Lament for an Old Giant

from the archives - posted 7/2/09

It seems like everyday we get another headline announcing the passing of someone who was part of the larger American family. I have been thinking about this iconic Tuscan wine, one that grew up with America. And as America developed, so this wine also expanded in the marketplace and on tables across America. For many people this wine came to symbolize Italian wine. In restaurants, surely, in its day, the top tier had more swagger than Brunello.

Le avventure di Ginocchio

"Canta pure, Grillo mio, come ti pare e piace"

Dining out the other night, we ordered a wine, a simple Rosso di Montepulciano. The server tussled with the cork, but eventually expunged it. On first sniffing the wine and then sampling it, I thought it had an ever-so-slight trace of corkiness. But it was so minute I chalked it up to watching the server struggle with the cork and imagined some sort of transference.

A few minutes into it though, the funk appeared to be magnifying. And then it vanished, only to pop up and disappear a few times. It wasn’t that the wine was bad, but the wine was making itself a larger part of the meal than it needed to be. All of this going through my head as other things were going on around the table. Little monkey-brain chatter, “This wine isn’t right.” “Stop griping and enjoy the experience.” “But something’s wrong.” “Shut up and let me enjoy the meal and company.” This mad little dialogue endured until the cloud drifted away sometime before desserts appeared.

Bank On It

"The wise man does at once what the fool does finally."- Niccolo Machiavelli

Money seems to be on everyone’s mind. The European Community is striving to pull Greece and Spain away from the ledge. In America, people are still spending money they don’t have. Last night I witnessed weekend millionaires spending money in ways that I could never bring myself to do. And I am more likely able to afford to spend the way I saw these folks spending. Not that I ever would. It’s highly predictable that they do this every Friday and Saturday night, if not Thursday as well as Sunday brunch. Their debts add up. Until no shovel will be able to dig them out.

Did the “millionaire weekend” contagion pass from the local party-goers to Spain and Greece? Is there something about the thrill of getting something without having to earn it, save for it and then pay for it? Is it human nature? Wiring? Greed? Impatience? Or just a lack of imagination?

The Curative Dose

"There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.”― Rod Serling

Yesterday on NPR’s Marketplace Kai Ryssdal interviewed Marco Bardazzi of the newspaper La Stampa in Turin, Italy. Mr. Bardazzi had some interesting observations. Read for yourself:

Ryssdal: How's the mood in Italy these days with all the turmoil around you in Spain and Greece?

Bardazzi: Well the mood is bad because we see that the situation is not improving and there are a lot of problems all around Europe. We are really looking forward for a European meeting that is scheduled on June 28 in Brussels. We are looking at that as the possible turning point in the crisis, but we are not sure that this will happen.

Ryssdal: Haven't we been at the turning point many times before though?

Bardazzi: Yes, you are right. We have hoped for several other turning points so we don't know if this will be another hope for Europe, but really it comes down to this meeting on June 28 that could decide what will happen to the euro and the European Union.

Ryssdal: Do Italians ever look at the United States and say to themselves, man you guys think you have troubles, but you don't know what you're talking about -- this is really rough over here.

Bardazzi: Yes, there's a strange feeling right now toward the United States. Some people think that the U.S. are those that have put us in trouble right now. At the same time there are many others who think that from the United States we can see some signs of recovery and we don't have those signs here.

Under the Tuscan Scum

Il Prezzo del Potere

“What do you think of Gaja’s Brunello?” a wine enthusiast sidled up behind me and asked. It’s the kind of question I have been getting more often. Folks who are getting into Italian wines or who have just come back from two weeks in Tuscany. You know the kind where they find a villa outside of San Gimignano and share it with two or three other couples and their scadload of kids. Private chef, day trips in and out of the compound (“Just make sure you get back before it gets dark”). Insulated from the scary Italy. Safe for the American kids. Under (but not among) the Tuscan Sun.

What do they want me to say? Of course I've had the wine, had it before Gaja bought it, back when I was poor but could still afford it.

The Battle for Brunello

There are many more qualified to offer their thoughts on the subject, but for some reason as I was jogging I couldn’t get these ideas out of my head. I started to go down the line of all the Brunellos I had had since I tried the first one I’d ever had, the 1964 Costanti. That wine, a memory that seared my impression of Brunello, was as good as I could have hoped for. It was 16 years old when I tried it and an unexpected treat. I was working at an Italian restaurant and the owner was sitting with his wife having dinner. It was a Saturday night and the evening was winding down. The sommelier, an older (35-ish) lady in short shorts and full sommelier regalia took a liking to me and called me over to the cellar, where she was decanting a wine. “Take a sip of this,” she offered. The color was medium-light ruby with a slight tinge of tan on the edges. The aromas were flowery, salty, cherry, a wild herbal note like oregano/rosemary, but less obvious than those. And then I took a sip. In the flavors I tasted the warm afterglow of love, a sunset on the Pacific, a deeply wooded vale, a bowl of bitter-sweet cherries and a rush of mellow alcohol slightly rubbed with the oxidative caress of soft wood.

Anisetta in Palermo

and other remembrances on this day... 
 

