A Tale of Two Italian Wine Dinners

Which is the one for you?

Soon, two wine dinners will take place, in the same town, on the same day, at the same time. They illustrate the different approaches. I think one works well; I think the other one is a stretch. Let’s take a look at them.

Italian Wine Dinner #1

• With the owner of a major Italian estate, with land holdings in Tuscany, Piedmont and Sicily. All wines are estate grown and produced.

• A top chef in town, who is about to open his own Italian Restaurant.

The wines (8) :

• Brut Metodo Classico
• Pinot Grigio
• Chardonnay

SuperTuscan duo

• Sangiovese/Cabernet/Syrah
• Merlot/Carbernet Sauvignon

Brunello

• Brunello di Montalcino
• Single Vineyard Brunello


• Dessert wine – Brachetto DOCG

Here's what's cooking (with the wine matches):

Reception with Brut Metodo Classico

First Course
Seafood Salad with White Beans & Arugula
Served with the Pinot Grigio and the Chardonnay

Second Course
Freshmade Tagliatelle with Pork Ragu
Served with the two Super Tuscan wines

Third Course
Braised Lamb Shank with Farro and Fall Vegetables
Served with the two Brunello wines

Fourth Course
Crespelle with Bittersweet Chocolate Fonduta
Served with the dessert wine – Brachetto DOCG


Additional: as a special gift for each attendee we will be giving you a complimentary bottle of Tuscan Red wine (a $40 value), which will be personally signed by the attending winery owner.

$119 per person + tax = $128.82 (no gratuity)

As well, this dinner has made provisions to buy any of the wines served at anywhere from an additional 15-20% off retail prices, so if you like the wines, you can buy them there and even get some of the bottles signed by the owner (which makes for unusual gift ideas, especially with the upcoming season).

Italian Wine Dinner #2

• A family owned business for almost 100 years, but no mention of owning any land. Claim to fame is unique packaging and value driven wines. Showing up will be a young lady, who appears to be a family member and has the title of Vice President.

• The restaurant no longer touts having a chef, although in the past this establishment had several very good ones.

The wines (5) :

• Prosecco
• Pinot Grigio
• Chianti
• Merlot
• Moscato

Here's what's cooking (with the wine matches):

Aperitivo
Passed canapés, arancini, crostini and tartlets.
Prosecco

Antipasto
Crab cake
Pinot Grigio

First Course
Pasta with sausage, wild mushrooms and toasted fennel cream.
Chianti

Second Course
Roast filet of beef with potatoes
Merlot

Dessert
Gorgonzola and Taleggio with cherries almonds and honey drizzle
Moscato

$75 per person + tax (no mention if gratuity is included or additional) with tax = $81.20, with tip $96.20.


I am curious which one you would want to go to? Is the free bottle of wine motivating? No tip? Ability to buy at below retail? Or would you prefer spending a little less on a night out in a place that is known for good food? I'd like to give some feedback to these folks, in light of the current economy and the ways to promote their business, and how friendly or alluring these kinds of events are for people who read this.

Last note: Dinner #1 sold out in 5 hours (60 seats). I don’t know about dinner #2 yet.



Thoughts, anyone?

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

The Whirlwind Tour (& Taste)

One of our Italian importer reps has been in town for the week. In the last 24 hours it has rained 8-10 inches. The Trinity River is reaching record highs. The Calatrava Bridge construction has stopped until the storms end. Last night, as we were assembling in the back room of Jimmy’s, the air raid sirens blaring, and the tornadoes threatening, 35 of us huddled together over plates of antipasti and wines from Piedmont.

It was eerie, but the crowd seemed to be into it. I imagined us all as if we were marooned on an island and had to get along for more than a few hours. There were six tables of folks. There were six wines. We had Gavi, Barbera, Dolcetto,Barbaresco, Barolo and Moscato. For a brief twilight zone moment, I imagined each table representing one of the wines. The wind was beating down on the old building, the roof was leaking. But we weren’t going anywhere. I couldn’t imagine anywhere else being any safer. We had food, water, wine. Worse case, we could all head into the freezer room and wait out the worst. We had fig cookies. We had dark chocolate, we had espresso. We had Moscato.

