OK, Italian winemakers, importers, suppliers, brokers and other hopefuls, listen up. Today we are going to have the tango lesson.Recently a soon to be open Italian-styled restaurant decided that needed to know more about Italian wine. Over a period of a month, all of the local suppliers gathered up their samples and went about-a-courting.
Now, mind you, this is a group who seem to have their feet on the ground, most of the time. They have had successful businesses and give to charitable causes. They aren’t entertaining any grandiose ideas about conquering the Italian wine and food scene; they are just looking to open a nice place for the people in their area. They aren’t looking to do one spot as the concept model, with the idea of doing twelve more in a year. That’s a definite recipe for disaster.
They aren’t even talking as if they are or will soon be “the greatest”, another pitfall I have seen. All that’s left of those places are their matchbooks in my bathroom. They have died, and yes, not with a bang, but a whimper.No, these folks are interested in change, and first in changing their ideas about Italian wine, and hopefully finding a style in their area that the local patrons will come to enjoy and appreciate. That’s what I get from hanging around them.
But there are so many wines to be tried from Italy and because the new place will be in an area where local folks consider the fine wines of the world to have names like Silver Oak, Screaming Eagle and Contoured Edge, wines with names like Camp du Rouss, Pergola Torte and Zanna are a bit “furrin”, and right now “furriners” are laying low.
Along with Italian wines they are also trying wines from everywhere else in the world.That’s the background.
Today’s lesson is about the 150 or so wines vying for the eight slots available on the banquet and catering list. Eight. Period.
This day, in the dark of the early morning while the frost was still on the branch, eight or so of us vendors trekked out to the hinterlands of our urban sprawl and lined our foil covered wines up in rows so these Catechumens could be initiated into the sacred mysteries of the blind tasting.
The scent of a wine times 150 – now what are the odds that your wine will get picked? If you cringe at this kind of exercise, wake up, because this is happening everyday across the country, just like this, many times over. To get a single placement that may or may not bear fruit. I kid you not. It isn’t romantic, it isn’t pretty, nobody likes it, but it is one of the facts of life in these here United States, if you want to sell wine. So many wines aiming for so few slots.So if you don’t like the odds, stay home under the warmth of your Tuscan Sun. Here, in the combat zone, it's cold and it's dark, no bright lights of "Dancing with the Stars". But this is the part of the business very few of us talk about. It’s the frontline of the battle fields, where we go daily to dance our dance as good as our wines will let us, hopefully with the form of a great tango dancer or ballet artist or even a Fred and Ginger. Yep, I’d happily trip the lights with F&G.
Capeesh?
Today, in the parlance of the sales world, is the last day of the year. You see, in the wine business, we have this flexible view of the Gregorian calendar, and in order to reach some lofty goals, we have extended 2007 until today. It’s a new-math way to squeeze a little more out of the already hesitant retailers and the almost exhausted restaurateurs, who are entering a busy segment of their cycle for the next 3 months. For the retailers, though, stick a fork in them, they’re done.
December, though, has been the beginning of the downward spiral of the cycle, as I see it. The worrisome bit is, usually the alcohol industry rallies when the economy slumps. People self medicate. Witness the post-Katrina growth of business in Louisiana and New Orleans, especially. I’d drink more if it would make this 12 day headache go away. But that’s another story. The story this time is that people arent rushing to fill their liquor cabinets, in the same way as they used to.
I penned a quick email to another blogger on my way to tango lessons.
Already new suppliers are emailing and calling for appointments. I looked at our inventory today and we have as much on order as we already have in warehouses. That would be a response to the price increases and an attempt to load up on already proven items in an attempt to forestall increases to the trade. Buying time by buying on time. Forget about just in time, this time. Roll ‘em in, hope like hell to sell them before the slow moving report sends them to Purgatory (close-out land).
And still more suppliers knock, wanting to get in. Please send 100 more great salespeople and 500 more great accounts. Then let's tawk.
My adult introduction to Italy was August 15, 1971. I had decided on my twentieth birthday in July that I would go to Italy by myself. So I bought a round trip ticket from Los Angeles to Rome for $900.00, a tidy sum then. 
Once I arrived at the Stazione Termini in Rome I decided to look for a place to exchange dollars for lire. Impossible, it was a national holiday, Ferragosto. It was also a Sunday. To make matters worse, Nixon had just devalued the dollar. I walked around the neighborhood of the train station, found a little pensione on the Via Palestro near the university and somehow managed to talk the landlady into letting me have a room.
