Vino Cotto ~ My Elisir d'amore

Last night we drove to Ft. Worth to the Bass Hall for a performance of Donizetti’s L'Elisir d'Amore (The Elixir of Love). Fitting coincidence, as I have been thinking about dessert wines after my recent swing through Southern Italy. It seems every region has a passito or some kind of vin santo wine. But this time the wine that I zeroed in on I found both in Abruzzo and Basilicata.

I first encountered vino cotto in Ortona at the Ristorante al Vecchio Teatro. I was spying the cooler of Abruzzo wines in the restaurant when I saw a large hand blown bottle of wine. I asked chef Armando Carusi what it was. “It is my grandfather’s vino cotto,” he said. And he proceeded to pour me a glass.

As I sat back down at the table, another winemaker looked over at me and asked what I had. When I told him, he said, “They don’t know how to make vino cotto well. They make it the old way. My vino cotto is better; I need to send you a bottle and you will know what really good vino cotto is,” he blustered.

Indeed the grandfather’s wine was from another time. It was sherried, and acidic and almost bitter. But it felt so real. I imagined this wine would serve as a wonderful digestive for the meal I had just had and I thanked the chef for the pleasure of the glass he shared with a stranger. It was really one of those sweet moments one gets when one strays off the tourist trails.

My second encounter was a week later, in Basilicata. Paolo Montrone, who oversees operations at Terre degli Svevi's Re Manfredi winery, had us at the winery as guests for lunch. His wife and two other women cooked an unforgettable feast of fresh vegetables, pasta and two kinds of meat to go with a gorgeous Muller Thurgau/Traminer white blend, an off-the-charts beautiful Aglianico rosé and a vertical of Aglianico going back to 1998. Wow, I was in heaven, and my reward was Aglianico. Then an amazing display of cookies and pastries were presented to the table.

I left my heart in Re Manfredi

Paolo, who resembles a well-fed Tony Bennett, stepped away from the table and minutes later appeared with a carafe of warm red wine. From Aglianico grapes, he brought his version of Vincotto (as they called it in Basilicata). This time the wine was deeper in color (not a surprise, seeing as Aglianico is a heavily pigmented and polyphenolically rich grape). I had stepped away from the table to take a picture and when I returned I saw that he had served everyone.

When I asked Paolo for a little glass to try as well, he looked at me funny but in a 1/1000th of a second kind of way. As I took the wine up to smell he looked a little nervous. And as I went to taste the wine I could sense even more trepidation, coming not just from him but from the rest of the locals in the room. Thank God I can sometimes sense these 1/1000th moments, and I drew the glass away and set it down. I then picked up one of the cookies and procceded to dip it in the warm, sweet elixir. The room melted in ease, assured that I wasn’t some American yokel who didn’t understand their customs. Dumb luck on my part, but a lesson, once again, to me, not to underestimate the traditions and the customs but to work to always be open and available for an autochthonous experience.

In Donizetti’s L'elisir d'amore, the elixir is a bottle of Bordeaux. I couldn’t but help laugh last night at the joke. The traveling salesman, Dr. Dulcamara, pawns a bottle of French wine off on poor love sick Nermorino. Thinking he has gotten the mother of all love potions, Nemorino proceeds to carry the farce of the opera out to its happy conclusion. But I was thinking all the way home, how my Dr. Dulcamaras pressed these ancient wines upon me and how they indeed cast a spell upon this equally love sick traveler. In love with Italian wines and sick that folks back home will rarely get a chance to see and taste and feel and smell such wonderful wines in such a rich and enchanting country.

Maybe we’ll have to do something about that in the future.

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

Making a Case for Italian Wine

2004 Montepulciano Passito Clematis from Zaccagnini

As promised, images from the last Italian wine trail journey. Twelve wines that crossed our paths, twelve singular experiences. But without the food, the people, the places, they are meaningless. Hence you will find no tasting notes, only captions and images. Breathe deep, you can almost smell them, and if you have an open imagination you are already there, on the wine trail in Italy with us.

