Sunday, August 16, 2009

Ferragosto ~ Southfork Style

Here in Big D, Texsom is underway in its 5th year. One of the traditions is for all the Master Sommeliers, Masters of Wine and conference sponsors to get together on the Saturday night before and enjoy some leisure time. In otherwords, music, beer, BBQ and party! Yesterday the Texsom magic bus took all the partygoers to the Southfork Ranch far north of the Dallas City Limits. This is where the 1980’s hit show “Dallas” was filmed (the outside scenes, that is). It is a working ranch and the family that owned it before were much like the Ewing family, except their patriarch (and yes he was also a J.R) lost the property hedging the ranch against a big oil deal. Nowadays, Sue Ellen is Tweeting (as is "Dallas") and the Southfork Ranch can be rented out for private affairs. So the Texsom steering committee set it up and what a party it was. Live music was performed by the Austin band Max Stallings, a country band with a progressive bent to it. Nice, mellow, music that wasn’t too loud and you could dance to it. Plenty of good wine, beer, and BBQ along with a killer strawberry shortcake. But the group was raring to party and party they did! The house has been furnished with all sorts of “Dallas” paraphernalia, complete with the J’R and Sue Ellen bedroom suite. The sunken bathtub was supplied with the rarest of all wines the 1984 Ch Mouton Rothschild Blanc. Master of Wine Charles Curtis, who now heads up the Wine Department for Christie’s in North America, pointed out the extremely “rare” wine. And he should know. When I would travel to Italy in the 1980’s and 1990’s, when the Italian winemakers found out I lived in Dallas, their mom or aunt would always ask me how Sue Ellen was or if I knew J.R. So real was that show to them, especially in Sicily and Calabria, that I didn’t have the heart to tell them that I never met them. But I told the aunts and the moms that the Ewings were doing just fine. “Well, you tell J.R. to treat Sue Ellen better,” one would say, or another would comment, “Sue Ellen, she needs to drink less whiskey and more wine, we worry about her.” I kid you not. Funny that the longhorn steer share the environment with the urban sprawl, not unlike Chateau Haut Brion must with their growing urbanization. One ranch grows cows, the other grapes, but city life pushes the plants and animals further out. Before the night was finished, the photographer herded all the masters together for one happy group shot. Of course with beer, BBQ and country music playing a few of them got frisky and cut up for the camera. The somms rarely get together in these numbers when there isn’t a test or some task involved and to just share the pleasure of each other’s company is as rare as that white Mouton. So, good for them, they all seemed to enjoy cutting up with each other and kicking back on a warm Ferragosto night deep in the heart of Texas..
Master Sommeliers Joe Spellman, Laura DePasquale, James Tidwell, Drew Hendricks, Keith Goldston and Fred Dame. Hey boys, is that anyway to treat a lady?
 
By the way J.R. wanted to tell all the Italians who read this, “Happy Ferragosto y’all!”

Thursday, August 13, 2009

Anticipation and Consummation

We are now officially in the dog days of summer around these parts. Italians are flocking to one vacation or another, cell phones are not working, email is down, fax machines have melted into the past. The Italians never forget August.

The whole country is vibrating on many levels right now. Many people are on vacation. The world has stopped for a brief moment. There isn’t much going on anywhere. America is having town hall meetings so that idiots can rant about a future they don’t want, which is inevitable. I have never seen so much misplaced anger.

Yesterday, instead of taking lunch I went to see a healer and a friend. His office was packed with fretting and worried people along with the most delightful pride of children who were lying on the floor and reading. Not one battery powered game among them.

In the room where the healer works on the energy patterns of folks who come in with back pains and such, there was quite a psychic stirring. I was off to the side in a private room, really his office with a low table. I fell asleep. When I awoke I heard a women weeping. My healer friend is leaving today go overseas, where he conducts seminars. He came into my room and looked spent. I could feel it. It drew me out too. There is a lot of pain and suffering and anger in the world right now. There is also a tremendous amount of connected emotions. Tielhard de Chardin, the Jesuit paleontologist hinted at that connectedness with his theory of the noosphere. Right now the noosphere has a few kinks to work out of the fabric of its being.