I was excited and a little bit jet lagged, so I set my gear down and decided on a little nap. Some hours later I awoke to the sounds of an Italian television program in the kitchen. I thought I had slept for days, but it was probably 4 or 5 hours, just enough to keep me from getting on Italian time.
The kind landlady made me a plate of pasta and some vegetables, and offered a glass of red wine. How wonderful it all tasted. Here I was in a strange boarding house in a big city with people I didn’t know, who were treating me like family. It was a moment that really made me see Italy and Italians through a lens that I still sometimes use. We were only 25 years away from the liberation of Italy during World War II; perhaps the landlady took pity on the young American. It wasn’t that much money, I think with half pension it was about 1,500 lire, or $2.50 a day. My room I would have to share if someone else came in. But it never happened that anyone else came to that pensione in August.
Walking around Rome during the day would be my introduction to Italy. And I walked everywhere, with my cameras, photographing everything in black and white, Tri-X film, with my Canon rangefinder cameras. I was living the dream of a young man to be a street photographer, and Rome was my canvas.
From the Villa Borghese to the Fontana di Trevi, the Sistine Chapel to the Baths of Caracalla, there was no backdrop that I wouldn’t shoot in the blistering heat and humidity of Rome in August.
In that time the city was quiet, many people out of town in cooler places. Just a few tourists and the workforce of Rome, who stayed behind to keep the city running. Many shops were closed for the month, but there was enough life in the Eternal City to get a feel for a place that humans have inhabited for thousands and thousands of years.
Even though I don’t get to Rome so often these days, I have an affection for the city that took me in as a young man, without lire and without being able to speak much of the language. I had my Michelin guide, my cameras and my desire to learn about the country of my grandparents. This would not be my last trip to Italy, but rather the beginning of many visits to Italy and to Rome.
During this past year, 
Next year there will be some changes. Sometime I’d like to clean up this site and make it 
I ride around all day with my sidekick, the one that I’ve been riding with all my life and I'm a little surprised when I look in the mirror and see that aging fellow that looks like my father. Inside I’m still a 25 year old young'un with a lot of hopes and some fears, some innocence, and some fire. I’m not going to let them snuff the fire as long as I can help it. It seems sometimes, that all I’ve got. But I look around and I see my peers getting older and older and giving in or giving up and I just am not going to go quietly. So I better find something to say.
Ladies and Gentlemen, children of all ages, see you all next year.
The wines I have been enjoying over the past few days?
The arguments can linger, after grappa, after the short Tuscan cigars, after all the telling and the retelling of the jokes. If nothing is resolved, then there is always that faithful plate of spaghetti al peperoncino in the early hours of the morning.
It’s easier on a full belly. But is the farmer in the country having these conversations, these fears, these doubts?
So while we witness this stirring in the Italian soul, what about the farmer? Where is his place in this opera? And what have we to say to the ones who help to provide food for the tables which fill our bellies which lead us into discussions of whether we have lost our way or our soul or our purpose? What about the farmer?
I had a note from another friend in California who, it appears, is shedding his materialistic trappings. He almost died a few years back when he turned 50, from cancer, and since then his discipline with yoga has helped to keep him alive. He actually has become a different kind of person. I think he might look at this and simply say that we have too much stuff. I agree.
It starts in darkness and ends in darkness. It is short and uncertain. At this point. There is hope and there is fear. And it will be quick.
I got a note from a friend in Italy. Small talk about the holidays, the wine harvest, comings and goings about a couple of mutual friends. Then my friend dropped a bomb.
My first trip to Italy, I walked around in jeans and sandals, with long curly hair, looking at “my people.” I really felt that I’d found the tribe I came from. I gazed upon the people as if they weren’t capable of any crime, sadness or malaise. I wandered the streets of Rome with a camera and a canteen, capturing images from every epoch on display.
The animals make more and more sense to me everyday. They live in balance with our world. They know not of our rules; they answer to a higher source than man. I like the animals more everyday. The pitiful little black cat that waits by my front door for a little food, sometimes in the bitter cold. The baby possums and their mom that come out at night and empty the dish when the cat has gone. The bees in my tree that have set up their business in the owl house. The sparrow hawk couple that comes back every year to nest and mate in the big tree next to my house. The chimney sweeps that come back in the late spring to hang out in my chimney. These creatures aren’t mad, they aren’t angry. They don’t need therapists. They haven’t stopped talking to their mothers. They don’t have these modern problems of civilization. But they do have to live in harmony with people, or at least figure out how to stay out of the way of our oncoming, “Get the hell out of my way” Hummer mentality.