Buon weekend y’all!

2009 Montepulciano d''Abruzzo Cerasuolo from Illuminati

2009 Cococciola Aer Terre di Chieti IGT

2008 Pecorino Ciprea Offida DOC from Podere Capecci San Savino

1997 Valentini Montepulciano d' Abruzzo

Rattafia Elisir d'Abruzzo Michele Jannamico & Figli (Montepulciano & Amarena)

2009 Rapitala Casali Sicilia IGT

Duca di Castelmonte Gibelè Zibibbo secco Sicilia IGT

1961 Chianto Classico - Castello di Bossi

Vino Cotto di Nonno - Abruzzo (made by chef's grandfather)

2001 Serpara Aglianico del Vulture from Re Manfredi ~ Terre degli Svevi

Vincotto of Aglianico from Terre degli Svevi winemaker's personal stash

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

Eating your heart out

Stepping onto the scales this week at the doctor (“You’ve gained two pounds, Mr. Cevola”) caused me to pause and look back at some of the great meals I had on this last Italian wine trail work/adventure. From Emilia Romagna to Marche to Abruzzo, Apulia, Basilicata, Sicily, Tuscany and Rome, what a trip it was. Here’s a little eye candy, sans traffic cones. Food, beautiful food.

Wines for another time. Sailing pix in the Mediterranean too. I reckon if one's gonna gloat, one's gotta flaunt the yacht shots, eh?

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

The Duty of Hospitality

is not just expected of the Host

My dad, Lou, in the 1950's - the consummate saleman

I received an email from Italy, via a concerned and upset supplier, whom I regard as a friend.

“The person you arranged to visit our property in Tuscany never showed up. They never even called! Do you know what happened? We were waiting. We are still waiting. This happens too many times! Please make sure the people you set up visits for really want to come to visit us!”

I cannot tell you how many times this has happened. And with the tourist season ramping up, I fear more incidents like this. In this case I made three calls, filled out visit forms, three properties I made arrangements for and the client was a no-show at all three. To quote my dad above, "WHAT'S THE DEAL?"

The client, whom forever going forward will be persona non grata in my books, emailed me a month ago. “I am going to Italy, to Emilia Romagna and Tuscany. Please set up some appointments for me and my colleague. We are planning a fall trip to take our customers on a tour and we’d like to find some nice spots to visit.”

So I drop everything, make some calls, fill out some forms, stop what I am doing. Because that is what we do. We are in the service business. I can go straight to the vineyard, these people are my friends. But even friends have limits.

I don’t know how to say this but in the most direct of ways. Italians value hospitality above almost anything else. So when someone, a client or a friend, is presented to them by someone with credibility, such as myself, they treat a visit as if it were a family visit. Ospitalità. Often cranking up the oven, cooking lunch. Bringing out the linen table cloths. Friends of my friends are my friends. That kind of thing.

When one crams appointments, trying to make two or three stops in Tuscany in a day, and the inevitable happens, and one doesn’t call, it makes it an embarrassing situation; the impression is that ugly self-centered Americans are at it again. And of course I get the inevitable call asking me why I didn’t know better than to set up an appointment for these deadbeats. The Italians don’t say it that way but that’s what they mean, when they ask me simply, “Why?” And I cannot provide them with a suitable answer.

So, going forward, to anyone reading this, if you ask someone to set you up in Italy (or France or California), for God’s sake have the courtesy to show up and if for some reason you cannot make it, at the very least, call and express your regrets at not being able to make the appointment.

You are being welcomed into someone’s home. It is simple civility to act with a modicum of respect for everyone else’s time.

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

Rendezvous with Roma

No matter how I try to avoid Rome, it draws me back inside. Not having to drive in is less stressful. Having a Roman in tow makes it a memorable experience. So it was, at the end of the week, that I found myself with our host, Caterina, whose family has lived in Rome for centuries.

