Do you want to tell the story?

How many times does it have to happen? I’m the speaker at a wine dinner. A guy walks up and says, “Are you the guy hawking the wine at tonight’s dinner?”

Yeah, that would be me. I just drove from San Antonio to Austin to Dallas to sell you a bottle of wine. Because I live to sell wine. Screw the stories, the wine trail adventures, I just want to get all the money that you have in your pocket and suck it out of your wallet. That’s my m.o.

I've done hundreds of wine dinners and I often say I’ll never do another one. And then, just when I think I am out, they pull me back in. Actually it’s a good way to do a nice service for a restaurant, to meet people and to promote the wines, the blog, and the Italian culture. You know, keeping the world safe for Italian wine? And then you get that guy, and it’s usually a guy. Usually middle aged or older, upper income, white guys. You know the type? The kind that come out to stump the expert.

Usually there will be the question of aging or barrel or vintages. “I love the 1997 vintage, they made such opulent wines in Tuscany.” If I had a nickel for each time I heard that line I could make more money collecting from those jokers than the money I never make on this blog.

Or, “I don’t really think Italian wines are as good as French wines.” Or “I have a friend in Napa Valley who made a killing in the (submit _________ here) business. He makes a killer wine that only sells out of the winery for $150. He makes the wine by letting the grapes drip.” I kid you not. I am not making this stuff up.

So there we are tasting the red, a Valpolicella Classico Superiore, a ripasso method, and this fellow, the same one who thinks I schlep wine for a living, comes up to me and says "I don’t like this wine - it needs to breathe for a day before it will be any good.” A day? You think?

I let it go. It’s a wine dinner. He could be a distant in-law; I need to let it go. And so I do.

And then he makes another pass. “Hey not bad, you had 3 out of 4 wines that were pretty darn good.” I tell him, “Great, that’s a .750 batting average – all star stuff. Or better.” Trying to keep it light.

But he just can’t help himself. He’s from a privileged economic and social class and he thinks his opinions have that certain gravitas. So he lobs another ball over the strike zone. “But that red wine, do you think it will ever be drinkable?”

Actually everyone at the table was enjoying the wine until he so inhospitably served up a platter of doubt. The chef paired the wine with lamb and a fruity sauce and it was a brilliant pairing. And I'm not even into that kind of thing. But the wine and the food were singing. Big time.

I wanted him to go away now. But I took a swing. “Look, the whole thing about breathing is a myth. And a day for a wine to breathe will, in most cases, just result in a dead wine.”

“Bullshit,” he snorts.

“Excuse me? Do you want to tell the story?” At this point I am thoroughly fed up with this guy trying to act like an expert. It is clear that he drinks unwieldy wines too young and that has led him to believe that he needs to let a wine breathe for a day. I'm curious if he makes those same calculations with the women he tries to shag. I wonder how that's working out for him.

What can you do with someone who thinks they are the expert? Have they just spent three weeks tasting any number of wines from France and Italy, tasting with the great winemakers of Bordeaux and Italy? Who is more qualified?

I’m not saying I want to be known as the expert. But in this instance I am the pro in the room and it is my story and I’m the one the folks came to hear. I even feel bad having these thoughts, because they sound like nails on the chalkboard when I read them. But after thirty years, I have stories to tell. And the last thing I am in the mood for is to drive all day and have some knucklehead get up on the stage and spew foolish drivel. It cheapens the whole experience of the wine dinner. Like I said, it is an inhospitable act. It is rude. And it is inaccurate.

And this has been the dark side of the Italian wine business for as long as I can remember. So when I talk all rosy and poetic about the vineyards and the winemakers, and I do, and I mean it, just remember that I have to come back to the native land and deal with the infidels.



Pass the ripasso please.

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

Just One Word

Kudos to the folks in the Marche region for not parading another scantily clad Miss Italy around to promote their wines. But Dustin Hoffman? What in God’s green earth does he have to do with the furthering of Conero or Piceno? Using celebrity to sell Montepulciano? I’m sorry Italian wine marketers, I for one, just don’t get it. It’s another disconnect, like the constant use of Flash on Italian web sites or the misunderstanding of social media like blogs, Twitter and Facebook, hell even Youtube, to integrate the new media into the culture of Italian wine.

Are you trying to seduce us?

If you are, it just isn’t working folks.

I want to say one word to you. Just one word.

