Lone Star Beer, Hill Country BBQ and Super Friulan Red in Austin, Texas

Alessandra Dorigo at J.Mueller's in Austin

If you spend enough time on the wine trail, eventually the circle of life brings you back around. So it was this week as I headed to Austin to meet up with Moxy Castro and Alessandra Dorigo. “You might have heard of Alessandra’s family. They make wine in Friuli,” was Moxy’s comment to me. Sure enough, not only had I heard of them, but sold the wine in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Even went to visit the family once in Buttrio in 1990.

So when I came across Moxy and Alessandra in Austin this week, I pulled out a photo I took (below) of a younger Alessandra with her parents, Girolamo and Rosetta. “I remember you,” Alessandra said. It was a night more than one of us remembered.

Do you know how to drink a glass of wine?

Ok, I'm a sucker for moving pictures. And the Italians have been a huge influence in my life, from DeSica to Rossellini, Antonioni to Fellini, Bertolucci to Pasolini, to the myriad of all the other wonderful film makers the country has produced. The Tasca d'Almerita estate  in Sicily also loves moving pictures and they have had a short video produced which I find an enthralling and beautiful visual poem. Please enjoy and if you like what they are doing, go HERE and look over the 2012 video contest finalists and the nine Finalists in Wine Spectator's Sixth Annual Video Contest. The Tasca video in the finals, Sound of Wine, isn’t the one above, but it is also visually and mellifluously gorgeous.They've got my vote (voting ends Sunday, Sept 16).

With things in the Italian wine business, it isn’t always about the sell and it isn’t always about the hype. And in wine and film alike, there should always be room for art and music and beauty..

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

wine blog +  Italian wine blog + Italy W

2012 Piemonte vintage notes from Chiara Soldati of La Scolca

In preparing for my harvest trip next month to Piemonte and Toscana, I have been in contact with friends, old and new. One friend, Chiara Soldati, whose family wine I have represented since 1983, the La Scolca estate, sent this email early this morning. I can hardly wait till we go and visit the property and taste the wines on location. For the record, I have never been to La Scolca, but this year I wouldn’t miss it for the world. In the meantime, here are a few words of encouragement from Chiara.

Good Morning,

I’m pleased to send you here attached the information about 2012 harvest at La Scolca. We started on 7th September and I’m pleased to update about the most important moments of our harvest.

The 2012 vintage at La Scolca started two weeks in advance compared to the average of recent years, with a high quality production. After a hot and dry summer which resulted in an advance of the grape harvest of about a month, compared to 30 years ago.

Forward, not Backward

Photo by Christopher Michel

Talk to anyone who is in the vineyard this time of the year and they'll tell you. It's not about planting, not at this time, and it's not about pruning. It's about waiting and looking and praying and picking. And moving forward.

Seems however there are plenty out there who want to leave things the way they are, or if not, complain about how unfair things are. The grapes aren’t listening. They are getting riper. Time to pick.

Years and years ago, so long ago it seems like another lifetime, a teacher of mine drilled into my skull the idea that the future was not going to be the way my parents had envisioned. So I had better start thinking about the way the future might shape up in my life. He recommended a book, Future Shock. That book stirred inside me the possibilities that nothing was going to be like I had or could imagine. And I had very well better get over myself. Sure enough, the author was right.

Italy’s "Other" Coast

With summer vacation now over for most of Italians, the coastal areas are returning to a less frenetic period. There are still almost 4 million Italians on holiday (plus a few lucky Americans), but the high-season prices are down and there are a few secret places I like to go to. Much of the activity is in the vineyards, or back in the cities, where the jobs are and the concentration of population lives and works. This is one of my favorite times to go to the coast and luxuriate in the sensation of the air, sea and land. Sure it’s a little lonely, this time of the year. But the harvest is still going strong. Vegetables are ripening, the grapes are filling up with sugar and the bounty of the sea has less demand on it. Did you know right now that fishing has been slowed if not halted in some areas? According to Coldiretti, in a September 2 release, “Fishing is expected to stop at the beginning of the week including all activities from the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Sea as announced by Coldiretti ImpresaPesca, emphasizing that the provision in force until October 1st will affect the coast from Brindisi to Imperia involving seven regions, while fishing has already stopped since August 6th in the Adriatic from Pesaro to Bari.”

Cock Blogging Saturday: Top 10 posts from O.T.W.T.I.I.

Some blog posts just never go away. the three Ripassos and Seersucker among them. In any event, this is an American holiday and no one is looking at anything much of consequence. So, I am re-purposing these top 10 posts ( of all time, sad isn't it?) from an undisclosed seat in the universe of ideas. Happy holidays to America. And to Italy, welcome back from your month long vacation. Try to get a little work in before the autumn strike season kicks in.

My White Trash Italian Cousins

They are those little secret shames, lurking in our lives. Sometimes they are in our face. Sometimes they dwell in a state of hibernation. They never really go away, no matter how far one may move or if you change phone numbers to get away from them. They always seem to resurface, insinuating themselves into your life. We all have them, those white trash Italian cousins.

L'abbandonato

Where has everybody gone? They were here all month, the patter of feet above my hot particles, constantly, back and forth; running, dragging, shuffling, hopping. Now all I feel is the drone of the tractor with the rake attachment, straightening up my bumps and ruts, removing the little vagrant pieces of seaweed and candy wrappers. Is August over already?

