American "Amarone" - a bitter drink indeed

I understand everyone needs to make a living. And in America, where free speech is sacrosanct, her citizens have the right to say almost anything. This wine label, however, is misleading, and according to Italian law has been made approximately 6000 miles outside the legal area of production. Let’s take a look at the information from the web site of the winery situated in Texas that has produced this beverage, which they call an American "Amarone":

Garibaldi's Last Stand : East vs. West

It may come as a surprise to my friends in Italy that there is another divide besides the North vs. South one they are familiar with. Here in America the contrast is between those who came and settled on the East Coast vs. the West Coast. And while it isn’t as contentious as the Polentoni vs. Terroni battle that to this day is waging in contemporary Italy, there are marked differences.

Being a child of the West Coast who lived on the East coast and is now curbed in the middle (depending on the election cycle, it is either referred to as the "Heartland of America", or in the down cycle it's simply "Flyover country"). But for a moment let’s leave great unwashed midsection of America to it’s own devices.

What really strikes me are the differences between Italian-Americans who were brought up on the two coasts. Perhaps there is a graph somewhere indicating the trends of who left where in Italy to come to another where in America. Did more Calabrese settle in New York? More Lucchese in Northern California? I am sure there are patterns of emigration that set the scene respectively for the contrasts.

For my part, observing, living and working with Italian-Americans on both coasts, I am going to make some glaring observations.

Uber Ripasso - The Next Big Thing?

Angiolino Maule's Ladder

Ripasso wines get a lot of traction in these parts - one of my blog posts that won’t rest, You say Ripasso and I say Ripassa, now seems so long ago (in the enoblogosphere 6 years is an eternity). When I came across this post, Using Dehydrated Grape Marc Waste to Improve Wine Quality: A More “Natural” Approach? From the up-and-coming- wine blog, The Academic Wino, I was fascinated. Could this be a new way of looking at Ripasso? Read the whole post HERE.

Yeah, say what you will, maybe a post like that seems like watching pain pail off a wall in the Veneto. But for my money, this could be the start of a whole way of thinking about Ripasso in its next incarnation. To quote Spock, "Fascinating."

I wonder what Bepi Quintarelii would think about this? Wherever his energy has been sprinkled into the universe, maybe, just maybe, he is still quietly at work on the next big thing.

Buon anima, Bepi!

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

wine blog +  Italian wine blog + Italy W

One Night in Tennessee: Bardolino, Baptists & Band-Aids

The drive from Dallas to San Antonio is one I’ve taken dozens of times. About 4½ hours long with the saving grace that Austin is along the way. The other day as I was driving that highway, this time to Austin, I was a little sleepy. I’d had lunch and started in the afternoon, and for some reason I could barely keep my eyes open. It reminded me of another time years ago when I was driving with a friend and colleague, Eugenio Spinozzi. We left Dallas at 1PM in order to get to San Antonio for a meeting of salespeople and for a dinner at an Italian place. It was a holiday meeting, so we had a lot of the wines we were repping lined up on the table. Sometime after 11PM we finished and set on to drive back to Dallas. Eugenio had an early flight out of Dallas the next morning, so staying over wasn’t an option.

Anyone who has ever driven that stretch knows just one way is a bit of a haul. But to come and go in the same day is madness. There we were though, with full bellies, late at night and a little less than 300 miles to get home. At first it was no problem. We were energized from the meeting and recapping all we had talked about and what we were planning to do in the upcoming holiday selling season. Then around Salado, we started getting tired. There was an AM radio station that played old rhythm and blues and Motown hits from the 60’s. Eugenio lived in Chicago in that time and became a fan of the music, as foreign to him as Gianni Morandi or Rita Pavone was to most Americans then.

There's something happening here...

...What it is ain't exactly clear 
 

It's time we stop, hey, what's that sound
Everybody look what's going down...

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

wine blog +  Italian wine blog + Italy W

Red headed stranger sighted behind closed-doors

In keeping with my current curiosity over wine labels - wondering if anyone else can tell which wine was served at this now famous closed-door fundraiser in May?

It looks to be a California Chardonnay with an Italian connection in the name. The winery inhabits a building which is also the Bay Area's oldest continuously operating winery, to which I have a personal connection.

The Jesuit priest who was the president of the University I attended, Santa Clara, worked as a winemaker at the original winery and helped develop a particular strain of yeast used in the making of sherry style wines in California. But that's another post for another day.

more pictures after the jump...

