Friday, August 22, 2008

Bad Waiter Dreams

Over the past week I have traveled the equivalent of halfway across the country, never to set foot outside of Texas. In a car, in the heat, in thunderstorms that shook our windows and in the cool afterglow of a cold front.I have slept in different beds in different cities, some better than others, but none as good as the one back home. I have lost my voice, my temper and my way. We have found new friends, new wines and new opportunities. And all through this week the undercurrent has been that no matter how far you travel, you still must start out every morning as though the past never happened. Because that is the way of the street in the wine business. There is always some new buck who thinks you don’t know a thing, and there are the old sods who don’t give a damn. There are managers who are just trying to keep the lights on and could not be as concerned with how Cusumano is spelled or if a wayward Chianti slipped into the New World wine category on their list. They will hate you for pointing it out and fight you for wanting to help them look better if you don’t find a way to make it their idea. And along the way, when the day is done and you put your head on the pillow, when you sleep, these are some of the dreams that could inhabit your sleeping ways.

The Dreams

You’ve been traveling all day across the flatland of Texas going from Dallas to Houston and your mouth is dry. You stop to get a soda and a snack. The bathroom is flooded and a man with a harmonica points you to use the handicapped bathroom down the hall. Along the way a woman walks by with a fresh pie and winks at you. The aroma of the baked peaches stirs memories of a Riesling tasting you had earlier in the week in Austin. You walk into the bathroom and people are there with party hats and noisemakers and a sign that says “Happy 60th Joe.”

You are late for a flight and they take you to a special military plane to get you to your appointment. Along the way, someone tells you to don a parachute and tie a special belt to your waist. A man hands you a bunch of fliers, which look like wine list proposals. You look at them as the plane lunges 1000 feet downward. A young girl in ice skates asks you to hold her hand as she recites her grandmothers’ recipes for spaghetti and meatballs. You grab her and head for the exit looking to escape from the plane which is crashing. As the parachute opens you look up into the folds of it and it looks like the inside of a wicker bottle of Chianti.

You have been walking the streets of a large city all day, talking to customers, looking for sales. In your haste to come to the city you haven’t made a hotel reservation, so you take your suitcase with you. Along the way someone opens it up and buys a white shirt you had folded inside. They ask you if it is Egyptian cotton or American. You tell them “Shenandoah,” and a large African American man comes from the back of the building to escort you to an abandoned tarmac. About 100 yards away is a billboard in white with large black letters, in block print, with the word “Patton”.

You get a call to let you know your appointment will see you in two hours. You are 5 hours away, but you convince a pilot to slip you into his jet and get you there in 90 minutes.

Along the way he says he must fly in a formation for a local air show, but it shouldn’t be a problem as he will make up the time by going faster than the speed of light and going back in time. He does so but you get to the appointment 30 years too soon.

You are walking on a country road in the early morning. The ground is still dewy from a late night rain storm. A woman is cleaning the windows and turns to stare at you. She resembles a woman you once loved but who has aged 30 years beyond your age. She calls out your name and asks to you come over to her. But you just keep walking, picking up a stick and hitting rocks on the ground as the sun rises.

You have your first job as a waiter in a family style restaurant. The first customers are a family who resembles your uncle and aunt and cousins. They ask about vegetarian dishes and you tell them the burger and fries would be a good choice. They ask you if you have an Australian Merlot from Italy and you tell them you have a reserve with a llama on the label. They order the wine and ask you to serve it ala mode.





Photographs by Richard Vesey

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Texsom 2008 ~ Session Notes

There never seems to be enough time for it all. Put a handful of master-somms and an ersatz Italian together and give them 90 minutes to talk about 8 wines? Not enough time for disambiguation. No time for the bang, not even for a whimper. Press on, press on.