As we were watching the TV, it looked as if tornadoes were touching down everywhere in town, like a tornadic recreation of the War of the Worlds. I went outside to look at the skies. Blue, green, gray, dense with clouds and rain and wind. And then I went back to check the TV. When I noticed. Fox. Just like last week when I was in Ft. Wayne and the TV was blaring another apocalyptic end of the world scenario, with the Hurricane on the east coast and the new oil spill in the gulf. Again, Fox. I called a friend in the media and asked them to give me their take on it. “You should worry more about me than you; it’s heading up a corridor towards me.” I suppose that was intended to make me feel better.

All day, I had been sluggish from a “procedure” and this weather and the stress started up the pains in the side, like last month when I had my “heart attack”. After meeting a friend for lunch at a tony spot, the situation improved, slightly. The 1976 Clos du Val Zinfandel sure helped, it was as perfect of a wine as one could wish for. 1976, drought year, the year we drove through the Napa Valley in the Falcon station wagon, slept in the car in a Calistoga trailer park, the year my son was born.

Earlier, perusing the wine list, I noticed the account hadn’t the same degree of passion for my Italian wines as I did, although the Italian wine section was more than well represented. Points for the other side(s). Small wine companies with the time to pay attention in ways we cannot or will not. Passion know no scale.

Same as the night before, another spot, this time all Italian. The wine buyer, really the wine gatekeeper, would never realize the great wines we have in our galleys. If for no reason than they come from a large behemoth company, and that alone gives people like him reason to hate those of us who work in that milieu. I noticed a red wine from Etna that was interesting, but at $90, hardly a value. Youth, they have to make their own mistakes, even at the cost of the diner who is parceling out their spending more carefully. Misconnection there. What to do? Maybe the tornado will someday cross the path of the buyer.

After a week in a hard hit area, the real Midwest, back in Texas, back to the daily storms of wine and ego and youth and vs. the established and experienced and the so very dug in. The voice of experience vs. the new voices of truth. Or so they think. Even under a wall of water, there really is nothing new under the sun. Just a new crop of humans who have to learn the hard way.

On with the show - it’s flooding down in Texas, hope the levees don’t break.

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

...to serve somebody

Last week, traveling across Indiana, I spent a day with a young lady, a sales manager. She was 33, with two little boys. She had the aura of an older person; she mentored many of the new young people in the organization I was working with. This organization was going through a rough patch, having lost many of its more lucrative spirit agencies. The wine department was still intact, but the company as a whole, was wounded. Not gravely, but wounded none the less. This young lady was in the battle, on the front lines, training new salespeople and trying to keep them and herself in a job. She worked many hours, this young mother.

The night before, I had spent an evening in an Italian restaurant. This was a nice little place, with real Italian feeling. The pasta was made on the premises; the garden in the back supplied the kitchen with fresh herbs, basil for the pesto and tomatoes for the salads and sauces. The owner was from the Neapolitan peninsula; he’d left when he was 18 and landed in the midwestern town when he was 28. Over the years he had a restaurant that did well and he bought another one, expanded and brought his brothers to work, other Italian immigrants to serve as well. One of the fellows, Paolo, from Calabria, reminded me of my childhood friend, John Carvaly. Always a smile and a good thought. He had left his life, his family, and here he was smack-dab in the mid-section of this great big country, and he was working, serving food and drinks to people, some who would go home and watch Fox and listen to stories about illegal immigrants setting fires in the Southern Californian desert. Or other ones about local state senators pushing for an immigration policy similar to Arizona's to deter illegal immigrants from entering their state. And on. And on. And. On.

You may be a preacher with your spiritual pride
You may be a city councilman taking bribes on the side
You may be workin’ in a barbershop, you may know how to cut hair
You may be somebody’s mistress, may be somebody’s heir

When I was a young man starting out in this business, I started through service. Waiting. Serving. I tried to tell myself I was paying it forward, so that someday I could sit on a nice restaurant on a Friday night with my pretty girlfriend or wife, and they would serve me. And it did happen. But deep down, inside me, the call to serve never left. This life isn’t about you or me; it’s about the other. It revolves around helping, serving, being at hand. The young sales manager knows that only too well. Recently, her husband fell ill and in a month he was dead. And she was left in the center of the country, with two boys under 10, in an uncertain time, working for a company that was going through convolutions that have shook numerous employees, old and new, out of the company. But she still has to make the delivery to the restaurant that forgot to order the wine for the weekend, and she has to do it before she takes her sons to football practice, on a dirt road, out in the country. Again and again.

