Vinitaly Day 1 ~ The Pavilion of Dreams

Two of my favorite chaps under the Tuscan Sun are related. Ugo Contini Bonacossi and grandson Leone are probably a lot more alike than even they realize. Ugo, now 90, was an engineer and traveled the world. But he came home to guard the patrimony of Capezzana for future generations. He remade his life and is an historical figure for Tuscany, Cabernet and the Super Tuscan phenomenon.

Young Leone is an artist. But family history compels him to fly the flag of the family and protect the historical capital of the winery.

When Ugo was a young man, off he went into the world. But the land, and the times, brought him back. Let’s say it provided him with a focus that previous generations had worked to build. For a family to have something that can be traced back hundreds of years is no easy task.

Young Leone is in that same position now. He has come back home. He has the soul of an artist. Ugo has the soul of an engineer. Both men have had their lives shaped by the land and the estate they call Capezzana. Ugo, and the succeeding generation have worked through the most intense period in history for Italy and Italian wine.

Now Leone has been shown the lithographers stone. It is now his time to forge his impressions over the next generation and take the place they call Capezzana into the future for the next generations.


No easy task in any time, for a young man or a young woman, with dreams and desires of their own. But a dream many a person would love to have the opportunity to pursue.

Just one of the many wonderful stories in the pavilion of dreams we call Vinitaly.

written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

Throwing Umami (Blogging) from the Train

I got a couple of notes and tweets over the night, seems I have gone off the rails with my stream of consciousness meanderings of late. So, I will fire Conan and bring back Jay. Actually the next five days is going to be a blur, what with all the meetings and goings on at the latest Vinitaly #44.

So I’ll leave it with a few pictures and keep the deep thoughts off these pages for a while. I reckon that looking at a woman for an hour on the train from Milan to Verona and then writing a quick allegory on the state of Italian wine could seem (to some folks) “sad that I paint the woman that way”. Sorry Mary Ewing, it was just an exercise, part of the non linearity that I learned from Bucky Fuller. But thanks for tweeting in. I’ve had my Master of Wine check. Always nice!

Guy Stout chimed in from the Master Sommelier department. He also sent me a note about the last post. I wish you were here Guy. By the way, Guy is the consummate tester and he was the only one who wrote in with the correct answer to the visual quiz we had on that post. It was D – Veneto. Thanks Guy!

Speaking of the Veneto, I have to get on my best suit and “git” to the Pavilion – we have a seminar today with Franco Ziliani and I cannot miss it – Sorry Luca Zaia, I’ll miss your speech in the next room, we’ll have to meet later and drink some Mascarello, which I found very reasonable priced for vintages from the 1990’s – all under €80.




One last stab. When I went to Vinitaly to get my pass yesterday, they handed out a satchel. First they handed me a white one, which just wouldn’t work. So I asked, politely for a brown one, or so it looked like brown under the green fluorescent lights. But the official behind the counter made sure, in her finest Veneto-Zaia to correct me. “Non é marrone, é Bordeaux!” she quipped. Well I just came from Bordeaux (see my official invite from Pétrus, pronounced Pet-ruhz, not Peh-troos) and conosco I miei Bordeaux. And that is no Bordeaux, Madam.

I got a girl name of Boney Maroney
She's as skinny as a stick of macaroni
Oughta see her rock'n'roll with her blue jeans on
She's not very fat,
just skin and bo-o-one

written and, more importantly, photographed, by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

Strangers on a Train

Triste è quel gioco, dove si teme il fuoco.

She looks out the window as the train speeds to Verona. Her mobile battery is dying. The little wrinkles at the edge of her mouth are showing, the collagen treatments no longer reach to the corners. Her hair is coiffed but fashionably messy. She has dark glasses on, the fashionable ones that have the gold logos on the edges of the lenses, guarding the eyes like a pair of lions. She is bored to death.