To walk the narrow streets and to come upon a place that one recognizes is always a surprise to me. How many times did I roam the streets during an abandoned August, a chilly Autumn, a hopeful Spring? More times than I care to divulge. But this is a walker’s town, and a town for the young and the dead.

Our day, before we made it to Rome, was crowned with a meal cooked by three women in Basilicata. The cult of the Goddess vibrates with a positive energy in that region. Men make the wine, women provide the context and the sustenance with their roasted vegetables, their pastured cattle and sweet lamb meats, and those incredible pastries made from the bright wheat and the pure water of the region. A shrouded plate of cookies, inspired by Christianity and paganism, were seductively displayed, proud and erect, almonds jutting from the top, dipped in warm vincotto of Aglianico. Female energy dipped into the male force, it was (with food) an erotic experience as I have never had.

Some say Basilicata is unfathomably poor. One could live well in such abject conditions. Povera ma profondamente feconda.

But now we are back in the cities with the streets and the other cattle, the corn fed ones from the land of the giant Hawaiian shirts. And those short pants that show the calves as if to signal to some unseen Observer, checking to see if they are ready for the slaughter house. Not yet, Rome must take their little piece of tribute from all who walk inside the walls.

Thankfully, Caterina knows how to jump into the Roman vortex, where we leave the Americans and the menus in English, proclaiming they serve “Italian Food”, which is a conundrum with profound implications. Maybe that is why it is so difficult to present real Italian wines and real Italian food, in general, to a culture that has been trained in Rome and Venice and Florence to accept a menu turistico of Italian invention. No worries, as the hipsters say in Austin, we press on deeper into our personal passeggiata of time and memory and pleasure.


We are seeking only wine this night. The food was already in apogee, a climax with a cookie coda that will produce offspring on these pages, someday, soon. Now we want to drink Italian wine.

Our first stop we ask for a simple white from Umbria to be told they are out. On a Friday night. I remember the conversation I had with my Italian wine salesmen friends in Rome and how unprepared the roman restaurants are for their weekend clients. The server brings us four bottles. A spoofed Vermentino (barricato) from Sardegna. Pass. A Pinot Grigio from the north. Please, dont. Another oaky imposter. What is she thinking? That we would like these abominations? Finally we point to the 2009 Frascati, light but senza legno.

The next stop, we weren’t so lucky. Past Pizza Farnese we found a Falanghina in the Campo dei Fiori. It was crisp enough, but maybe a little too acidic. It had a metallic finish. Cold enough, it would be fine. But we weren’t batting too well this night.

Finally, we found a quieter wine bar in Piazza S. Egidio that Caterina remembered. We flip flopped between a Grecchetto in purezza and a Pecorino in purezza. We settled on the Pecorino. It was white, it was cold. It wasn’t spoofed. It didn’t have the soul that the Pecorinos had that we'd tried the week before in the Marche and Abruzzo. But it was a lovely night, and we paused to let the eternal procession we call Rome pass by us, and we enjoyed the endless pastime of Romans, watching people, with all their quirky lovely movements.

Ah yes, Roma, we love you, but we can never be yours. There is too much Italy to belong too. But for a night, for a moment under the stars, with friends and wine and the caressing breeze, yes, we can be swept away, one more time.

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

Sicily ~ Under the Windmill

The long ride from the old center of Palermo to Rapitala took us through a labyrinth of winding roads going towards the newer parts of the town. Past the English garden, where an affluence rivals ones seen along the coastal towns of Southern California.

On the main highway, after 30 minutes, towards the airport, a plaque commemorates a terrible bombing near the town of Capaci where the Mafia dons blew Giovanni Falcone, his wife, a judge and three police escorts to kingdom come.

Within the hour we were in the country. Cliffs jutted out of the ground with dramatic simplicity. We could have been in Capetown South Africa or some part of California. Sicily was weaving her web around my imagination once again.

Before we reached Rapitala we started seeing windmills. In this place where there are so many influences, I thought of another don, Quixote, and the simple sincerity that this land promised without the muddle of the human dealings. So much opportunity. So many squandered years.

