Dreaming at the Speed of Wine

`

“You’re all over the place!” my friend Mario said to me. For sure, the past month has been a roller-coaster ride, from Canada to Italy, over to NY and Rhode Island and back to Dallas, only to shove off to Austin and then back to Dallas Just in time for TexSom VII. So as I was chatting up a French chef over a bottle of Chateau de La Chaize Brouilly, my friend Mario was ruminating over my movements.

“Mario, how come I have never seen you drink wine?” I asked him. At which time he picked up the glass of Beaujolais and took a sip. Something I thought I would never see. Mario is soon to be 95, you see, and an avowed Dubonnet and Scotch man. No wine for him. But he recently went through a hip replacement and some heart work and he was down for a few months getting himself healed. But now he’s back and walking with barely the aid of a cane. He’s not afraid of change. Hey, I got him to drink red wine. Now if I can just get him to try some Italian wine, maybe even something Sicilian, like where our people came from.

La Notte di San Lorenzo Guido

Study of ecstasy in a glass of Valpolicella

My blogger amica Susannah noted the August 10 holiday in Italy, La Notte di San Lorenzo, on her blog, Avvinare, “August 10 is celebrated in Italy and by Italians throughout the world as the night of the shooting stars. This film by the Taviani brothers is one of my old time favorites. This night is famous because you can see a host of shooting stars in the night sky and of course, as we all know, you make a wish when you see one.”

“Historically, the night of the shooting stars is supposed to commemorate the tears of San Lorenzo who met his end on this day in the III century.”

And it was an introduction that we really did it up in the Circolo del Vino in Dallas at Paul and Mike Di Carlo’s wine and food Mecca, Jimmy’s. And while the name harkens not in any paranomastic way, shape or form, it was a night of shooting stars.

Alice's Odyssey

Nudi venimus ~ Nudi discedimus

                                            Playing Tag at Night                       Laurel Casaletto

From the perch of my loft on the Pacific coast of Vancouver Island during a recent vacation, I pulled out Alice Feiring's latest book, Naked Wine. Amidst towering trees, some that were saplings before the Renaissance, it was the perfect place to dive into her compact, 200-page tome. Alice sets her sails, back and forth, between California, France, Spain and her five-story walk-up in Little Italy. I don’t envy her the task. She has her critics, some of whom think she writes about wine merely to extend her eccentric arguments about wine and life to a larger audience. Alice writes, looking for something more elusive, some key to her place in this world. And her message is resonating with people.

In the wine arena there are all kinds of players and philosophies. And likely in 500 years there still will be. So to celebrate wines that are apart from the mainstream, whether they are organic or biodynamic or natural or just plain quirky, why not? There are plenty of critics who pay obeisance to the steamrollers of wine, to the tall skyscrapers of production, to the mega-powerfully flavored wines that garner points and awards and big bucks. In fact, to turn away from them for 200 pages might even cause some to wonder where it is we have gone this past generation in our search for bigger, better, broader, bolder.

The Last Leg

from the "uchronic meanderings" department

Thursday Aug 4
The trip out of Rustic Tuscany was bumpy. After a week of cloudless days, it started to rain in Pisa. And rain it did, all the way to New York. The rains must have rusted the cargo bay doors at JFK, because we waited over two hours for our luggage. Really funny to be with several score of Italians, coming to America for holiday, and to hear them talk of the situation like we do about Fiumicino or Malpensa.

New York was wet, but not unbearably so. It actually cooled the city down. I stopped to crash a night at a friend’s house, seeing as I lost my connection to Providence. We walked to a local pizzeria, and had a bite. And while I had beer, I did notice there were plenty of cool wines to sample, including some of Angiolino Maule’s wine and also an interesting Gragnano.

Odd that Maule’s wines come through Dressner, what with the yeast thing and all. Such a nice guy. Maule, that is.

The e-mail one never wants to get from a winery in August

Aug 2, 2011

Dear ______,

Just to inform you that Mr. (and Mrs.) ________ did not show at the appointment.

______ __________ and ______ _____, waiting for them since 10:30, can stay until 1:00 pm. Then they have to attend other obligations and the visit will be considered cancelled.

Best regards,

_____________

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Bad enough when it happens - But when people delay their vacation and the visitor is a no-show? Oh, and the winery folks prepared a nice lunch too. And the importer folks did their due diligence in getting the no-show to fill out a form. A lot of good it did  the importer and the winery. All I can do is apologize to them profusely for something someone else didn't do.

Well, let's just say this is one of the easiest ways to incur my wrath for a very long time

But let's back track - This was a process we started back in June and then after the 4th of July holiday, we started sending out emails, via the importer and to the winery. Take a look at the process:

Which Wine with Fish? How's About Red, White & Rosé?

Over the course of a few days, on special assignment in Italy, our travels landed us by the sea. And as anyone who follows this blog knows, I loves me some seafood. Whether it is live Dungeness crabs from Canada or an array of fish and shellfish from the Mediterranean, I’m always ready for a platter of seafood. Lately there has been talk on some of my pals blogs about the right wine with seafood. And after I read through them, I was presented with the opportunity to make further evaluations on the subject.

An Italian Girl Finally Stole My Heart

I’m going to divert from my normally prescient state to a case of absolute infatuation. I have finally fallen for an Italian girl.

First, this is an old soul. A very old soul. Ensconced in the body of a seven year old. I am totally under her spell.