She was probably a beautiful young woman, but the excesses of affluence have erased the character from the face leaving only a hollow attractiveness. She was born with good genes, though, and all the gold and silver talismans have protected her from bulging out beyond her fashionable black dress. But she is not happy.

She has lost her significance. Sure, she is wealthy and she skis in the chic spots of Switzerland and France and summers in Sardegna or Panarea. But she doesn’t have anything to live for. She has no purpose, other than to assuage the desires and the whims of her husband and children. She is getting desperate.

One can only put on so many pretty clothes, perfume and jewelry. And then something deeper must kick in. And so it is with our dear Italian wines. Revved up fruit, charred wood and fancy labels can only take the industry so far. There must be something deeper, call it character for lack of a better word. But as our lady is finding out, none of us can escape the scythe of time, and if we wish to contribute a deeper meaning to the history of life and wine in Italy, it won’t come by hiring the best wine consultant to run your winery or the best chef to run your kitchen. It will take some heavy lifting and a desire to be part of something greater than one’s own self.


It isn’t enough to just be a millionaire.

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

How to Make a Fortunate Life

Whether you love it or loathe it, Bordeaux is a vibrant crossroads for young men and women looking to make a life with meaning. Regardless of the haranguing, the gnashing and wailing of the pen quills and the cursers, whether the Bordeaux ‘09 is worthy of stratospheric prices, there are folks on the ground who see a whole ‘nother view.

Two views here – from the East and from the West, both involve young women, looking forward to a future where their life has some significance, a meaning their own country cannot supply.

The young chemistry student from the Ukraine, studying in Pessac. Her once bountiful country now a mess of political corruption, in transition. She told me one telling story – they have to buy potatoes from Poland. How can one imagine a country, larger than France unable to even co ordinate the growing of one of the easiest and most basic things? She has chosen to live in France, for now, though she tells that they will never accept her. She is fluent, but foreign, her language isn’t perfect. “Even the people in Cognac complain that the way they speak French in Bordeaux is wrong.” That said, she sees the opportunity to be in a place where she can carve out a life, a place, perhaps even someday in the labs in Bordeaux?

To come to a country, where the language is so essential, not being able to speak it – that takes guts. How many of us sitting in front of our computer screens sipping our medium roast coffee in a room that is climate controlled, which of us with all our little complaints can have it so bad that we have to uproot our life , totally, in order to go forward?

“Would you like to go back someday?” I ask her. “Of course,” she touches her heart, “that is a part of me inside.” But it might be more a matter of if, not when.

She is young, pretty, healthy, intelligent, speaks four languages. She will make it in a world with six billion and counting. But, like so many of us in the West, she wants a life with a connection. She lost it, moving to France, to forge a life of meaning. The attachement will come later.

The other young lady from China, dressed tres chic as if she just came off the runways of Paris or Milan, lives in Hong Kong. Have you noticed Hong Kong is a pretty fashionable place these days? I remember the movie, In the Mood for Love, the women were so beautiful, tall, lanky, dressed gorgeously. Imagine something like that.

When she stepped in the room, everyone who had eyes and a beating heart lost their breath for a moment. She made a striking entrance. She was looking for her love, Ausonius. She was in the right place. How do you say it, she was in a beatific moment? She was having one of those moments when ecstasy upon and into her. I was tasting the same wines, it was easily understandable.

But all poetry aside, I had to talk to her, ask her why she was here. I read a Jancis Robinson tweet that she hadn’t seen any Chinese at the Primeurs 2009 tastings. I had seen plenty of them. I don’t know if they were just on the same route as mine, but I was going to talk to one that seemed simultaneously representative and atypical of the Asian Wave.

She was very approachable, spoke English well (easy for me, essential for the new Global professionals?). “What are you doing here,” I ventured to ask. “I love Bordeaux, working in Hong Kong for a UK wine company.” She was smitten with the spectacle of it all. She was part of the pageantry. And the ascendancy.