The Italian Paradox

From the “why Italian wines are so confusing” dept

On Sept 4, 2012 @missmelpayne posted the picture above on twitter asking if anyone knew the origin of this wine or anything about it.

Her tweet:
Fellow winos: can you help me find more info on this 1964 #Barolo? #wine #vintage #Italy #Piedmont @WineWouldntYou pic.twitter.com/wauMjCXh

This week another tweet came through from ‏@WineLibrary:

@missmelpayne Not on that particular bottle. @italianwineguy, any thoughts?

I took a look at it and tweeted as @italianwineguy:

@WineLibrary @missmelpayne you got me- maybe @haddadfrank knows about this 1964 #Barolo #wine #vintage #Italy #Piedmont pic.twitter.com/McA6bzOv

Frank Haddad, a friend and collector of these kinds of wines in Vancouver, BC,  added as @haddadfrank these five tweets:

@italianwineguy @WineLibrary @missmelpayne I have had this producers wine before I will check my notes etc and will get back to you Tues

@italianwineguy @missmelpayne funny it is hard to read but appears to say that it is a DOC wine in 64 Barolo became a DOC in 66

@italianwineguy @missmelpayne you have me on this one 1964 Vintage with a DOCG on the label, a long time in the bottle until release

@italianwineguy @missmelpayne the 64 Vintage a good one should be drinking this one now. hard to put a value on it Probably brought in grapes

@italianwineguy @missmelpayne it certainly confused me would you wait that long to bottle even a tannic Barolo

Here’s the closeup on the label:

And here’s the conundrum. There were no DOC or DOCG wines in 1964 – DOC started in 1966 and DOCG ramped up in 1980. So how could a 1964 Barolo claim to be DOCG?

What’s inside the bottle?

Anyone care to comment?

P.S. Gotta love these things…

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

wine blog +  Italian wine blog + Italy W

Ab ovo usque ad mala

Driving in the rain, driving in a dust storm. So it goes in the selling season in the States. Texas is no different, except the distances can be longer. Slowly digesting the road as it disappears beneath my car. Hurry up, slow down, Stop, get in the car, start all over again. Ab ovo usque ad mala.

Narci-servitude – In many restaurants this time of the year, showing wine, spending money, pleading for our cause, fighting for my farmers. At week’s end, in a small place, just looking to eat and drink in peace. Liberal BYOB policy, we ordered a Picpoul to start with the appetizers. The server, who recited the complete menu to the table, might have understood the type and light grey color of the menu made it damn near impossible to read. Or perhaps it was his 15 minutes. As he poured the wine, all of it, into the 4 small glasses, I thought to myself how would he take care of the wine I had lovingly cared for the past 15 or so years. A Paulliac from 1990, first growth, thrown to the curb by Parker, who said it was dead and gone. I had a 1997 Brunello in the bag just in case. Didn’t need it. Server carried the bottle to the wine manager, who decanted and brought the wine into the last segment of its life on earth. The wine, a Mouton, was sharp and racy, not like its usual fleshy ripe chocolaty style I had experienced in other vintages. That is was lean and racy appealed to me, seeing as the food on the table skewed more towards lighter wine. But this wine wasn’t a lightweight as much as an agile dancer. Maybe this is the key, when Mr. Parker said “For a first-growth, this is an unqualified failure.” Ah, now I get it. It didn’t meet his expectations.

Lone Star Beer, Hill Country BBQ and Super Friulan Red in Austin, Texas

Alessandra Dorigo at J.Mueller's in Austin

If you spend enough time on the wine trail, eventually the circle of life brings you back around. So it was this week as I headed to Austin to meet up with Moxy Castro and Alessandra Dorigo. “You might have heard of Alessandra’s family. They make wine in Friuli,” was Moxy’s comment to me. Sure enough, not only had I heard of them, but sold the wine in the late 1980’s and early 1990’s. Even went to visit the family once in Buttrio in 1990.

So when I came across Moxy and Alessandra in Austin this week, I pulled out a photo I took (below) of a younger Alessandra with her parents, Girolamo and Rosetta. “I remember you,” Alessandra said. It was a night more than one of us remembered.

Do you know how to drink a glass of wine?