You might be a rock ’n’ roll addict prancing on the stage
You might have drugs at your command, women in a cage
You may be a businessman or some high-degree thief
They may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief

Last month, several of my colleagues and one of our best clients went to the Italian Club for a benefit. The room was set up with glasses for wine and Italian antipasti. The night centered around a loosely woven foundation to serve as a way to honor the memory of a man loved in the community and missed by his grieving wife and family. We were all trying to raise money so that young boys and girls, living in the country with limited financial and educational resources could have access to musical instruments and music teachers. When the widow stood up to talk about her husband, gone barely a year, she talked about how he came from Italy with his brother, also from the Neapolitan peninsula, with a dream to carry on the skills they learned from the father in the New World. And they were successful. Immensely successful. But last May, in the middle of the night, he had a massive heart attack and left this world and all his success and family and everything we know about this world. He served somebody too.

We are called, daily, to set our wants and need aside for the greater good. A CEO asks us to be patient for a few more months. A President asks us to hold on. A child asks us to tie their shoes or wipe their nose. A dying wife asks us for more morphine. A mother asks us for more time. It’s what we are called to do that forges us into the one we become. Daily. It’s more important than money. Or control. If it is a higher calling or not isn’t important. It just is. And whether it is selling Italian wine or getting to day care before the doors are locked, it all must get done.

Might like to wear cotton, might like to wear silk
Might like to drink whiskey, might like to drink milk
You might like to eat caviar, you might like to eat bread
You may be sleeping on the floor, sleeping in a king-sized bed

But you’re gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed
You’re gonna have to serve somebody
Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord
But you’re gonna have to serve somebody

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

Lyrics by Bob Dylan

Pastramma Mia: The Best Fried Green Tomato BLT and Pastrami in Flyover Country

From the “It doesn’t get any better than this” dept

My amigos in Austin might have great home cooked meals (and great Nebbiolo) when they go home, but even on the road one can find culinary surprises. I’m in Indiana all week, all flyover, all the time. And I got to tell you all, this is one underrated part of the world. I’ve been here since Sunday night and have been putting in 14 hour days, and loving it.

I’m here to work with a great bunch of salespeople and a great company, Olinger in Indiana. From their leader Jim “just when I thought I was out they pulled me back in” Oliver, who is Sicilian to the core, to the people who work the streets. Man, I am feeling the street-love, and I’m sending it back in doubles!

We got here Sunday afternoon and hightailed it to Capri, where Arturo Dirosa runs a place that if it were in my neighborhood I’d be there every Friday night. Check out his website, how cool is it to have Paolo Conte playing on the front page (instead of Louis Prima or Dean Martin) for a change? Situated a little bit away from Indy-Central, Arturo is a mellow fellow, and we have fast become friends. To make it even better, where can you go drink a bottle of 2006 Produttori Barbaresco for under $60? One of the best Barbarescos at any price (in spite of what one misdirected Italian wine salesman in Austin has to say about it).

Speaking of haters, folks have been slamming me on other food blogs lately. I have been told that some anonymous jerk slammed me for recommending a falafel place in Dallas to the local restaurant reviewer. How dumb is that mishegas? Like I have anything to gain from telling anyone about a great Israeli hangout in the hood? I have way too many things that have happened in my life, it puts hating in its proper perspective. Knuckleheads.

Along with that, who said it was cool to go into an account and slam your competition wines, in front of the restaurant owner and the salesperson? Lesson 1: Never slam the competition; you never know when you might be selling it. Point in fact: this week I am selling Planeta, Antinori and Bertani in Indiana, where in Texas I compete with other products. So there. In fact I don’t even sell Produttori in Indiana, but I still like it. Duh! So fellow wine salesman who likes to throw down stupid insults, go crawl back in your air conditioned chamber and leave the job to those of us who love Italian wines and the people who make them, sell them and drink them.



That made me hungry. Fortunately there is no shortage of good food here in Hoosier country. Yesterday at Sweet Grass in Bloomington (how cool is it that they have Texas-grown Stevie Ray Vaughan playing "Sweet Litttle Thang" on their front page?)I had the most amazing fried green tomatoes, fried with panko bread crumbs, and topped with a little “country caviar”. The Zardetto Prosecco paired beautifully with it, and the spoofy little Sassyr was wickedly good. Who knew Sangiovese and Syrah would match up so well? But the pièce de résistance was the Fried Green Tomato BLT. That one makes my list of best things eaten in 2010.

