Muddy Boots

Aquila del Torre: Good vibrations on Tanzer's site

If you follow Steven Tanzer's reviews at all, you quickly realize that he and his reviewers are not ones to indulge in grade inflation. Wines that others may deem a 92, Tanzer & Co. seem to mark 3-4 points lower. They do not subscribe to the Lake Wobegon philosophy of "illusory superiority."  

So it's with pride and pleasure that I inform you of some excellent scores and reviews by Ian d'Agata, Tanzer's man in Italy, frequent contributor to Decanter and Director of the International Wine Academy of Roma.

Aquila del Torre in late February. All organically farmed,

vineyards are set within a nature preserve

Recently, on Tanzer's wineaccess.com site, reviews of three of Aquila del Torre's wines were published. We applaud this, to us, new and very impressive producer from the Colli Orientali district of Friuli.

Here are the reviews, along with links to wineaccess.com. 

Friulano 2010 -- 88 points

<http://www.wineaccess.com/expert/tanzer/ecommerce/product.html?product_id=11281000>

Green-tinged straw-gold. Rich nose of fig, lime blossom and almond. Fat, thick and sweet, with an almost syrupy texture to its apple and almond flavors. An impressively rich and big Friulano, but compared to the sauvignon it comes across as slightly blurry, in need of a little more acidity (or less alcohol) for better definition. Finishes long and rich, with hints of lime oil and cut grass.

Sauvignon Blanc 2010 - 89 points

<http://www.wineaccess.com/expert/tanzer/ecommerce/product.html?product_id=11280999>

Pale, straw-gold color. Fresh nose verges on the exotic, offering pineapple, grapefruit, green fig and lime skin notes. Solidly built, but with lovely delicacy to the pineapple and grapefruit flavors. Has the flesh to support its very good acidity. Nicely done: Aquila del Torre, long known for an excellent picolit (the Savorgnano subzone is an absolute grand cru for the variety), actually makes one of Friuli's more interesting sauvignons as well.

Picolit 2008 - 90 points

<http://www.wineaccess.com/expert/tanzer/ecommerce/product.html?product_id=11281072>

Bright yellow-gold. Pure aromas of lime oil, mango and ripe yellow peach complicated by dried apricot. Bright and sweet, with lime and honey flavors on entry, then rather gently styled in the middle. Could use a bit more length, but it's so pure and varietally accurate that it rates an outstanding score.

We have in stock the Friulano and the Sauvignon Blanc, as well as the relatively unsung Riesling, but the Picolit wasn't available when we placed our initial order in the summer. That luscious nectar, bright with enough acidity to make you want another glass, then another, will be here early in 2012.

Grapes that depress

Do you experience some grapes, or, should we say, the wine made from certain grapes, in a negative, even depressing way? Where the wine leaves you with a low, crappy feeling after you've drunk even a small amount?

Like Semillon, for example? 

Like Primitivo?

And why, exactly?

Those are two of my top picks in this category.

Just thinking out loud...

The Producer responds: Sweetness of American food

I thought I'd share further eludication on the topic of the sweetness of American food from the lady who instigated the whole thread, Chiara Martinotti of Cascina Gilli. My few comments after her para.

...To be honest it took me a few days to realize how sweet the food was there in US. At the beginning I simply felt I was really enjoying eating out, then I realized that the big cheese plate was loaded with frosted peanuts, the apparently healthy salad had caramelised strawberries on top, while the steamed salmon was topped with cherries. No wonder eating was becoming such a fun experience (yeah...I have a sweet tooth). The point is: this kind of food is anesthetizing your palate, it makes you lose in complexity and shades. They are pushing you towards an immediate, short and childish taste. Adult tastes are savour, saltiness, acidity, adult tastes often require time as well. I think quite a few Italian wines also require an "adult palate" to be fully appreciated.

OK, first off, Chiara -- you ordered a salad with what on top? Salmon with what on top? No wonder you have this viewpoint!

Granted, too many salads and salad dressings here are loaded up with sugar in addition to gloppy with greasiness thanks to excessive amounts of what purports to be cheese. But you can always bypass (key word!) that my requesting oil and vinegar, or lemon.

As to the fish, what can I say? It sounds like the wrong thing to dump on salmon. I don't care if it was farm-raised. 