Once inside the estate, Rapitala is a universe of terroirs. And with it one finds the indigenous grapes, the Catarratto, the Nero D’Avola, in proximity to Chardonnay, Syrah, Pinot Noir, Cabernet, Sauvignon Blanc. At first I thought how odd to see all of those grapes. So I asked our host, Laurent, “Why? How can this happen?”

“This is Sicily!” Laurent exclaimed. Indeed. The land that is conquered, by people, by grapes, eventually who wins out in the race against time? We already know with invading peoples who prevails on this island. Sicily. And the grapes? These French grapes? I am asking a man whose father was French and who came here 40 years ago with his native vines.

Laurent is a bit of a transplant. The ultimate outsider, looking in to a culture and looking out from it. His wife is Sicilian. His children are Sicilian. His Father-in-law is from a Sicilian family who have been here since the Normans. He looks like Sean Connery, tall and handsome. His interests; photography, his palace and the patrimony of Palermo, one only needs to talk for a few minutes to see this family is stitched into the fabric of Sicilian and Palermitan culture, at the deepest levels. And even with Laurent being half French. But Sicily was the prototype for America in the melting pot creation of her people. And we are seeing, because the land is so fecund, these grapes assimilated and the wines that come from them as an expression of this prolific land.

This marriage of France and Sicily, between a man and a woman and between a grape and the earth, follows the traditions of Palermo in her lean towards French sensibilities. Not exclusively, but an inclusion upon the palimpsest that makes Sicily and Palermo so exotic and beguiling.

Later in the day, back at the house for an al fresco meal, Laurent and I sat together and talked about butter. “It is not uncommon in cooking of Palermo is it?” I knew this because my Sicilian grandmother used butter, and oil. “No, you are right; it is part of the French influence of the French chefs, the Monzu (Monsieur).

Over a glass of late harvest Sauvignon Blanc and a stunning duo of ice creams from Antica Gelateria Ilardo, one of jasmine and cinnamon and the other of straw berry, pistachio and decorated in the style of a cassata cake, we talked about this French influence. Funny because we were now tasting food from the influence of the Arab culture.

I thought of dear old Lampedusa, who lived in this neighborhood, and wrote one of the great Italian novels of the 20th century. I feel his spirit in my bones, I am a son of Lampedusa, of Palermo, of this whole swirling mess we call Sicily.





The Rapitala Wines – notes under the windmill

"Piano Maltese" Bianco 2009 - 50% Grillo, 50% Catarratto – smooth mellow light acidity- creamy finish.

"Casali" Catarratto Chardonnay 2009 - 70% Catarratto, 30% Chardonnay – buttery nose, spritely flavors, spicy.

"Grand Cru" Chardonnay 2008 – oak nose right up front, nice balance. While the oak is evident in the aromas, the flavors seem well integrated. The alcohol levels are in check and the wine is balanced. I like this wine.

"Campo Reale" Nero d'Avola 2008 - Buttery, fruity spiciness; cherry. An entry level red for casual sipping.

“Altonero” Nero d’ Avola 2008– something new from Rapitala. Wood treatment, 5 month in barrique, another 18 months in large oak tanks. Peppery, perfumed – delicate – still a bit tannic from the oak.

"Nuar" Nero d'Avola Pinot Nero 2008 70% Nero d'Avola, 30% Pinot Noir.

"Hugonis" Nero d'Avola Cabernet Sauvignon 2007 – coffee, oak, spicy. I see a thread, through the reds, of spice. This family blend is pleasant.

“Nadir” Syrah 2008 – Orange aromas, spun sugar. Not at all tight or bitter. Again, a mellow red.

“Solinero” Syrah 2007 – more classic syrah notes with pepper. A buttery flavor too.

Cielo Dalcamo 2004- 50% Sauvignon Blanc, 50% Catarratto. Dessert white. Botrytis. We had this wine after dinner with classic Sicilian desserts. Went surprisingly well with ice cream (jasmine-cinnamon and straw berry, pistachio and decorated in the style of a cassata cake).

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