While we’re at it, today I went to Shapiro’s, a much loved institution in Indianapolis, and famous for deli food "to die for". I couldn’t resist the pastrami on the home made rye. Maybe Kenny and Ziggy’s is as good, but I haven’t experienced it yet. Shapiro’s, whoa, I haven’t had anything like this in recent memory! There was a soulful fellow making the sandwiches and talking smack about politicians interlaced with how great America is. He was a trip. But the pastrami on rye (with potato salad, sorry about the mayo) was another one of those that will make my list of best things eaten in 2010. Did I say Indiana is cooking? One thing I didnt say (but wish I did), "I never thought I’d utter the words, “there IS great deli outside of New York.”

These have been 14 hour days, and I have an 8:00AM pickup to take me to South Bend and back. I just got home from an incredible meal with the Ruth’s Chris folks. We drank Orvieto, Brunello, Aglianico, Tignanello and old Amarone and passed around big honkin’ steaks to go with it. So I better get this post written and get to bed, 'cause I have got to get on the treadmill in the early morning and work off some of these corn fed calories. Two more days to go.

Really folks, I couldn’t be happier than when I am standing around with a bunch of open bottles of Italian wine and a few folks and we are tasting and telling tales. That is my element, especially as we lead into the holiday season.

And this team here has had a tough summer, a summer in Hell. Without going into the details, suffice it to say, I am working with a major league team here, trying to make the world ( and flyover country) safer for Italian wines.

And to make it even cooler, I snapped this shot out in front of one of my new best friends Italian restaurant. Can you guess who else was “Est. 1951”?

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

What these Italians did for their August Vacation

The normal course of action, In August, for an Italian, is to take the whole month off. While it is not as prevalent as it once was, there are still millions of Italians who flock to the beach, the mountains, away. Business as usual is halted, while everyone gets their fill of sun, sand and seafood.

But once in a while there is that beautiful deviant, ones who have broken from the pack. They see the times for what they are; they put their personal desires behind. And they head for the mean streets of America, even here in flyover country.

As I have been flying over and through and within flyover country on this day, while many Italians are packing up to go back to the cities, to work, back to even the harvest, let me take this time to signal some of those who spent their Italian vacations working, with the rest of us, in the missionary lands, striving to make the word safer, and more plentiful, for Italian wines.

Pio Boffa
Pio, does he really need to work in Texas in August? Do any of us? But for those of us who will never be called back to the motherland, we have one mission, to infiltrate the heathen countryside and convert it over to wine, Italian wine. And Pio was there with us this year. Even when I had my “bout” when I had to rush myself to the emergency doctor with my “heart attack”, Pio covered the wine dinner and made good. Pio is in his mid 50’s, has a successful worldwide import business, he is famous, his wines are famous. He is like Angelo Gaja. But Pio made a decision to come to America, to flyover country, to Texas, and work down in the nitty gritty of the market place in a room filled with people on a hot August night in the heat of the summer. Pio has true grit.

Daniele and Barbara Pozzi
Fourth generation winemaking family. Wealthy, societally landed. What did they decide to do in August? The decided to criss cross America and work the badlands in the service of their wines. Simple wines, Nero D’Avola, etc from Sicily. Nothing special you say? But here they were, in August, working sweating, building displays, in a time when it means a lit form those of us who are on the front lines. Here is the epicenter of the battle for wine and love of things Italian. And here is where Daniele and Barbara made the sacrifice to come, work, sweat, laugh and cry with us. Hero’s in my book, any day.

And where does that leave us, as Italians have packed up and gone back to their jobs, after a month of sun and swim and relaxation. I for one am looking in the rear view mirror of the summer just passed and looking forward to a holiday season in an uncertain time. But know this: the folks who emailed me with ideas and those who cancelled their trips because there were more important things on their agenda, they will suffer because they just don’t seem to have what it takes to make it in today’s world.



And like the old crooner in the corner likes to sing, “If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere.” Really.

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

The Problem of the South

Back around 1984 I was talking with an Italian wine importer, at Vinitaly. I worked for a small company that brought his wines into the Southwest. We sold a lot of Tocai and Verduzzo, Barolo, Barbaresco, Vermentino, Pigato, Chambave Rouge, Passito di Chambave, Elba Rosso, all the kinds of Chianti, Brunello, Morellino. The economy was very strong. And then something happened.