Ok, I'm a sucker for moving pictures. And the Italians have been a huge influence in my life, from DeSica to Rossellini, Antonioni to Fellini, Bertolucci to Pasolini, to the myriad of all the other wonderful film makers the country has produced. The Tasca d'Almerita estate  in Sicily also loves moving pictures and they have had a short video produced which I find an enthralling and beautiful visual poem. Please enjoy and if you like what they are doing, go HERE and look over the 2012 video contest finalists and the nine Finalists in Wine Spectator's Sixth Annual Video Contest. The Tasca video in the finals, Sound of Wine, isn’t the one above, but it is also visually and mellifluously gorgeous.They've got my vote (voting ends Sunday, Sept 16).

With things in the Italian wine business, it isn’t always about the sell and it isn’t always about the hype. And in wine and film alike, there should always be room for art and music and beauty..

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

wine blog +  Italian wine blog + Italy W

2012 Piemonte vintage notes from Chiara Soldati of La Scolca

In preparing for my harvest trip next month to Piemonte and Toscana, I have been in contact with friends, old and new. One friend, Chiara Soldati, whose family wine I have represented since 1983, the La Scolca estate, sent this email early this morning. I can hardly wait till we go and visit the property and taste the wines on location. For the record, I have never been to La Scolca, but this year I wouldn’t miss it for the world. In the meantime, here are a few words of encouragement from Chiara.

Good Morning,

I’m pleased to send you here attached the information about 2012 harvest at La Scolca. We started on 7th September and I’m pleased to update about the most important moments of our harvest.

The 2012 vintage at La Scolca started two weeks in advance compared to the average of recent years, with a high quality production. After a hot and dry summer which resulted in an advance of the grape harvest of about a month, compared to 30 years ago.

Forward, not Backward

Photo by Christopher Michel

Talk to anyone who is in the vineyard this time of the year and they'll tell you. It's not about planting, not at this time, and it's not about pruning. It's about waiting and looking and praying and picking. And moving forward.

Seems however there are plenty out there who want to leave things the way they are, or if not, complain about how unfair things are. The grapes aren’t listening. They are getting riper. Time to pick.

Years and years ago, so long ago it seems like another lifetime, a teacher of mine drilled into my skull the idea that the future was not going to be the way my parents had envisioned. So I had better start thinking about the way the future might shape up in my life. He recommended a book, Future Shock. That book stirred inside me the possibilities that nothing was going to be like I had or could imagine. And I had very well better get over myself. Sure enough, the author was right.

Italy’s "Other" Coast

With summer vacation now over for most of Italians, the coastal areas are returning to a less frenetic period. There are still almost 4 million Italians on holiday (plus a few lucky Americans), but the high-season prices are down and there are a few secret places I like to go to. Much of the activity is in the vineyards, or back in the cities, where the jobs are and the concentration of population lives and works. This is one of my favorite times to go to the coast and luxuriate in the sensation of the air, sea and land. Sure it’s a little lonely, this time of the year. But the harvest is still going strong. Vegetables are ripening, the grapes are filling up with sugar and the bounty of the sea has less demand on it. Did you know right now that fishing has been slowed if not halted in some areas? According to Coldiretti, in a September 2 release, “Fishing is expected to stop at the beginning of the week including all activities from the Ionian and Tyrrhenian Sea as announced by Coldiretti ImpresaPesca, emphasizing that the provision in force until October 1st will affect the coast from Brindisi to Imperia involving seven regions, while fishing has already stopped since August 6th in the Adriatic from Pesaro to Bari.”

Cock Blogging Saturday: Top 10 posts from O.T.W.T.I.I.

Some blog posts just never go away. the three Ripassos and Seersucker among them. In any event, this is an American holiday and no one is looking at anything much of consequence. So, I am re-purposing these top 10 posts ( of all time, sad isn't it?) from an undisclosed seat in the universe of ideas. Happy holidays to America. And to Italy, welcome back from your month long vacation. Try to get a little work in before the autumn strike season kicks in.

My White Trash Italian Cousins

They are those little secret shames, lurking in our lives. Sometimes they are in our face. Sometimes they dwell in a state of hibernation. They never really go away, no matter how far one may move or if you change phone numbers to get away from them. They always seem to resurface, insinuating themselves into your life. We all have them, those white trash Italian cousins.

L'abbandonato

Where has everybody gone? They were here all month, the patter of feet above my hot particles, constantly, back and forth; running, dragging, shuffling, hopping. Now all I feel is the drone of the tractor with the rake attachment, straightening up my bumps and ruts, removing the little vagrant pieces of seaweed and candy wrappers. Is August over already?

Indulgence or Sustenance?

