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Guest commentary by Beatrice Russo

What is it about old people? IWG comes up to me other day and says, “Uh, you know you haven’t sent in a blog posting since middle of August?” Uh, gee, I didn’t know it was my job. Hey, Unc, nobody cares about your blog. Got it? And he comes right back, “Uh, so I guess you didn’t have a good time in France?” Oh so, that’s the game you be playin?

So he’s all laid out before the TV waiting for Ken Burns to tell him how The War ended. And he’s been that way every night. Never knew he was such a history buff.

And then during a break he says he’s thinking of moving to Chicago. What? Says there’s some action up there with something going on, money, position; other side of the hill it sounds like to me. He is one tripped out dude, and I can’t believe he lets me post this.

So, France was cool. I had just watched Antonioni’s L’Avventura, so it all influenced me a bunch. Monica Vitti, what an actor. She nailed that certain period in one’s life when there just needs to be a direction and all there seems to be is one endless drama after another. I can relate to it, but not right now. Life is good.

Drew (Ziff) and his new restaurant, going well. He has me cataloguing new wines coming in. Getting ready for the opening. And he has brought on board Brandan, who reminds me of IWG’s son, Rafa. Brandan came from a very cool place, York Street, I even thought of wanting to work there once. But no way am I jumping, now that I have a steady job that I like.

IWG dragged me around one day in France. We left real early and headed down to a place in the south of France, Grasse. He’s all Jumanji about aromas lately. He has this 24 page book he has made with smells and their scientific formula names. He goes around saying things like, warm essence of musk and bergamot, things like that. Kinda creepy, but then when we taste a wine and one of the descriptions matches the nose, I’m like, wow, this is cool. So, I forgive him.


Anyway we drove so long it seemed we were almost going to Italy (I wish). But we get to this town and he goes to some building that has this real scientific look to it. Find out it’s a perfume school and he is there to visit an old friend who teaches there. They make scents for all kinds of things, perfumes, nail polish, soaps, everything it seems, except wine. What? The friend says they even make vegetable based scents to “enhance” the aroma and flavor of wine. No way. Those French folks, they are a crafty lot.

A nice lunch and a pale rosé from the area, the two of them go off into a lab afterwards and I excuse myself to go walking the town. The place does have an unusual scent to it, like a closet I once walked into, a friend’s grandmother who asked me to put a hat box on the top shelf. Just like her closet, all kinds of musty, musky, dusty, flowery, totally overwhelming scene.


It got me to thinking about my mother and dad and my twin and for a moment in the sun, in the south of France, I allowed myself a moment of regret and pity. But I say to myself, I am well, I have work, people like me. I am young; I have my whole life before me. This will pass. And it does.

Later that night after we get back to the chateau there is a bottle or two of unusual liqueurs. IWG goes for the absinthe, but I spy some flowery looking bottle that looks old. It says Grand Marnier Cuvée du Cent-Cinquantenaire, so I take a pull of it into a snifter. By this time everyone at the table is getting plowed with XO Cognac or some other kind of liqueur, but it’s just a short climb up the stairs to bed. No big deal. So I step outside to listen to the owls and the frogs and stick my nose in the snifter. The whole south of France was inside. It was like being on a ledge overlooking the ocean and all of a sudden fear was so intense that my senses were elevated to a higher degree of receptivity. That’s what I must do with this sommelier business.


Nothing above me, nothing below me, so I leap off.
Something I read in one of IWG’s old hippy paperbacks.

Brunello in Bergerac

Something that I’ve been thinking about since my trip to France last week. First, this proviso: France is one of the top countries in the world for food, for wine, for cheese, for bread. So let it not be misunderstood that I don’t like French products, culture, etc., because they are a lot closer to the Italian experience than, say, China or India. OK?

One night we were sitting around the hearth with a simple meal. There was cheese, there was a little chicken, there was bread, there was wine. We started with a Bordeaux Supérieur. A nice wine, good flavors, nothing improper about it. We finished the bottle and the owner of the chateau went down to the cave and brought back a bottle of Brunello. By this time we were on the cheese course and pretty much finished with the big meal.

We opened the Brunello, a 2001, and decanted it. Gave it a 10 minute period of adjustment. And dove into it.


