There Are No Sick Bees Here

I have been back in Texas less than a week. During the first half of November, I visited six regions in Northern Italy. These were wine producing areas that were mountainous. There was usually a temperate valley included, for the grapes. We visited wine producing areas such as the Valle d’Aosta, Valle de la Roya, Valtellina, Valpolicella and the Valle Isarco.

Today I worked in my garden. It is past mid November and the figs on the trees are ripe, the basil is still growing and I harvested a 5 pound cucuzza squash. There are dozens of baby cucuzzas that probably won’t survive the coming cold spell later this week. The oregano and the rosemary will, though.

I don’t know how to go about telling stories about the wine valleys we visited. They were intense visits, lots of climbing and probably too many appointments. But what diversity there is between the regions. Is this Italy? Happy to report, it is, although it will be difficult to find many of the wines, and the food to go with it, in Italian restaurants here in the US.


One place that captured my heart was Airole in Liguria. Positioned in the Italian Riviera, this is a little known area, but what a treasure. Stark landscapes, dramatic inclines, awesome vistas, heroic spirit of place. On the trip into Liguria, and specifically to Airole, we had an appointment with Dino Masala, whose A Trincea property makes a wonderful olive oil from the Taggiasca olive. The oil is a dense, prehistoric kind of primordial slime that is worth fighting over. Brilliant yellow, cloudy, dense and desirable. If an olive oil can be sexual, the oil from Liguria is a symbol of that kind of sensual quality one normally associates with a person. It is an elixir, a medicine, an antidote, a vitamin, mineral and vegetable, a full meal and an anointing potion.


Dino Masala charges €18 Euro for a 1 Liter bottle of his oil. That’s precious enough. He also makes a variety of white and red wines, but it is his signature wine called Roccese that was one of the most interesting finds of the trip. Made mostly with the famous Rossese of Dolceacqua and blended with other indigenous grapes of the area. That could mean Italian or French varieties, as we straddled the two worlds on these mountaintops, shared between vines and olives, thyme and ruta. The wine is this rich, fleshy, ride in the back seat of a '55 Chevy - smooth, comfy and pleasurable.


Dino Masala is a man with a tan from working on his land, not from a tanning machine or a bottle. He is less about the wine and more about the land. Here is a man who, when he puts his head on a pillow, sleeps so soundly, so deep, that when he awakes, resurrects himself everyday as a new man. An entrepreneur who has made several fortunes, but who sees his bees and his vines and his mules as his real wealth. As we were walking though his property, which looks and feels like something out of Cervantes and the Douro, the bees were buzzing so loudly as to be the dominant hum of the world around us. “There are no sick bees here,” Dino remarked as we walked through a wall of the busy little creatures, intent upon gathering as much of the precious nectar that they could find, or steal. Yes, the air was filled with the sound of bees with the music of Leonard Cohen playing in the valley below.


Maybe it is just that I haven’t been here that much. For me Liguria is a wonderful find. It is rustic and wild, far from cities and frescoes. It is a wild side of Italy. At the end of the day I smelled like a bouquet of herbs - ruta, thyme and rosemary. From the top of A Trincea I remarked to Dino that his place is the Macchu Picchu of Italy. He nodded, as if that hadn’t been the first time someone had said that to him. To the old Roman bones inside this soldier of the vines, it was like coming home.

The Macchu Picchu of Italy

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

A Master Class for the Nose

Olivetta S. Michele ~ Côte d' Nez

The circular driveway up to the Mansion on Turtle Creek wasn't crowded. No snaking line of cars waiting for a valet. More like a deserted main street in a Western town, waiting for the gunfight to start. It was a serene evening in the twilight, not unlike one I’d had just days before on a mountaintop on the Italian Riviera. There, wild herbs shimmered, waiting to become an essence for perfumes, some of which we were about to experience.

Inside the newly enhanced entry of the Mansion restaurant, class and luxury oozed from the walls and polished marble floors. Textures of circles and squares distinguished the space, as if one were entering into a three-dimensional checker game. The genial maitre'd, Brian Perry, greeted us as if we were his neighbor. Upstairs, the scent scholar, Chandler Burr, had collaborated on a dinner paired with aromas. A master class for the nose.

