L'Odore Del Tuo Raspare

I’m asleep, dreaming about being trapped in a room full of snakes (triggered by a glass of absinthe?). In the distance, outside, in the dark, a tractor is going up and down the rows of vines, harvesting the white grapes. In the afternoon it had rained and the owner of the chateau was worried. The approach of the harvester wakes me. It smells musty, like rancid heather and ancient, dusty ambergris. It’s 5:30 AM. Again.

A week earlier I was stuffed into a plane to cross over to France, excited about visiting the planet of Aroma. On the plane, a young man in dirty jeans sat next to me. He reeked of mustard, sweat and semen. My nose isn’t my best friend on a plane. I took off my seat belt and headed into the restroom, where I thrust water into my nostrils to wash out the arôme de foutre.


A glass of cheap Bordeaux, an Ambien and 25mg of a generic antihistamine, that’s my “formule”. Six hours later I wake up ready to land in Paris.

I have taken my nose on vacation. The rest of me doesn’t want to be here. Part of me wants to stay home and look after family matters, of which I can do nothing about. Another part of me just wants water, a beach and a platter of grilled langosta. Not this time.

The walk to the rental car. In the airport terminal there lingers the aroma of cigarettes, dark Turkish. Resin, patchouli, more sweat, this time from Africa, paste wax, silicon spray and burnt crust.

Once in the parking lot, the pavement, a mixture of tar and concrete, wet from a recent morning rain, welcomed me to the earth of France with a coppery, rust-like greeting. Once at the counter, the cultures of people from three continents helped me to pick up my car. The European smelled like butter and violets, the Asian reminded me of frankincense and pork brisket and the African smelled of starched cotton, and pine that had marinated in an ant pile.

On the road to Beaune I find an Autogrill. Hoping for un café Italien, I get a soppy mass of dank, dark bitterness.


A moment in Beaune, and back to the road, across the massive central of the country. France, a country as large as Texas. And we are driving down it, across it, over it and, eventually, back to where we started.


Along the way a short stop in a little run down hotel with a restaurant on the second floor. The aromas of burgundy wine steeped in an oven with lamb and veal. Ripe local cheeses, perfume from an elderly lady, and the smell of the dust of baking flour, a thin sheet of mist that settles on everything. It is invisible, but, like scent, is very present. A moment with a bottle of rosé wine, a plate of string beans in butter and olive oil, like my grandmother used to make when I was the only one at the house. I used to ask her, “Nonna, why butter and oil?” She would say, “So we can always remember the times when we can afford both butter and olive oil.” This would be a short long trip across the plane of the country we were now exploring, this planet of perfume and forests, butter and duck fat, Pinot Noir and Merlot.

As mentioned two weeks ago, time to take some deep breaths. And what a place, where all the aromas and smells one could imaging are gathered in this confluence of aromatic ecstasy. A chunk of bread, a slice of cheese and a row of lavender. Did you notice I didn’t mention wine? Not yet. Remember? We've just started harvest.

Coup de Gras

Dale is doing his supertrooper thing, busy ganging up all the local sommelier talent for his latest venture.

Ziff, meanwhile, has been taking pleasure in the delights of the French countryside during the harvest season.

Foie gras entier de canard, Confit ou magret sauce périgueux, cabécou du Périgord.

Grapes, strawberries, raspberries.

Cahors, cognac, absinthe.

The plat thickens here in the enoblogosphere.

I'll Be Seeing You

Beatrice , Arthur and I will be taking some time off, convinced it is time to take some deep breaths of fresh air.

When the ship returns, so shall we.

Mortadella, Portobello, Mozzarella

At the Italian buffet today, Francesco had lots of good offerings. Andrea asked the server about the mushroom that was offered. "What is it?” he asked, "Porcini?"

The server said "No, Mortadella."

"Are you sure?” IWG asked. "It looks more like Portobello."

"We call it Mortadella in Spain." the server responded.

“What do you call the meat that looks like Baloney?” Andrea asked?

The server replied, “Mozzarella.”

Guards! seize him!

Click on image to enlarge

The 300

Beatrice and Arthur challenged me to write something in 300 words or less; a length that wouldn’t lose their generation. I have been on the road, working out of hotel rooms, long hours. So that could be easier than usual.

