, within our means.



Photographs: Top one by James Evans; all the rest from the Flickr Italy in Black & White photo group.

A Rat, a Blister, Fast Cars & Women on the Prowl

Blog Advisory: Strong language, graphic depictions and wanton women.

There is no real reason to continue. I have fallen off the Italian wine trail. Ken Burns did it to me. I sat there and looked at all those bloody war pictures. It was like someone taking a carton of cigarettes to a desert island and smoking them until they were gone. Finally cured.

And then I walked into my garage in the morning. I smelled gas, decaying hair, skin and bone. Like someone had left the freezer open and all the deer and pheasant conspired to repulse my olfactory sense. Overload. And then I saw a dead rat, the size of a small cat. The source of this aromatic inferno.

I was thinking about a description I had once read, of a soldier who had walked into Auschwitz. His account was dominated by the smell of the place. The gas, the decayed and burnt flesh.

My garage smelled like he described Auschwitz. And I was heading out to lunch. Yes, definitely off the Italian trail.


After about fifteen minutes, I landed inside a little bistro, took a corner seat and set up shop. Like Giuseppe Baldini, the perfume maker. The wonders of the wine world explode on screen. The catalogue of wine that was before me was something to marvel at. Wine, rows and rows of wine in warehouses, reduced to a simple spreadsheet. Meursault, Amarone, Pinot Noir from Arroyo Grande, Gaglioppo from Calabria. Like bergamot and lily and oudh and sandalwood, all the wonderful essences of aromas. So too,

Moments later I walk into a boutique wine shop, run by a very fine, young man from an American mother and a Persian father. The shop wafted aromas of leather and sweet cedar, a smoky habanera cigar box, as if one were in the middle of a humidor surrounded by great wines, oils and tobaccos. A feast for those blinded by their senses. As if in a dream.

I was heading to the Maserati dealer. They were having a party later that night and I stopped by to see if they had chosen wines for it. An attractive young lady, well-tanned, with better curves than the Maserati, was dispatched to offer assistance. “Why don’t you donate some Pinot Grigio and Prosecco for tonight’s party?” Sure, and how about that Quattroporte for a week, in exchange? Everything is negotiable.

The catering company had already ordered the wines. They were good enough, but they were not the Italian that the Maserati was. Nor as well-tanned.

A young chef would present food from a menu he would be serving in a new restaurant. A swirl of controversy surrounded him in the local press, as it seemed someone in his investment circle had decided on a derivative of the chef’s name for the restaurant. No one bothered to vet the name for any possibility that somewhere on the Italian peninsula it might have some derogatory or unpleasant connotation. There are 15 ways to tell someone their mate is sleeping with another person. There are scores of names for a woman’s most private part, and also a man’s. One does not call Leonardo da Vinci’s most famous painting the Mona Lisa, in Italy. There it is called La Gioconda, where it doesn't refer to any of her parts, public or private.


To make matters a little more comical, the name also referred to a very tired brand of Italian wine. As if it weren’t bad enough that one would name their restaurant the slang for bulls_ _ t, they also were bill boarding the tired old wine of the Veneto. Perfect. And I would have to step into that fray, someday, and try to make sense of our part in their wine program? Maybe I should spend a week in San Quentin, preparing for further humiliation. Yes, it’s a dream job, in a dream life. Our fondest dream.

So, that evening, the young chef is splaying out polenta and small pieces of unidentifiable protein, the band is playing peppy music, Prosecco is having foreplay with orange juice and a new model of 2-door Maserati is laying under wraps waiting to disrobe amidst the Kubrick-like setting. Soon-to-be trophy wives were circling the room in search of future ex-husbands. Dallas. Big D. Shark-o-rama.


The well-tanned curvy one spots me and grabs my hand to welcome me into this scene. One of only 3 faces I would recognize in that menagerie, but not enough to keep me from downing the prosecco, finding an emergency exit and heading to a safe haven.

Maybe that Italian wine trail isn’t such a bad idea after all.

$treet $mart$

Guest commentary by Beatrice Russo

What is it about old people? IWG comes up to me other day and says, “Uh, you know you haven’t sent in a blog posting since middle of August?” Uh, gee, I didn’t know it was my job. Hey, Unc, nobody cares about your blog. Got it? And he comes right back, “Uh, so I guess you didn’t have a good time in France?” Oh so, that’s the game you be playin?

So he’s all laid out before the TV waiting for Ken Burns to tell him how The War ended. And he’s been that way every night. Never knew he was such a history buff.

And then during a break he says he’s thinking of moving to Chicago. What? Says there’s some action up there with something going on, money, position; other side of the hill it sounds like to me. He is one tripped out dude, and I can’t believe he lets me post this.

So, France was cool. I had just watched Antonioni’s L’Avventura, so it all influenced me a bunch. Monica Vitti, what an actor. She nailed that certain period in one’s life when there just needs to be a direction and all there seems to be is one endless drama after another. I can relate to it, but not right now. Life is good.

Drew (Ziff) and his new restaurant, going well. He has me cataloguing new wines coming in. Getting ready for the opening. And he has brought on board Brandan, who reminds me of IWG’s son, Rafa. Brandan came from a very cool place, York Street, I even thought of wanting to work there once. But no way am I jumping, now that I have a steady job that I like.

IWG dragged me around one day in France. We left real early and headed down to a place in the south of France, Grasse. He’s all Jumanji about aromas lately. He has this 24 page book he has made with smells and their scientific formula names. He goes around saying things like, warm essence of musk and bergamot, things like that. Kinda creepy, but then when we taste a wine and one of the descriptions matches the nose, I’m like, wow, this is cool. So, I forgive him.


Anyway we drove so long it seemed we were almost going to Italy (I wish). But we get to this town and he goes to some building that has this real scientific look to it. Find out it’s a perfume school and he is there to visit an old friend who teaches there. They make scents for all kinds of things, perfumes, nail polish, soaps, everything it seems, except wine. What? The friend says they even make vegetable based scents to “enhance” the aroma and flavor of wine. No way. Those French folks, they are a crafty lot.

A nice lunch and a pale rosé from the area, the two of them go off into a lab afterwards and I excuse myself to go walking the town. The place does have an unusual scent to it, like a closet I once walked into, a friend’s grandmother who asked me to put a hat box on the top shelf. Just like her closet, all kinds of musty, musky, dusty, flowery, totally overwhelming scene.


It got me to thinking about my mother and dad and my twin and for a moment in the sun, in the south of France, I allowed myself a moment of regret and pity. But I say to myself, I am well, I have work, people like me. I am young; I have my whole life before me. This will pass. And it does.

Later that night after we get back to the chateau there is a bottle or two of unusual liqueurs. IWG goes for the absinthe, but I spy some flowery looking bottle that looks old. It says Grand Marnier Cuvée du Cent-Cinquantenaire, so I take a pull of it into a snifter. By this time everyone at the table is getting plowed with XO Cognac or some other kind of liqueur, but it’s just a short climb up the stairs to bed. No big deal. So I step outside to listen to the owls and the frogs and stick my nose in the snifter. The whole south of France was inside. It was like being on a ledge overlooking the ocean and all of a sudden fear was so intense that my senses were elevated to a higher degree of receptivity. That’s what I must do with this sommelier business.


Nothing above me, nothing below me, so I leap off.
Something I read in one of IWG’s old hippy paperbacks.