This wine (and life) thing distills to these two coin ends, anticipation and consummation. We want to try this Soave or that Barolo; we want the ’68 or the ’07. We want the orange wine and then the older rosé wine and then the sparkly wine and then the ancient red wine. We want the young girl in the second row with the long flowing hair, and then the red haired mat cutter in the frame shop and then the long haired blond in the restaurant and then the dark eyed beauty in the jeans. We want, we want, we want. Anticipating some immeasurable pleasure or revelation. Desire, desire, desire. We are all hungry little wolves prowling the grasslands looking, hunting, needing.

In Italy hotels and restaurants have been reserved for weeks, months, years, in anticipation of another August holiday. The whole country goes into a collective orgy of sun, sea, mountains, food, wine, lust, sex and satiation. Only to wake another day and start all over again, year after year, generation after generation, century after century, epoch after epoch. It’s quite exciting to think about thousands of people eating and drinking and laughing and loving all at the same time.

When I was a young boy, the town I lived in, a resort, filled up for a holiday, I remember lying in my bed on a Saturday night. I was all of 10 or 11. I swore then I could hear people making love, I could hear their collective screams of pleasure on those spring nights when the world was blossoming in my head.

How does this relate to the wine trail in Italy or anywhere? It’s a similar yearning and longing for something not quite within our reach. It might be for that bottle of Brunello when there is only enough money in the wallet for a Rosso di Montalcino.

It might be for that wine to not go away. It’s not like a painting. Once the genie is out of the bottle, all that remains is the memory.

It is energized and fed by the anticipation of something special. Wine, like passion, when bottled up, can only wait so long. Knowing when to open it up is the key. Waiting can be as much fun as what it is one is waiting for. If you buy that bottle of 1985 Sassicaia and hold on to it for 20 years, the pleasure of anticipation might be as rewarding as the consummation. It might even be better. If the wine is corked, isn’t the last 20 years of thinking about that wine all the reward one could expect? At that point it would. But how bad would that be? Has any one wine really made a critical difference in one’s life?

I still have a few bottles in my wine closet. Some of them have aged with me. I am not sure I want to open them up and end our long journey together. I have more recently and the final act has been wonderful, don’t get me wrong. But then what? Le commedia finite? O comincia?

Long live anticipation; for Italian wine lovers it is a dance of seduction that is better than any blue pill.