Today I see many new faces in the wine scene. Young men and women just starting out on wine trail, needing to learn about wine. They are moving through the stages of wine faster than previous generations. What’s that mean? Usually one would start out with fruity or sweet wines, Riesling or a fruity Zinfandel, moving on to Beaujolais and then on the Cabernet and then on to Burgundy. Something like that. But in a time span of maybe 5-15 years. Now we have youth in the 20’s who say, great, Napa Valley Cabernet, what's next? For me that is a revelation. Also, these newborns aren’t afraid of the $20 price tag. Hey, they are driving BMW 3 series and plunking down payments on urban loft spaces. They are expecting the good life. Minor concern is they cycle through the process so fast they keep sailing right out through the exit-chute. Then we are left with the next cycle of bambini and the process of exciting, educating and keeping them engaged in this profession.

What can help? Travel, tasting and talking to different folks in their world of wine. When you see that you belong to a small global community of like-minded people whom you can have friendships with, it makes up for perhaps not having the biggest paycheck in your peer group. Challenging yourself to the mastery of something is an honorable endeavor. I stand along the trail with my pitons and haul bags, ready to help any and all, on their way up the summit.

Dream Storyboard

It isn’t about Italy. It isn’t about wine. And what trail have you been on? Those were the words that came hurtling at me like so many spears in the sky, blotting out the light, bringing on the darkness. If my eyes hadn’t already been closed. And if I hadn’t already been asleep for some time.

Today’s post isn’t so much about words as it is about images from a dream.

Pictures to follow, view on...

Tocai and Tilapia

I had lunch the other day with pal Sam who has been traveling all summer. France, Colorado, Seattle, Costa Rica, Florida, San Sebastian, South Carolina. I’m exhausted just thinking about the packing.

I’m one of those people that take two days to pack for a three day trip. I labor. No, I sweat blood over every thing I put into a suitcase. I have another pal, Hank, who goes away for three months at a time. Sri Lanka, India, Cambodia, China, Italy, another one with endless wanderlust. He packs everything in a little carry-on. A great role model, but still it baffles me.

How did I get onto the subject of packing?

I had an email from Lewis Cutillo, who read about my family and their talent with sewing machines. Lewis works for Bontoni, an artisanal shoe company in the Marche. The Marche, where my friend Hank’s family is from and where he spent two months (with that little carry-on.) Near Hank’s family village of Fermo is another hilltop town called Montegranaro. It seems that's where Bontoni and a few other shoe making dynasties live. Montegranaro is to shoe makers like Casalnuovo is to tailors – a Mecca.

Shoes – a weakness of mine passed on from my father’s father’s father and on to my son. We share the same shoe size, so he often covets and gets shoes that I relinquish.

Luxury stuff. Suits, shoes and wine. Throw in travel, a good car or two, and anything else that strikes your fancy, and we are starting to see a picture develop in the tray.


Sam has taken on the task of mentoring the affluent and successful in his neighborhood. And for what purpose? It seems that Sam is an action model of how to live, for these two Ferrari families. Over achievers who work hard, play hard, make a ton of money and spend it too. But they have no free time. One couple asked Sam to take them to Italy. The caveat was, they only had three days, and needed one to visit the Ferrari factory. Excuse me? Someone else needs to be thrown out of the plane. This time it would from be their very own Hawker or Gulfstream though.

OK, OK, focus. These folks are wildly successful in channeling millions of dollars in their direction. But they don’t know what or how to appreciate the finer things that money can acquire. So Sam and I, talk it over, over Tocai and Tilapia.

When I was in my 20’s and had very little money, I found a way to feel like whatever I had coming in my direction was of a certain quality. Look, I was making maybe $7-10,000 a year. Maybe. But the food we bought was fresh. It was often organic. We’re talking 30+ years ago folks (California, not Texas, much easier on the west coast than in the south west). There was a Trader Joe's down the street, and even though Charles Shaw was yet to be reinvented, one could easily get a Two Buck Chinon. OK, so my cars weren’t so wonderful. A Corvair and a Ford Falcon station wagon. I could take the heads off the Ford's engine block and have them ground and put them back on. And the Corvair was a bit sporty, and now so very collectable.

And clothes, hmm. Well, I did know where to find gently worn threads. I worked at nights in Hollywood, so I must have passed muster somehow. Looking back, I was treading much lighter on the earth than now.


We were a family of four living in a little California cottage. I measured it on the outside, 20 feet by 20 feet. That would be 400 square feet. Today it is worth $250,000. The simple truth was, we felt the quality of our life wasn’t too bad. Were we poor? Yes by some government standards. But we had fresh eggs and great milk and wonderful veggies (we were also vegetarian at the time- so no meat = less contribution to the then unknown global warming crisis looming in the future). It was a simple life.

