Pure and Simple

After two days of solid rain in the San Francisco bay area, I’m waiting. For the power to come back up. For the wireless to reappear. And for a better understanding of natural wines. Specifically, the Italian ones.

Before anyone thinks I’m about to take on the sacred cow, invoking the “N” word with unabashed acceptance and reverence, turn away. While I am a devotee of many natural things in life, I know things aren’t always what they seem. In essence, the words I heard uttered by one of the Renaissance men of the 20th century, Bucky Fuller, who told me to my face, “Anything that nature lets you do is natural.”

So, given a wide berth, I’ll dig in.

It started on the drive over the Bay Bridge from Berkeley to the City, on my way to Biondiviono to see a friend who brought in some winemakers for the Gambero Rosso tasting earlier in the week. A small reception for the winemakers and their wines in a convivial neighborhood setting in only the way one finds in San Francisco and other cities who have devoted their urban spaces to a accommodate the human scale. With dogs. My kind of place. The pump is primed.

Deep Dishin' and Dolcetto in da 'burbs- Ain't Life Sweet?

Just a quickie, ‘cause we’re on the run, with the family and hanging out in the East Bay. Last night we opted for Deep Dish Pizza and Dolcetto. With a Trader Joe’s a block away and a downpour, I headed into one of my old haunts. Wow, has TJ’s changed since I first went into the place back in the '70's. Lots of private labels and a generally dismal wine selection. Thank God Ceri @ Biondivino left us with a killer bottle of Rosso from Montalcino.

But there was a little bottle of Dolcetto begging me to take it home. Ok, not great, but @ 6.99, not bad either. Better than the mystery bastardo Nerello the wine guy was trying to sell me on. “These use indigenous grapes that we can’t put on the label” Yeah, right. A quick glance on the back label told me the importer ( whom we call the "wine criminals" back home, because nobody can import an Amarone to sell in the US for $17, unless it ain’t the real deal).

Elegia di Nera

I pulled out the bottle of 2000. Around this time it was being born, right about that time we were watching her last sunrise, she was breathing her last breaths. The appassimento was only ten years old, I shouldn’t have opened it. It was too soon. But things happen.

What can one say about the last ten years that this wine cannot? In ten years I have lived everyday without her, thinking about her, losing her everyday I wake up. She is now younger than me, than all of us. She doesn’t age, unlike this wine. But like this wine, neither had the time to grow old, really age. And so, once again, something is in front of me, dying.

The wine from the Veneto. I was just there. I should have gone down to Umbria and visited her site. I’ll go in the spring, when the lilies are covering her spot on the hill. Now, I am relegated to the gloomy skies of winter, and this bottle of wine and my memories of a love lost to the ages.

Colli Orientali del Friuli 2011: A Few of My Favorite Things

Fire and friendship on cold winter mornings

Farmers who work in their fields without stopping

Doors that are opened to reveal new mysteries

These are a few of my favorite things

The nail I hang my purpose on

Driving back to the airport in a fog. After a week with my compadres it’s time to go back home. Leave Italy. Again.

I have this thing I do when I am getting ready to leave Italy. I get nostalgic. Must be something I inherited from my immigrant grandfather. I look at the ledges of windows in a bathroom and imagine all the people who will come in and use this space when I am gone. Or looking down a walkway in a town, when on Saturday night, in the summer, people will walk, arm in arm, doing their little passegiata through their time on earth. I won’t be there, but Italy will be just fine.

A week in Friuli, one place, Colli Orientali, how valuable is that for one to get an idea of this Italianita? Who really knows? Traveling with folks who have such a command of the language, who confirm to me that I have no idea what the Italians are talking about, it has been like a forty year walk along the Italian landscape as a deaf man. I know nothing. Thank God I took my camera with me all those times.

So, what? Nothing. Just that I will continue to walk in my own way and see, if not hear, what it is that Italy is now.

Gli American wine bloggers conquer Italy? How about Italians try to conquer Italy first?

And so my fellow Italians,ask not what America can do for Italy; ask what Italy can do for Italy"

The flash on my camera is not working. It's stuck. So is Italy. As much as there is talk of wines being natural, we even go so far as to walk in the vineyards, pull up a stone and look under it, or tear out a piece of soil and see the live snails tearing up the matter, still there are elements in Italy that rip it out only to throw it up in the air. For what? To see where it will go? To see if it will fly?

Italy has their barking poodles too, Ron. Maybe the television shows are not as entertaining as American ones, Starsky and Hutch, CSI, Dexter. Maybe there is a need for blood. Or controversy.

Man cannot live by bread alone...

17 °F in Dallas and 17 °C here in Friuli

My neighborhood back home in Dallas today - Photo: Jessica Meyers/DMN

It is so hard to believe back home it is 17 °F in Dallas and yesterday in Friuli it was 17 °C ! They had ice, snow, sleet, and the coldest night of the past 15 years. Meanwhile, here we were walking around in shirts, even after the sun set.

All the better to get after it here with the COF 2011 crew. And also a little work with wineries I represent back home. Yesterday, an early morning meeting with my Friuli friend Stefano, who makes wine here, where we are staying at Il Roncal, and also the winery in Emilia, Campodelsole, which I represent in Texas. We had a short strategy meeting before setting off to taste 40 Schioppettino and Pignolo wines.