Vintage photos by Vittorio

Sunday, August 09, 2009

Narcicentricism

Bagging 'n Bragging How many times do we have to read about it? Yes, some folks out there get to taste some a.m.a.z.i.n.g. wines. But to open up the wine magazines or blogs and constantly have to be reminded how lowly we are because we didn’t taste a 10 year vertical of Gaja Darmagi or an 1852 Naval Reserve Madeira Sercial, really, how much of this can we take? I am on a riff about Elitism again, because it is rife in the 21st century of electronic wine literature. A wine lover opens up a whole slew of rare wines and invites a friend or two over and, Pow! an enthusiast or blogger has to regurgitate every wine, every nuance, every breath of their so wonderful evening. As if us knowing about it will make it greater for us? Maybe for them! But really does it? I was thinking about some of the wines I have tasted and not tasted in my life and asked myself the question: “Is there any wine you just must have before you die? Will the experience do something for your health and sanity that to not have it would have irreversible consequences?” I mean, really, all the wines I have had to this point won’t prevent me from running into a wall (or a wall running into me). So, no, there is nothing I need from here on out. Not more of anything. Probably less of some things. Most things. But think about it. We run from coast to coast or continent to continent, chasing things, Wine, love, fresh air. Around and around we pace ourselves in our lifetime ring looking for the big match, the score, the experience of a lifetime. Will getting to taste a 1947 Cheval Blanc really matter? But we desire something outside of ourselves. Wine is joyous; yes I’ll give it that. And getting together with friends and colleagues over a lineup of wines is more than the sum of the parts. Yes. But what is there to this kiss-and-tell we are seeing all over the place? On TV the newscaster reads his prompt screen, “Today Michael Jackson died. And Hugh Robinson cracked open a bottle of 1934 Calissano Barolo. Details at 11.” So what? Measuring the fullness of our lives by what we have drunk vs. the next person is shallow and snotty. I can’t taste it, reading about it. So what good is it? What does the reader take away from it? I’ll tell you. That the person who brags about their wine conquests is saying, “Look, mere mortals, up here on Olympus this is the way gods drink and enjoy their position. And you’ll never make it up here with us. So stick to your longing and your desiring, because as long as you have it, you make us more powerful.” Hey, this is my Sunday supper rant, and braised with a little tongue-in-cheek. So before you fire off some flaming comment meant to defend the uber-tasters, stop right now. Look at yourself. Think about what it is you do when you read a post or an article about some great wine tasting. And then, if you write, think again about what you want to say about an event like that, if you even do.
“Personal history must be constantly renewed by telling parents, relatives, and friends everything one does. On the other hand, for the warrior who has no personal history, no explanations are needed; nobody is angry or disillusioned with his acts. And above all, no one pins him down with their thoughts and their expectations.” -Carlos Castaneda
the magnum of 1911 Lafite... was interesting. It was 75+ years old, same age as the U.S. president at the time, without the benefit of lighting and secret service. It was brown and losing its fruit in the glass. But the elusiveness of the fruit made it precious. Here was a wine that was dying, and we were allowed to sip its last drops, breathe its last perfume before it said adieu. Wonderful moment.” Pretty, yes, and a nice memory. But a 75 year old wine tasted 23 years ago isn’t important. It’s someone’s personal history and it should now be erased. So, in this August summer of 2009, as one goes forward, all this posturing and measuring must be just that. History. And with it comes the exhilaration of freedom one gets from stepping into the ring of the unknown.

Photographs of 20th century boxers (many Italian-Americans) from the Harry E. Winkler Photographic Collection

Thursday, August 06, 2009

What are you looking for?

So much about what we read in wine blogs seem to center on ones finding a particular wine and then telling the world about it. Often it is written in a style that can make the reader feel like there is something the writer is writing about, a little secret wine or a special group of people that have gotten together to taste the forbidden fruit. Forbidden to you, not to the insiders who exult their aggrandizements.

But really, what does that do for you? If there is something rare and one of a kind how does sharing that information make your quest less taxing? We all rack up this old wine and that one but you might be coming to these blogs and say to yourself, “What the hell? I’ll never find that wine and taste it with all the illustrious folks that I am reading about. I might as well grab a Coors and forget about the whole thing!”

Or you could turn off the laptop, the blackberry, the Iphone or the Flip, grab a corkscrew and open that bottle of wine you just brought home. Forget if it isn't organic or farmed sustainably. In fact, pour the darn bottle into a plane carafe so the label and the provenance doesn’t get in the way of simply enjoying it for the pleasure of what it is, a miracle.

I recently got an email from a person that follows the wine trail in Italy; here’s what they had to say: “Dear Alfonso, why don’t you write more wine notes? It seems you taste a lot of wine and have access to great wines, not just from Italy, but from all over? You must have notes you take, and wouldn’t it be wonderful if you would just share them once in a while? You have such a vivid imagination and tell so many stories that lead up to the bottle of wine. But then you stop right there, leaving me wondering how the wine tastes.”

Dear reader, thank you. But the paths that each and every one of us takes are different. I could no more tell you how a wine will taste to you than I could describe a color or a combination of aromas one might encounter on a run in the country. That is up to you. I can point out a road or two, but the journey is yours to take.

And likewise, when reading about a great tasting, here or elsewhere, don’t get too invidious. All isn’t what it seems. It is fleeting and transitory. With more heading this way. And also not just for the precious few who are fortunate enough to sample some of the great wines that intersect their paths. You too, have the same opportunity to taste greatness in any wine. They don’t have to be harvested during a waxing moon. All it takes is an open heart.

Now, where did I put that corkscrew?