This evening had been planned as a feast for the senses, with scent being the headliner. But make no mistake, the Mansion on Turtle Creek is a visual, audible and textual experience as well, reincarnated after divorcing what seems a now-dated Southwestern mode. A few miles away, at another property, folks who want to relive their heyday, along with the requisite cotton candy hair and Goodyear boobs, are welcome to wait in the parking line and take their chances. The Mansion has moved on. A little New York, a touch of Paris, a sense of Milano, but Dallas to the bone. A Class Act.

I hope somewhere Chandler Burr's parents are proud of their child, even if he hasn't become the international economics expert they might have envisioned. And though he might seem to be wound tight, it is a necessary measure. There is so much potential, so much promise in the man, that it must be doled out carefully, like a perfume essence. He has the gift of gab in at least four languages - English, Italian, French and Japanese. And does he know how to sell. Burr is the perfume critic for The New York Times, which he admits is a first. But he also says that if he hadn’t met Luca Turin, a man he calls a genius of smell, he wouldn’t be here tonight. On a Eurostar train from England to France, he sat next to Turin, a Frenchman of Italian origin, and they engaged in an intense conversation all the way to Paris. Along the way, Burr had already decided he would write a book about Turin, and so the journey wasn’t over at the train station. That book, The Emperor of Scent, is a must-read for anyone who is fascinated with the subject of smell. Burr is so damn good at what he does; he has you reading scientific formulas like they were passages in a romance novel. Every writer must envy him for his talent.

As the guests arrived, Roederer Champagne was being poured and light fluffy apps were floating off the trays. Burr was greeting us with an excitement that was contagious. Over in the corner of the room, the scents we were going to guzzle were ready like beauties in line for the bathing suit competition. There were essences of aromas, some very rare. Along with them were famous perfumes to show the final product and scent strips to convey the sensations. All very organized - heads up, chests out. The bathing suits would reveal gorgeous, one-of-a-kind beauties.
The courses, revolving around scents, were:
First course – Salt
Second course – Carrots and Ginger
Cocktail Course- Cedar infused Martini ( absolutely brilliant)
Third Course – Saffron
Fourth Course – Pepper
Fifth Course – Pineapple, Mango and Coconut
Sixth course – Cotton Candy, Vanilla and Chocolate


The fascinating aspect to this dinner was how Chandler Burr assembled individual aromas from their essences, then showed a perfume that corresponded with their comingling. Then Chef John Tesar and staff ingeniously matched them with food and wine. It was as brilliant as the checkered floors and circle paintings downstairs. What seemed, at first impression, to not match appeared as a new expression, a unique pattern.

My favorite course was the dessert, really a brilliant arrangement of perfumes - Missoni by Missoni and Black Orchid by Tom Ford - with a very blue ice cream and cotton candy, select textures of chocolate with vanilla aromatics. To this they added the perfect glass of wine, a Brachetto, Rosa Regale, red and bubbly.

And while the dinner seemed a little long to some, I found the evening magical. Great food and wine with an engaged and charming speaker, mixing up distinct elements to make new arrangements. In the foodies' world, this comes along as rarely as white truffles from Alba. And though I had just gotten off a plane from a time zone seven hours and thousands of years removed, this was captivating stuff. No way was I going to surrender to jet lag.

Let the ritzy rattlesnakes duke it out, down off the mountain top. Pass me a snifter and some Chanel No. 5. I’m staying up and watching the sunrise.

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

Finding Your Wine

Vallee d'Aoste ~ Vigne de Torrette

One day on the highway in Liguria, it hit me. We were driving up and down hills, into one valley and then on to another. All along the way I was meeting people, some who were winemakers and some who simply liked to drink wine. In Italy, it is easier to find a single wine that you can enjoy over a lifetime. A visit to a winery in your neighborhood, and there you go. It might be a crisp white wine or a mellow, rich red. But along the wine trail in Italy, I keep meeting people who have found their wine. So what is wrong with us in America? Or maybe the question should be, have you found your wine?