Americans can be so influenced by the oddest junctions between aspiration and sensibility. A retail friend was lamenting that this summer all of his big buyers, his “whales,” had disappeared. “They can go wherever they want for three months. They have the money to live anywhere and do their business from the clouds.” His business in the over-$100-a-bottle business was lagging. Meanwhile, I made him a sweet deal on a Morellino that tastes good and even has great press (91 from the Advocate’s Galloni). He can sell it for $10, half of the regular retail ($20) and make money, and he’ll offer a great product to folks who aren’t whales, maybe even people for whom wine actually sustains rather than indulging their egos.

Not Yet

A few months ago it started to get to me. 2012 has been a challenging year in many respects. But after five years and 900 blog posts, I've kept going. Maybe it’s all vanity. I cannot plunge into that pool. What I do know is this: I have met a whole new world of folk in these past five years, and I’m not sure I would have if I hadn’t bled these words and pictures onto this place, all these days, weeks and months. So I am not done. Not yet.

Young Rebel Creamy Soft Porn Wine Marketing = Uncontrollably Juicy Italian

From the "My Way or the (Appian) High Way" dept.

"calling all cornuti"

Just when you thought wine marketers couldn’t find any further contumely avenues, they hand you a lap dance in the middle of the Via Appia. In the current iteration Italy has been ravaged with an eno-anomalism, named “if you see kay.” Cute, eh? Yeah man, the first time I heard it when I was a teenager it really got my attention, way back in, say, ’69.

I thought someone was blowing sunshine and then I scratched a little online and found the potation. Drink in some of the scintillating copy (reproduced below, verbatim, with commentary, from the website), no doubt dreamt up by a marketer who seemed to be otherwise engrossed watching HBO's Taxicab Confessions.

From the website, a prinked procession to push the timeless palliative. Marketing, in the guise of Young Rebel Creamy Soft Porn:

Ogni cosa è illuminata

It was like any other day. A little longer than most, perhaps. As I rose at 5:00 AM to drive 200 miles to work in Shreveport, I packed lightly and figured it would be a day filled with appointments into the evening, with the next day day to drive back slowly, no rush.

The drive to Shreveport was uneventful, save for an angry Texas pickup truck driver, somewhere around Marshall, who didn’t like that I was driving in the lane he wanted to come into from the ramp. I wasn’t passing and was in the right place. But he thought differently, waggled his middle finger as he roared around me in a flurry of smoke and rage. An apt farewell from Texas, I reckoned.

Teaching an old DOCG new tricks

Last week in San Francisco I presented a piece to a group at the Society of Wine Educators conference. Called Deconstructing DOCG, it was an effort to offer a path from the past to the present (and possibly leading to the future) regarding the changes that are coming to Italian wine laws as they assimilate into the greater European Union discipline.

Anyone who peruses the pages of On the Wine Trail in Italy know I have been a bit obsessed with noting the changes in Italian wine laws. Here is the text from the talk. It was accompanied by a loosely related PowerPoint presentation (by the way, I am not a fan of PowerPoint, except to offer visual markers that relate to something I am talking about). It was accompanied by a tasting of four of the five original DOCG's awarded back in the 1980's. In any case, the talk seemed to be a success (aided by lubrication from Brunello, Barolo and Co.) and I am including it. Here goes:

Making the Connection

With all the stuff that is thrown at most of us on a daily basis, it seems to be getting harder to have those singular moments where the outside world isn’t always crashing in. Our digital diet has become super-sized, what with the access to information on the internet and all the daily doses of blogs, social media, email, and work that keeps us staring at these little screens. Our monkey brain is in control, churning out words and thoughts and desires and needs. Those darn needs.

Meanwhile our Italian counterparts, many of them, have unplugged and are at the beach. I envy them this time of the year, with long slow mornings, a leisurely caffe, a sun and a swim and then maybe a roll around town or the island. Then lunch and maybe a nap, followed by maybe another sun and swim working up the appetite for dinner. But dinner is hours away, no need to rush it. After all, it’s August, this is the time to log-off and recharge. Time to re-connect.

You don’t need an island or even a beach, although it is much easier and pleasurable. What one really needs is the ability to quiet the mind, stop the chatter and let the inessential crap float away.

Sanctuary for the Soul

Twelve years ago at this time, life was a living hell. The summer was unrelentingly hot; my wife’s disease was entering its final stages and the two major wineries I was representing were incontrovertibly out of touch with the market. There was little or no respite, nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. No retreat, no sanctuary. The fury of hell, with heat, disease and ignorance. A perfect trifecta for misery.