Jane Anson (@newbordeaux) tweeted, "Three years ago, 30% of Mouton Rothschild ended up in Asia. Today, that figure is 45%." That’s a lot of eggs in one basket. Or is it? With a potential clientele of 50,000,000, that being the middle-upper-middle echelon of China, perhaps looking to the East isn’t such a bad idea. For our young lady, one of 1.2 billion, it is surely a way for a smart, motivated young person to look for a career far from the factories that make plastic baskets for laundry. Becoming significant in a sea of humanity, isn’t that what all of us imagine for ourselves?

I hear people say that the Asian culture doesn’t dovetail so well with the wine culture. Rich, heavy Merlot and tannic Cabernet, sitting in barrels for years. High in alcohol, expensive, taking years to mature. Maybe years before the trendy wines will be abandoned in favor of Riesling from Germany or Chardonnay from the Cote d’Or? Or Pinot Noir, like our stateside and Sideways phenomenon has produced? It could be a mess for Bordeaux.

I wouldn’t worry too much about this very established wine center. The Bordelais are smart; they are opportunistic, as one young winemaker told me. This isn’t their first rodeo, as we say out West.

But for our two young ladies from the West and the East, and for those young and young at heart, this is deliverance to a new world of options and freedom. And the possibility of a very fortunate life.

written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

The Day after Easter is a Holiday in France and Italy

It seems the trains don’t always run so frequently on the day after Easter in both France and Italy. So, once again I have been "stranded", this time in the Haute Savoie in Le Chinaillon. Pity.

I am researching the Pre-Alp wines of the Savoie, and today we had to go to two Chalet’s and try two Apremont wines. Same producer, but curiously two different bottle types and two different levels of alcohol. At the higher altitude, the chalet had the lower alcohol one. It could only be reached by ski, snowboard or cross country hike.

My face is now well tanned for sunny Vinitaly. This is the first time down I have had since September and I barely know what to make of a day or two of leisure. But I will endure. If only for the cause of researching the wines of a country I am less familiar with.

Fear not, my Italian wine lovers; I will soon get back on the wine trail in Italy. Until then, the Savoie is getting one closer to the source.

Again thanks to my gracious hosts, Wink and Brett. Mondeuse, anyone?

written and photographed on the sunny slopes of the french Alps by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

The Italian Fork in the French Road

All last week in Bordeaux, there was plenty of French wine. But occasionally the stray bottle of Hungarian or Bulgarian wine would pop up on a table. One day we tasted a round of wines from a negociant whom we work with very closely and I saw a fellow at a table with a bottle of Italian wine. Giampaolo Motta from La Massa in Panzano was there with his wines as part of the collection of the French oenologist Stéphane Derenoncourt and his stable of estates that he consults for.

Stéphane’s partner, François Thienpont and his sister Bernadette Thienpont had us in their suite at Stéphane’s event last week in Bordeaux. Great people both of them, very sharp, friendly, savvy people. I like them. François reminds me of my Italian friend Eugenio Spinozzi, in utilizing personal relationships as the foundation of their business in a way that feels not pushy and very, very hands on. Bernadette, as well, follows this very personal approach and they really are, to me, the poster children for how to build your business with French (or Italian) wines in America.

Giampaolo Motta from La Massa

Along with consulting for clients like Stephan von Neipperg’s, one wine of which is the "super cuvée" La Mondotte, Stéphane Derenoncourt started working as a consultant for the Italian estate in Panzano, La Massa.The La Massa wine, very dense and fruity (I reckon part of the signature of Stéphane), was a quick break I made from the 2009 Bordeaux wines. It didn’t feel like too much of a leap, perhaps the wine being so young has something to do with it. My concern is that the wine does not lose its identity, which in Panzano is so unique.

We shall revisit this wine at Vinitaly. My hope is that this wine and winery has not been too finely tuned. But as one might be able to tell, I am a bit skeptical. Just being candid.

On another note, I love how in France they allow just about anyone in the trade. What I wouldn't give to have the kind of nose that little chap has, eh?

written by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas Easter

The wine trail from France to Italy leads through Savoie. Almost Italy. Un po.