Are you listening?

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

The Growing Italian DOCG List ~ Now up to 51

From the "Say it isn't so" département

The French would never do this. Only the Italians. Not that it matters to that many people, but to try and figure out how many Italian wine DOCG’s there really are has become a hobby for me. Yes, I have seen the Wiki DOCG entry, why can't those people even count the wines on their list? 44? Count the wines, people, I counted 47 on the list that they claimed were 44! They didn’t yet list Aglianico del Vulture (1), Elba Aleatico Passito (1) and Amarone della Valpolicella” and “Recioto della Valpolicella” (2). That would make 51! So what slipped in?

They have included a separate a listing for Dolcetto di Diano d'Alba and according to Sourcews Italia it is now also a DOCG.

Someone get in touch with those Wiki people and illuminate them, please!

The updated list after the break.

Complete Listing of Italian DOCG Wines (as of April 2010) : 51

Abruzzo (1)
Montepulciano d'Abruzzo "Colline Teramane"

Basilicata (1)
Aglianico del Vulture Superiore (new)

Campania (3)
Fiano di Avellino
Greco di Tufo
Taurasi

Emilia Romagna (1)
Albana di Romagna

Friuli-Venezia Giulia (2)
Colli Orientali del Friuli Picolit
Ramandolo

Lazio (1)
Cesanese del Piglio

Lombardia (5)
Franciacorta
Oltrepo Pavese
Sforzato della Valtellina
Valtellina Superiore
Moscato di Scanzo (new)

Marche (4)
Conero
Vernaccia di Serrapetrona
Verdicchio di Matelica (new)
Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi Classico (new)

Piemonte (13)
Asti spumante - Moscato d'Asti
Barbaresco
Barbera d'Asti
Barbera del Monferrato Superiore
Barolo (Chinato, as well, falls under this DOCG)
Brachetto D'Acqui o Acqui
Dolcetto di Dogliani Superiore o Dogliani
Dolcetto di Ovada Superiore
Gattinara
Gavi o Cortese di Gavi
Ghemme
Roero (Rosso & Bianco)
Dolcetto di Diano d'Alba (new)

Sardegna (1)
Vermentino di Gallura

Sicilia (1)
Cerasuolo di Vittoria

Toscana (8)
Brunello di Montalcino
Carmignano
Chianti
Chianti Classico
Elba Aleatico Passito (new)
Morellino di Scansano
Vernaccia di S.Gimignano
Vino Nobile di Montepulciano

Umbria (2)
Montefalco Sagrantino
Torgiano Rosso Riserva

Veneto (8)
Bardolino Superiore
Recioto di Gambellara
Recioto di Soave
Soave Superiore
Conegliano Valdobbiadene Prosecco Superiore (new)
Asolo Prosecco Superiore (new)

Amarone della Valpolicella and 
Recioto della Valpolicella (2)

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

It's a Man's Man's Man's World

The past few weeks in France and Italy has cemented in my mind the reality that, in the wine business for at least half of the known wine made in the world, it is still a man’s world. Rather, it is a paternalistic point of view that still dominates, whether those views are held by a man or a woman.

At Vinitaly all one had to do was look at the seminars and panels and know that the world is still heavily populated by white middle aged and rapidly graying men. But a new product is being promoted, and who do they send out to blow the horns about it?



Where was I? Oh yes, the archetype - father knows best.

My dad loved the TV show, I Dream of Jeannie. He used to say this to me all the time in the 1970’s. “Son, man’s job is to provide and woman’s job is to love.” Imagine how well that would have played if I had bought into that and taken that back to my northern Californian university life. Needless to say, I became indoctrinated in the movement that had women striving for equality. It was a tilt and a shift from the cultural perspective the women in my highly matriarchal family (they lived longer than the men – man’s world indeed!) dispensed. They were highly supportive of their young men growing up in which they were the "center" of some world. It is just that in the Italian (and Greek and pretty much the Latin) world, the women are so benign (and protective) that the majority of men grow up thinking they can do no wrong. So off they go to conquer the (wine) world.

Giacomo Tachis just announced that he was retiring, and for a generation Tachis has been a guiding light. I never spent that much time with the Dottore, except to meet him a time or two. But his influence had been wide among man and women in the wine world. If Maria Gazzaniga or Teresa Lungarotti had been accorded with the same level of gravitas in the world of wine, would it have changed things much? I don’t know. But I know this – I am tired of the domination of the wine world, indeed the world indeed, in which the history has been written by a quill that has been dipped in the inkwell of testosterone. I see it so much in Italy, especially at Vinitaly where everything is concentrated and magnified 10x.