Sunday, August 02, 2009

Seersucker Sunday

Sometimes things seem more seductive than they really are. Two out of the last three weekends I have been in Northern California for conferences. Right before the Bloggers conference ( I could not take the time to go) in Napa I spent three marvelous days learning about information, networking and meeting old and new friends at the WITS conference. The past few days I have been in Sacramento for the Society of Wine Educators conference, met Jancis Robinson, did my seminar on the Italian influence in California winemaking, bought a Flip video camera and drank a lot of great wines with some fantastic people. Great life, good career, flying around, uh huh. But today, back home, I got up early and headed to work.

Mission: Reset a wine shop.

I was rested and ready. The store was closed, so no distractions. What is a guy like me doing on a Sunday resetting a wine section, when everyone else is at church in their Sunday best? Well, it’s not just any store. It’s one of the best Italian wine stores I have seen in all of the Southwest. Italian wine only. From all regions. Even Valle d’Aosta. And it is closed on Sunday so we could get a lot done in a little time. It is with a great deal of respect for the wines ( and the wine god) that my colleague and I set about making sense of the set.

You know I can be a big picture guy, but sometimes you have to zoom in on the macro and get down to the root. The floor. And that is where I was, on my knees, in my seersucker shirt, trying to get all the wines in their proper places.

A word about the average salesperson. The average salesperson is just that, average. They come in a store, try to find something that's out of stock that they can get an order for. So they bury a case or two in the cold box. Maybe there’s a case of Barbera that has been sitting in the corner for a few weeks. It isn't hurting anything, and there’s no more room for another wine in the Piedmont section. And there it stays. And stays. But the salesman gets his piddly little order and slinks out to find another victim. All the while the wines made by the hands of the Italian man and woman finds their last stop in a little store in the corner of America and there it sits, their life’s work, their heart and soul. And the soul of their ancestors. History kicked under a stack of Pinot Grigio and forgotten. All because some salesperson was too damn lazy to help find it a final home.

Our reset went slow. In fact we never quite got out of the white wine section. We kept finding 2003, 2004, 2005 white wines from Italy. And we aren’t talking Fiorano or Valentini or Gravner. These were Pinot Grigios from the Veneto, old (and very falso) Cortese wines, tired Rabosos with no more spritz in their frizzante. You get the idea? So our client and friend who, owns the store, now has a beautiful white wine section and a table of sale wines. There are some surprises in there, but the real shocker will be when those average salespeople walk in the store and see more space and try and fill it up with more of their lost soul wines, the ones they never tended in the first place. They’re like pimps, with no real concern or love for the wines they are schlepping around. Pity.


Sometimes a shelf set begins to look like an Escher drawing or an optical illusion. All these Italians standing on the deck of the ship waiting to dock so that can be taken to their very own spot in America. That’s what the wines in the Tuscan section scream to me when I walk by them. Chiantis and Super Tuscans, Morellinos and Vino Nobiles. Brunellos are bulging and declassified Brunellos are also peering over the edge wondering when anyone will take them in. They aren’t tired and they aren’t poor, but they sure are the huddled masses. Like our client said, “There will be more Sundays.”

Personally I am looking forward to that seersucker Sunday, my Fellini-esqe escapade, on the beach, where everything is young and fresh and willing, and there is another Sunday following it, not a Monday. Wouldn't it be loverly?






Thursday, July 30, 2009

Junk in the Trunk

Dallas, Texas
So a recent Monday didn’t start out so well. Around 5:00 AM it sounded like someone was banging on my back door. I was already up. A few minutes later I heard some sirens and then what sounded like a full tilt gunfight with automatic weapons. Weekend is over.

Around 12:30 I stepped into the local Whole Foods looking for a sandwich. A demo person was asking me if I wanted to try their prosciutto. I asked her what kind of prosciutto it was, because it didn’t look like it had meat in the little demo cup.

She said something about not knowing what it was, but there was no meat. I looked at the product and it said bruschetta. I said, “Oh you mean brew-skeh-tah.”

She cast this askew glance at me as if to say “Whatchoo talking about Willis?” I said,” My people come from Italy where bruschetta originated and we pronounce it brew-skeh-tah. Brew.Sket.Ahh. Not too hard to say now, is it?”