I'd have to say that the excessive sweetness in a lot of American food is, in part, a matter of habit as well as the desire of the restaurateurs and food-product manages to make the customer back for more. It's the path of least resistance for everyone.

Looking at this issue diachronically -- look it up! Google makes it easy to expand your vocabulary! -- I can remember back to about 60 years ago. As a little kid, I of course went crazy for anything sweet. We had things like "tonic" (soda in American) and ice cream as treats fairly seldom. Sure, we binged candy and Halloween and baked goods at Christmas. But holidays were a completely separate category regarding food, which was a major part of why we eagerly awaited them. Now that holiday/ordinary day dichotomy is blurred to the point of insignificance. We have the national obesity epidemic to prove it.

What has this to do with wine? Nothing and everything. Even among those who drink wine frequently, there is a common theme of "I don't like sweet wines." Yet ask them what they prefer, and it's something high in sugar and well as alcohol -- California Zinfandel or Cab, Amarone, some jammy monster from Australia. Chiara commented on this, and Jeff and I, observing this preference at tastings for civilians, laugh about it all the time. We laugh but we're crying on the inside.

Well, look, I have no intention of making a lot of profound observations on the topic, nor do I wish to devote my days to researching it. It's an interesting point, which I hadn't thought much about before Chiara brought it up. And it does shed some light, if obliquely, on the ingrained American preference for sweet drinks of all sorts, wine often included. That's all.

  

 

Terra di Vento in Vini d'Italia Guide for first time

We've always been big fans of the organic wines of Terra di Vento, which is located near the sea in southern Campania. Under Roberto Nicodemo, the winery has gone from strength to strength the past few years. The 100% Aglianico "Petrale" and the 100% Fiano "Faiano" have great fruit and balance, and they really sing their terroir. For the quality of the wines, they are an exceptional bargain.*

Imagine my delight this morning when I found an email from Roberto with the newest "results" of the 2012 Vini d'Italia, which is one of the better ones in the country, published by the magazine L'Espresso.

Below is a picture of the guide's review of Terra di Vento and the wines that it reviewed.

Enjoy! And brush up on your Italian...

"A brilliant debut in this Guide for this winery at the foot of the Picentine Mountains..."

*Note that the Italian prices to the consumer in euros are very similar to shelf prices here in dollars. We're lookin' out for ya.

The sweetness of American food

On her return to Italy, Chiara Martinotti, la Regina della Freisa, sent an email from Cascina Gilli. Most of the contents were business details about her recent trip to the States, but she stopped me short with a comment about the sweetness of American food.

"I found very sweet, almost childish flavors, especially in Ohio [take that, Buckeyes!]. I don't like this, but I do begin to understand the American preference for sweet drinks, including wine."

I hadn't thought about the sweetness of American food even though I've been in Italy dozens of times. It's very different here, granted, but I also don't glop up my food as so many people in America do -- you know, the sour cream on the baked potato, melty cheesoid product on everything from popcorn to noodles, heavily sugared prepared spaghetti sauce, etc. I also avoid chains like Olive Garden. But don't most aware food and wine geeks avoid that kind of thing anyway?

That observation doesn't address the larger issue of sweetness in the drinks we, as a people, prefer. After all, we oldsters have lived through many crazes having to do with sweet, unstructured alcoholic products: Mateus, cold duck (the nadir, IMO), hedonistic fruit bombs and, currently, those too-sweet fruit beers. There hasn't been one major marketing barrage pushing steely Muscadet or broad-shouldered Aglianico to the masses. Never happened, never will.

As I tiresomely point out to people, our national fondness for sweet drinks was firmly established in Colonial times. Yo ho ho and a bottle of rum. That rum, made from molasses, was aged in toasty oak barrels and combined with all sorts of sugars and spices to ease the weariness of the working man. Toddies and shandies and all sorts of concoctions that sound like a recipe for instant diabetes. (The rich had their Madeira and Port.) Bourbon -- treated in a pretty similar way. (Look at America's classic cocktails -- heavy on the sugars, whether via fruit or the cane variety.)

But I'd like to pose a question to all five of you who read this blog [people still write blogs? how cute!].

Do you find the food here all that sweet? That much sweeter than, say, in Italy or France? 