It seems that even the ascendant women in the business have a great deal of that paternalistic juice flowing in their veins, blue bloods and terrones alike.

And while it might be more a matter of those who like to dominate the process vs. those who jump around in the creative pond, I am navel gazing a little bit this Sunday morning.

How else can that explain this continuing mania for oak and alcohol? The need for an “important” wine, which means a Cabernet @ 14.8% drenched in new oak, screaming for a huge piece of meat. Please, that’s so 1982. Or so 1962.

I was sipping on a Soave last night and enjoyed it thoroughly. And that is the way it seems to be going.

Personally, I will enjoy it more when the important men and the women in our world come down off their magic carpets and relate a little more with us little people. There are plenty of wines in Italy and the world ( of man, woman and all the other creatures in it) that are not important and are a perfect joy to be around. Kind of like the people in it.



To be continued….

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

Air Space, #ashtags & Aglianico

Scientist says Icelandic volcano activity increases, warns of more travel disruptions – AP

Real time map of planes in the air here

What a difference a week makes. This time last week, Vinitaly was in crescendo. I had been on the road more than two weeks, and had a good three more days of putting the pedal to the metal. And now back home, in a jet lag stupor, working, reflecting and hopefully preparing for the next trip out. For now those trips will take me around the great State of Texas, but someday, sooner than I think, the wine trail in Italy is going to get lit up. That’ll be when the volcano calms down (live webcam here) and when the planes start to fly again.

Some of the feeds from Facebook and Twitter that I have been following:

Air space over northern Italy is closed because of ash from the Icelandic volcano, about 2000 miles away - Corriere della Sera

Lufthansa cancels all flights until 6 p.m. GMT (2 p.m. ET) due to volcanic ash, no Lufthansa plane is flying anywhere in the world.

'there are no trains in France. They're on strike.' No other details on how long or how many affected.

Flavors From Afar Day One of our first group for our Spring Food and Wine Trips to Tuscany. Tons of cancelled flights due to Iceland volcano cloud. Picking up four of our six travelers this morning at the Roma airport. Two are still stuck in Dallas. We're on to Grosseto them San Gimignano today and hope the Radkes get in tomorrow!

All Heathrow flights suspended until at least 01.00 on Sunday 18 April due to volcanic ash #ashtag ( if you want to track the news on Twitter #ashtag is the #hashtag)

This sort of eruption could go on for days, weeks, maybe months. As long as the ash is thrown up with such intensity it is very difficult for anyone to predict what will happen next.-Sky's Greg Milam in Hvolsvollur

Meanwhile, we’ve got some Italian wine in the closet. I have an old bottle of Aglianico just daring me to open it. It’s spring. I have a slew of seeds for the garden that need sewing and I’m pretty happy to just drive my couch around the living room for the time being. Happy weekend y’all!

@BreakingNews - British Airways cancels all flights until Monday afternoon - Sky News

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

Vinitaly: Instant Impressions

Friday lagniappe - a few instant shots from the retro-mobile - Homage à Polaroid.

"Instant" photos by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

Vinitaly Report: Italy’s Little (Social Network) Problem

From the "Will they ever get it?" department

Ok, I am going to go "all' Americano" on this one. I have been blogging my heart out for, oh, I don’t know, let’s say four years now. Seriously. The beat is Italy. Italian wine. I have gotten lucky and I have a good amount of people around the world coming to On the Wine Trail in Italy to read these posts. I am dialed into the industry, both in Italy and America. So what’s the deal with the knuckleheads who run things at Vinitaly? You know, the ones who put together seminars and decide topics, and such? At Vintialy those who make the decisions, decided it would be about time to finally put together a WINE AND SOCIAL NETWORKS seminar. So guys, why no love for the American bloggers?