I remember that sinuous ceramic floor, on top of the building on Via Roma. Of all things, why that floor? Perhaps the floor was the safe, the repository for all the memories stored up on the roof overlooking Palermo. All the long dinners, late lunches, cups of coffee in the early morning looking out over the water, watching the ships pull into the harbor. Looking at Monte Pellegrino in the afternoon, in the aperitivo moment. For whatever reason, that odd squiggly tile floor pulls me into the shots. Most of these people are family in some way, most of them are now gone. But here it is, Memorial Day, and one of their kin is remembering them, channeling them, looking back into the past peering into the magic mirror of images my grandfather brought back.

Seersucker memories, Vonnegut “so it goes” tattoos and Ripasso with Dr. Zaius

"All this happened, more or less." 

Why are people attracted to certain things? I’ll never know. One of my most humiliating memories is when I was 18 and my girlfriend at the time jettisoned me for an older man. I used to work for him, and he was the epitome of ugly, like a wrinkled Woody Allen bereft of charm. But something about him was attractive to her. For a month or so it devastated me and my perception of the world. For a little longer I thought I was somehow unworthy. It wasn’t until years later that I realized it wasn’t really me. But perceptions of myself were colored in ways that I am sure shaped future decisions and paved the way for any number of successes and failures.

As you age does your taste in wine change?

That was the question I posed on a Facebook page two months ago. I have been thinking about it for some time now, and doing active research.

In my life, I have to say, my tastes have ranged all across the board, like waves of appreciation. For a while I would taste all the Bordeaux reds I could get my hands on. And I developed a taste for them. But my diet, which ranges from low to no red meat, really doesn’t complement them. I also was into Rhone reds as well, and again, aside from the occasional spicy chicken on the grill or holiday repast, I found them hard to take on a regular basis. Not that I didn’t like them, it was more that I just didn’t have a lifestyle where these wines fit on a regular basis.

Facticity in Flux

I’m here but I’m not really here. Sipping on all kinds of Italian wine, I have been tripping back and forth between Sicily, Umbria, Marche, Tuscany, Santa Barbara, Mittelmosel and Provence. Who wants to source local when there are so many wonderful experiences in wine? And that has been my week, under cover of long days and nights of working in the field. All good, all healing, but very tired.

Look, we’ve already determined schlepping this or that wine isn’t going to save anyone or make that big of a difference. Or does it? After looking at the mess politicians and bankers, stockbrokers and lawyers have made of this so-called civilized world, maybe slinging wine isn’t such a bad thing.

So what has passed by my palate this week that has really made a difference?

A History of Italian Wine in America from 1977-2012

 

I was waiting in a long, slow line on the freeway for the traffic to pass by an accident on the side of the road. As often happens, everyone was slowing down to gaze at the wreck, which only made the collective crawl slower. But there we were, what can you do?  Behind me, though, there was a car with a driver behind the wheel who was going to get through, if they had to make a new lane. Honking and tailgating, screeching on his brakes while talking on the phone and smoking. All this with only two arms and one very overstimulated and under-exercised brain.  There was nothing we could do but wait for the fools in front of us to peer and move on. There were no cops moving the traffic along; no law, no order. Just the blunt force of humanity creeping ever so slowly towards their destinies.

Along the way I had been slowly digesting a barrage of disparaging remarks I had recently read about the state of the wine business in America. Mostly it went like this, “Everything sucks! I can't get the wine I want. The current system is a dinosaur and needs to be tore down. I want what I want, is that such a big deal?” One can find it regularly on (wine) blogs, and usually from folks who are armchair quarterbacks or who have no idea of the scale of the wine business in this world.

Wetness Protection Program

The picture above is of a window from a Sicilian winemaker's winery to his home. The little hole in the bottom is room enough for a lupara, should anyone be so rash as to violate said Sicilian’s bottaia, or barrel room. Winemaking in Sicily was fraught with all manner of risks, from nature and from the dark heart of man. And still these people of Sicily persevered. Theirs was not an easy life or a glamorous one, but they showed strength and stamina, like their wines. And that is why I love the Sicilians and their wines so very much.

I am currently under the spell of a woman, Tresa. And her wine, the Cerasuolo di Vittoria, a wine that is rare and hard to get. And even harder to find folks who might want to know about it, for they are looking for things they cannot have. In the meantime, there is this wonderful wine, a blend of Nero D’Avola and Frappato, vinified separately and then blended, which is my current crush.

Aglianico Unearthed

Interpreted from recently unearthed sealed documents of possible Jesuit origin found in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples.

In the year 1215, while folks over in England were setting up a pilot for future governments, travelers from another planet arrived on Earth. They came not in flying machines but teleported their molecular makeup though time and space and settled in Basilicata. Basilicata was chosen because these beings studied the planet, their new home, and decided it would be out of the way but close to some civilization. The weather was usually good, but sometimes cold. They didn’t object to that. This was to be a seamless transition, for their planet, known as CO, was placing their population all over the galaxies as a supernova would soon destroy their sun.

What’s the ROI on Rosé?

I’m feeling pretty good about it being May and already we are seeing the new crop of rosé wines rolling into the market. But with that joy there is always a little trepidation. You see, rosé is kind of like an in-law. You love to see them when they first arrive, but after awhile you are trying to figure out ways to skooch them out the door.

An Eternity of Mondays

“Your job isn’t who you are,” the little monkey voice inside the head kept chattering. Yeah, yeah, heard it all so many times before in a been-there-done-that kind of way. Wave after wave of images roll onto the shores of my short term recall, trying to evoke a response or any sign of life. Only to return back to the abyss of the deep sea of memory. It’s going to be a long night, but when it’s all said and done it’ll be another Monday.