Family Management & Anger Values

This blog seems to have been zigzagging on and off some trail. Not sure if it is wine or Italy, but for sure it is a glimpse inside the head of yours truly. Nothing is really bugging me lately, the usual issues of work, aging, family and civility, the same concerns we all might be facing one time or another. My intern has been ranting, but that is her way; youth has so many expectations of easy delivery and then they find out that they are beholden to the same powers of gravity and time as the rest of us. The wine business is plodding ahead; even in slow economic times there is always an opportunity to make something happen. I seem to be getting myself out on ledge from time to time, but like I recently read, if you don’t go out on a limb how do you expect to pick the fruit? So I ask for forgiveness if I can’t get permission; 'e la nave va'.

All these families, native born and foreign, assemble their fragile little kin and go about putting their lives in order, one step at a time. And it is through time that we find ourselves shifting and being tested by some of the adjustments. Humans seem to naturally resist change, whether you are Italian or American. Both countries are being faced with huge transformative issues that must be decided upon.

Tastes vary. The Italian salesperson of 30 years ago was faced with introducing Brolio and Bolla and Ruffino. Twenty years ago it was Santa Margherita and Brunello. Now it is Amphora wine from Friuli, resuscitated reds and whites from Campania, fruit bombs from Puglia and the Veneto, and extracted and alcohol driven big reds from Piemonte, Tuscany and Sicily. You ask for permission and hope like hell you don’t have to repeat too many mea culpas. But even if you fall, you must climb back up and move on up the hill.

And when the fashions advance so must this family of wine. In any event, looking back will always make it seem strange from another era; one wonders what made that wine or that clothing so darn attractive. And then one goes right on looking for the next pretty shiny thing.

Along the trail some of us stop and look back on a time that appears to be more desirable than what awaits us in the future. But how many babies have returned to the womb? In this Annie get your gun era, looking back at an age will always be colored by the lenses of hindsight. Don’t try backing the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria into the Old World.

And if we move forward, will there be mistakes made? Without a doubt. Just like those who came before us made. Sweet fizzy white wine from the Veneto seemed like a good idea, just like staying out all night with your girlfriend did. But it passed, and most of us moved beyond it. Every generation likes to think they discovered sex or red wine. “Those who forget history…connect the dots.”

And like those who forgot history, have they also have conveniently misplaced their better judgment about the sanctity of life? Is this reverence just something to direct towards the unborn? Our children, of all ages were not brought into this world to kill and die. When a society truly reveres life then they will value families. Managing their anger might lead towards a world in which we don’t feel compelled to send our babies across the world to do our misdirected bidding, in this time or 40 years ago. To value that unborn soul only to send one’s son or daughter to the gates of hell is something I cannot fathom. It’s a horrific trend in the time I have spent on earth. My Italian friends ask me what it is we hope to do with these dissonant concepts. I point them to their history and remind them they have not been untouched by the same waves of inexplicable behavior in a supposed civilized society asking neither for permission nor forgiveness.

And the torch is passed to the next generation and it begins all over again. Learn to swim, learn to drive, learn to drink, learn to love, learn to forget. And round and round and round we go.

A Republican and a Democrat were arguing about the American flag waving in the wind. The Republican said: "The flag moves." The Democrat said: "The wind moves." Back and forth they argued. Coming upon a giant duck, he said, "Partisans! It is not the flag that moves. It is not the wind that moves. It is your mind that moves!" The partisans were awestruck. The duck then asked them to get off of his diving platform; and a new Zen Koan was born: Nothing above me, nothing below me, so I leap off.

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

Foreign Influence

Sitting back home, listening to the remnants of Gustav rattle the bamboo chimes and Solari bells, I have taken to thinking about influences. Gustav slipped in over the walls and the gated communities and now the region is wetter and windier. Italians crept into the American landscape and wine and the kitchen flourished under their influence. American film makers have transported their visions across the continents and moved audiences in the dark around the world. So it is in this new world where we all are under the influence of something, many things.



