5:40 AM – Wake up, look at the clock. Not 6:45 yet, but up. It's 88°F outside.6:45 – Alarm goes off.
7:30 – Emails rolling in.
8:00 – Text from supplier, asking if we are going to meet them at first appointment.
8:30 - Call to my Aunt Jo, who is 94 today. phone is busy.
8:40 – Call to salesman- I will pick up the vendor and the winemaker at 9:30 and meet him at first appointment at 10:00 and then take them to the next stop.
9:00 – Stop for a coffee because am out at home.
9:20 – Sitting outside it’s already 93°F.
9:22 – Dump half the coffee – it’s too hot to drink anyway.
9:23 – Text from supplier, winemaker is going to be 15 minutes late.
9:24 – Take a picture of a storefront.
9:25 – Arrive at hotel and wait outside.
9:45 – Supplier meets me outside. Winemaker isn’t here yet. Talk. More talk, sitting outside hotel in the shade, where it’s only 89°F.
9:55 – Winemaker arrives. He hasn’t had coffee yet. We are 15-20 minutes from first appointment with 5 minutes to get there.
10:08 – Call from salesman. “Where are you?” he asks. “Two blocks away,” I lie.
10:12 – First appointment, introductions and tasting of eight wines from Piedmont, six of them red, five of them Nebbiolo.10:40 – Meeting goes well. Next appointment 11:15 – we are 20 minutes away.
10:45 – Stop at another coffee shop for the supplier and the winemaker, who haven’t had their coffee yet.
10:50 – Call from another importer who tells me his best selling Pinot Grigio has new owners, but the old owners own the trademark to the name. Brainstorm over new name.
10:55 - Call to my Aunt Jo, who is 94 today. phone is busy.
11:00 – Importer calls me back. It seems they can use the name until the end of the year and still get the wine and then the owners will pull the plug. 20+ years of working a brand goes down the drain.
11:02 – On the road to next appointment.
11:16 – Call from another salesman, “Where are you?” he asks. “Two blocks away,” I lie.
11:18 – Meeting with next account. Friendly folks, a jolly buyer who loves soccer and a sommelier who loves to blog. It’s all good.11:45 – Finish appointment – hand supplier and winemaker over to salesman. He has a farm truck that is 4 feet off the ground. I worry how my not so tall winemaker is going to get into the cab of the truck. It is now 95°F.
12:15 PM – Arrive halfway across town at a Caribbean place for a 12:30 lunch appointment with the top chef. 15 minutes early. I spill water all over me in the car and it looks like I wet myself. It is now 99°F, in the shade.
12:30 – Lunch with chef. I order the Cuban (sandwich) and water. No fries. Arroz moros instead.
1:30 – Back to office. I have a car full of wine, a wine dinner tonight with the winemaker, and work back at my desk. Redoing a list of Italian wines, following up on previous calls and projects, and “checking in” with my colleagues. The temperature is now 103°F.
1:45 - Call to my Aunt Jo, who is 94 today. phone is busy.
3:30 - Walk down to first floor to photograph our mixologist for a blog post. She hands me three drinks she has made for a Grand Marnier cocktail challenge and asks me to taste them, tell me what I think of them.4:30 – Looked up and saw the afternoon disappeared. I grab a bottle of water from the fridge and down it. Look out the window. A package arrives at my cubicle space. Parts for a computer. I unpack and condense the packaging and set aside the recyclable parts for the bin at home (we don’t have a big enough one at work).
4:40 - Call to my Aunt Jo, who is 94 today. Finally picks up.
4:41 - Run out mail a package. The temperature is now 108°F.5:15 – I have to gather the supplier at 5:30 for the wine diner which starts at 6:30 halfway across town. Down the staircase, with a briefcase, a camera and other packages I feel a sharp twitch on my left side near my chest. As it get down the stairs in the parking garage the pain is getting more intense. I cannot breathe in too well. I try to stay calm.
5:22 – Selt-belted in the car, Air conditioning blasting high, the temperature in the garage says it is now 105°F. My left side is in pain, but I don’t think (or hope) it is a heart thing. I try to put my earphone (for the phone) in but it keeps falling out. I almost back up into a pillar in the garage. My heart rate is steady. The pain is increasing. I am getting nervous.
5:30 – I call Kim, more afraid of her than anything I’ve got. She lost her last guy to a heart attack and I don’t want her to get pissed at me because I didn’t listen to the signs. As she is talking to me, my supplier and winemaker pile into the car. Rush hour traffic is murder; the temperature now says 107°F. I hang up with Kim, as I don’t want to worry my car mates.
5:40 – I explain to my car mates that I am going to get them to the wine dinner and if I don’t feel better when we get there I will need to go do something about it. The winemaker looks upset; the supplier gets on the phone and starts swearing in French.