Did we want more? Yes. But it wasn’t something gnawing away like I see in so many folks today, young and old, rich and poor. It seems that if you’ve made it or not, there is always something more. Like Hank says, if you’re worth $10 million, you look at the guy that has $20 million and wonder how he got so lucky. So we have these up and coming young professionals, wanting the house, the cars, the wife, the husband, the lover, the nanny, the personal shopper and the therapist.


And then you have the guy with the $20 million and he doesn’t know which wine to drink (or collect), where in Italy to go ( besides the Ferrari factory), what to order at Bice or Babbo, or why he should be requesting mozzarella di bufala on his thin crust Napolitana style pizza. Isaia or Kiton? Bontoni or Area Forte? Panarea or Porto Cervo? Supertuscan or Silver Oak? A real quandary.

My little 400 square foot bungalow is now written up in architecture magazines. Seems folks spend hundreds of thousands for some property way north and west of Taos and want to put up something small, like a glorified fishing cabin. And now the small is becoming upscale. Tiny is the new big. As long as you don’t have to abandon your McMansion in the safety of your personal bubble, back home.

There are plenty of folks out there who want someone like a Sam to teach them about roasting coffee and the difference between full city and city plus. Or helping them write a book about their life. But first they have to get a life with some meaning. And they aren't going to get it in three days or less.

Goose Summer

You’re on a plane and as it taxis out to the runway a little girl starts screaming, at the top of her lungs. Shrieks fill the cabin, heads turn, and yet the child continues to let out a howl. Death by a thousand cuts. We are witnessing the first of three tantrums in a plane. The wine business is an adventure. The wine business is elegant. The wine business is romantic. How can I get off this plane?

While the little she-devil wailed, mommy dearest kept repeating her failed mantra, “Use your inside voice, Haley.” Had we all fallen through a trap door into some Bizzaro-Montessori-gone-south experiment in parenting? Please bring us all a collective pair of tantrum-cancelling earphones. Snakes on a plane.

We decided instead to open the hatch and throw the child and her mother out. A young Army paratrooper on leave volunteered an extra chute for the pair. It was a little windy and we lost some papers and a laptop or two, but afterwards all the remaining kids were good, and all the parents learned some new skills, quickly.


Later, I witnessed one of those wonderful scenes one sometimes finds in the wine business. That would be people interested in learning about wine from each other. The laptop is the modern day campfire, we tell stories about vineyards and wines around it. We indoctrinate young people to come into the trade. We show them exotic places and underground caverns, measureless to man. Yeah, the wine trade is one big giant Xanadu, with the requisite vow of poverty.


The other day I broke out about 60 or so bottles of wine for a journalist. Standing room only, all the seats on this hopeful plane of press were filled. The Pinot Noir phenom- we tasted 8-10 of them- some were pricey- $35-ish. For that price, if an Italian wine isn’t perfect we hear it all the way back to 1982. "But they don’t make enough Pinot Noir," which is usually followed by the invocation, “and we need all we can get.” Yeah, I heard that spun back in the 90’s with Merlot. There is about to be a lot of broken golden goose eggs, folks.


The dog days of summer. Retailers in these parts have a floor tax. Translation: “We aren’t buying.” Things can be challenging in terms of starting anything up until after Labor Day. This is our Ferragosto without the beach, without the table, without the camaraderie of a slow time and a break taken to accommodate for the lull. We have brought in counselors for the sales staff who have to deal with the inertia of the market place (temporary). And still the onslaught continues; we keep seeing more new wines being brought in. The goose is stuffed. Can someone lock the doors now?

Seats forward and tray tables up. Pass the parachutes, please.

The Naked Truth

Click on image to enlarge

I delivered some Italian wine for a recent event here in town. There were some very wealthy people there who didn't realize how lucky they were.

Unbelievably, they presume this game is all about them. But a $115,000 Maserati can't get you a ticket to immortality. Bummer, I mused, for them.

And they were so looking forward to being uber-affluent forever. Meh!
-Arthur

Made to Measure

My grandfather almost 100 years ago-click image to enlarge

I spent the better part of Friday and Saturday at a trunk show in a men’s store, showing Italian wine. Several young men came down from New York to show the latest from Gianluca Isaia, a family of tailors from Casalnuovo, near Naples. I love this line from their web site. “Neapolitan tradition holds that the closer a jacket is cut to the armhole, the more comfortable the fit. Northern manufacturers adopt the attitude of a deeper armhole, ‘for greater comfort’, as they do not have the tailoring skills to emulate the comfort achieved by a true southern tailor.”