There are a few more posts on Bordeaux coming, but it is Easter and don’t we all have to take a few moments to rest up for what is coming? Italy and Vinitaly looms, and there will be 6 days of nonstop work in the Pavilions of Verona. My mom is reading this and feeling no pity for me.

My hosts, Wink Lorch and Brett Jones, have rescued me from work. Two wine professionals who have found this wonderful, beautiful place, Chinaillon, a small village in the French Alps (Haute Savoie). I am taking a crash class in the wines of Savoie. Studying very hard. Lots of research. Cramming it all in. Wink is the world's expert in the wines of Savoie, so I am in good hands. And Brett is a wonderful raconteur and quite a good chef. Thanks so very much to both of you wonderful and patient souls.

Quickly, the wines of Savoie are quite interesting to me, seeing as I love white wine so much. But I am seeing small similarities with the wines of Valle d'Aoste, especially in the way the two regions organize their quality wines. Some similar grapes, but also a huge attention to the indigenous grapes unique to the area.

Seriously, I am taking a few days to let down my hair and catch my breath, and it has been the first time I have done so since September.

Chinaillon is home to Reblochon. Down the road the cows are working inside the rustic chalet that share the hillsides with weekend getaways and ski slopes. It is a busy time here for the cows and the leisure seekers alike.

A few pictures, that’s pretty much all you will get from me today. Happy viewing and Buona Pasqua, y’all!

Keeping it French for a few more days with Vin Jaune and Englegarten

Night shot - hand held

written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

If you're gonna get stuck at an airport hotel, Bordeaux ain't too shabby

After a week of 12+ hour days, driving from Bordeaux to the Medoc, and then to St.Emilion/Pomerol, and finally to the Pessac/Graves area, we headed to the airport for our flights out. My companions made it to Paris (they texted me at dinner) but my flight to Geneva was cancelled. No explanation. Barely enough information to figure out the next move. But what the heck. At least I was in a wine town. This is very do-able.

They shuttled me to a hotel, nothing special. So I decided to take the down time and catch up on exercise and sleep. A long run took me to a shopping center, looking for tomato seeds for a grower back home. I really must post about this experience, because if you know your chickens (and I know my chickens), there is some meat there. But I am flying out soon (hopefully) and must get going.

There was a wine blogger get together in Bordeaux last night that I was planning on going to, but after the run I was done in. Sorry folks, I really wanted to make it, but stanco morto was I.

The good news is that the hotel restaurant was probably better than most dining experiences I have back home. And that again is another post, one which most likely will land me in the poaching pot.

Along with that they had a marvelous little wine bar, which was but a few steps away from mon chambre.

Good food, good wine, internet connection, rest – I can deal with it.

The other good news is that I bought flight insurance. Now if I only had my lawyer here to translate the legalese in French and (Proper British) English.


"C'est la vie"

written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

Bordeaux 2009 ~ It’s Complicated

Out of the hotel room at 7:30AM to meet the group I am traveling with. We have a 9:00 appointment and the rain has become “la plunge.” In Texas it’s what we call a turd-floater.

First sense is that 2009, you are no 2005. But you might resemble 1982 more than we might know. That said, I highly doubt whatever I think about the relative stability of the situation will affect the outcome- there will be buyers for these wines at whatever cost the owners think they can get. As one young technical director of a winery told me over lunch, “The Bordeaux wineries are opportunistic. If they think they can get the money they want, they will ask for it.” And seeing as it is a “niche” market and there is only so much to go around, and after all, Bordeaux is still the center of the wine world carousel that goes round and round.