Just like that, poof, it was over. The oil market tanked. And then we went back to selling Pinot Grigio and oaky California Chardonnay and Merlot. And shiny little Shiraz from Australia.

Back to Vinitaly. We were talking, me and the importer, the Barone. He was pitching one of his Montepulciano d’ Abruzzo offerings, a nice one from the area of Controguerra. Not Illuminati. Another Barone’s estate. Nice guy. Barone #1 was trying to get me interested in Barone #2’s wine, and I had already been working with one of Barone #2’s neighbors. Illuminati. I told Barone #1 that I didn’t think I could do justice, in those times, to two Montepulciano d’ Abruzzo wines. Around that time, he said to me, “You Southerners all stick together.”

I wasn’t sure what he meant. Was he pulling the terrone card on me? I was born in Southern California from 1st generation Italians, Southern Italians, and was living in the South of the United States. “Which South”, I asked him.

“It doesn’t matter.” he replied. “It’s the problem of the South.”

I was offended. Hurt. I wear my feelings on my sleeve, at 22, 33 and 59. That’s one of the problems of being a consummate Southerner. Or is it?

This week, I was visiting a wine buyer in a steak house. He was charged with writing a wine list for one of their new restaurants, an Italian “concept” with a heavy red sauce and steak influence. He wanted to pepper the mostly American list with a smattering of Italian wines. Big wines. Brunello, Amarone, the usual suspects. The place was packed, on a weekday, at 1:30. There was no sales job to be done, these folks were successful and they weren’t going to leave the door open for me to muck it up with all my flowery talk about Valpolicella and Rosso Piceno. Nope, they were going to give the clientele what they wanted.

Two hours later, on the other side of town, I stood in front of a group of servers, talking to them about several Tuscan wines on their list. One of them I had never sold, but they thought I did. I knew the winemaker, so I offered it up to the Italian wine god. There was a favorite Chianti of mine from dear friends and a famous and popular Brunello from one of the category leaders. I waxed on about Sangiovese, the dark brooding type, a traditional, lighter style and an upstart, the Montalcino version. The chefs were presenting new kinds of pizza. They looked OK, not bad. Not sure one would ever find them in Italy. Sure one would, in Rome, one finds everything in Rome. That’s one of the problems of the South.

Where am I going with this? Where I have gone for years and years. In circles. The seminar I did was for a restaurant that was changing their concept; they were becoming an Italian Steak house. Once again, Italy is co-opted with steak in these parts. We just keep going around in this cycle of drilling for oil, finding oil, boom, steak, bust, economy goes sour, we go back to simple, to value, to local, maybe even natural. And then the economy starts to ratchet upward and folks get a hankering for steak. Now it is fashionable to call it a Tuscan Steak house. I get it. And put some Argentine Malbecs on the list too, while we’re at it, so the folks can have something full and rich and familiar. That’s one of the problems of the South.

Does it make you wonder then, why some wine producers in Italy adopt a California style because their main market is the United States? They’re not dumb. They know their markets. Not like me, trying to sell Tocai in San Antonio in 1987 or Morellino in Ft. Worth in 1986. Mr. Smarty-pants. Mr. Italian wine director. Mr. Fool.

I have tilted at windmills in these parts for so many years. People in these parts want giant steaks. They want big, juicy, fruity, oaky red wine pretending to be Italian. They want large scores from Parker and the Spectator. Those are my windmills masquerading as giants.

That, too, is the problem of the South.

The Barone was right.

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

The Salesman, the Sommelier and the Supermodel

A vertical of Brunello and a slab of meat or a delicate glass of champagne and a beautiful woman – which would you choose?

It’s Monday, day after Ferragosto, I’m still in a suit and tie, end of the day, grand tasting at a wine conference, Texsom. The day after I have a 9:00 AM tasting with another journalist, 50+ wines and roughly two hours to get the job done. This day, I have arranged the wines, made sure they are the correct vintages, vineyards, temperature and lined up a room. Outside it is still blazing at 105°F. But at this moment there is a room filled with wines from all over the world and somewhere inside there is Champagne.

I make it around the room, only, at the last stop, to find the bubbles. If I had gone counter-clockwise I would have found it first, but I might have just stopped there. After a sip of the sparkling wine, I head back to taste wines, when I ran smack-dab into a wall of truffle oil.

“What was that chef thinking?” I ask myself. The pungent odor of truffle knocks out half my nose. The other half is running as fast and as far from the center of the room. Recalibrating. Recalibrating.

A friend hands me a bottle of a single vineyard Etna Rosso, nice. A Twitter buddy tells me on the other aside of the room there are some interesting Italian wines. Let’s go see.

In the corner I spot an importer sales-rep, one of those old-school guys who loves a tussle in the streets. Not a bad guy, good wines, a little overbearing. But I have my fly swatter if I need it.

A sommelier friend is there chatting me up with a story about how he has gotten his older mother to move from sweet wine to a drier style. Really a great story and probably a blog post in the future. What I love about the story is that this fellow deals with the best of the best and the wealthiest of the wealthy. He opens great wines on a regular basis. But he is so well grounded that he is still working on upgrading his mom to a better wine, albeit incrementally. That’s all the spoiler I will offer.

There we are, talking, the salesman and the sommelier and me, and as if she had just been beamed down, a tall, lanky, tanned, gorgeous woman appears. She is wearing a tunic and sandals. She has long wavy hair, and looks like something out of Greece, 6th century BC. I note in the corner of my eye as my two gents are chatting and think, “Where in time did she come from?” I really thought she was an apparition. And in August, with this heat, and sipping wine, it wouldn’t be totally out of the question.

A day later, hunkered over a table full of wines, the first wine I would open would be a sparkling rose of Nerello Mascalese. As I opened the cork, the wine would spew forth, frothy, but cool to the touch, blushing, ready. The Sicilian sparkler imitating life. Wines have funny ways to portray their territoriality. But that is in the future; now we have a room full of frantic salespeople, exhausted sommeliers and the lone supermodel, sipping wine.

“It’s my birthday today,” she notes. “What are you doing here?” one of us asks. (What do you mean asking her that, do we really want to stare at each other all night?). She offers up an explanation that she is working in town and someone had noticed her at the pool, alone, and invited her to the tasting.

A colleague calls me over to another table and I excuse myself, but the way she bends her head towards the glass and gives me a look, with just one of her eyes, beckons me to revisit at another point. I note it and hesitantly saunter off.

Fearing this was getting a little too Nabokov-esque, I move on with my business, but as I avoid the truffle table, I notice her sitting alone. I remember something my sister told me about pretty woman and how lonely they are because men are often afraid to approach them. I gather my courage to walk past the truffle table, grab a glass of sparkling wine and head back though the feculent fog.

I hand her a glass of the Champagne, wish her a happy birthday. She invites me to sit down. We talk.

It seems like minutes, but it was an hour or more. I notice the room is emptying; the overhead lights are dimming and brightening. It is time to go.

Further ahead, at a fancy feast, sommeliers are sipping on several vintages of elderly Brunello and carving chunks of meat to match.

I walk out of the room with the most beautiful woman in it and the words of Nabokov taunt me, ripping me from this vision and slinging me back into the still blazing night, leaving me with only these words:

"Let all of life be an unfettered howl. Like the crowd greeting the gladiator. Don't stop to think, don't interrupt the scream, exhale, release life's rapture. Everything is blooming. Everything is flying. Everything is screaming, choking on its screams. Laughter. Running. Let-down hair. That is all there is to life. "

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

Our Sangiovese: It Will Be Wonderful Brunello

Montalcino Report: Millenovecentosettanta

“Excuse me, do you know where I could find a vegetarian restaurant?” I asked the person in my pensione in Florence. You would have thought I was asking them where the nearest insane asylum was. That was Tuscany in the 1970’s. But eventually I came across a macrobiotic mensa run by Episcopalians, and was able to eat the diet I had chosen.

In those days, to choose to be a vegetarian was an oddity. Italy was coming out of the haze of a terrible war, the economy was still in shambles from a world recession and here was this American kid asking to pay money to eat food without meat.

But deep inside the country this wouldn’t be as difficult to discover as it was in the cities. In the country, one could make a meal of polenta, some wild greens tossed with oil and vinegar and some salt, maybe a piece of cheese thrown on the spit and in the fall some mushrooms, roasted. And the hearty, rustic wines of the time would also nourish, albeit in a serviceable and not very elegant manner. This was the reputation of wines from Italy, rustic and simple. And often undrinkable to the connoisseurs, the French wine lovers and the new Americans who were multiplying in their affluence. Tuscany was tired of being poor and downtrodden. And Tuscany, at the time, was the spearhead of the Italian wine movement towards more polish, focused, drinkable wines, mainly red.