These days, respect for the Southern Italian tailor eclipses the work of the Southern Italian winemaker. When one plunks down $3,000-8,000 for a suit, considered the best in the world, it makes me happy and sad. Happy for the respect the tailor has gotten for their artistry, sad for the winemaker who still has far to go to get that level of respect and price. It will come, but probably not in my lifetime.


My family, on both sides, started out by working with their hands. My mother’s mother was an amazing seamstress in her youth, working in Dallas in the days when Neiman-Marcus had just started up. She could do a perfect blind stitch by hand, my aunt once told me. I know she could roll dough for the casalinga (home made) pasta with a broom handle and it always came out perfectly round. She and the family she came from were artistic and artisans in many ways.

My grandfather and father as the business grew-click image to enlarge

My father’s father also came from similar beginnings. His father was a wholesale leather merchant. And the sons learned to make shoes, but not just any shoes. And business, but not just any business. When he first moved to Dallas 100 years ago, setting up shop at St. Paul and Pacific streets (now a gazillion story building for the corporate folks), he would work many hours at the machinery. By the time my father was a young man, my grandfather had learned the way of business, and hired workers, learned to delegate and watch the cash. He did well, retiring at the age of 50 and living for 47 years in retirement. But he learned the art of business, did not like to work the heavy machinery all his life. When my father went into that field, he worked as a sign of respect to his father, in the shop, but he hated every moment of it. He wanted to be an artist too, an actor or a musician. He never was able to realize his dream in that way.

They lived well, for theirs was a time when the American dream was alive and well. And they dressed well, like any respectable Italian, southern or northern. I always had a respect for fine clothes, though in the 1970’s I abandoned sartorial splendor for a more comfortable, tribal Aquarian image. It lasted longer than my family cared for, I am sure, but as soon as I started going to Italy for the wine business and visited wineries near clothing manufacturers, the light turned back on inside. We could have our Montepulciano d’Abruzzo with Brioni, our Attolini with Agliancio. The tailors loved to barter; wine was as expensive for them as their suits were to us.

Now I am not overly interested in image or keeping up with the styles from Paris or Milan. But I do have a sense of responsibility to measure up to my cultural expectations of suiting up. Thankfully, in the corporate world, the suit is back, as is the tie, and the French cuff, and cufflinks, and leather. And so, when I looked into the trunk on Saturday, with the bolts of fabric so masterfully woven in Southern Italy, it didn’t take more than a night to sleep on it to decide to pick a fabric out of the trunk and order up a suit of it.


Winemaking and wine marketing is very much like the fashion business. The fashions of flavors ebb and flow as do the lapels and hemlines. But well-made is timeless. A great tie or suit will look good 5 or 10 (dare I say 20?) years from the time it was made for. Wine, well made, can go down the road too, and be a wonderful reward for the patience one put into keeping it. And while one can wear a suit many times, one can only drink that wine once. Unless one buys a case or two of it.

The boot maker and the tailor inside my bones recognizes this artistry and will pay for it. Now, for the day when people will look at the wines from around Naples (or how about all of Italy?), and see them measuring up in the same way, as they do a suit from Kiton or Isaia.

Hurricane Giorgio

While I was otherwise occupied with my flights of fancy, this week was a return to the foxholes and corridors of the tradeways. From Italy, we have new arrivals, getting here a little earlier than expected. They get bonused to move the ships ahead ( and out of the way) of the latest hurricane. These barely made it.

Looking over a recent special order for a client, it was like an heirloom seed catalog. You know, when the winter has approached and it is dark and cold outside and all one can think about is the spring. So one starts looking at seeds. Sunflowers, squash, tomatoes. But here we are in the midst of that time, the earth is bursting with flavor.

Today these eno-immigrants who have shown up at our door and have asked for asylum.

Bonarda, Ciliegiolo, Gaglioppo, Granaccia, Grechetto, Greco, Mantonico, Marzemino, Nosiola.

Not a Chardonnay or Cabernet in the bunch. Nowhere is Sangiovese or Pinot Grigio to be found. Pinot Nero is absent along with Merlot. It’s just us indigenous ones today.

No tired, no weak; just ready and willing to spill their blood on foreign soil. We're still talking about wine, folks.