Indulgence or Sustenance?

Americans can be so influenced by the oddest junctions between aspiration and sensibility. A retail friend was lamenting that this summer all of his big buyers, his “whales,” had disappeared. “They can go wherever they want for three months. They have the money to live anywhere and do their business from the clouds.” His business in the over-$100-a-bottle business was lagging. Meanwhile, I made him a sweet deal on a Morellino that tastes good and even has great press (91 from the Advocate’s Galloni). He can sell it for $10, half of the regular retail ($20) and make money, and he’ll offer a great product to folks who aren’t whales, maybe even people for whom wine actually sustains rather than indulging their egos.

Not Yet

A few months ago it started to get to me. 2012 has been a challenging year in many respects. But after five years and 900 blog posts, I've kept going. Maybe it’s all vanity. I cannot plunge into that pool. What I do know is this: I have met a whole new world of folk in these past five years, and I’m not sure I would have if I hadn’t bled these words and pictures onto this place, all these days, weeks and months. So I am not done. Not yet.

Young Rebel Creamy Soft Porn Wine Marketing = Uncontrollably Juicy Italian

From the "My Way or the (Appian) High Way" dept.

"calling all cornuti"

Just when you thought wine marketers couldn’t find any further contumely avenues, they hand you a lap dance in the middle of the Via Appia. In the current iteration Italy has been ravaged with an eno-anomalism, named “if you see kay.” Cute, eh? Yeah man, the first time I heard it when I was a teenager it really got my attention, way back in, say, ’69.

I thought someone was blowing sunshine and then I scratched a little online and found the potation. Drink in some of the scintillating copy (reproduced below, verbatim, with commentary, from the website), no doubt dreamt up by a marketer who seemed to be otherwise engrossed watching HBO's Taxicab Confessions.

From the website, a prinked procession to push the timeless palliative. Marketing, in the guise of Young Rebel Creamy Soft Porn:

Ogni cosa è illuminata

It was like any other day. A little longer than most, perhaps. As I rose at 5:00 AM to drive 200 miles to work in Shreveport, I packed lightly and figured it would be a day filled with appointments into the evening, with the next day day to drive back slowly, no rush.

The drive to Shreveport was uneventful, save for an angry Texas pickup truck driver, somewhere around Marshall, who didn’t like that I was driving in the lane he wanted to come into from the ramp. I wasn’t passing and was in the right place. But he thought differently, waggled his middle finger as he roared around me in a flurry of smoke and rage. An apt farewell from Texas, I reckoned.

Teaching an old DOCG new tricks

Last week in San Francisco I presented a piece to a group at the Society of Wine Educators conference. Called Deconstructing DOCG, it was an effort to offer a path from the past to the present (and possibly leading to the future) regarding the changes that are coming to Italian wine laws as they assimilate into the greater European Union discipline.

Anyone who peruses the pages of On the Wine Trail in Italy know I have been a bit obsessed with noting the changes in Italian wine laws. Here is the text from the talk. It was accompanied by a loosely related PowerPoint presentation (by the way, I am not a fan of PowerPoint, except to offer visual markers that relate to something I am talking about). It was accompanied by a tasting of four of the five original DOCG's awarded back in the 1980's. In any case, the talk seemed to be a success (aided by lubrication from Brunello, Barolo and Co.) and I am including it. Here goes:

Making the Connection

With all the stuff that is thrown at most of us on a daily basis, it seems to be getting harder to have those singular moments where the outside world isn’t always crashing in. Our digital diet has become super-sized, what with the access to information on the internet and all the daily doses of blogs, social media, email, and work that keeps us staring at these little screens. Our monkey brain is in control, churning out words and thoughts and desires and needs. Those darn needs.

Meanwhile our Italian counterparts, many of them, have unplugged and are at the beach. I envy them this time of the year, with long slow mornings, a leisurely caffe, a sun and a swim and then maybe a roll around town or the island. Then lunch and maybe a nap, followed by maybe another sun and swim working up the appetite for dinner. But dinner is hours away, no need to rush it. After all, it’s August, this is the time to log-off and recharge. Time to re-connect.

You don’t need an island or even a beach, although it is much easier and pleasurable. What one really needs is the ability to quiet the mind, stop the chatter and let the inessential crap float away.

Sanctuary for the Soul

Twelve years ago at this time, life was a living hell. The summer was unrelentingly hot; my wife’s disease was entering its final stages and the two major wineries I was representing were incontrovertibly out of touch with the market. There was little or no respite, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. No retreat, no sanctuary. The fury of hell, with heat, disease and ignorance. A perfect trifecta for misery.

Twelve years later, that hell is not as acute, but the days are not without their challenges. Still we are enduring triple digit temperatures. There are challenges in my family orbit regarding health issues, and my dear Italians are giving us a break for the time. It is after all, the beginning of August. So for the next month, we are unencumbered, free as a bird. As long as we don’t fly too close to the sun.

In a moment of diversion, I came upon a lovely photo project, “Into the Silence”, by the Sicilian, Carlo Bevilacqua. In some of the more remote corners of the world, and especially Italy, Bevilacqua has lived and photographed folks who choose to live a simpler life of solitude.