In the months when we stayed in Tuscany, and Umbria, we would backpack from town to town, often staying in the country. One period, during harvest, as we passed by Siena on our way to a hilltop town, Montalcino, we saw old people, young people, whole villages, working in the vineyards, harvesting.

“What kind of wine is this, Chianti?” I would ask. “No, signore, Sangiovese.” Up in the village they would call it another name, Brunello, from Montalcino.

I was able to buy a quarter of a liter of the house red, and it often was the low of the low. But it would usually be refreshing, slightly prickly, not too dark, and it made me hungry when I drank it.

I had a name from a friend in Florence, who gave me an address if I should ever be in the little hillside town. “They make a wine there that has a great reputation in the area, but the people keep to themselves. We can barely understand their dialect. They are protective. Ever since the war they have burrowed into their hillside. The keep all the good wine for themselves.” I heard this often. It was as if the town was inside a protective layer, keeping progress and modernity, and more war from ever getting in.

I looked this friend of a friend up, went to his property and looked around. Chickens were running around, and several dogs were resting by the doorstop. I could hear people talking; one was singing a tune in a rhythmic manner. The melody was hypnotic. I knocked on the door, but no one answered, so I walked around to the barn. It was made of stone and held all manner of farm implements, machinery, a wine press, some ancient barrels, large. Further in the dark were concrete vats, not too large, home made looking objects.

Deeper into the structure I heard movement. It was October; the air in the early afternoon was starting to cool earlier. The sun was deeper down the horizon. I had a moment of worry that I was in the wrong place, that they might think me an interloper, or a trespasser, and punish me for my transgression. Those fears were never to be realized, thankfully.

What I did eventually encounter, was this friend of a friend, who was waist high in one of the large tanks, with grapes and juice and bees and flies and the hum of Bacchus setting the pace of the work. “Come in here, take off your clothes, get in and help me, please.” He pleaded friendly and not in a threatening way. Here I am not even knowing this person and he’s asking me to take off my clothes and get in a vat of sluice to help him.

“What is this?” I asked him. “What grapes are these? What wine is this becoming?” I asked him as I climbed in, my young, lean body climbing into the container to help him complete the work.

“This? It is our Sangiovese. The elders call it Brunello. It will be wonderful if we can get the work done.”

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

Remembering Herman Leonard

Too marvelous for words


New Orleans, summertime, pre-Katrina, a crowded Italian restaurant, Maximo’s, and I’m sitting at the bar. The owner, Jason, is pouring Champagne, Krug, from magnums to a large table and topping off my glass and another fellow's whom he affectionately calls Herman. Just a couple of guys sitting at a bar, drinking Champagne, waiting for the night to develop. And in New Orleans, anything could happen. I notice Herman has a little point and shoot camera with him and we start talking about wine, jazz and shooting.

I immediately liked him, he reminded me of a gypsy-freelance photographer that I hung out with in the early 1970’s. But Herman had it together; he succeeded, he had that special vision.

That night, on a steamy New Orleans summer night, it was just the two of us, having a drink and talking about stuff. I knew his work, lived with it whenever I sat in the restaurant. They filled the place. Ella, Duke, Bird, Tony Bennett, Art Blakey, Miles, Dizzy, man I would stare at Lester Young’s hat and coke and cigarette and would swear that cigarette was still burning. Herman took a picture of Charlie Parker in the late 1940’s that was a technical masterpiece. Low light, hand held and detail to the micron. I would stare at Bird’s suit; it had a pattern that was mesmerizing. I loved, loved, loved his work.

Look, there are plenty of sites out there with information about Herman, much more comprehensive than mine. He was a friend of a friend, and we would share a glass of wine together from time to time, that was all. I used to stay at a hotel near his house before Katrina wrecked the neighborhood.

Reggie Nadelson wrote," When I got the news that he had died, I looked at his photographs on my wall and I recalled what Tony Bennett said when he heard Frank Sinatra was no longer with us: ‘I don’t have to believe that.’"

I loved how he took an art form, jazz, and made art from the folks who made the art. And he took us along with him on this historic journey of a uniquely American music form.