There is something exhilarating about being in a room with a set of high energy wine gurus. Rising tide kind of thing. We had two sessions on Italian wines, Italy being a darling of the mutant set of somms currently working their way around the airports and boardrooms of the halls of power in the wine biz. Make no mistake about it folks, the big boys in the industry know what is at stake and they have lined up some of the best and the brightest to sell the message down to the platoon level.

In our sessions, day one (Northern and Central Italy) we had:
Moderator: Brian Cronin MS

Panel:
Laura DePasquale MS
Brett Zimmerman MS
Larry O'Brien MS
Joe Spellman MS
Alfonso Cevola CSW

Day two (Southern Italy and the islands) we had:
Moderator David Glancy MS

Panel:
Laura DePasquale MS
Reggie Narito MS
Larry O'Brien MS
Brett Zimmerman MS
Alfonso Cevola CSW


I would love to accompany a couple of these folks on a wine blast through Italy, or anywhere for that matter. Guys like Larry O’ Brian (above) always seem to be working through the wine, constant students of the grape. Brett Zimmerman, working for a small importer, his path on the Italian wine trail, treading and tasting, working his way up that insurmountable mountain we call Italy. How about that new salesperson in the audience looking at this and wondering how they’ll be able to get to base camp? I’m telling you, sons and daughters, we’re all trying to get to base camp. And on to the ascent.

Teaser: The article in the latest Sommelier Journal from my last trip to Piemonte just a little avvinare (taste). Subscribe and support David Vogels valiant effort to bring intelligent writing about wine to the young sommeliers and all the rest of us.

On one of our sessions, The Central Italy part, we had two wines from Tuscany. I hadn’t realized it until I tasted the wines but there was some thread of similarity, even though the two wines were as different as concrete and balsa wood. The wines, Castello dei Rampolla’s Chianti Classico 2004 and the Argiano Solengo 2004, both had the imprimatur of Giacomo Tachis, albeit from a now historical whisper. Time, time, bang, bang, whimper, whimper.

The Rampolla spoke to me in a simple, pure and direct way. The spirit of the place, Panzano, was erect and present. Wild horses tied to a wagon heading towards a sunset on the coast, in no particular hurry. Gorgeous, golden, wild, velvet, young-first-love-Michele-in-1965. Holy mother of God, how did they do this?

The Argiano, with those gypsy grapes of Cabernet, Merlot and Syrah (aren’t these the grapes that could get a winemaker in trouble in Montalcino?), preening and prancing about the glass. “Last dance with Mary Jane, one more time to kill the pain.” I’m at a loess for words. I don’t want to like this wine, want to prefer the Sangiovese in purezza. But the two wines have this astral thread that connects them. Is it the Dali Lama of Italy, Tachis, from his cave in Sardegna, sending out his influence over the waves, out-Milarepa-ing Milarepa?

Soil, servitude and the fortune of territoriality. Two wines, two apparently different styles. Our house is a very fine house, with two cats in the yard. Dottore Tachis, now everything is easy ‘cause of you.

And this is the way the week ends. Not with a bang, but a conga line.




Photos courtesy of Texas Sommelier Conference 2008

Sunday, August 17, 2008

Texsom 2008 ~ Hill Country Ho-down

Julie over at D-Magazine is doing a live-blogging feed, for more information. She's even got a Quicktime dance video of the Master Sommeliers in action. Too much going on to put it all down right now. Ray Wylie Hubbard, Shiner Bock, ribs, cobbler and dancin'. See some pix after the jump.




Texsom in Austin 2008


Salt-lick smackin' good ribs!


Blackberry and peach cobbler


Ray Wylie Hubbard singin' the blues


Kim Stout looking after husband Guy Stout, M.S. and Larry O'Brian, M.S.


Drew Hendricks, M.S. lovin' that cobbler ala mode


Fred Dame, M.S., and Travis Goff doin' some dirty dancin'


Texsom founder James Tidwell payin' the band



Friday, August 15, 2008

Out On a Limb for an Etna

Some time back, when I was invited to Sicily to evaluate several vineyard projects, a few of us were sitting around the midnight table with passito and amaro. Next thing you know, we grabbed a few hours of sleep and then piled in a large van and headed towards the volcano. It was our homage to Burning Man, and what was waiting for us wasn’t what we had expected.

Wednesday, August 13, 2008

Living the Life You’ve Dreamed

Forget the Euro and the price of oil, the mergers and strategic joint adventures; let us plunge back through the pinhole of reality. Italy, vineyards, grapes, fresh food. The life you’ve dreamed.

All through the year these pages divulge personal ardor for things Italian, some real and some imagined. But there comes a time when it just doesn’t matter which is which. What we are dealing with, here and now, is the awareness of an Italy that transcends time and space. I’m sure there are cynics lurking around the dark corners of some Chinon-soaked bar, just waiting to pounce on another man’s dreams. Those people are dead to themselves. I say, dream and live, and live the dream.

Abruzzo in the summer of 2008 is looking like the archetypical pastoral Italy of the 1970’s, the 1740’s, of hundreds or thousands of years ago, or sometime in the future. It is timeless beauty. There’s no reason to shun it or criticize those who love it for its own sake. Look, even if you never make it to Italy, you can still reap the joys of the harvest of the heart. The fool in the corner is kicking a cat and spitting out blood, and then expects us to revere his bleak judgments, because it is contrary and has a gravitas that is attention seeking. But the blind old man is living alone in his tree house in a sunless country. Look around you, sunflowers don’t grow in hell.

I am in awe of my Italian friends who live this way, an everyday occurrence. Along with that there is a fecundity in the air, the soil, the bounty. This is no accident. This is no illusion; there is no corporate nudge moving things along in a timeline to become the biggest, the best, the longest, the hardest. It is all in a flow of collaborative providence.

Do you ever wonder, if you are somehow involved in the world of wine, whether it be in a restaurant or a wine store, or as a salesperson in a distributorship or as a rep for an importer, why sometimes the wine runs out?


I am more surprised that it doesn’t run out more often. We bully and bloviate over some contessa who deigns to swim in the sea for a month or more, as if our mission statements or business plans were so much more important. I remember the story of the Italian Prince and his magic cellar and just stop. Inside, the word "cancel" pops up, my mantra which interrupts the chatty little monkey running around my brain. Who in the hell are we in America to say what the Italians should or shouldn’t do?

The wine will come when it comes, just like the tomatoes and the figs. If not, there is a McDonald’s down the avenue.
Go, get your fill.

And if you truly can follow the advise of Mr. Thoreau and “live the life you’ve dreamed,” then this doesn’t seem so odd, so pie-in-the-sky. The disparager in the darkness cannot tempt you to drink his bitter drink of vinegar and bile. He’s invisible, has no secrets, no leverage.

“Do what you love. Know your own bone; gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw it still.” Another Thoreau insight. Italy is full of the meat of life, filled with the marrow of passion, grab a rib and hold on. There is only one life; there is no time left to kill.








Thanks for the photos from Jeff and Audree Miller

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Deep Thoughts in Agitated Waters

August 10, 2008
From: La Isola

I find it nearly impossible to wade into shallow water these days. Or maybe the problem is that I am wading in shallow water thinking it’s the deep end. I really didn’t intend to go here today. But sitting under the sun, watching the earth rotate while clouds above smirked at my insular orientation, it just popped out.

It started last week as I visited a group of restaurants. Here in North Texas it is restaurant week, a two to three week period in which selected restaurants dream up a three to four course menu, some of the proceeds going to a charity. Diners flock to these places, in the hope of getting a taste of a life they don’t normally frequent. Salespeople for distributors have been scrambling to print special food menus and to also reprint wine lists. Some of the wine lists will show higher wine prices.

I had forgotten that happened. After all, the other day I was looking at a list in the northern-burbs with a wine that I know the restaurant paid about $17 for. On the list they had it priced at $66. Ouch.