Twelve years later, that hell is not as acute, but the days are not without their challenges. Still we are enduring triple digit temperatures. There are challenges in my family orbit regarding health issues, and my dear Italians are giving us a break for the time. It is after all, the beginning of August. So for the next month, we are unencumbered, free as a bird. As long as we don’t fly too close to the sun.

In a moment of diversion, I came upon a lovely photo project, “Into the Silence”, by the Sicilian, Carlo Bevilacqua. In some of the more remote corners of the world, and especially Italy, Bevilacqua has lived and photographed folks who choose to live a simpler life of solitude.

An Encounter in the Bardo - The Mentor and the Longtimer

Walking along a hiking path, on the edge of the continent and from the neighboring northward country, the longtimer came upon a glen. The temperature was a cool 66° F. The breeze blowing from the straights that separated the two countries was refreshing but brisk. The glen offered a perfect lull from the rigors of hiking and the possibility of a little, stolen nap. After all, the old hand had worked many years and this was kind of a vacation. It would also be a point of reckoning.

Once ensconced upon a picnic blanket, and after a light meal and a sip of fresh rosé wine, he slumbered. And the dream came. And inside the dream the messenger appeared. And as with all messengers, there was a dispatch. It was meant to review the old timer’s working life, this life in wine, and deeper inside the world of Italian wine than all the other wines. And as it was a dream, there would be no escape, until all the material had been transmitted. It was more like a Grand Jury.

The courier took the form of a mentor, long gone, but one who had a similar trajectory, only the generation before. So, while it was meant to be unfiltered, it wasn’t unkind. But it was frank, this review of one’s life in work.

Priority Access

Last night I found myself in a most wonderful predicament. High in the hills of Marin County for a small concert, with people I didn’t know. Artists and musicians, many from the once-upon-a-time Soviet Union. Totally out of the realm I usually find myself in Texas, even though there are probably like-minded folks in my home town. It’s just that I don’t often run into them.

Musically, the evening was magical. It’s the kind of experience that makes me long for the California of my lost years, although I am realistic enough (or is it a Frank Zappaesque cynicism?) to imagine if I really lived here I wouldn’t feel quite the same way. That aside, in the moment, I loved it.

One of my host’s friends, who was working the video camera, came up to me. Light conversation ensued. I was a little gun-shy, as the last person I went up to, let’s call her Anna (she had reminded me of Alice) tolerated me for a while until she psychically dismissed me (or her introversion had had enough of being "outdoors"). In any case, with the new person in front of me, let’s call her Tina, I was polite and responded.

Something about writing about wine came up. “What is there to write about wine?” I don’t believe she meant it in a rude or defensive way. More out of curiosity. I then proceeded to channel my inner Gerard Asher.

Home Remedy, Bottle Variation and the Voice of the Master

From the "Two Geralds are better than one" dept.

Upon setting foot on the west coast, the 2nd time in a month, I am in awe of air that isn’t blisteringly hot. The California I knew as a child, the embracing breeze off the Pacific, is a welcome relief. When we talk about the maritime climate of Italy aiding the growth of the vines and making for conditions which the grapes can thrive, I look back to my childhood place, California, and am thankful for the home remedy that it is to me in this time.

The wine god is alive in California. Upon setting foot back here, one of my internet pals, Gerald Weisl, fetched me from the hotel. I am here for a Society of Wine Educators conference, and tomorrow I am giving a seminar, Deconstructing DOCG. Trying to make peeling paint interesting. Wish me luck.

The Last Italian Wine I Drank

Last night, over a wonderful dinner, our host brought out two dessert wines, a Sauternes and a Vin Santo. The Sauternes was a famous one, Chateau d’Yquem. The Vin Santo, from the heart of the Chianti Classico region, was actually a declassified Vin Santo. It was 2002 and the d’Yquem was 2003.

Folks around the table were curious to taste the French wine. After all it is famous, perhaps one of the most famous (and expensive) wines in the world. And yes, we tried it and it was lovely. But it didn’t fit the night. Where we had come and where we were going, with the food and the preceding wine, the Vin Santo was the more appropriate wine. And for the evening it was more delicious.

What has become of our land?

Tonight in front of a sold-out crowd in the back room at my favorite Italian store I led the group through a tasting of Italian wines. There were a lot of new folks there so I told them my story. And for the first time I realized how tied I am not to one, but three places. First is California, which is where I was born and grew up. Next is Italy, which is my wellspring for inspiration. And lastly, there’s Texas, which in its basic natural state, can affect a gravitational pull. All three of these places share a commonality – they are being altered radically from the vision I have of them inside my heart of hearts.

A Fine Line

An Italian Wine Blog

It doesn’t happen that often. You’re planning a meal at home and choose a wine. The wine turns out to be the wrong choice. No big deal. You find another and move on. That happened to us recently.

The problem? The initial wine wasn’t one I would normally select. A 15.1% Santa Rita Hills Chardonnay. The wine aged exclusively in French Oak (75% New Barrels) is not available to the public. It is only available, as a gift, to select members, restaurants and fine wine shops.

I was intrigued. So I opened a bottle and tried it. Within minutes I was repulsed by the imbalance of the wine. I am a California native – there are Californian wines I like. The other night I opened a 2006 Rafanelli Cabernet with a steak. It was perfect with the food. The wine was rich and oaky and delicious with the meat.

The Ultimate Wine

That by which you can taste, but that which you can never taste

As with all things, there is always the Unobtainable. No wealth, no power, no amount of influence matters. Race as we may, looking to try this bottle or that rare vintage, some things cannot be held. Sometimes it is just beyond the human experience.

Sound odd to you? "What is that you are claiming?" you might ask? Less of a claim than a reality. The reality of the Ultimate Wine.

The Ultimate Wine doesn’t exist. Not for mere earthlings. Or at least for the tainted adults on the planet. The wine is possible, even probable. But no one has ever tasted it and reported back. No score, not 100 points. That would be bringing it down quite a ways out of its higher range. No lofty purple prose to describe it. Words, really? Again, that would be a pity to cut it down that way.

At best a wine like that could be an aspiration for a wine lover. But a destination? Sure tragedy. For to achieve an appreciation of something like the Ultimate Wine one must have Higher Powers. And wings not secured by wax.

The Summer of Zibibbo

In June of 2001 I went to Pantelleria for two weeks by myself. My wife had died four months earlier and I was grieving her loss. It was summer and I just wanted to go away. Thirty years earlier I had passed on an invite to go to the island. This time I just went, alone.

I ran a lot and swam and rode a scooter around the little island. I went down to the market and bought fresh vegetables and fish and cheese and cured meats. And wine. Being not far off from Sicily there were few choices. But one of the wines I bought, a dry Moscato Zibibbo, was one I still remember fondly.

Carrying water, waiting for the wine

Wine, frozen in time, that’s what all those bottles in the cellar turned out to be. And like our friends and family and life in general they are subject to a constant barrage of elements resulting in a permanent state of change. Think of a wine cellar (or closet) as a laboratory of change in which the wines stored will surprise, delight, disappoint and occasionally be opened at the very perfect moment they were meant to be.

Like my fig tree outside in the back. Three days ago some of the figs were ready. Now some other ones are. But the ones that were ready three days ago and didn’t get picked, now are suffering, oxidized and cooked from sitting under high temps for days. Then under a leaf in the blazing noon day a little fig will poke their head out and you will pick it and it will be cool inside. Much like wine.

The Sign of a Great Wine

Sometime ago I remember reading about a person who was learning to do an activity and the teacher was emphasizing that to really arrive at mastery one had to stop trying, thinking and hoping and then when all that happened the person and the activity would fuse seamlessly. Maybe it was a Castaneda book or Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Or some other book. It doesn’t matter. But last night after a long day of scrubbing windows and cleaning up a place to ready it to sell, we gathered around the grape-picking table with some Texas BBQ and all the accoutrements of a meal in that genre - potato salad, coleslaw, some fries, pickles and hot peppers - and we went after it. Tagged the two meat, two potato platter. And along with that the wine.

A Land of Giants

Last week we got off the grid. Back to nature. No phones, no email, no blogging. Took hikes, cooked, read three books (analog), shot pictures, cooked, drank wine and looked at the United States from the other side of the Juan de Fuca Strait. And did a mess of thinking.

And while I did a lot of thinking about the country I was born and live in, my thoughts also were in Piedmont. In fact when I came back I posted that little one about the Cannubi matter.

In my research, I read and pored over maps, old catalogs, pictures, all kinds of ephemera I have saved over the decades.

To Cannubi or not to Cannubi?

I am writing this as an outsider; one who loves the wines of the Langhe. And as an outsider I am blinded by distance but clarified by the perspective that distance gives. As well, there are many on site and around the world that are infinitely more qualified to give the definitive argument. As with my character I will not sing into that microphone, but will point myself more towards an existential viewpoint. But first, some basic information.

The Last Leg

From the archives - posted 12/27/09

from the "uchronic meanderings" department

Thursday Aug 4
The trip out of Rustic Tuscany was bumpy. After a week of cloudless days, it started to rain in Pisa. And rain it did, all the way to New York. The rains must have rusted the cargo bay doors at JFK, because we waited over two hours for our luggage. Really funny to be with several score of Italians, coming to America for holiday, and to hear them talk of the situation like we do about Fiumicino or Malpensa.

New York was wet, but not unbearably so. It actually cooled the city down. I stopped to crash a night at a friend’s house, seeing as I lost my connection to Providence. We walked to a local pizzeria, and had a bite. And while I had beer, I did notice there were plenty of cool wines to sample, including some of Angiolino Maule’s wine and also an interesting Gragnano.

Odd that Maule’s wines come through Dressner, what with the yeast thing and all. Such a nice guy. Maule, that is.

Lament for an Old Giant

from the archives - posted 7/2/09

It seems like everyday we get another headline announcing the passing of someone who was part of the larger American family. I have been thinking about this iconic Tuscan wine, one that grew up with America. And as America developed, so this wine also expanded in the marketplace and on tables across America. For many people this wine came to symbolize Italian wine. In restaurants, surely, in its day, the top tier had more swagger than Brunello.

Le avventure di Ginocchio

"Canta pure, Grillo mio, come ti pare e piace"

Dining out the other night, we ordered a wine, a simple Rosso di Montepulciano. The server tussled with the cork, but eventually expunged it. On first sniffing the wine and then sampling it, I thought it had an ever-so-slight trace of corkiness. But it was so minute I chalked it up to watching the server struggle with the cork and imagined some sort of transference.

A few minutes into it though, the funk appeared to be magnifying. And then it vanished, only to pop up and disappear a few times. It wasn’t that the wine was bad, but the wine was making itself a larger part of the meal than it needed to be. All of this going through my head as other things were going on around the table. Little monkey-brain chatter, “This wine isn’t right.” “Stop griping and enjoy the experience.” “But something’s wrong.” “Shut up and let me enjoy the meal and company.” This mad little dialogue endured until the cloud drifted away sometime before desserts appeared.

Bank On It

"The wise man does at once what the fool does finally."- Niccolo Machiavelli

Money seems to be on everyone’s mind. The European Community is striving to pull Greece and Spain away from the ledge. In America, people are still spending money they don’t have. Last night I witnessed weekend millionaires spending money in ways that I could never bring myself to do. And I am more likely able to afford to spend the way I saw these folks spending. Not that I ever would. It’s highly predictable that they do this every Friday and Saturday night, if not Thursday as well as Sunday brunch. Their debts add up. Until no shovel will be able to dig them out.

Did the “millionaire weekend” contagion pass from the local party-goers to Spain and Greece? Is there something about the thrill of getting something without having to earn it, save for it and then pay for it? Is it human nature? Wiring? Greed? Impatience? Or just a lack of imagination?

The Curative Dose

"There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.”― Rod Serling

Yesterday on NPR’s Marketplace Kai Ryssdal interviewed Marco Bardazzi of the newspaper La Stampa in Turin, Italy. Mr. Bardazzi had some interesting observations. Read for yourself:

Ryssdal: How's the mood in Italy these days with all the turmoil around you in Spain and Greece?

Bardazzi: Well the mood is bad because we see that the situation is not improving and there are a lot of problems all around Europe. We are really looking forward for a European meeting that is scheduled on June 28 in Brussels. We are looking at that as the possible turning point in the crisis, but we are not sure that this will happen.

Ryssdal: Haven't we been at the turning point many times before though?

Bardazzi: Yes, you are right. We have hoped for several other turning points so we don't know if this will be another hope for Europe, but really it comes down to this meeting on June 28 that could decide what will happen to the euro and the European Union.

Ryssdal: Do Italians ever look at the United States and say to themselves, man you guys think you have troubles, but you don't know what you're talking about -- this is really rough over here.

Bardazzi: Yes, there's a strange feeling right now toward the United States. Some people think that the U.S. are those that have put us in trouble right now. At the same time there are many others who think that from the United States we can see some signs of recovery and we don't have those signs here.