One night Herman was dining with Doc Cheatham when I walked into Maximo’s. Doc had a gig in New Orleans and was getting an early dinner (9 PM). Folks would come by and pay their respects to Doc, Herman was shooting, his young assistant by his side. Good times.

I’ve been lucky to know some great photographers in my life. I collect photography and shoot almost every day for the last 45 years, ever since I was a young kid. I have an old childhood bud in California who is a great collector, one of the top in the world, for photography. But my takeaway from Herman, and the treasured body of his life’s work, is that there’s seeing and there’s living. Herman saw, but Herman lived a wonderful American life.

Happy trails, Herman, thanks for sharing your passion, your work and your images with us on this pretty little planet we all call home.

The best is yet to come....

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

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

This is the moment we live for. Hotter than hot, slower than slow, this is the time when one goes out with a bag of Italian wine and tries to convert the souls over to our way.

My computer was down, I lost all my contact info and forgot an important 3:30 staff training at a hotel. The phone rang at 3:15. “Just calling to remind you of our training,” my hopeful saleslady cheerfully reported. “Holy crap,” I yelped and sprang from my desk, running out the building.

Adrenaline pumping in a car at registering 103°F, pre-rush hour, 12 miles away, man I was embarrassed. My little left toe tingling, the result of a too aggressive trim job with underpowered reading glasses. Huge pain from one of the smallest parts of the body. But pressing on, darting in and out of traffic, trying to get there without getting a ticket.

3:35, a text announces, “we’re in the lower dining room." I go to the upper banquet room, running into a group of white American businessmen and women registering for a convention. Finally someone calls my name, one of the angels in our company; she guides me down to the proper place, to a table of young men and women.

“I’m out here a thousand miles from my home,” the words from Dylan searing my skull. Three wines, a Vernaccia, A Gavi and a Fiano. 15 minutes to give birth to the beauty that these wines held, two of them forgotten on a wine list, locked in a cellar, waiting for the moment when that precious liquid, so arduously gathered by the hands of the farmers, would be released in a glass.

The Vernaccia, a 2008. Would a 2009 have been more welcome? But what about the older white wines? Have we treated wines like women, preferring only young and perky ones? Isn’t there a time to appreciate a mature wine, like we do a mature woman?

The Vernaccia. She was subtle, her aromas were delicate, a little sting of sweat, a pinch of tropical flower under the ear. A kiss of honey, a lick of butter and a bite of sharp fruit. Perfect wine to go with the perfect selling day, the hottest day of the year.

The next wine, a Gavi, a 2006. Someone had forgotten her charms, shelved her for a more seductive unoaked Chardonnay or a fashionable Pinot Gris from Oregon. No doubt. I was familiar with the 2006 and was a bit worried. But the first sensation showed that wine was healthy. She had been well kept.

This was a wine I had first had in the early 1990’s, sitting in the restaurant of a friend's aunt, on the Adriatic. She brought us a plate of linguine with small clams, simple, a little oil and parsley and salt. The wine matched well and a memory was made. Today, almost 20 years later, I recast the wine and the story, weaving a way to encourage the young servers to bring this pretty lady out of the cold and into the hearts of their customers. I want to go back to that restaurant and drink that wine up before she passes beyond an uncertain and muddled age.

The last wine, a Fiano. We didn’t sell it now, although we might have sold it when this wine, a 2001, was made available to the restaurant. And who knows, we might sell it in the future, having just been in a meeting the week before with the importer, who had gotten his foot jammed in the door and wasn’t going to pull it back before we gave him 10-20-30 minutes.

But the wine. The Fiano. 2001. The color was perfect for an older Fiano. Light. Great cellaring. The nine year old wine had wonderful development for a wine from a good vintage and a grape that can age. Lithe, tanned, taut and worldly, well traveled and evocative. Not the over-the-top voluptuous in-your-face type. A wine with an independent nature, a lover of history and the arts, a self-starter. Salty, sweet, bitter, tropical, long, grazing the tongue but leaving no marks. And in an instant she is gone.

And just like that, three wines, fifteen minutes, and it was all over. From the initial rush to get there in a hot car, to the final act, I found myself in a cold sweat and heading back to the office, now in rush hour, to make a meeting. I’m loving it, pain and all, this summer surge towards an uncertain holiday season. Bring it on. I am ready.

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