5:50 – Another importer friend calls me about a meeting on Monday. I have an earphone that is stuck nine yards up my ear, a sharp searing pain in my chest, a supplier and a winemaker in my car heading onto a freeway at rush hour; with a deadline to be somewhere and motorcyclist commuters are swerving in and out of traffic. Oh boy.
6:15 – We get to the wine dinner destination and I drop off my companions. I get back into the car, take off my tie, and call Kim back. “Should I go to the ER or a Doc-in-the-Box?” she was heading out to yoga, but decided not to. “You go to the Doc-in-the-Box where we took Renee. If you are worse off, they will call the ER and expedite your entry into the hospital. Go now!”
6:28 – On the surface streets at rush hour with commuters who have been cooped up in office downtown all day and the temperature is holding at 108°F.
6:40 – I walk in the Doc-in-the-Box. The pain is really intense now, but I am not panicking. I cannot blow my nose, sneeze or breathe heavily. I need to blow my nose. I need to pee. I am really uncomfortable now. And the desk lady hands me a pile of paperwork and asks for my insurance card, drivers license and credit card.6:50- Sitting in the waiting room. There is the end of a movie with Dennis Quaid and Natasha Richardson on. They are in a wine cellar and he is manhandling a bottle of 1923 Burgundy in a room that is lit up like the 4th of July. I wonder if I am going to meet Natasha before this day is done. Both she and the bottle over Burgundy are dead and the saying, “non c'è due senza tre” runs through my head.
7:10 – Paper work done, and then scooted into a little, dark, cold room that has Leave it to Beaver on. I touch every button on the screen. Last thing I want to do is die with that running through my head.
7:15 – Vitals checked. All good. On to chest x-ray. Back to little, dark, cold room. The TV is now dead. Good, that’s the “tre”.
7:30 – Doctor comes in. shows me the x-rays. Stomach is filled with large pockets of air. “What did you have for lunch?” he asks. “Just a Cuban and some rice and beans,” I answer. “Do you eat beans often?” he asks. “All the time.” Not lying.
7:40 – Doctor asks me to lay back. He presses my abdomen and when he helps me get up, there is no more pain. None.
7:45 – Before he discharges me, the Doctor, tells me “Don’t eat anything spicy or creamy, stay away from fried foods and alcohol. Drink some Sprite or Perrier. And don’t lift anything for a few days and please try to stay out of the heat.”
8:00 – I show up at wine dinner. I missed the Vitello Tonnato course. Everyone is surprised to see me except the owner’s brother. He is putting on a pair of plastic gloves, looking like he's playing Doctor and getting ready to give a digital rectal exam. “Where’ve you been?” he asks. I scurry past him after I say hello in a funny, Italo-idiomatic way.10:00 PM – After the dinner the supplier wants to go to the hotel and sleep. The winemaker wants to drink some of the supplier’s champagne. I call up several people to ask where we could go. We are directed to a quirky French-ish wine bar near the hotel. I proceed to drink a little Champagne and take my friends back to their hotel room. Temperature says it’s 99 °F at 11:00 PM.
11:45 PM - Go home eat some crackers and goat cheese, and watch an episode or two of Weeds and go to sleep. Wake up every two or three hours though the night with the worst headache. But I could breathe. And my heart was beating strong and steady.
All in a day’s work, on the wine trail, in August, back in the US of A.
written and photographed by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy
Last month at the Illuminati estate in Abruzzo, I had lunch with my people. No, they weren’t Sicilian or Calabrese cousins. They weren’t my co-workers or clients meeting me in Italy. It was much more visceral than that, almost tribal in the connection. I was invited to have lunch with a wine sales team, guys who sell to wine shops and restaurants in Rome.
Over the years I've had many meals at Illuminati. In the early days we had meals on the second floor of the old house, sometimes outside. If it was cold we’d invade the dining room. As the winery grew and the Illuminati family redesigned the old stable on the main floor, we settled into the space they called the Luperia, a space with a kitchen and an open hearth. And a larger dining room. Many great memories exist in this room, but I had never sat down to eat with my own regiment. And during those years, friend and cellar master, Agostino, has opened many a bottle for us to enjoy. We’ve grown into the job together.
I was really excited about this meal. I was prepared to pick the brains of rookie and veteran alike. Who would know better the travails of selling wine than a salesman from Rome? What kind of kickbacks did the Roman restaurateur demand? How did one go about getting control of the wine list or selling a wine from Abruzzo to a Sardegnan? I was hoping for all mysteries to be revealed.