How did the American armed forces influence farming in post war Southern Italy? For instance, did the Marshall Plan get Italy “up and running” in a way that once the daily needs had been met the farmers looked to their history and went about resuscitating the old lost vines?


Tourism, at once a dreaded scourge and a needed shot of economic stimulus to any economy. But how has all the tourists changed a place like Rome all these hundreds of years? Or would Rome not be the Rome it is if it weren’t for the constant flow of people through her gates? After all it also attracted great artists like Caravaggio and Michelangelo. Their Roman holiday became our must see attractions. Rome has always been under the influence of something or other, even its past.


When young women in medieval Sicily became pregnant outside of marriage, often these fatherless children would be put into orphanages. They would be given surnames such as Esposito (from ex positum, "of this place"), Trovato ("found"), Proietti ("cast out") and d'Ignoti ("parents unknown") until 1928 when it was deemed those names would unduly influence the lives and the future of the unfortunate children.


Nobility has long been an influencing factor, on the Italian canvas and anywhere in the world where someone seeks power and status. We call a wine noble or assign nobility to certain grapes, be it the “French varieties” or some other way to parade one’s ossified rational. So those ancient workhorse "bastard varieties", Cannonau or Corvina, Malvasia or Montepulciano, because of their identification with a rustic past, have no opportunity to claim title to nobility? I think the influence of the democratization of taste has uplifted the alluring and the authentic to new levels in the post revolutionary world of saporosity. New masters arise in the hierarchy of hunger; a young virile flavor replaces a silverback languishing in the crowded forest of flavors.


Not to say some of the old champions’ day is done. But in the streets of New York and bayous of Baton Rouge, the heavyweight must still be relevant, still be able to wield with some influence. Cabernet, Pinot Noir, Sangiovese, Chardonnay, Pinot Grigio still have an audience, even if we sometimes daydream that they’ve fought their last fight.


A young winemaker from Tuscany or Piemonte makes a tour through America. People come to listen and taste and take some of the wines home. It happens all the time. The same winemaker who has just influenced those 60 people will go to a western shop and buy a pair of Lucchese boots or Ed Hardy slip-ons. Foreign persuasion with mutual permission to change, alter and reset one’s way of thinking about something. When a French wine making family sends one of their young ones off to harvest in Australia or when a Davis grad picks grapes in the Côte-d'Or do you not think they will walk away from the experience unchanged? We are all connected by our mutually non-exclusive influences.


You can cover your head any number of ways, but it won’t exclude you from the locomotion of influence that you are under in these times. And while it has become fashionable to go back to simpler times and recast this or that philosophy as more essential, because it resists pressure from outside forces, that is simply trying to shield oneself from the inevitable. Politicians get people all worked up with this because they try to influence voters into thinking they (the voters) can be immune from outside persuasion. But that is exactly what the pols are working up to.


And likewise with food and wine. There is no Kansas to go home to. Everyone and everything touches one another, like it or not. We have not arrived at the end of the river to carry out a mission that does not exist – nor will it ever exist.


At least not as we could ever imagine, without some outside influence.

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

Graphics from the Polish cinema poster site

Suffering ~ Suffolk Style

Commentary by Beatrice Russo


Friday Aug 29 – 8:00 PM
Once again, the old man, IWG, has left me in charge. What an idiot! He knows there are some old bottles, standing up in his wine room, which are pretty close to my birth year. I have already texted my friend down south to see if she wants to come up and raid the room. I even saw a bunch of old Brunellos from her birth year, 1975. I think they’re both ready.

So he goes and abandons ship, says this month really kicked him in the butt, gotta get away, sun and water and wine and friends. OK, so go, nobody reads your damn blog anyway, get on down the road, Viejo, we can handle it around here for a few days wi-chout-cha.

I bet you’re all dying to know, what’s up with the “intern?” I have long ago given up that title, even though IWG still thinks of me as his find. I am so not part of his world anymore, I’ve learned all his mysteries, and I gotta tell you, when he’s running around town saying “ I gotta get more cowbells,” I think we should “make the call", if you know what I mean.

Speaking of running around, IWG seems to think he has everybody fooled into thinking I am some figment of his imagination. He says he already set it up on some older post, just so nobody would offer me a job or a column or book deal. Well, ask the old man’s Sicilian Godfather. Every time I go over there to take him some Googootz or pomodorini from my garden, he livens up a bit. Doesn’t seem to think he’s imagining me. I don’t know why IWG thinks he can claim me as his own. Nobody owns Bea.

Saturday Aug 30 – 11:00 AMI got a text from IWG last night when he landed. I didn't pay any attention to it till now, Great, what’s for lunch and how well will it go with that last bottle of 1990 Cristal that we be chillin’ up?

He wants to talk, says he had a breakthrough. Just another latent and left-behind mid-life crisis that is haunting his oh-so never-will-be-middle-aged keister again. Look it up, he used it. Said one of his friends in the Hamptons uses it. There are very few who are worse name droppers than IWG.


Now he is torn, ‘cause he gets this call trying to bribe him to come into the city for a tasting of old wines , journalists just back from their trips, old Italian wines, ready to go. Spume-man is back in SF and the grand poobah nephew of the great sci-fi guy, well he’s still M.I.A. And that pretty well much cover all his friends. At least the ones he think he’s got left, if you don’t include those whack jobs out in Albany and Nyack.

“No, not those,” he says. “Big ones, really, really big ones. Influential in their own circles. Critics, auction houses, European folk.” Ok, so what? Go.

He said he felt like he was abandoning his hosts on the “island”. Give me a break, they’d love to see him go (I can’t believe he’s gonna let this post stay up).

I left him at that. The bubbly was ready and we had figured out how to make Croque Monsieur with some ancient Fontina and Speck he brought back from his last trip. That should go down real good with it. Now, let’s see where did he put the SPF30? The sun is high and bright.

Why is it something like a 1937 Carmignano so interesting? It’s old, like IWG, that must be it. Hell, I’m digging into old, right here in the wine room; have that 1975 Lisini Brunello lined up and am looking at a 1979 Schloss Schönborn Erbacher Marcobrunn Riesling Spätlese for sometime après swim and sol. Let IWG suffer in Suffolk, tonight friends will come over and we will par-tay.


Sunday Aug 31 – 9:30 AMI told him to not call me before 10. He said he waited until 10:30. Technically, for him, he was right. But I wasn’t ready to hear about his old wine conquests. Our party lasted until 2:30 and some folks crashed around the many beds, while others just split for more private surroundings. I have an aunt of one of the friends who has a cleaning service, he’ll never know. Like he can see anything outside of his own drama? That’s the Mother Lode of Life Theater, boys and girls. Believe me, he’ll never, ever, know.

OK, now he’s all happy, ‘cause he got them to let him take the driver to drive him into town and wait for him, in time to back for some truffle dinner in the Sound. Sounds like he double dipped the elite-class. Good for him.

So it was old Italian for lunch and old French wine for dinner. And there’s still Monday, which he says, in honor of the holiday, will be a tasting of old California wines. I hate him, truly, truly despise every bone in his body. Which is growing ever larger by the day.


Check this out and puke with me ~ His Italian lunch:

1979 Salice Salentino - Malfatti
1978 Etna Rosso - Torrepalino
1976 Morellino Di Scansano - Francheschini

1982 Le Pergola Torte
1979 Tignanello
1979 Sassicaia

1969 Barbaresco Riserve Speciale - Calissanp
1968 Monfortino Riserva - G.Conterno
1961 Chambave Rouge - Ezio Voyay

1937 Carmignano Capezzana

1936 Est !Est!!Est !!! Amabile – Lampari

His Majesty's Truffle dinner and French wine menu:

1966 Margaux
1966 Cheval Blanc
1964 Mouton Rothschild
1962 Petrus
1959 Ausone

1953 Domaine Comte Georges de Vogüé Bonnes Mares ( magnum)
1928 and 1929 d'Yquem.


I’m so glad we drank his freekin' 1990 Cristal, sister.