Rustic Tuscany, Organic Lambruschi and a True Original

Italy is full of characters. People with unusual life stories. And in rustic Tuscany, not the one the tourists go to in droves, I ran across one.

Today as we drove the SS1 "Via Aurelia" highway from below Grosseto to Bolgheri, the traffic was thinner than I had thought; this being one of the days Italians pile in their car in droves and go on vacation for the month of August. Around La California though, the traffic slowed, halted, and for 15 minutes or so, we crawled. Very exciting stuff to be in a traffic jam with all of the Italians going on holiday.

Our journey took us away from the water and inland to a mountainous area, seeming very much like Liguria. One in our group ran into a friend at a porchetta stand and he invited us to his place to taste some Lambruschi and salumi.

Wine from an Invisible Island

How did one get here? It is an island on the way to the North Pole. How does an Italian land here and decide to make wine? How does anyone?

In their unquenchable thirst for discovery and adventure, Italians have been exploring and discovering wine regions for millennia. Gaul, Iberia, Germany, the New World, Australian, South Africa, South America. Why not Vancouver Island?

So close to the mainland, and so large, one barely registers being on an island. But for those with a passion for islands, the simple act of stepping off the larger land mass sets the stage for something different, if only in one’s head space.

Dante’s Boot Camp

The sound of the waves crashing upon the shore has been replaced with the sound of my heart beating in my chest. As if in a dream, I am transported across the world from my wild place in the New World - ocean, eagles, tall pines - to a rugged edge of Tuscany - alabaster, olives and sheep.

I cannot say how I got here, because in reality I was sleeping most of the time. And that is my common story: the human, who walks around in his pajamas, sliding across the polished concrete floors, going to get a glass of water, walking from room to room, taking a spider outside and seeing a small group of foxes as they go from their outdoor places.

Here, there are no grapes, except for a few wild stragglers. Italy, the giant peninsular vineyard, here is bereft of those energies. They are transmitted through other things. How interesting to be in a place that has defined my work, my life even, and to not have any of that which is familiar. It is liberating, actually, not to have the message broadcast and to only have the energy, the essence. The raw matériel.

The Call

We’re not home 48 hours and I get the call. “Pack your bags, you’re needed in Italy. Flight leaves tomorrow at 10 AM.” Could it be that Italy and the wine gods are jealous of our latest infatuation with the New World?

On the Wine Trail in Italy Canada

Off the grid for a glorious week. No cell phone. No Internet. No twittering nabobs of negativity. No Facebook. What we did get in return was a life in Nature that we needed so very much. Indeed it is hard to be back home in Texas, in the heat and the mean times. Is that all there is? For us, it isn’t. And a week is darn short time to recharge. But we will forge ahead, onward, through the fog and the haze of war.

From the Archives- Calabria: The Epiphany

This was originally posted in June of 2009

There has been discussion in Italy about the future of wine in Calabria. In brief, there are two camps: one to maintain a more traditional use of the native grapes for the wines of Ciro and one which seeks to elaborate the appellation with the use of more international grapes.

Calabria is where my mom’s mom came from. She left a poor region, which had just been devastated by a terrible earthquake, early in the 20th century. Calabria has been abused by organized crime and tribal urges. It is a beautiful place. The wines are hard to sell, but when someone tastes a Gaglioppo or a Montonico they become enthralled with the fruit and the texture and the echo of the earth from where they spring.

Can Cabernet help bring wealth and fame to Calabria? Who knows? When a wine like a Ciro or any number of wines from Calabria tries to make it in America, it is a combination of energies. When the Statti’s or the Librandi’s come to America, the wines are well received and people love them. And surely these two wines often represent different styles and philosophies of winegrowing in the region. The connection isn’t always because of a review or a score. Sometimes it is the personal touch that these people bring to the selling game. So it’s not as easy as Cabernet or no Cabernet, native yeasts or designer yeasts, French barrique or chestnut botti. It’s just all simple and black and white.

From the Archives- Calabria: The Legacy of Local

This post originally appeared here June 15, 2006 and I rewrote it to reappear on saignee when Cory did his 32 Days of Natural Wine last year

"What was it like?” I remember my aunt Amelia asking me later in Texas, about walking into the village where her mother was born. Old Calabria, a little village clinging to a hillside like a vine that had wrapped itself around a sycamore tree and hung on through time and the elements.

I can only imagine what they were thinking 100 years ago, when where they were, in Calabria, looked as inviting as that West Texas dust storm raging on the plains. Devastating earthquake, utter breakdown in civilization, a civilization that had been established in the 6th Century B.C. Desperation, hope, a clean slate, away. Just far, far away.

In 1977, the train took us from Brindisi to Cosenza, and we followed Merlin back in time, the pine tree forest through the mountains over the hill. Back to grandmother’s house. It was the harvest season, September, in a year that would be remembered, by some, as a better than average harvest.

Gone Fission...

It's been a little hectic around here lately - It often seems more like the wine trials than than the wine trails. So we're going off the grid for a week. Nothing's wrong, Sam and Bianca, don't worry. I just need to step away from the world and dip my pole in cooler waters - the rods have heated up and we're approaching critical mass. And I know y'all don't want another mess to clean up. I'll put up a couple of archived posts in keeping with my Calabria themes.

Thanks for reading - back in a week...

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