But does it really matter? We have countries going to war with each other, does it really mean anything if some poor slug in a bedroom community spends a little more than he should for a bottle of wine? So he pays $20 more than he should. He drives 30 miles less than he would if he drove into town with his gas-hog SUV, which gets 12mpg. Which works out, at $4 a gallon, to saving him about $10 in gas. And then there’s the time factor. So when countries across the planet are sending their citizens out and away from targeted urban areas to escape destruction of life, it really isn’t that big of a deal.

Back to Italy. A farmer makes a wine and sells it for €4.50, that’s about $6.75. It costs about $1 for taxes and to get it over. The importer adds 35%, the wholesaler adds 28% and that brings us to almost $17, if you round up. The restaurant owner marks it up to $66. That’s 10x, with the highest mark up at the end. BYOB places start looking better and better. Or cooking at home.

I mention this to a friend and colleague, who is also a mid-level manager. Forget about talking to the bar manager about this; they do not want to hear about anything that has to do with them making lesser margins, in percentage points. Bean counters don't want to hear it. Forget about the argument that you take dollars to the bank, not percentages. Forget the concept of getting good press for marking up your wine and then having the word spread. Forget about taking more money to the bank. And then folk wonder why so many places across the country are closing? Ask Charles Darwin.

The feel good part to this story? When you go to Italy and buy that same bottle of wine in a trattoria, you’ll probably pay somewhere around €12, which is under $20. See, the dollar doesn’t really suck as bad in Italy as it does in the US. And you’ll probably get charged somewhere around €50 (US $75) for dinner for two. So you get out for under $100. In a similar situation in Anytown, USA with the wine costing $66 and two people eating for around $50 each plus tip, you’re looking at almost $200. And the food will probably better fresher, simpler and better at the place in Italy. Now doesn’t that make you feel better?

It almost makes taking a vacation a cheaper thing to do than to just stay home. But then, home is where the work is, and the family, the life, etc.

While taking a ten day or two week vacation might be something that some folks reading this do on a regular basis, what do you do about the daily routine when you are at home?

Learning how to cook is a good first step. Then, learning where to source fresh, local or otherwise wholesome ingredients is a good next step. If you are lucky enough to have a store specializing in the foods you love, you are a very lucky person. In my home town, not far from where I live, there is a store that does that. Only Italian products. Even here in flyover country we have folks who give a damn. Mike and Paul DiCarlo, who own Jimmy’s in Old East Dallas (what used to be the Italian neighborhood), have dedicated themselves to all the above, and priced for folks other than the millionaires who are constantly worrying about losing their fortune. So that would be for most of us. Very cool solution.

And when another Italian restaurant closes in my town, I will not mourn its loss. All the more if they never listened to me about which wines to use and whether or not to employ fair pricing. Natural selection, the survival of the fittest.

And after 25+ years, that’s how I wage war. Quietly, peacefully, and with a good meal and a bottle of wine of my own choosing.






Friday, August 08, 2008

Which Wine With Googootz?


I wouldn't want to belong to any club that would have me as a member." - G. Marx

The bells and chimes are making a racket outside. The remnants of Tropical Storm Eduard are fleeing northward, overhead. It’ll probably make it in time to O’Hare before American Airlines does. Down below, on the terroir-stressed soil of Texas, we are in full-harvest mode. And just in time for the weekend, we have the cucuzza crop starting to hit. For Southern Italians, cucuzza is sacred, in fact there is a Sagra della Cucuzza in Calabria. Then again, they have a Sagra for almost anything, even a Sagra Cassata Siciliana.

But today the cucuzza is front stage and center. My son sent me a picture of the Cucuzza Squash Drill Team in California, so it seems a likely time to break out the old “Which Wine With” post format, for the second time this week, and give it a fling.

In preparation for that I emailed a couple of bloggers across the country to see what their choices were, along with a few old hands in this forsaken terroiritory. So let’s get started.