Franco Ziliani got in touch with me early on and invited me and a slew of bloggers, Italian and American and from around the globe to his opening event in the Puglia pavilion on rosato wines. Someone knows that there are folks who write about Italian wine outside of the Italian culture and language. You now, the ones who help drive export sales and stimulate the Italian economy?
The internet is English centric, at least for the Western world. Hell, even the Chinese have figured out the “worldwide web” works better in English. I blog about Italian wine for four years now, have been a loyal Italian wine ambassador in America for 30 years. I’m an early adaptor, have figured out how to plug into Facebook, Twitter, Twitpic, Flickr, Friend Feed, Webshots. So who is in charge over at the press office at Vinitaly? Why did I find out about this event after it was all over? The internationally-inclusive nature of the seminar was, how do I say it, so very 19th century. Pirandello would be so proud of y'all.

Oh, niente signore. Farle vedere che se noi oltre la illusione non abbiamo altra realtà, è bene che anche lei diffidi della realtà sua, di questa che lei oggi respira e tocca in sé, perché – come quella di ieri – è destinata a scoprirlesi illusione domani.

I got on Twitter and asked around.

@ItalianWineGuy What's up with the knuckleheads who planned the #Vinitaly social media/blogging panel? What, don't American wine bloggers get invited?

These folks, Tweeted back:
@robbin_g and it was a complete snoozer!
@vinoiskeeno @italianwineguy it was ridiculous.
@WineOnTheRocks@italianwineguy Vinitaly and Organisation... not the best blend - uuuhhh, I mean - no comment!
Where was@tirebouchon?@ViniSMargherita?@brunellomaker?@mondosapore?@slgold ?

@Vinoalvino?


Yes, where was Franco Ziliani? If anyone is the Alder Yarrow, Eric Asimov, Steve Heimoff, Dr Vino and Tom Wark all rolled up into one uber-Italian blogger, it has got to be Franco Ziliani – why wasn’t he invited, involved?
Italian bloggers Filippo Ronco of TigullioVino, Vinix and Giampiero Nadali of Aristide Blog were there. Hell, they were presenters. I even got a Re-Tweet from Giampiero as I was writing this – he’s plugged in!

Note to folks who make the decisions at Vinitaly: thanks for including the good old USA. Crawl out from inside your 19th Century cave and wake up to the new global world order. It’s flat – it’s transparent – and you all are failing. Time for another Risorgimento, people.

Funny how Italy looks to America to buy their wines, in good years and bad, in years of crisis and scandal as well as in years of plenty. Many an Italian wine consultant is driving around Italy in Maseratis and Porsche Cayennes, courtesy of the money they have made selling wine to America. It’s equally mystifying that Italy, once again, is myopic when it comes to learning about how these things work. Once again, Italy falls back into their outdated cultural pecking order, a world in which only the Alto-Borghese have anything of value to say and the rest of us folks down below, the Terrones, are there to simply shut up and serve their masters.


Shame on all y’all. I give Vinitaly an “F” on their report card for the lame WINE AND SOCIAL NETWORKS seminar they held. As we say in good old America, “F ‘em Danno!”

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

Vinitaly Day 5 ~ "With my mouth and nothing else."

Last day, Vinitaly. This has been one of the busiest Vinitaly’s I can remember in 30 years. I am completely overwhelmed with the relationships, the connections and the stunning wines many of my producer friends are making. But next year I have to bring some colleagues with me, because it is just too much for one person to try and tackle. But try I did, and I ran, not walked, this Vinitaly. Even the last day, which is traditionally a day to wrap things up (many of the producers have already left Sunday night), I found myself getting around and making one more visit, one more tasting. It was actually one of my best days, in the aspect of being able to talk to some of my friends. Aldo Vacca, looking tired, his eyes slightly bloodshot from manning his booth under the hot lights on the Piedmont Pavilion, poured some stunning wines. I will post about this soon. My friend Pino, pouring one last taste of Illuminati Brut as we share one more sip, one more story.

Two Barolo’s for €6.90 - That'll be US $4.70 per bottle, folks

I found an old hand, a gent, who has come up with a couple of interesting wines, an odd couple of sorts. A Barbara D’Asti and a Falanghina, both DOC’s that can sell well below US $10. And with the recent sighting of 2005 Barolo selling for under US $5, in Italian stores, I reckon there are all kinds of values lurking.

Many people told me the wineries are ready to deal. Barolo for $4.70. From a large, modern co operative. Now we’re talking “back to business.”