Under the Tuscan Scum

Il Prezzo del Potere

“What do you think of Gaja’s Brunello?” a wine enthusiast sidled up behind me and asked. It’s the kind of question I have been getting more often. Folks who are getting into Italian wines or who have just come back from two weeks in Tuscany. You know the kind where they find a villa outside of San Gimignano and share it with two or three other couples and their scadload of kids. Private chef, day trips in and out of the compound (“Just make sure you get back before it gets dark”). Insulated from the scary Italy. Safe for the American kids. Under (but not among) the Tuscan Sun.

What do they want me to say? Of course I've had the wine, had it before Gaja bought it, back when I was poor but could still afford it.

The Battle for Brunello

There are many more qualified to offer their thoughts on the subject, but for some reason as I was jogging I couldn’t get these ideas out of my head. I started to go down the line of all the Brunellos I had had since I tried the first one I’d ever had, the 1964 Costanti. That wine, a memory that seared my impression of Brunello, was as good as I could have hoped for. It was 16 years old when I tried it and an unexpected treat. I was working at an Italian restaurant and the owner was sitting with his wife having dinner. It was a Saturday night and the evening was winding down. The sommelier, an older (35-ish) lady in short shorts and full sommelier regalia took a liking to me and called me over to the cellar, where she was decanting a wine. “Take a sip of this,” she offered. The color was medium-light ruby with a slight tinge of tan on the edges. The aromas were flowery, salty, cherry, a wild herbal note like oregano/rosemary, but less obvious than those. And then I took a sip. In the flavors I tasted the warm afterglow of love, a sunset on the Pacific, a deeply wooded vale, a bowl of bitter-sweet cherries and a rush of mellow alcohol slightly rubbed with the oxidative caress of soft wood.

Anisetta in Palermo

and other remembrances on this day... 
 

I remember that sinuous ceramic floor, on top of the building on Via Roma. Of all things, why that floor? Perhaps the floor was the safe, the repository for all the memories stored up on the roof overlooking Palermo. All the long dinners, late lunches, cups of coffee in the early morning looking out over the water, watching the ships pull into the harbor. Looking at Monte Pellegrino in the afternoon, in the aperitivo moment. For whatever reason, that odd squiggly tile floor pulls me into the shots. Most of these people are family in some way, most of them are now gone. But here it is, Memorial Day, and one of their kin is remembering them, channeling them, looking back into the past peering into the magic mirror of images my grandfather brought back.

Seersucker memories, Vonnegut “so it goes” tattoos and Ripasso with Dr. Zaius

"All this happened, more or less." 

Why are people attracted to certain things? I’ll never know. One of my most humiliating memories is when I was 18 and my girlfriend at the time jettisoned me for an older man. I used to work for him, and he was the epitome of ugly, like a wrinkled Woody Allen bereft of charm. But something about him was attractive to her. For a month or so it devastated me and my perception of the world. For a little longer I thought I was somehow unworthy. It wasn’t until years later that I realized it wasn’t really me. But perceptions of myself were colored in ways that I am sure shaped future decisions and paved the way for any number of successes and failures.

As you age does your taste in wine change?

That was the question I posed on a Facebook page two months ago. I have been thinking about it for some time now, and doing active research.

In my life, I have to say, my tastes have ranged all across the board, like waves of appreciation. For a while I would taste all the Bordeaux reds I could get my hands on. And I developed a taste for them. But my diet, which ranges from low to no red meat, really doesn’t complement them. I also was into Rhone reds as well, and again, aside from the occasional spicy chicken on the grill or holiday repast, I found them hard to take on a regular basis. Not that I didn’t like them, it was more that I just didn’t have a lifestyle where these wines fit on a regular basis.

Facticity in Flux

I’m here but I’m not really here. Sipping on all kinds of Italian wine, I have been tripping back and forth between Sicily, Umbria, Marche, Tuscany, Santa Barbara, Mittelmosel and Provence. Who wants to source local when there are so many wonderful experiences in wine? And that has been my week, under cover of long days and nights of working in the field. All good, all healing, but very tired.

Look, we’ve already determined schlepping this or that wine isn’t going to save anyone or make that big of a difference. Or does it? After looking at the mess politicians and bankers, stockbrokers and lawyers have made of this so-called civilized world, maybe slinging wine isn’t such a bad thing.

So what has passed by my palate this week that has really made a difference?