Merano ~ Südtirol

Tonight, as I write this below the base of the Alps in Merano, I think about the day 10 years ago when I married my wife. We spent a lifetime finding each other, had a dozen or so years together and then she was gone, taken back by the Creator. We had found each other and drank from each other's heart of a wine as sweet as the latest harvest. Tonight in a small trattoria, I watched a young couple sitting beside each other drinking their wine. Have they found in each other a wine for the rest of their lives?

Vallée de la Roya ~ Airole

Days before, I had been on steep hills plunging down to a rough river, ragged with the bones of ancient mountains. On the schist-laden slopes, vines struggle to break open the concrete soil, pushing towards the sun, holding their breath until the flowers bud and the fruit forms. A summer of heat and night takes over, like making love, then falling back on the pillow, only to disappear into a dream world. Day after day, for four, maybe five, months. Then the love children pop out and are ready to be picked. Anxious workers huddle under the canopies of the vines, picking this cluster and that one. All the offspring are sent to the winery to be nursed and made into precious liquid, so young couples can drink them and fall in love. A cycle that will be repeated until none of us are around to have these thoughts and urges.

Finding your wine. What can it be? How will you know? Does it need to be only one wine?

I met this winemaker in Liguria, Fausto he was called. Fausto has a gray torrent of uncut hair, covering ears that have still black hairs around the openings. An Italian surf bum, but not a lazy guy. Behind the furrowed brow, two eyes peer out, full of life and not a little mischief. Fausto has found his wine. It is a Pigato, an unlikely wine he makes, but one that works very well in his life. As he jumps into his little 2-cycle utility truck (really a glorified scooter), he grabs a bottle of white and heads off to his sister's sports bar. At a table, a plate appears, tiny piquant sausages in a fiery broth that only a Pigato can quell. Fausto teases one of the cook's daughters, and one can see his life is carefree and happy. Almost every day Fausto goes there, to eat his lunch and drink the wine that makes his life lighter and brighter.

I am not sure I have found my wine. And while there are some wines that I prefer over others, what could be a better wine to have with Fausto's sausages than a Pigato?

Valtellina ~ Sondrio

Some of us are outsiders, wandering the trails, in search of our tribe or even our moment. Some of us can never settle anywhere long enough to find our wine. We are poorer for that. For to enjoy a simple dish that our sister has made alongside a wine we have made with our own hands, well, that is such a special circumstance. Haven’t those souls won the big lottery of life? For along with finding their wine, they have also found their life and their place on this earth.

written Nov 9, 2007 by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

Onward Through the Fug

Postings might be a little light next month. It’s a busy time of year for the wine business and there will be some travel involved. A little research is needed in the area of winegrowing at higher elevations. So, make do, while I do the mountain do. I'm going in.

Before that, a short list. Just a few things on the radar, and a prediction or two.

The price of oil and the weakness of the dollar. Enjoy the buys this year, folks, methinks next year is gonna be a doozy. Oil @ $125+ a barrel and the Euro @ $1.50+ to the dollar. Prosecco @ $20+, Pinot Grigio @ $30+ and Brunello @$95+. This isn’t scraping the ceiling, it’s pealing off the tin cover tiles and fashioning sharp projectiles out of them. I have never seen anything like this in the 30+ years I have been paying attention. Talk about spooky; this ain’t no treat, my friends.
Prediction: Argentina wines will become more prevalent in the Italian restaurants in 2008.

One can always get a sense of how things are going, in the wine business, when we start seeing year end meetings before the end of the year. It could mean a couple of things. What it usually indicates, in this end of the wine biz, is that even though goals are on track, there is a whole lot of wine waiting to be shipped out of warehouses somewhere. So during the busy time of the year, along with trying to move out close to 40 containers of product a day, per warehouse, and another 20+ coming in on the other side, and by the way, the warehouse is packed, make room for some more. It happens like clockwork and there are deals to be made.
Prediction: This glut of wine will dry up in the next 16-24 months. There are some deals out there, but in places like South Africa, Argentina, Chile, places where the dollar isn’t sucking and the country wanting to sell hasn’t just had a drought or a freeze or a hailstorm. Bordeaux wines just might get a break here, but heavily discounted.