Reorganizing Italy ~ Part 2

Back to business. The streets have been pretty quiet in these times, so the times call for special operations. I called up Joey the Weasel and told him to meet me at the usual place, bring his young assistant. We were going in. Like Garibaldi, earlier in the morning I liberated Sicily, starting in Marsala. We weren’t going to let some of the greatest wine sit smoldering in an obscure corner. It took an unusual maneuver, but we got ‘em freed up. On to the mainland.

There’s been an iniquity of understanding in the world of Italian white wines, so we worked our way down the rows starting with Liguria and Umbria. In this particular setting the white wines are all grouped together. It’s not all Pinot Grigio.

Time out. The other day, on this blog, I had a bit of a discussion on the merits of the wine industry from my perspective. This week the mission was to go into a store that had seen a lot of action but had been rendered hither and yon (what is a yon?) and was looking skewed. Wines from everywhere were just mixed up. The act of a re-set is to logically re-order the selection so it makes sense, much like one would organize a wine list. In this case the setting calls for wines arranged by region. No big brain-drain here, just fitting everything in. In this case a smaller, niche company easily could have done the work, or a group of companies working together. I guess business has been so brisk that those folks just couldn’t get around to it. A couple of ‘em straggled in looked around, one of them freaked out and left. Another large company came in with their platoon, looked around ordered food and slipped into the back room. I was hoping they’d want to partake, but I figured they thought I was taking ownership of the task and maybe, just maybe they knew I knew just what to do. In this case, a rising tide does lift all boats and all Ligurian wines need to be together, even if they all come from Neal Rosenthal. Hey, Tony, just keeding.

So Joey the Weasel and his young assistant set about helping me. The young assistant was also busy sending SMS’s to the three people she was simultaneously having conversations and drama with. I guess what we were doing just wasn’t that interesting to a 20 something. Ya think?

But that is the work of the moment and with month end coming, and little or no hope of growing sales, how about a little housecleaning?

We tackled Liguria and Umbria, and Basilicata. Then on to unifying Friuli with Venezia and Giulia along with Collio. So far so good. Abruzzo needed to be found and relocated, Pecorino here we come. Good, that’s done. Lazio, wait on it. Then on to the Alto-Adige, the Pinot Grigio selection and Piemonte. Marche, over by Abruzzo, and we still have to figure out where to put Puglia. That leaves us with Trentino, Emilia-Romagna, Sardegna, Sicily and Calabria. Done. Sin adesso tutto bene. Then there is Tuscany and the Veneto.

Now we had a little problem figuring out how to make Campania get along with Lombardia, but after separating them from each other, we averted a cat fight. Then finally Lazio and Puglia are set. Then the rosatos. There, the whites and the sparkling and the rosatos (the chilled wines) are set. On to the red wines.

This is serious business but it was getting late, so Joey the weasel and his charge d'affaires took off to run a delivery and get her back to a young man waiting. I was alone, save for the gang of guys I thought was waiting in the back room for me to leave. But I was not finished reorganizing Italy.

Like I said, this is S.E.R.I.O.U.S. stuff, because the customer is our lifeline. And if his business is slow, we must do something to help him clean out his inventory, re-work it, help him with the investment and the trust he has put in us to move the wines through to the wine lover.

I figured once I got out of the place the thugs would undo everything I had just done. After all they are also a big company and aren’t all big companies bad to the bone? What I didn’t know was that they had gotten their food and slipped out a few hours before. So while I was guarding Ft. Laramie they were on to Little Big Horn.

No problem, I had a country of red wine to re-settle and unify. I saw first that Tuscany was asunder, and I took to separating Morellino from Vino Nobile. The Super Tuscans and Brunellos were all mixed up and I left ‘em that way for the time being. Just as in real life. Let God sort that out. Or Dr. J. Or Angelo Gaja.

I moved on to getting all the Abruzzo red collected. And then on to Puglia. It’s going well at this point, nice and cool in this section of Italy. Not like the 97°F it is outside and the 120°F it is in the trunk of my car, where my three Sicilian refugees were huddled. But Marsala can take the heat, yes? That’s what makes it so darn adorable.