Then I heard from The East Coast, and Marco Povero.
His answer was a little longer

“Are you grilling it or having it tomatoes & pasta? These points are
important.”

I answered, “Doesn't matter-For the blog-You tell me-Subito-Grazie1000.”

His speedy reply:
“2006 Etna Rosato Scilio Sicilia
2006 Vesevo Greco Di Tufo
2006 Alticello Fiano Cantele Salento Apulia
2006 Costamolino Argiolas Vermentino Di Sardegna.”

A true Southerner trapped in the cold Northeast.



A short text to Tracie and she, being a foodie, also pressed, “Depends how it's made.”

Must be girl’s night out …. Any who, she followed with “...either a light red (Grignolino) or a deep rose'!”

Back to Curacao Mojitos and Jell-O-shooters girls, thanks for txtng bck.

Then I got on the phone with Tony the Bone and Joey the Weasel. They were heading to a party with a bunch of women. Or rather, “colleagues.” Don’t ask.

Tony answered “Riesling.” Could he have been a little more specific? They were rolling up to the party house.

Joey the Weasel mumbled a couple of inaudible suspects and then settled on a rather respectable Conti Zecca-Donna Marzia, Malvasia Bianco, from Puglia. Party on, ragazzi.

That wasn’t so difficult now was it?

Today I also found out the Koreans love cucuuza too. They have another name for it, sounds kinda like googootz.

But googootz thrives in the old Italian neighborhoods, one the East coast, up in Chicago, down here in Texas, and especially in Northern Louisiana (the cucuzza capital of the world), oh, and yes in California. It is loved in old Oraibi too, once had a friend who was a Hopi and he loved the stuff. He liked to dry it out to make ceremonial rattlers for some of the dance rituals. That’s right.


Women love to grow and pick googootz. The older ones even know how to cook it. My Nonna’s knew how to. My mom used to cook it for my dad and us kids. My mom’s recipe was good. It seems that everybody’s mom has a special recipe.

Some of those old Italians just loved to see how long it could get. They have contests in Canada to grow them at unbelievable lengths.

The plants take over the yard. And then they produce the fruit and they really go to town. I mean, before it’s over everybody is giving the stuff away. A little goes a long way.

The Northern Italians sometimes make fun of the Southerners love for cucuzza. I don’t know why, I think they just like to find anything they can to make fun of them. Kind of the way the old schoolers from the East Coast would taunt those who lived in the Southern states of the USA. Just plain ‘ol ignorance, manifestations of archetypical pathology. Probably don’t like accordions either.

Wine wise, for me? I’d go with a Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Cerasuolo or a light Calabria red like a Gaglioppo or a Ciro. There’s also a deeply colored Ciro rosato that would work. I could also go with a Cerasuolo di Vittorio (not a rose’) though it is a wee bit lighter than some Sicilian reds. I could also enjoy it with some of the Gruner Veltliner whites I tried last week, especially some of the Smaragds from Wachau. There, I got that in.

But if you could have one wine, only one, what would it be? Operators are standing by.

In the meantime, back to practicing. I can’t wait for the Sagra Cassata Siciliana, hoping to be invited to play with Beatrice again. Yeah, right.


My Cucuzza ~ by Louis Prima

My Cucuzza
Cucuzza bella
She's my pizza pie with lotsa mozzarella
With Cucuzza
I wanta be
'cause Cucuzza is so crazy over me
Cucuzza grows in Italy
They love it on the farm
It's something like zucchini
Flavoured with Italian charm
I call my girl Cucuzza
'cause she's sweet as she can be
She loves to hear me say
"Cucuzza please babotcha me"

My Cucuzza
Cucuzza bella
She's my pizza pie with lotsa mozzarella
With Cucuzza
I wanta be
'cause Cucuzza is so crazy over me

Now you can have your pasta
And your chicken cacciatore
I'd rather have Cucuzza
'cause for me it means amore
So when the moon is shining bright
On dear old Napoli
I dream of my Cucuzza
She's the only dish for me





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