Hey, I don’t want to get my friends who are making fine artisanal small production wine upset. I understand their “fixed costs”. I understand the need to improve a winery and the land and the farm machines. I’m not sure a Lamborghini is a legitimate farm machine, unless of course it is the tractor version, not the 2 door sport coupe that goes 200 mph. But hey, they have it in Napa and in Bordeaux, and elsewhere. Wine is still emotion, it’s drama, it’s the big show. I just think there are millions of people we have yet to reach who just want to drink Italian wine, good solid, everyday kind of stuff that is still reachable, still within the grasp of us “little people.”

That said, my last stop, my very last stop at the stands at Vinitaly, was a wonderful way to finish the show. My palate was beyond scorched. I was ready to go home, pack, get a nice glass of Soave in a wine bar, wait for a restaurant to open (on Monday, no easy task) and get a little pasta, some fresh veggies, maybe some nice roasted fish and get on the plane back to Texas. And then I stepped up to the booth of Christoph Künzli. His estate, Le Piane, in Boca, is one of those magical stories. Sit back; let me tell you the story of how he saved the DOC of Boca from near extinction. And for my friendly sommelier friends reading this, if we can get any of these wines, you will want them.

Amongst rural communities and green pastures we pass through small stone bridges, old farms, tool sheds and the extremely thick forests alongside the road. Once, there use to be thousands of hectares of vines in this area, hundreds of years back...and if I hadn’t seen the aerial photos that show the village of Boca completely surrounded by vineyards...I never would have believed it.- Armando Castagno

Imagine this: you stumble into a village, an ancient wine region. At the turn of the century there were 40,000 hectares in production. 80 years later there were less than 700 left. An old man, making wine in barrels they still rested, year after year, going back decades. And these were beautiful, delicious, supple wines. These were treasures of the Colline Novaresi. This is what Christoph Künzli and his partner Alexander Trolf stumbled upon, this treasure trove of Italian wine history. The old man was Antonio Cerri. His heirs, what heirs? He was preparing to retire, in his 80’s. He was leaving this all behind, as we all must do some day. But he wasn’t quite ready to hand it all over to Künzli and Trolf. It took nearly ten years for these young men to assure the old man, this Obi-Wan of wine, that they would honor his life’s work. He would take them into his cellar and they would taste the ’47, the ’50. This liquid history I talk about on the wine trail in Italy, this was one of those places, like Fiorano, Monsecco, Voyat. Bygone bottles. I had heard about this place long ago, in Novara, in a wine shop. We were talking to an old guy in 1984, and he was telling us about this wine, Boca, up in the hills. His dialect was too hard to understand, but one of the young men in the store told us that he said, “There is an old man up in the hills making wine the old way, the ancient way. Making wine for the ages.” And that was all I heard. I was on my way top more important places, to Barolo, to Barbaresco. And we didn’t have time.

Christoph did have time and he found one of the Holy Grails of wine. But not only that, he saw the shrinking of the vineyard space, left to go back to wilderness, to forest, A terroir preserve for the future. Vision. Patience. Timing. Reward.

An image of a vineyard recalled a trellis system long gone from the training manuals of Montpellier, San Michele all'Adige and Davis. Called the Maggiorina system, where a vine is trained to form a cup of sorts, a grand receptacle in the vineyard. Sounding like something from “Avatar” and Pandora, this system has been resuscitated by Künzli, a system that, legend has it, was designed by Alessandro Antonelli, who was born in nearby Maggiora. Antonelli became famous for designing the Mole Antonelliana, a major landmark of the Italian city of Turin. A building was conceived and constructed as a synagogue and now housing the National Museum of Cinema. Interesting connections, I am intrigued. Hell, I am planning a trip just to go see this winery, this area.

The wines are small production and are in a premium price range by today’s economic standards. No they aren’t 2 for $9. More like $70. Ok, there is room for one more at my table. Especially with a story like this one.

And how were they wines? How do you think? After five days of tasting all kinds of wines, as I said with a scorched palate, these the last wines I tasted before I headed to Soave and to sooth my palate of soft white wines from the Veneto?

Let me tell you, these wines were beautiful. The Boca DOC, the “Piane” Colline Novaresi DOC and the “La Maggiorina” Colline Novaresi DOC, we tried, going back a few years. There are tasting notes on the site if you care for that sort of information. There are blogs as well; I’ll link the info here and here.

How rare, and how wonderful it was, on the last day, to come upon Christoph, this steward of history, carrying on, making the wines of Boca, in his simple way. Or as he said, "With my mouth and nothing else.”

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