Press releases about famous chefs whose names are branded, they keep coming into the in box. One area of discourse hovers around a certain bicoastal chef who operates on a very high level. Think, it’s gonna cost you $500+ for you and your guest to eat there, if you can even get in. A recent discussion has been about this branded chef going into the supermarket frozen food biz. People are in shock over this line extension plunge way below business class. But not to worry, another press release just popped up. Now said chef will release a “very limited” red wine offering from Napa. It had great pedigree and provenance. Meticulous winemaking. Oh, and it’ll set you back only about $200. If you can get any.
Prediction: If you cannot get on the list to get a precious bottle, winecommune.com will feature it next year for $400.


The Get Lost Generation. The young ones in my world have announced we are to no longer refer to them as millennials. That is unless we want to wipe the drool off our own faces in 20 years. Hate to say it, but it’ll be more like 30 years and I am not waiting around for them to refill my Depends drawer or restock my fridge with Ensure. Thanks Bea and Arthur, and all the other market targets. I’d rather do it myself. And seeing as you don’t call us, we’ll not call you – anything.
Prediction: You've got to be kidding. Next.


What is the response to a long air flight, that left one in the very last seat, with no ability to recline said seat, while a previously named millennial supinely slumped his seat into one’s previously functioning reproductive organs – for 4 hours? It’s a simple fix. Send 'em packing.
Prescription: Acupuncture. Go get all that airplane poison released. It stings like a bee and feels like nirvana. And the mindless one from the get lost generation? Just a faint memory. Om, mommy take me Om...

Seat backs and tray tables up. And cross check.

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

Going Green

After a few hectic days in NY, a soft landing back home. Texas has a calming effect, and on an autumn day, when the sun is casting shadows differently, it might be the time to talk about something a little away from wine and Italy.

Kim’s dad, Hugo Richter, is 92, and just finished building a 1913 Model T Ford from scratch. A car that was made a year or so before Hugo was born, these two old fellas in the company of each other, keeping each other alive. It’s an amazing thing.

Hugo lives with his wife Alice out in the country north of Dallas. Driving up to their house, one might not know if this were Texas or Perigord, what with all the geese and their commotion. But it is a serene life with a workshop filled with interesting things.

Hugo told me he spends about 6 hours a day out in the workshop. He has been working on the 1913 for at least three years that I know of. We go out there several times a year; I love to go out there. We eat and have a little wine and then go out into the garden and then the workshop. Pieces of ancient Fords litter the place beside a prehistoric lathe machine that is a piece of art. Shavings and belts and all kinds of adjustment gears make up this machine from another time. It has helped to rebuild countless Model T’s.


He emailed me a picture of the finished car. A green (not standard black) Phaeton.How is it a 92 year old man can do these things? Good genes and an engaged mind. Hugo is a gentle man and people are drawn to his goodness and kindness. I truly like him, like being around him. He is old but his mind isn’t. He works it. How many reading this could rebuild a Model T?

So let’s raise a toast of a nice Spatlese or even a rich red from Southern Italy in honor of a man who hasn’t given up. Hey, millennials and gen-x’ers, put that in your pipe and smoke it.

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

Full Moon Pizza

Late this week, in NY for meetings, the dreaded Wine Experience and a chance to satisfy a craving for some Pizza Napoletana.

The evening started at the Wine Experience, where a whole slew of winemakers were pouring one of their wines. Bruna Giacosa, Pio Boffa, Piero Antinori, Stefano Chioccioli ( pouring Tua Rita Redigaffi), Carlo Ferrini running around like a whirling dervish, a nice, nice man. On my way to talk to Anthony Barton, the tireless Angelo Gaja was pouring one of his reds.