Dino Illuminati, the patriarch of the estate, motioned for me to sit next to him. Lunch is serious business for Dino and he didn’t want anyone to get too near him with idle chat. He wants to eat and drink first. I know the drill. When Dino and I sit down we both go after food and wine pretty well much in the same way. Except Dino has a capacity that I will never be able to match.
One of the older veterans sat across from me. He reminded me of one of the salesmen back home. This gent had a peaceful air about him, he was the elder statesman; he grew up in Amatrice in northern Lazio.
I asked him how his route was. Was it competitive? Cutthroat? Was it hard to collect money? Did you get resistance with all the new wines coming out? What about the prejudices of owners from one region against the wines of another region (i.e. Piedmont vs. Tuscan). I was surprised to be reminded that they don’t go around tasting wine, sampling as we call it. Now they just carry their list, with maybe some Gambero Rosso review (very big in Rome) and the price list. Pretty cut and dry. Rome was a city that was prepared for all comers, and has been this way for hundreds if not thousands of years. Anything goes.
He was a thoughtful guy. And we were starting to drink pretty well by then. The big slurpy purple stuff they make in Abruzzo that they call “Montepulciano in purezza.” All the while the young salesmen would come over to him and bear hug him or jostle him around. You could tell these guys liked working with each other; there was camaraderie among them.
“Alfonso, what really works best is the rapport we build with our customers. Trust, time and relationship.” Ah, the “R” word. So the secret was, there is no secret; daily treading, pressing the flesh, and being reliable. Showing up. Building trust. Just like almost everywhere else.
Look at these people. They’re having fun. They’re enjoying their lives. They’re enjoying each other.
I told some stupid story, trying to be funny, about a sales experience here in The States, but I don’t think the experience translated so well to their frame of reference. No matter, platters of grilled lamb, sausage and pork were pulling up to the table and we soon were diverted to the main course.
After lunch we went outside for espresso and cigars and fresh air, what a combo, eh? The sales crew had to get back to Rome. It was only three hours we’d had to sit down and break bread, but in that time I felt like a huge gift had been dropped in my lap; An afternoon with my selling tribe; with the young ones, the veterans, the crazy ones, the calm ones. Its not a closed brotherhood but it is a deep connection, to capture what is growing right out there in the land and transform it to wine and take it to Rome and NY and Austin and try and share with all those folks in those places these amazing miracles in bottles. Not just wine, but the lives, of Spinelli and Spinozzi and Illuminati and you and me and anyone that wants in on this.
For weeks it seems I have been slumbered over a computer, studying trends, making spread sheets, eating dust. Bound to this place by time of harvest and holiday. Setting the stage for the big show.
Better? With yeasts developed in Torino, from factories provided by funds that grew from the wealth brigands stole from these very places? Has television and mobile phones done in a few short years what Hannibal and Caesar and Federico II and Napoleon weren’t able to accomplish in all the ages before? Why would you mingle the yeast for panettone with the grano duro of Barile?
The road though the Cilento National Park hooked me. I want to linger. Forests, greenery, cool, peaceful. It is the kind of experience one can only hope to have in Italy, or anywhere. But the coast is calling, as is Calabria. We will have to touch the sand when we get there. The trail goes straight through the 
This is the ideal time of summer; lying out in the pool, on my isola, thinking about the little sounds and sights and smells that make up the perfect day in July.
This is a yearly event, bringing dancers, artists, musicians, actors, clowns and jesters to this one place in the country, to celebrate the casks and the wine and the middle of the summer. Large women are seen carrying these gigantic platters for the fire; today they are feeding the artistic community and we have been invited by the winemaker.
The invitation was only sent a few days before. To get all the players together was a major feat, but this is a dream, all things are possible. The invitation went like this:
I thought it a little strange when I got closer and started hearing all kind of animal sounds. A tent by the side of the building was pitched, a circus had stopped by. The smell of fresh seafood and garlic, mixed with the exotic aroma of capers, saffron and rosemary, filled the air.
This was the wine we had been searching for. It wasn’t some baked, tired, brown mass of lifeless juice with an alcohol base. And it wasn’t a mass of vanilla and butter, seamless and uniform, as if it could have come from anywhere in the New World Order of Winemaking. It was perfect. Crisp and juicy, an acidic marmelata to relieve the rice and the mussels of their responsibility to be the sole nurturing force. It was golden, it was sunshine, the tan on the arms of a young woman working in the fields, the little hairs on the small of the back of the newborn baby, the strength of the pizzaiolo, gathered after all those years in front of a hot oven, working his life away for his art.
The food, the circus performers, the exotic animals, they all retreated to the edges of the dream. All that was left was a pitcher in the late afternoon sun by the edge of the water and the sublime silence of a hot summer day; the synchronization of a life searching for that perfect moment, found by accident, over a festival for an ancient grape.
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.