Anyway I then took on the Veneto and Piemonte. I have more to do that we didn’t get to that day, but we reorganized Veneto with Valpolicella and Ripasso and Merlot and Refosco. Then on to my pet peeve, the separating of the Barbera D’Alba from the Barbera D’Asti sections. It’s real important, when setting a store, to make sure the shopper can have a clear delineation. Makes it easier for the salesperson on the floor to help guide the shopper. Got the Barberas worked out for the umpteenth jillion time. And then the Dolcetto and the other varieties, Grignolino, Rucche, etc. Even had time to do a little reconnaissance on the big boys, the Amarones and Barolos and Barbarescos, let a Carema find it’s way amongst them (you’re welcome, Tony) and those Nebbiolos that some wine salesperson thought should have been in with the Barberas. Sent them up with their own kind, unified and all real pretty like.

Two days later I went into the section and some knucklehead had already moved a Nebbiolo back with the Dolcettos and mixed up the Barberas. Time out. Again. Most likely, from looking at the wine, it was one of the small niche distributors. You know the ones those bleating-heart blah-gers think are the hope of the free world? Mind you, remember the big guys (us) are the scum bags, the ones fixing the mess, the rising tide that is often mischaracterized as a tsunami. In any event I wish someone knew how to scratch their niche correctly. Again, it isn’t about the size of a company, it’s the intent and the purpose of the individual. Or as Guy Stout likes to say, “It ain’t the wand, it’s the magician.”

Well, I did my best to wave my wand, and now am feeling pretty good. In less than a day we had gone all the way from Marsala to Lombardia, liberating and unifying all things Italian (wine that is). And it’s a good thing. While it lasts. Which will probably be a week or so. In the meantime, I got a date with a lady and a sunset.



Take it away, Bea, it's all yours. The Hamptons are calling.

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

Reorganizing Italy ~ Part 1

Field report from the Italian-American delegation.

In the past few days the happy warriors along the wine trail have been looking for opportunities to make something out the month of August. While our Italian counterparts are bronzing and eating bronzino, those who have not gotten furloughed from their platoon assignments have been skirmishing and planning counter-insurgent acts toward all things regarding Italian wine. Seminars, working with trainees, retail re-sets, reprinting wine lists, you name it, this is the month to plant the winter garden. And while we won’t see the fruits of our labors in the next few weeks, somewhere down the line, it will pay off. In the meantime, this week, several of us decided to go about reorganizing Italy.

Before month’s end, we’re all looking for any opportunities to sell something, even a close-out. Some folks might be waiting for their ship to finally arrive, though this month not much is moving. And if the transport company happens to take the route from Livorno to the New World via Marseilles, those at the end of the line might have a surprise in store. Dock strikes and port blockades will spiral costs for those wines sitting in (hopefully) refrigerated containers. But the clock is ticking. Then again, if you believe everything you read on the blogosphere, the world is coming to an end with the latest round of distributor consolidations. Now, anyone who has read On the Wine Trail in Italy probably knows I work in the industry, and for a large distributor at that. I have heard the company I work for, and the people in it, called scum-bags, evil-empire, dark-force and behemoths. Oh, and mad-wounded elephants, that’s one of my favorites.

We have read, on blogs, bloviated comments such as “consolidation is a sign of weakness,” and referring to consolidation as a byproduct of “fear and scarcity.” And usually this comes from some unspecified workstation in some condescending setting, far from the reality of the streets. More often than not, the blogger has never sold a bottle of wine. But to hear them, they know the ins and outs of the business; they’re better briefed than the bespoke suits on Stockton Street.

Blah-gers also commented recently about the amount wholesale alcohol distributors spend on political causes. A figure of $50 million has been put forth for spending by American wholesalers and their associations for state politicians from 2000 to 2006. What never seems to get mentioned by bloggers – is the charitable spending these companies do. For example, Larry Ruvo, Senior Managing Director of Southern Wine and Spirits of Nevada, is founder of the Keep Memory Alive Foundation and the Lou Ruvo Brain Institute. Since its inception, Keep Memory Alive has become one of Las Vegas’ most important charitable initiatives and a key player in the nation’s fight against Alzheimer’s disease. Larry has helped raise more than $50 million and recruited leading specialists to become part of this vital project. But what do we hear from bloggerdom? That worn out talking point mantra: large companies are anti-competitive scum-bags.