The eerie similarity between 1982 and 2009 refers as much to the economic conditions that surround the vintage as the quality of the harvest. In 1982, A young Robert Parker glowed over the results and America and the world swallowed the wines up. Now the wine world doesn’t need a Parker as much it did then, although they aren’t throwing him out of the game. On the contrary, his critical acclaim can build the momentum, augment the kabuki dance to a staccato frenzy. I saw it today, ever so slightly in the halls with the young buyers from Asia. One young couple I observed went so far as to employ that mise en place as a setting for their public foreplay. Bordeaux as way to channel their unchained sexual energy – it was strange, but in today’s world where so many cultures are converging, why should it shock?

For me the shock is more the one of the economic differences between the owners and the worker bees and the disconnect between the money and the labor. It still takes a force of pickers and laborers to bring in the grapes from the lowly Cru Bourgeois to the loftiest First and Super-Second growths. But the two factors often don’t share the same societies. I see it as I go from polished chateau to modern palace. The divide is glaring - a mirror to the culture that it comes from.

Where is the opportunity for any kind of convergence? If there can be a hope it will be with the generation that is coming up – those who are inheriting this mess. From the managers who run the estates to the souls in the shops and on the floors of the restaurants, men, women, European, Asian, American. Worker bees included.

You thought you were going to get tasting notes? Please, James Suckling does notes (and scores) so much better. And Parker is preparing. Along with all the merchants and masters who are crawling all over the place in the wine world that the whole world is watching for the next few days. Or for those on the wine trail in Italy, until Vinitaly starts after Easter.

Again, not many answers, many more questions.



Again, an 18 hour day. Sorry mom, this is no vacation.

written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy

Bordeaux 2009 ~ On the Prowl for the Big Fish

What a lesson from the Masters it is - to stand before them and watch as they explain a miracle that finds itself inside a bottle. We’re talking those who are talented, really talented, the top of the world of wine, the center of the wine trade. In a way for me, usually found on the wine trail in Italy, it is a little like going to a mountaintop and not knowing the country or the world I have found myself in. But nonetheless there is a profound manifestation of a natural cycle. Then, it is also like watching the big cats as they prowl the savannah. One must be sure to remain alert so as not to become prey.

Those who know me, they know I don’t buy into Bordeaux just because it is – I am a very curious person by nature, albeit somewhat introspective. And that is really what this journey to France is – more about how I think about wine than how someone is going to sell me on another vintage of the decade. For sure the 2009 vintage in Bordeaux is special – I can see it in the gestures, the excitement, the light behind the eyes. But it is also like being inside a bubble, like rare tropical fish that have been captured and put into a special tank. No longer are the fish swimming in their original nature.

Bordeaux is a proto-natural situation, a kabuki dance of the wine world. They are very, very good at it. One with an open mind and an observant heart can learn from these who master the modern wine world.

Think back to the Ancient world, say, 2,500 years ago. We could have had this discourse over the wines from Campania, at the time the center of the wine world. What would we have considered from these winemakers for Caesar, the emperor of the Western world? Another time, another bubble, now dissolved and pushed off the stage for another play.

It really is a beautiful dance, the play between the winemaker, the chateau, the negociant, the wine shop and all the players in the middle, on the side and in the center of this current campaign.

What do I say to a winery that makes 20,000 cases of wine? What do they say to me? “We are a niche market,” is what I am told. “We do not need everyone to want us, just a few in the world, here and there.” Really an interesting idea, this world view. America, Japan, China, we have all become their consorts, desired but not loved. Nor should love be part of it; after all isn’t finding some of the best places in the world for some of the greatest grapes love enough? Think about it – you can find a perfectly decent Cabernet from Chile, for say, $15, and how could wine from that same grape fetch $50, $200, $1000 and be rationalized?

Well, it cannot be rationalized. Any more than Picasso’s abstract art can be seen as a representation of realism.

Art, commerce, agriculture, spin, mirrors, barrels, sweat – wine in a glass, meant to capture an essence – in the final racking, one could no more put a price on it, whether it be $5 or $5,000, that would change what its fundamental nature is.

And what, pray tell is it?

As we swim around in this bubble this week, I hope to find an answer or two.

Or better, more questions.

written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy