Chant of the Ancient Wines

" Ancient souls must relive the wine in the time it was born in order to bring it forward."
At the Merano Wine Festival there was a little jewel box of a room filled with all types of gold and ruby dessert wines. It was embarrassingly empty of people. It was also almost impossible to get to, hidden behind a parlor with famous and important wines from France. I’m not sure how many people found their way to the room with the sweet wines. For those who did, it was like finding Madame Pillaud’s perfume shop in Menton.

Outside, the wind was howling off the freshly snowed mountains. Inside, the sun steamed the room to a frothy warmth, one that required taking off several layers of jacket and sweater. The opened bottles of dessert wines were a Greek chorus juxtaposed with the morose Italian vendors who were vying for the attention of those few who found the secret door to the room. I looked at one wine, resembling a murky mess of primal goo, and commented with a facial gesture resembling one who had just peered into the face of Gorgon.
As the room steeped, the olfactory sensation created from the polyphony of the wines was intoxicating, if not a bit disconcerting. Imagine going to a dance where there are all manner of beautiful and unattached creatures who all long to dance with you. It was too much.

I put three wines on my dance card: a late harvest Marzemino, a Sagrantino passito and the murky fellow, a ménage of Grecchetto, Malvasia and Trebbiano.

I was really trying to wrap my head around these dessert wines. How did they come to be accepted, in older times, as wines that went with food? What was the reason, the meaning of these wines? Was it like the cheese and the salumi, a way to preserve food products for a time in the future?

I have been down into the ancient tunnels below the town of Orvieto, where the brown, reclusive bottles slumber far from modernity. Wine catacombs, but the wines are not dead or decaying. Merely waiting for a time when someone will bring them out into the light.

This day in Merano was one of those moments.

You Give Me Fervo
The Marzemino, from the Astoria wine estate in Crocetta del Montello. I was interested because Donato Lanati is involved with the winemaking. Lanati teaches and consults for wineries such as Frattina, Librandi, L'Abbazia di Santa Giustina, Palari and Pietra Porzia. They had me at salve. Two nights before, we sat next to owner Giorgio Polegato at the Ristorante Laubenkeller. Giorgio loves to eat, what you’d call a “good fork”. So as we pulled up to their booth, I recognized a man who knew his way around the Italian table. Fervo, as it is called, is in this squatty little bottle, very posh. I am sometimes suspicious of cute bottles from the Veneto – they know only too well how to market items from the living workshop of Venice. But I closed my eyes, opened my nose and took a plunge. Inside the bottle was this sanguine sensation, visceral in the thick texture. Dense. It had the most beautiful shade of crimson going towards cyan along the edges, like the light through a stained glass window. I’m still tasting it, some memory alongside my palate tugs at me.

What to do with such a wine? Drink it at the end of a meal, of course, with figs soaked in brandy and then covered in bittersweet chocolate. In ancient times, with what food? Game, such as deer, or with andouille or Pizzoccheri, like we had at Sale e Pepe in Sondrio.

Very gothic, plush velvet, scarlet and embers.

The Milk of Paradise
Sagrantino passito from Antonelli San Marco in Montefalco. The lady behind the table was one of the few females in the room. Her gaze was hypnotic, perfect for sales. I see Umbria and their wines as having a lot of female energy. My California roots are showing? In any event, the dark one at the Antonelli booth was ladling Sagrantino Passito into the chalice. It is one of the primal wines of central Italy.

I read recently about Sagrantino passito being the original wine of the area. Making Sagrantino dry would come centuries later, along with the heavy bottles and high price tags. This was tasting the history of the wine; this was meeting face-to-face with the ancestors. This was a moment to bow on one knee before taking a sip.

Lights down, music to a low chant, with only the heat from the candles. Once inside, the wine turned my palate towards the pagan. We had landed in Xanadu: the sacred river, the pleasure dome, the caverns measureless to man and the sunless sea. The milk of Paradise.

What to do with such a wine? Try roasted meats with a high fat content. Pork would be perfect. Or if a dessert is needed, go to your local church and pilfer some of the communion hosts, pre-sanctified. Dip them in a wild honey and dust them with cinnamon. If you must have the Body to go with the Blood.

The Big Muddy
Rhea Passito of Carlo Massimiliano Gritti from Umbertide – the trinity of Grecchetto, Malvasia and Trebbiano. This was my cloudy mire of aboriginal slime. It had me grimacing as if I had just lost a stare down with the demon. It wasn’t that it was horrible. Au contraire. It was a shock. This hall of sweet wines was filled with clean, clear, diamond points of nectar, and here we were faced with chaos that was rich and unctuous, from a time when it was the only wine in the world. Gravner could only hope to make a wine with this kind of depth, coupled with an attraction that was molecular.

“Will you write about my wine?”, the hopeful young Italian asked me. I assured him I would. But it wouldn’t help him sell it. This was a wine from another time, another language. It would be like asking the Americanos to read and understand ancient Greek. But that is a wail for another chorus on another day.

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

Merano ~ Bosom of the Dolomites

A fascinating aspect about Italy is what it represents to people, what they think it is. Aside from the usual misunderestimations about Italian food (spaghetti and meat balls) or wine ( Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio), it goes to a deeper level. Italy is the four cities: Rome, Florence, Venice and Milan. Doesn't anybody ever talk about going to Torino or Palermo? Italy has such wonderful countryside in Tuscany. The Amalfi Coast is so picturesque. As if getting to the Tuscan countryside or the Amalfi Coast weren't strewn with unbelievable beauty along the way?

So it was with me, when I arrived in Merano at the base of the Dolomites, 70 miles from the Austrian border. In a store back home, I ran into a local person, and they asked me about where I had just been. When I told them the Merano Wine Festival, they remarked, “Oh, don’t you just love the colorful glass from there?” Why, yes I do. Especially when they get it from Murano.

I don’t get as worked up over those encounters anymore. I find them bewilderingly amusing. I tell myself, at least they are appreciating something Italian. Oh, and pass the meatballs, please.

Merano must be wonderful in the summertime. I’ll not likely get there in that period. I prefer large bodies of water, the Pacific or the Adriatic or some lake, somewhere. But I can imagine its attraction, with those long days and moderate temperatures, especially when I am in Texas in July. Which is more likely the case than not. What an oasis it must be.

We arrived at Merano in time for a little snow flurry action in the higher elevations. Nothing to wreck the leather-soled shoes, rather a light dusting that one could admire from a distance.

Here the wines have names like Kerner, Schiava, Lagrein, and Zweigelt. The last three are red wines. These are wines that are more well known coming from other countries, say Germany or Austria. But because they are technically grown and made in Italy, they can be marketed in the US in Italian restaurants and wine bars. Still a bit of a tough sell, because the names are as difficult to pronounce as Falanghina or Granaccia, which are also not household names.

Gestalt at Ristorante Laubenkeller: wine & wall

Again, this is the beauty of things Italian: not to be pigeonholed into the same old fiasco. The awe of this Italian wine labyrinth is in the complexity, the diversity, the seemingly endless variation. Want something simple? Go to France, or Germany. Those countries are infinitely easier to grasp.

This side of Italy can be a comforting change from the chaos of Southern Italy, or even the maddening laissez-faire of places like the Marche. Here in Merano there is order. One friend remarked that it was the worst of both worlds, the irrationality of the Italian with the inflexibility of the Teutonic. I see it another way: The creativity of the Italian is tethered and brought into a workable state by the rational determination of an ordered society. Brightly painted walls, but with a paint to last through winter snow storms.
Still, there are madmen wandering out of the asylum. Who else will pay €149.00 (that’s US $225.00) for a pair of jeans that looked like they were fished from the bottom of the pile in a thrift store? Oh yeah, someone drinks a little too much Die Jäeger in these parts too.

I spent evenings with Calabrese and Sicilian winemakers - my tribes. It was interesting to see this part of Italy through their eyes. To them, it was another world, more removed from their experience than New York. I could only imagine what my Tuscan-countryside-loving, Amalfi-coastline-hugging Americanos back home would think of this.

For my part, sitting under a heated patio lamp, sipping wine and looking at the snow falling on the mountaintops was as natural as watching waves nuzzle the sand down in the Gargano. As I thought about the days I was spending in the Val Passiria, here in the bosom of the Dolomites, you wouldn’t hear any complaints from me. I was lapping it up like mother’s milk.

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

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