Colli Orientali del Friuli: Field Report

The field at Miani in Buttrio. I nearly tripped on the stones that covered the yard and the fields. The wines are immense, like the winemaker. The cellar, only 79 barrels (a little more than Chateau Le Pin), is colder than the outdoors. When garagiste Enzo Pontoni tells me the wines are more about the place (Buttrio) I think back almost a year when a winemaker took me out from his winery in Abruzzo and tasted the Montepulciano in the vineyard. Here, as well, I would like to do that. Out of the garage and back into the fields

Mother of winemaker Pontoni with Christian Patat of Ronco del Gnemiz chatting in Friulan

His mother is animated, very direct in her Friulian language and her naturalness with expressing herself simply and clearly. The wines too are very direct though not too simple. They are big wines; I am transported back 20+ years when Colli Orientali was asserting itself on the world stage. Now Colli Orientali is no longer a child, but a young person, full of energy and spunk. There are a few wine lovers in Dallas who would love these wines with their hearty Western fare.

Sunsets and Revelation in Friuli

Earlier in the week, back home in Texas, I was lying in bed late at night. The wind was howling. A huge winter storm was bearing down over my roof. Snow, ice, winds, tornado sirens going off, alarms. Another winter surge, another whiteout. And so my mind raced, thinking about Friuli.

I don’t really know that much about the area. It isn’t exactly in the center of things. And for me, it isn’t one of my go-to regions. Alto-Adige has more draw in my business life, as does the Veneto. In fact, as I think more about it, I have spent an inordinate amount of time talking about wines from Friuli without the requisite sales volume. That’s a real shame, because these are good wines. But there are problems. And after tasting through a series of wines from Friuli last week at the Vino2011 events in New York, some of the same problems exist that I initially observed when I first got interested in these wines back in the early 1980’s.

Seeing as I am on my way with the COF2011 blog crew to Friuli, and specifically the Colli Orientali, I thought it would be illustrative to make some notes and see if the following week addresses concerns I have for these wines as they pertain to the American market.

Marea with the Maestro

That's right Marea - not Marfa - not yet

There ain’t too many people I would get out of a warm, dry taxi and go hunt down a shovel to clear a path for, in a snowfall, but Filippo De Belardino is one of them. And to do it, to make a way to one of the best meals I will have this year, let’s say it was worth it. Oh yeah! Man if I was a gambling man, after SD26 and Marea, I should just go home. First the disclaimer and then the details.

I know some folks just don’t like reading these kinds of posts. It could come off like a nah-nah-nah-nah-nah kind of brag-fest. But I promise to interject love and life and good times about friends and the most important thing in the wine business – the relationships. If I remember. Or I might just brag.

It’s hard not to love a guy like Filippo. Even when I get mad at him (rarely) I still love the cat. He is warm and generous and he gives me room to be myself. I think of him as a brother-in-arms. Thankfully, not a brother-in-law.

My Dinner with Carmen: The Sequel

People love stories. And I’m no exception. I adore a good story, especially from a master storyteller, like my pal Carmen Castorina. I love his energy, his sense of wonder in things, his early adopter mentality. In fact Carmen is one of the few people I can talk to about things as diverse as politics, wine, photography, technology and talk and talk for hours. We don’t argue, we talk. And talk. And I love to listen. Who can resist when the stories being told are so damn entertaining?

So when we met again for the second year in New York for Vino2011 I knew we were going to have dinner together. Anyone who read the entry from last year, My Dinner with Carmen, might already know a little about the guy. But this year, we aimed to blow it out. And blow 2010 away. And we did.

The Great Whiteoutpocalypse of 2011

Despite the foul weather (after all, it is January and winter!) this week in NY has been another great week of networking and celebrating all things Italian. The Italian Trade Commission took it “over the top” this week, with a stellar lineup of seminars and superstars to present. Their web site is "fully socialized” and the young (and young at heart) who ran that part of the event really get social media and all the new stuff that very few people get. But like breathing or blood pumping, it comes pretty naturally for them and for all the early adopters of all ages. Great wines more than make up for foul weather, non e’ vero?

How to sell your wine to America

This week in New York during the Italian Trade Commission event, Vino 2011, there will be many folks, from Italy and the USA, converging for several days of intensive Italian wine learning, tasting, and hopefully, selling. In the spirit of this event, this piece is posted in the hopes that I will be able to send folks to a place to answer the question, “How do I get into the American market?”

I keep getting emails from Italian wineries and their agents who seem to think that just having good wine is enough. Once again, I am going to lay out the roadmap for them with how I think they should approach selling wine in America. In this post, in no way am I attempting to disrespect anyone in Italy. Actually I am attempting to give you a million dollars’ worth of advice from one who deals with this on a daily basis and has done so for many years. The main fault with this advice is that is it unsolicited and it is free. And as everyone knows, volunteered advice at no cost carried with it is of no value. But I am an idealist and, if for no other reason, I can direct the hundreds of people who knock on my door (or blast me with email) if the conversation should go beyond the delete button.

You have a beautiful wine. It has hundreds of years of tradition. It embodies innovation. It belongs to a wealthy or powerfully connected family in Italy that has influence in its society. In other words, it is a bulletproof formula for success. Right?

3 Days, 2 Towns and a "Biblical Commute"

On and on and on and on and on the Italian trail again - Photo by Teresa Rafidi

My barking poodle buddy, Ron, likes to lampoon my blog name. I know it’s all in good spirit. If I didn’t feel that way I would have called my cousin Calogero in Sacramento to pay old Hostradamus a visit. But fortunately, for all of us, we didn’t have to go there.

No instead, I headed back onto the road this week, this time to Arkansas. I’ve been working my way up to New York and Friuli with forays into New Orleans and Little Rock, La Place and Fayetteville. This week was a great week, but cold, and snowy, and lots and lots of ice on the wine trail. That part wasn’t so fun.