About an hour or so later when were well into Cognac, I got to thinking about it. Now this is strictly a personal take. My view and nothing more. A light went off inside, an ah-ha moment. Now I get it, now I understand why people are so intimidated by Italian wine. It’s really, really complicated. It isn’t simple. It’s always changing. You can’t go from one region to other without scores of new grape varieties ending up in the bottle or the carafe on the table. It is difficult.

Like the Italian kitchen. The way they cook in Valle d’Aosta differs from the way they cook in Sicily. Enormously . It ain't all spaghetti and meatballs. Duh. But wait, what is the message pounded year after year; from the Lady and the Tramp café love scene to I love Lucy grape stomps, to the Soprano’s. The message: Italy is this. Meatballs, wicker and goomba's.


Is that Italy? Really?

Well, it just ain’t so. Italy, wine, food and culture, isn’t some cookie cutter representation. It isn’t monolithic and sometimes it isn’t pretty. But it is a work in progress. And for folks who like change and the differences, it is a Holy Land of wine and food. Not to say France is below par, not at all. But for a certain temperament, say mine, Italy resonates so deliciously within me that, even though it is complicated and unpredictable, it fits. Perfectly.

So how does that play into the American landscape? The answer is I don’t know. I do know there are people in Midland who understand what I am talking about, because I have talked with them till late at night about this. And they are infinitely more frustrated than the average Italian restaurateur in Queens or Brooklyn. This I know. But Midland doesn’t present itself as the cutting edge of culture (and don’t we all know that now after these past few years).

My interest is in what places like Birmingham, AL, or Novato, CA, or White Plains, NY or Snohomish, WA think and do, and are showing in their cultural evolution and development in that they are integrating some Italian-ness into their daily lives. It might just be a great espresso or a home made mozzarella. It might be a gelato that rivals Sicily or Venezia, or it might be that they just like living a lifestyle that resembles somewhere on the Italian peninsula. This is the vision I had, sitting inside a 400 year old chateau, sipping on a Brunello, in Bergerac.


Pass the passito.

Random Thoughts at Week's End

I’m staring at a set in the wine section and this old man calls out to me. “How did I get here?” He’s trapped on a label of a Tuscan wine.

He’s hovering around the Tuscan section, but he should be happy. He landed in Austin, Texas and someone will think it’s cool and wierd enough to pick up. There’s a lot of that in Austin. And lots of wealth. Welcome home.
After traveling around France for a week or so, staying far from urban centers and deep in the country, I am happy that owls still shriek at night and bull frogs still bellow into the early morning.

The natural life – a true break from the day to day work of making the world turn.

Yeah, yeah, no one cares about my blog or your blog or Myanmar or Ahmadinejad .

Meanwhile, all the containers are lined up – wine is on its way. Here come the harvests of ’03,’04 and ’05.

Kicking Back in Perigord

We were still a few days off from the beginning of harvest. Based in Bergerac for the remainder of the trip, it gave us a good jumping off point to explore nearby areas, St. Emilion, Monbazillac and Perigord. Friends who own a tower invited us over for lunch, commencing at the Perigueux market. And while the grapes were still a few days away, fruits and veggies, and the endless foie gras, were plentiful. The only thing I lacked was a back scratcher. But I improvised.

Actually the back went out right about then, so mobility was limited to a slower pace. No big deal, although 10 days later this is getting a bit tiresome. Meh.

So a short display of pictures I like. Anybody who cares to can go to my Webshots slideshow to see the whole shooting match.

The raspberries. Right behind the oyster counter.

Ever had an oyster with a Kir and a raspberry chaser?

Two little goats. Part of my aroma-vacation. Smelled like an old David Bruce Pinot Noir from the 1970’s.
I like the little guy on the left, he was assertive, in the game. Could use some salespeople like him.

Baby ducks. On a farm called a Ferme Auberge. Similar to an Italian Agriturismo, a Ferme Auberge must produce a large amount of what it serves right there on the farm. The one we went to, Ferme-Biorne, was country cooking at its best. More on the farm and the food here.

The little rabbits we found at the market in Perigueux. The Ferme Auberge also raised the little creatures and they were tasty!

And that’s how Cyrano spent the weekend, a week or so ago, in under 300 words.

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.