She started to look truly afraid like I had said something vulgar or worse, threatening. So I wished her luck and ran, not walked, away from this pitiful creature.

The sad thing is, I was trying to help her market the product to a group of customers who most likely have been to Italy. This was in a wealthy part of town in a very upscale store. But once again to use the words of Jim Schutze, I was “Forever the foreigner. More than 30 years I've been here, sawing this same log.”

Other notes: I love the photographs of Kors van Bennekom (all of the B&W's on this post are his), who has an impressive and enormous body of work. I found him on another site Bint photobooks on Internet, which is also a great source for interesting images. People ask me where I get all the images on this blog. I take many of them, but I am a visual forager, always looking for interesting images. These are two additions to where I will now scour for interesting shots.

Uber Blogger Mike Wangbickler showing an impressive array of Rueda whites

Wine notes: I can’t remember a day when I tasted so many unusual (and good too) wines in one evening. Dornfelder and Kerner from Lodi, Verdello from Rueda, St. Laurent from Austria, Zilavka, Bena and Krkosija from Bosnia Herzegovina, Plavac Mali from Croatia (some say the "Noah" of Primitivo Zinfandel), Kékfrankos from Hungary (good blog here for those wines: http://www.bluedanubewine.com/blog/) and an old vine Barbera from Lodi (a great story here too). I tried these at a walk around reception at the Society of Wine Educators yearly conference, this year in Sacramento. It is a great place to learn, to taste and to comingle with many people, at all levels, in the wine biz. And a great value. Highly recommended. Tomorrow I am presenting a topic, The Italian influence in California winemaking with my sidekick, Guy Stout, who has more initials behind his name than Niels Bohr. But that’s a whole’nother story for another day. Gotta get on the wine trail now. Cheers!





Sunday, July 26, 2009

Fill 'er Up

Pit Stop - Deadlines, work, preparation for many things. Will return later this week.

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Buñuel on Brunello: Ballo Finale

Have we heard enough? Is Brunello dead? Have the Italians taken one of their greatest wine symbols and thrown it to the devil? From the looks of it, that seems to be the perception in the shattered market of late. The timing of the whole incident was horrible, but would there ever have been a good time for deception, misrepresentation and the endless mobius strip of Italian bureaucracy? But it isn’t the first time. It won’t be the last.

Colleague Do Bianchi laments about his depression over Brunellopoli. He cites a passage from Luis Buñuel’s autobiography. The vines have been pulled out, the rifles put away. But the sales are dead.

I ran some reports today. The 2004 Brunellos are trickling in painfully slow. The problem is the 2003’s have stopped and, though inventory levels are about half of what they were this time last year, people have shied away from the category of Brunello. This could take years to rehabilitate the reputation and status of Brunello.

A major part of the problem is the perception of exactly what Brunello is. It isn’t a Napa Valley Cult wine blockbuster of a wine, anymore than the Castello Amorosa is a real medieval Tuscan Castle. Years of misleading reviews that people trusted and came to expect moved the style of wine away from the reality of what it started out to be, what gave it its fame. New wineries and ancient ones, somehow people got caught up in the lie. The reports are out there, I don’t have to make anything up. But now perception, once again, is reality. The popular view was that Brunello was a big, inky, massive, unctuous wine. Now Brunello's legacy is clouded by doubt and its future has been hijacked for a time. And though just a handful of producers have been caught, Italians on the ground speculate that there were others who got away with it. The image of Brunello and Sangiovese is tainted every bit as much as the wines that were exposed in scandals in the 1980’s, diethyl glycol and methyl alcohol. How ironic that Brunello got the DOCG the same year as one of the scandals in 1986.

I was in the trade then. It was devastating for a young industry person to spend their first years (and specializing in Italian wines) to have the carpet pulled out from under them. To start over, to pull oneself up, dust oneself off and go back into the trenches. I really thought the Italians had learned the lesson. But another generation longed for recognition and affluence. How many Porsche Cayenne’s clog the tiny roads around Montalcino? I’ve been there, seen it, saw the gold jewelry and the designer clothes and tanned bodies. All these things cost money. But the currency was the soul. The temptation was too great for a few and now all will suffer. This is happening in a time when the world economy is drawing down, so recovery will be years in the making.

