As these words appear on the page, outside my window the sky has its own idea about what a rosé is. Of course, in the early morning the idea of a rosé is an evolving one. Right now we’re in a Franciacorta rosé moment. As Spring winds down and Summer is setting the stage for its moment, wine lovers love to talk about rosé.Outside, a helicopter draws away the last of any color from the morning sky. So here we have the elusive moment for rosé. Just when you think its time to sell, drink and share this wine, isn’t autumn announcing its time to put away the toys and get back to the real stuff of wine? Well, here in flyover country we have at least four months before that will happen, and by then who knows what the world will have in store for us?
Copper River salmon are streaming into the local food shops, and at $27 a pound, one cannot always afford a Bandol Rosé from Domaine Tempier. One of my go to wines is the La Scolca Rosa Chiara. I know purists probably won’t agree with me, but they don’t run my life. And I love this wine. It’s lively, had a wonderful color and enough body to go with the salmon I love. Maybe it’s my lack of agenda when it comes to enjoying a wine, but I find pleasure in the enjoyment of this rosé. I love the color. I like the aromas. I like the fruit. And the body. It’s gulpable. And on a picnic in the park, listening to a Beatles or Stones or Texas Swing cover band, it’s pure summer. Not quite tiny bikinis, but enough skin to tempt and tantalize.
Texas foods, like chicken livers and the baked Italian chicken that my aunt taught me to make go well with anything. But if I have a bottle of a deep rosé like one from Abruzzo, Calabria or Sicily, all the better. Three that I like are the Illuminati Campirosa, The Librandi Rosato and the Regaleali Le Rosé. These are more deeply colored and with a fuller body. The spice and the fuller flavors match well with fried foods and again make for a wonderful evening on a porch or a patio, sipping with friends and your favorite warm weather comfort foods.
Seasonal warming brings out the grills and makes for a nice transition to the outdoors, if only for an evening. Here in Texas we are preparing for the onslaught of mosquito season, so while we feast we will also be feasted upon. Fish on the grill reminds me of the Maremma and so a rosé from that area is a great way to sooth oneself. Marco Bacci’s estate near Grossetto, Terré di Talamo, brings some of us his Piano Piano, a Sangiovese/ Cabernet blend (with maybe a little Alicante as well, eh Marco?). Light in color, fresh, in a word, deelish.
Last summer I trekked to Chicago for a few days. One of the highlights of the trip was to make the pilgrimage to one of the great pizza ovens in America, Spaccanapoli. These are pizzas elevated beyond mere comfort food. And to have them with beer, while that might be great, well, we just had to have a little wine. One of the wines I loved with the two pizzas pictured was the Cavalchina Bardolino Chiaretto. Same grapes as Valpolicella (Corvina, Rondinella and Molinara) with a delicate color, light flavors, just one giant bottle of yum.
We started with a sky the color of Franciacorta rosé. For me the morning are serious stuff, so Franciacorta gets the nod for my serious morning rosé fix, if I were on vacation or if I stayed up all night. But a little to the east over in Valdobbiadene the Prosecco folks are jumping on the rosé bandwagon. And our friends at Bisol have come out with this little rosé called Jeio. It’s a perfect wine to sip on the porch while I watch my bees working furiously before the light of the day comes to an end. Here we are, not for me it is time to go to work, selling, not blogging. Getting through another tough month. Ah well, the bees don’t complain, why should I? I’ll just chill a bottle of the Jeio rosé for this evening. That’s reason enough.
I got a call from IWG, he was heading out, could I come over and watch his house and his tomato plants? $100 a day to look after the old man’s crap, sure why not? As the taxi pulled up he was rushing to catch up with his adventure. “Where are you going?” I asked. “To a place where these cell phones and internets don’t go.” “When will you be back?” We were changing places in the cab. “I’ll be back soon. Just watch the house, don’t let your friends leave anything in their cars if they park in front of the house. And one more thing, that interview with the Italian wine sommelier, why don’t you test drive it around my blog?” He handed me the keys to his silver bullet, cool, quick German sedan and told me to drive safe. Yeah. Uh huh.
First question: So, Andrea, tell me what are people drinking?
Q- They won’t make it through the summer if they do. But enough about what I’m seeing, over here most of the folks except crazy-wonderful Antonio think they have to mark things up like they’re a gentleman’s club?
Q- I hear more from my friends here that getting a sommelier certification doesn’t get you the dream job? How about your life, how goes that?
I would (and do) advise to simply take the hit and close them out. Now. Lesser wines are taking the hit. Dolcettos and Barberas are streaming through the wine bars having been discounted to ridiculously attractive levels, ones that even I would bite on. And I need no more wine in my closet.
The Barbera. I started hearing about this little beauty from SB (somm-buddy) who comments on this site. I knew the place, went up to the estate in Castiglione Falletto back when the crust of the earth was cooling. I got it then, just stood up a bottle of their ’81 Nebbiolo to let the dust settle. Had first communion with Alfredo, OK? I get it.
Look, for a generation now some of us have been carrying this donkey up the hill. The Italians always undervalued their wine, almost apologizing for it because of the price. A Chianti Classico Riserva selling for $7 when a 3rd growth was going for $12. And the Italian was contrite, ashamed, sorry. So the wine got discounted down to $3 and all of a sudden lots of buzz from a restaurant here, a wine shop there. It was rampant in the 1980’s with Rosso di Montalcino, the “throw away” wine. The distribs had to buy the Rosso to get the Brunello and when it didn’t sell they’d schlep a bottle to Don Cazzu and make him an offer he couldn’t refuse. Great stuff, from Costanti to Il Poggione to San Restituta. I am not kidding. How many times I sat there with my bag of wine while Don Cazzu tells me what a great deal he got for the ‘74 RdM for only $2 a bottle. And he was right! But it perpetuated the image of Italian wine value. A Rosso di Montalcino was only worth $2-3 a bottle because it wasn’t bought right in the first place and it surely was never sold right. And so the true value of the wine never made it into the hearts and minds of the wine buyers.
Truman Capote was a young literary genius whose emotional maturity never quite caught up with his talent. His writing was fierce, fearless and so very sharp for the times he found himself in. A child born from a child, his life raced furiously in the fast lane until he was 59. And then, it was finished. Much has been written about his life, bio-pics have been made, numerous books and articles about his life, his writing, his escapades, his demons. But when he was alive, Truman Capote became a big star. A bestselling brand. Along the time his star was traversing across the winter skies, television and heightened attention to the new media brought many people into contact with him. I still remember seeing this funny little short, squatty man on the TV in my parents’ home when they were watching Mike Douglas or Jack Parr or Johnny Carson. He seemed a lot like some of the people in my home town (Palm Springs) so it wasn’t too out of context to see it on TV. But the number of times he kept showing up registered in my brain. I once saw a copy of “In Cold Blood” on the table in the living room and picked it up. I was probably 12 at the time. I was more interested in tennis or getting out of my parents home, going outside and riding my bike. But Capote was big. So big. What people thought of him, be it the high-society types or the artistic ones, they shaped the Capote from there on. He never had a chance. Partying and drinking and smoking and talking and twittering about. What great works of literature were stolen by taking his time? It was an era when a writer as a media star was something new, and he was so damned talented. But he was diverted. And before long, the brand “Capote” overtook the man.
Robert Mondavi was a visionary, a leader, driven to pursue a dream that shaped Napa Valley and beyond. Because of his relentless stubbornness any of us who work in the wine business today are in a better place, thanks to Mondavi. He was Moses and he led us out of the wilderness. I remember the early days in the 1970’s, when what he was talking about was so rare. Single varietal wines made in a fashion, at a level of quality that there was no market for. Yet. But he persevered, and everyone around him did too. And Mondavi became a monster brand.
Gary Vaynerchuk. He’s on top of the world. Thousands visit his sites daily. His number of followers on the new social platforms like Twitter have grown six-fold in two months. He’s on CNN, his American Express miles must be in the stratosphere from all the travel. He has a ten book, seven figure deal with a major publisher. And he still has time to personally return an e-mail. How does he do it?
He doesn’t have a blog in which to schlep his wines or his philosophy. He hasn’t sent out samples to wine writers and bloggers. He didn’t go to Vinitaly (or the alternatives) and he isn’t planning on going to VitignoItalia or Terroir Vino. He doesn’t have air-miles or instant-upgrades in which he can rely on to get him over to Italy on a regular basis. He doesn’t have a patron or a mate who is making tons of money. And it’s not that he isn’t a sociable guy. He has many friends. It’s just that he has to make it work. He cannot fail. He doesn’t have a fall-back plan. He must succeed. I’m betting he will.
This week, he called to tell me that:
There isn’t a day that goes by when I don’t think of Abruzzo from my first visit there in the early 1980’s, when they adopted me as one of their native sons, to the years of friendship and collegiality among the many winemakers there.
The land oozes soul; the grapes burst their energy forth for lively wines. When one hears about all the tankers of Montepulciano that move north at night to vivify weaker wines in the north, this is an unsung hero of a region.
My friends at Illuminati, not trampled by the crashing bricks or rumbling dirt, but none the less affected by their neighbor’s cries of pain. Over the years their wines have changed, like their labels, but always for the better. Today they are a success story for Abruzzo. Some of their neighboring wineries near Aquila are searching for their way through back to the future.
Some day they will open bottles of sparkling wine to celebrate a gathering, a success, a landmark.
There’s an old East Texas term called "firch-piling" that I learned about from an Oregon magazine many moons ago. The magazine, called 
One of the stories was about the East Texas practice of not letting anything usable get thrown away. People would go around the curbs and corners when things were laid out for the bulky trash pickup (still happens here in Dallas to this day) and drive by in their van or pick-up and collect anything that they thought they could use. My living room is made up of used furniture, some vintage and some valuable. A most treasured piece is my 
Sunday we went out into the “country” for Mother’s day. At the farm we saw acres and acres of dandelions and I thought about my grandmas. They would love this post, from another site I firched from another Twitterer, @
Lorenzo Gabba can be found @
The wine business is on the move. There has been a fundamental shift. Depending on who one talks to, it is either so small as to be barely noticeable, or so huge that the walls have come tumbling down and we are in shock and no longer recognize the landscape we have found ourselves in.
Santa Margherita, known the world over for light, fruity, Pinot Grigio. Reviled by connoisseurs, envied by the competition and made the butt or the target of so many salespeople and wine journalists who have scoped it in their sights for their own aggrandizement. And all along the way, 30 years and counting, SMPG just keeps knocking them out of the ring. It is a brand and it hasn’t tried to be anything other than what it is: light, fruity, white wine for people who are looking for that kind of thing. Say what you want about it, and I’m sure the navel gazers of the wine world are rolling their eyes right about now. If they read these words. Which they don’t. So we’re “safe.” Santa Margherita isn’t looking to tempt the hairy armpit crowd. All along this brand has really only been successful at this: making a lot of money selling Pinot Grigio for a high price. And making a lot of people happy. Always pretty much the same message, lightly dry and fruity. End of story. But what a success story the “brand” of Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio has been. So it goes.
And now we have Robert M. Parker. The wine critic people love to hate. Or fear. Or copy. Or target. And what has his transgression been? Depending on who you ask and what period of time, he has been accused of liking overly alcoholic wines, overly fruity wines, Bordeaux and not Burgundy, Barolo but not Chianti, oak, malolactic acid, micro-oxygenation, New world wines and Old World wines in New World clothes. People have criticized him for his palate, even though, the whole time, what has he been doing? He has been tasting wine and saying what it is he likes. And in return, many, many winemakers have either agreed with him or wanted their wines to be liked by him, because he was a force of nature and because HE SOLD WINE. Was that his intent? Or did he have a sinister plan to inexorably change the way wine was made?
“The vine and humankind have walked the same path together for thousands of years.” This quote, remembered from some ancient text, sets our mutual destinies on course. Whatever we think is natural has been in a state of constant change. The vines, the wines and the humans. Some of the changes work, some of them are imperfect, and so it goes. It amuses me when I hear the natural camp express a stringent, unbending philosophy of what they think wine should be. Equally bemusing are those who think wine is all the hand of man. Somewhere in the middle there is an equilibrium, but I won’t be the one to bring both sides to the table. It is not my concern. What interests me is how these two elements, nature and the hand, have come all these years on the wine trail.
After the meetings and the tastings I itch to get out into the fresh air and walk in the vineyards. Do I care about the trellising or the distance between the vines? Not one whit. Is the soil important? For the vines growing in it, yes, but schist, calcaire or gumbo, what can I do about it? Nothing. That is for those who have committed their lives to the soil below them. In my garden, yes, there I have my concerns. Where to plant my tomatoes, basil and squash. The Hoja Santa, which is taking over everything as if it were meant to. And the peppers and the arugula, growing wherever I stick them. The oregano, which has decided it would rather live in the crack between the fence and the concrete decking. And the rosemary, which is thriving in the pot, most likely root-bound, and delirious. That is my nature and the world in which my bees and squirrels and sparrow hawks live.
In Italy, the hand of man (and woman) has many facets. The nobleman, whose family has owned the property for countless generations, his hand is now finely manicured and steady in which to pour his precious liquid. For his and the legacy of his family, the land is everything, for it has given them so much. Pride, prestige, wealth, standing, position and time to read the ancient and modern philosophers. Wine is part of his Cosmologia Generalis. Marcus Aurelius, in his Meditations, says, " He who does not know what the world is does not know where he is, and he who does not know for what purpose the world exists, does not know who he is, nor what the world is.”
The hand of the young son of the winemaker, hands stained with grape and soil, those are his jewels and his gold. Years ago, in Montalcino, at the table of a humble family of vine growers, we had lunch from everything that grew or was raised on the farm. These were farmers, uncomplicated in the way they saw life. They woke up early and worked until lunch. They ate and took a short nap. Then they returned to their work until dinner. And afterwards, maybe a little diversion. But the life was set for them.
I saw not only a 95 year old walking briskly up that steep hill. I saw the spirit of one who had learned long ago what her nature was. And like the birds and the bees in my backyard following their nature, so was this incredible old woman.
