On the brink of a pandemic – how will it affect Italian wine?

Photo from eturbonews.com and Getty images

I was on the phone Friday with an Italian colleague, who asked to remain unidentified, and he sounded worried. “It’s starting here,” he said, his voice shaking. “I’ve cancelled, indefinitely, any trips to mainland China.”

I asked my friend about all the Italians coming to America. We have the Slow Wine Tour already in motion in America, and the James Suckling Wine Tour will be here in my hometown on Wednesday. These are Italians who usually travel freely around the world. Places like Chengdu, Seoul and Tokyo are commonplace visits for many jet-setting Italian wine celebrities, whose wines routinely garner high 90’s scores from the many publications who tout the 100-point system. It’s a familiar 21st century occurrence to be in a Shanghai on Friday and an Austin on Monday.

Where have they been? Where are they going? Is it safe to be exposed to them?

Wine Tariffs Update

We’re sure to hear more about this in the coming months – it’s far from over. And there is a lot of emotion over this subject. I once heard Bucky Fuller say in front of a group, “You put all the politicians in a spaceship for a trip around the sun, and in six months, nobody would notice they’re gone. You put all the farmers in that spaceship instead, and in six months, we all starve.”

Wine isn’t essential for life. But for wine growers, it is. They are being punished, along with all the folks along the supply chain.

An Abruzzo Journey ~ Between the Tranquil and the Active

There is this reoccurring dream, one that has happened, even in waking hours, that sometimes I cannot distinguish between the two. This is happening more and more these days, as the reality of life becomes blurred between the tranquil and the active. It’s as if the meaning of life has swelled from merely what one does to also include one’s fanciful musings. As when we were children, so now, one may revisit that state of being, if only for a brief moment. And that is the way it is for this one when it comes to remembering Abruzzo. What was visible and what was envisioned?

Abruzzo was where I saw the birth of the golden age of Italian wine up front and personal. It is where I wandered vineyards and cellars, and talked to the old people and ate their roasted meats and drank their luscious, rich, generous red wines. It was heaven on earth and it remains a Valhalla to this wanderer, for there is so much for the mind and the body, the heart, the soul, and the eyes and the ears. And for those who thirst and hunger for the unfeigned.

“Wine? I don’t care about scores, competitions mean nothing to me and I don’t collect anything!”

– The Gen Z interview

While writing a recent story for the paper, I sat at a coffee shop and scribbled. An apparition of a  person hovering nearby saw that I had a copy of a wine magazine and asked me what I was reading. Being the quintessential introvert, I squirmed. And then I showed it to her. She could have been young enough to be my granddaughter, if I’d had one. “Last year I turned 21,” she said, and have been thinking about wine and alcohol. I had no idea they had magazines about wine!”

I was on a deadline and was pressed to finish the piece, which had nothing to do with the magazine. So, I told her I was working on something else and could I send her some interview questions. We’d earlier determined that we had mutual acquaintances and thus there would be no risk from exchanging emails. “I don’t check my email that often,” she said, “but text me when you do, so I can pull them up.” And with that I finished my flat white, she disappeared, and I boogied out the door to my next appointment.