In Buñuel’s Movie, Simon of the Desert, Simon was a stylite, an ascetic who lived on a pillar in the desert and preached, fasted and mortified his body to get closer to God. And while Buñuel works on many levels of interpretation and symbolism in his short film, I see a parallel between the movie and the current state of the Montalcino wine trade. A little less glam and a little more dirt under their nails (or all of ours in any case) in this moment might be a real grounding moment. Keep the SUV for 6 years, not three. Take care of your shirts and keep them around for more than a season. Save money on French barrels; buy fewer and use them longer. Or better, use the larger botti and let the purity and beauty of the true Sangiovese represent all that is good about Brunello. Come back to earth and the vines and tend them and respect them and the wonderful life that awaits those fortunate enough to call Montalcino home.










Sunday, July 19, 2009

California Dreamin' ~ Full Immersion Italian

There’s something about the influence Italy has had on California. In fact the influence continues. It goes both ways. The New World has loosened up the way Europe looks at wine, sometimes to the dismay of the purists. But California has a young, often irreverent, sexy aspect to it. Italians have been attracted to California for some time now.

Driving through Sonoma, Bob Pellegrini told me of early campaigns in Lucca, Italy to draw the locals to work in the wine country. In fact, Bob says, Sonoma is populated with many Italians from Lucca, while up the road in Asti people were recruited from Piemonte to work in those vineyards. But that was many years ago. Nowadays, not many of Italian extraction retain their Italian-ness. The American Melting Pot has indeed melted many of them into the big blender.

But for those who have been seduced by the guile of the Italian mistress, the idea of making wine inspired by Italy in America persists.

“Have you seen the castle?” I must have heard that a half dozen times in the few days I was in Napa and Sonoma, telling folks I was in the area researching a project. Finally as we drove up the hill I thought maybe I had translocated to Tuscany. Castello Banfi it wasn’t. Castello Amorosa is the California dream of Daryl Sattui and is a Neverland homage to his vision of Italy. Hey, some folks insist on Parmiggiano on the linguine con vongole.

Bob Pellegrini and Dave Rafanelli

Heading over to Sonoma, we had an appointment at A.Rafanelli winery. Amerigo Rafanelli was a wonderful guy and his son Dave and his family are continuing Am’s work. No pretenses here at being an Italian influenced winery, no Sangiovese or Dolcetto offered here. Zinfandel and Cabernet. The essential confluence is in the unstated philosophy on a molecular level, passed down from generation to generation. All is well at Rafanelli; no castles, no Pinot Grigio. Only the essentials, along with the irreplaceable winery dogs, the ones who really call the shots.


At the nearby Seghesio winery, there is a different vibe. Here, Fiano and Arneis seek sanctuary from Chardonnay and Merlot. And on a day when the temperatures hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit, cool white wine, with a revealing fragrance and come hither flavors, was as energizing as sitting in a pool in Positano watching the sunset.

Leaving the bees to their work, we took a run up to Asti, where an ancient winery now sits in waiting rotation for its renewal to begin. Italian Swiss Colony, anybody remember the catch phrase, “You can’t miss with Italian Swiss”? And for a while it was hit, but now it is missing in action. The growers have blended into the countryside, they are indigenously American now. The chapel and the cemetery still hold memory and shelter for the spirit of those Italians now conjoined to history.

Rolling down the road to Santa Rosa and a quick stop at the library, a goldmine of oral history, photographs and documents. How did the Italians make it through Prohibition? Through the grace of God and the purchase orders of the archdiocese of San Francisco. Long time merchants like the Traverso family span the decades and carry the torch forward. Michael Traverso is the latest generation of ambassadors of Italian culture – food and wine – in Sonoma.

Sangiovese, Fiano, Zinfandel, Sagrantino. Sattui, Seghesio, Rafanelli, Pellegrini. Open-top. Full immersion. With pleasure. More to come.






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