James Molesworth said this recently on a Wine Spectator forum, “This is the problem with the 'blogosphere'. It's a lazy person's journalism. No one does any real research, but rather they just slap some hyperlinks up and throw a little conjecture at the wall, and presto! you get some hits and traffic..."

Others trivialize by wondering how “the small wineries will fare with increasing competition for attention among the already over worked sales force with even greater expectations of delivery upon them.” Of course none of those bloggers who perform their armchair criticism will ever know how those barmy-mutilated pachyderms will break away from the psychosis of the wine industry, because they are safely ensconced in a bubble of protection from the reality of having to worry about reality.

For those of us who do sell actively, and selectively, whether it is for the Brobdingnagian or the niche companies, it boils down to this: You are a salesperson offering a product to a buyer. You are one person talking to another person, mano-a-mano. It is up to you to engage that person, the buyer, your client, sometimes your friend, into wanting what you have. It doesn’t matter how big and powerful or how small and terrified you are, you have to “sell” that person on you and what you will deliver. That is the great equalizer. This week I saw a young saleperson from a niche company attempt to enter into an exchange with a buyer and she had as much time and opportunity as I did. And was as challenged as the best of us.

Remember me? One of the guys who work for the “scumbags.” Me and my friends for the last quarter of a century, who have forged a family of wine, who take in the younger people like the trainee we had this week, who helped us reorganize Italy. Yeah, we’re really bad people doing bad things. Just ask our customers, our friends and all the families we help support. I have a challenge for those “nattering nabobs of negativity”: Come out of your protective shelters and walk around in the sun, in our shoes, if you have the cogliones. Which I doubt any of you do.

That would mean having to do real work, no business-class treatment, no free-run of the mouth. The road. The service portion of the exam.

Reorganizing Italy Part 2: Next post.

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

Peaches, Peppers 'n Pesto

Every spot on earth has its place to find a little bounty from the harvest. This year, my back yard has given up figs for the mockingbirds and Hoja Santa for the cheese maker. A farmer has given us several boxes of East Texas peaches and the garden is ready to offer up the Jalapenos to be pickled and the basilico to be made into pesto. The Pequin peppers are a ways off, if we can keep the mockingbirds from harvesting them first. As well, in the winter garden, arugula and finocchio are ready. Today we will be putting up peaches and peppers and making pesto.

My aunt Amelia put up peaches during her life, I still have a few packages in the freezer (she passed away in 1999) but I don’t have the heart to discard them. So we will offer up the new crop to the collection. They smell wonderful; the home has been filled with the aroma of ripe peaches. I feel like I’m living in a bottle of Riesling.

The Jalapenos have been ready for some time; many of them are ripe and red. The bees love their flowers; I wonder what it does to their honey. They also have plenty of basil and mint flowers to keep them busy in my back yard. We have a couple of colonies of Italian bees in the front yard, high away from children with rocks. They keep my yard happy and they seem to be gentle enough for us all to live together in peace.

The basil is in prime shape and so we will transform them into the sauce we will use all year long. Pine nuts are ready, olive oil from Liguria has been summoned to the dance, and the Reggiano-Parmigiano is resigned to its fate of joining forces with the other ingredients to give back joy all year round.

The Hoja Santa fills the whole yard, I never have to plant flowers again, for the towering plants fill the whole yards with a crop that goes to my friendly cheese maker in Deep Ellum and comes back to me in the form of year-round cheese. And there is never any poison or any kind of intervention, except by hand weeding and pulling off the critters that damage the plants. A compost bin is in the works and this little garden is my own way of letting the earth be the earth in its fundamentally perfect way – simply by letting it be and caring for it.

And as for Italy, come va? How are your ancient villages and hillsides doing? When will we see you? Soon, very soon. In the meantime we have our peaches, peppers 'n pesto to keep us occupied.

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