Angelo Gaja, Warhol-ed

I snapped a quick pic of him and a young lady comes up to me and asks me if he was a famous man. She was a newbie, albeit a well cared for one. Very well adorned and splendidly tanned. I replied that he did some work in his life that would be remembered as something historic, but that the fame that came along with it wasn’t the most important thing. She raised an eyebrow, curious as to my rendition of fame vs. good works. “So he is famous?”, she pursued. “Yes, my dear, he is. But the legacy that he has established will outlive him and everyone in this room.” At which point she made a gesture known well to a trained face screener that said, I’m interested in this and want to know more, but I must go back and think about this some. At which point she asked me which California wine should she go taste. I motioned for her to pass by the Ridge table and sample the Montebello.

So it was that kind of a night, full of interesting and wonderful people, many colleagues and friends, from Italy, France, New Zealand, California, Germany Portugal and Spain.

Matt Kramer comes up to me and an old Italian friend, gesticulating and sprouting Italian prose-nography. Lots of fun. And the wine wasn’t too shabby.

That's Amore

A quick cab to 1st and 13th for a little reception in an underground cavern. A little sparkling rosato from Torti in Lombardia.

Above, inside Luzzo, warm coals and crusty pizza. Falanghina and and Aglianico/Piedirosso blend, Serrone, from Nifo Sarrapochiello.

Full moon on its way up, overlooking Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty.

Good Night and Good Luck

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

“Wine like my grandfather made”

Another late night, another early plane in the morning. A few hours to sleep, and on to another adventure.

As I slipped into my room tonight an email was blinking at me. Luca and Francesca, a young couple from Calabria, and my family home place, Bucita, were among the folks who came out tonight to dine and savor the wines of Paolo Librandi. Luca writes:
Thank you so much for the good time we had tonight …. We hope you will have time to download the pictures from tonight! It was a wonderful night (excuse my essential language, but after all that passito I fell quite happy and too relaxed to write more ! ehehe). Best of luck for everything … Greetings, Francesca and Luca

You know, after a day of climbing an ever expanding hill of expectations, occasionally to slip of a ledge or two, it is really rewarding to get a note like that. Two young Italians living in Dallas, far from home, missing their family. My grandmother went through that, with 5 children, alone, during the Depression, not speaking English so well. Without welfare. She had to send my mom and her little sister to an orphanage for a few years because she needed the help. The nuns pitched in and helped bring the girls up for a few years. Sad.

Calabria- to some folks it could be Arabia, for the different world it represents. Francesca and I were talking about the food, especially eggplant. Her family makes the eggplant Parmigiano with boiled eggs, like my family does, and as I saw it made in Bucita. But her eggplant “meatballs” really got my attention. Thanksgiving time we will be making them.


Paolo Librandi is a great guy, very good command of the language of wine. This Librandi family, like so many of the winemaking families from the South lately, they are engaged. The land, the soul of the place, the work to be done, the wine that comes from it, the process of refinement that is evolving so rapidly in places like Calabria and Sicily, Abruzzo and Campania, this is really a historic time in all of Italy. But for the South it is monumental. They are really growing into their role of stewards of tradition with style. I cannot even find the words. Pick up a bottle of Librandi’s Efeso, a 100% Mantonico or their Magno Megonio, a 100% Magliocco. Like Luca said, “this is wine like my grandfather made. This is a wine from the country.” Yes, a wine that is historical and healthy. What a wonderful world.


You must try to make it to Calabria, to experience truly something original and unique. As Paolo was talking about an 11th century church built by hand by the Orthodox-rite monks, he seemed to shudder a moment as he relived the time he visited the humble chapel.


As my California burns, again, I look to the Calabrian landscape to rest my eyes a while from the smoke. I hate when California catches fire. But it is as it has been for untold millennia. Build a home out of concrete or brick, let the chaparral do what it does, which is burn. That is a way for the seeds to pop and spread, with the heat from the fire. It is just Nature at work. It’s the humans who insist on putting multi million dollar homes in the path of the natural cycle. Still, sad at the loss and destruction.

I’m all over the place tonight and I must finish, get some rest and get back on the wine trail, early in the morning before anyone in America is awake. Meanwhile, good morning, Italy and Calabria.

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

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