The wines hail from Lombardia, Trento, Liguria, Umbria and Calabria. I am not going to describe these grapes or these wines, there are resources for that already. Two books, Wines of Italy by Patricia Guy and Wines, Grapes and Vines, by Jancis Robinson are the sources I go to read about these grapes. So have at it if you wish.

Meanwhile, I have the next few days with the folks that bring you Armani, Brioni, Kiton and their ilk. They who must know about wine, that sort of thing.

I'm ready for my close-up Mr. De Mille.

The Meltdown

Annabella and her friend Lily were waiting for us at the airport. A small car, but ample enough for the four of us with our carry on bags. I had met Lily when she was married to Roberto. That was several years back at Vinitaly. They seemed happy enough then.

Lily was somewhere between 38 and 42, a dangerous time for an Italian woman, married or divorced. She can become anxious and unsettled, like a wild cat in a cage. If married, her husband’s friends can be suspect. If divorced her ex-husband’s friends can be considered provocateurs. Fear, superstition and uncertainty, with life and the future looming ahead, all add up to a powder keg of tension and explosive emotions. Perilous times.

“The first summer a newly divorced Italian woman spends is a test of how she will spend the rest of her life,” a saying goes. Here on Pantelleria she would be removed from the scrutiny of the local people who know her in Sicily. But her inner sentinel would still be on guard. For now it appeared her primary goal was getting as tan as she had been when she first blossomed into a woman at 16.


The airport in Trapani was unavailable for landing. Umberto had a friend in the Italian military, so he called ahead to Pantelleria for the unscheduled landing. The airport in Pantelleria is busier in August than most of the year, but it wasn’t really a problem of traffic. As the private plane touched down the temperature reading outside was 38°C. It was 10:00 AM.

A short drive to the resort went smoothly enough. A little idle chatter and gossip, nothing to sink the teeth into yet. Lily was a student of music and Marsala, her father was a winemaker, mother an opera singer. We were going to taste some of his older wines along with a few others from some of the luminary winemakers of the region. Marco de Bartoli was up in Bukkuram. Salvatore Murana was harvesting his Zibibbo at Mueggen. Donnafugata’s Ben Ryè was being harvested and taken over to Khamma Fuori. So at once a busy time for some, and a time of relaxation for others. And at night everyone would gather and eat and drink and enjoy each others company.

This time of the year they don’t do too many primi's or secondi’s. But being Sicily there was an abundance of dolci; in liquid, in solid and in other guises.


And the cards games. Ever since I watched my grandparents playing Scopa or Briscola, I was fascinated with people spending time playing cards. As a young boy I thought it odd that these old people would spend what few remaining moments they had on earth in pursuit of winning a card game. While my grandparents seemed ancient to me I knew somehow that they wouldn’t always remain so. It frightened me for them that they didn’t realize their folly.

Now I see it was a way for them to relax, unwind, stop the daily chores and duties and take a few breaths. Umberto seemed to enjoy playing with Lily. Both of them were alone, and while Umberto always has this sense of self-sufficiency, someone like Lily would be a match against his hard stone; something could ignite.

Lily was in her post meltdown sequence, according to Annabella. Not interested in men, but definitely interested in parts of them. Conflicted, angry, hurt, vulnerable, cautious. A true Sicilian.

The party at Giorgio’s that Friday. I can’t tell you anything about it, I’m sworn to secrecy. I can tell you what we tasted though.

The winesMarco de Bartoli Marsala Superiore Dieci Anni- 10 years in big oak barrels with the Solera method. 50% Grillo, 50% Inzolia

Marco de Bartoli Marsala Vigna la Miccia Cinque Anni- The wine is aged in small oak barrels for 5 years. 50% Grillo, 50 % Inzolia

Marco de Bartoli Vecchio Samperi- 20 years in old barrels. 70% Grillo, 30% Inzolia

Marco de Bartoli Bukkuram Moscato d`Alessandria (Zibibbo) Passito di Pantelleria


Donnafugata’s "Ben Ryè" 2004 Passito di Pantelleria

Salvatore Murana "Mueggen" Moscato di Pantelleria

Lily also brought some of her fathers aged Marsala wines from the 1960-1970 era. Definitely Vecchio, some Superiore, Riserva and one Vergine.


Like the women in our party, the wines were all ages, in all stages of life. Young, middle-aged and elderly.
They all shared a common familiarness. There was an attractiveness that they all had, but in many cases it was like what one feels for one's mother or daughter, or one's sister. Once in a while the lover would appear. But we were in their milieu, their surroundings, their sea. I was just a carefree observer on a short break.