And are your food choices determined, in part, by the necessity of pairing them with the wines that you favor? 

Aggiornamenti -- Updates

I finally got around to updating the Domenico Selections website last night, with a number of small changes and additions. Nothing momentous, but, as we know, a well-functioning society gets that way by paying attention to details. 

* Finally added the newest wine in our lineup, the refreshing and very pretty Barbera d'Asti "Vigna delle More" from Cascina Gilli. Reason for delay? Um...

* Addition of recent scores to wine spec sheets from top American publications - for example here. (I know, I know. So craven, blablabla.)

* Correction of a couple of transposed vintage years of the L'Arco wines Pario and Rubeo. This is what happens when you're a tad dyslexic.

Open a week: Wine with a backbone

Sunday night, October 2, 2011

 

Every once in a while somebody blogs [people still blog? how cute!] or tweets a nugget like:

Mierda Hills Cabernet '00 open 3 days. Wow! Better than when I opened it, 95 pts! :))))!!

It is a marker of quality -- of excellent winemaking -- when a wine improves for some days after opening.

We all know the sinking feeling when, the evening after opening a bottle, we pour and taste and realize that, despite TLC in a wine fridge, the left-over bottle is characterless and off. So we either open a new bottle or do without wine. 

I was going to say that it "sucks," but I overcame the age's bush laziness and decided to ennoble my statement with "characterless and off." Give a guy credit for sort of trying.

Now to get to my point in under 150 words.

Friday, when I was wrestling with some cases of samples chez moi, I noticed that in a box under another box there was an open bottle from our tasting last Monday, September 26, 2011 A.D. -- that's how momentous it was, though if it had been all that momentous I'd have written "Anno Domini" despite the highest of Jewish holy days going around right now -- where am I in this sentence? I am no Addison and Steele, O! English majors.

Ah yes. I discovered an open bottle, hardly touched, of the 2005 Rosso Veronese from L'Arco. L'Arco is the winery owned and operated by Luca Fedrigo, who, as we have told everyone we've met in the recent past, learned his art from the one and only Giuseppe Quintarelli. The lad has learnt well. 

But I digress.

There was a slow-pour cap on the bottle. The bottle was hidden from the stresses of heat and cold in my apartment -- corrugated cartons have impressive insulating powers -- but, still. It had been opened and was slowly but surely aerating.

FF to now. Sunday evening. We had tuna steaks in an umami* kind of marinade, rice, bok choy. We drank the left-over, open-for-six-days Rosso Veronese with it. 

Can I tell you, without all the damn "!!!!!!!," how good the wine was after all that time? How well it paired with the umami-ish tuna and all the other fixin's? It was perfect. Delicious. Moreish.

L'Arco Rosso Veronese 2005. Some damn fine wine. And it's Luca's "base" wine at that. If that was his base...exactly, my friends. Ex. Act. Ly.

 

*I'm told the marinade was salt, pepper, garlic, white wine and olive oil. Who knew it was so simple and could deliver such yummumaminess? Hats off to anyone who can cook more than toast.

 

  

 

New York is Naples without palm trees

In their recent visit to Our Fair City, Chiara from Cascina Gilli and Francesca from Aquila del Torre expressed amazement and horror over several aspects of New York life. 

They were shocked by the amount of trash in the streets, and the rats. 

They were horrified by the desperation on the faces of the poor. And that there were so many of the poor. They were even more horrified by the evident consequences of lack of access to decent health care.

The gap between Haves and Have-nots seemed very Third World.

The noise and crowding were suffocating. Not to mention the clammy humidity. 

On another note, the food was too heavily seasoned (piccante) and the amount of black pepper on some restaurant food made it hard for them to choke down. The amount of wine poured by the glass was excessively large. Did we drink to get drunk? (Um. Sort of.)

It's good to get an outsider's view of things. And note that these Italian ladies had the same reaction as many Americans from less pitiless places, down to the pepperiness of the food. It does no good to point out that, compared to the 1970s and 80s, this New York is a dream. 

As Chiara, a self-confessed country girl, said at one point, "You are very brave to live here." This took me aback. I feel extraordinarily fortunate to live here. But...

This is what I saw. (Francesca at the Conservatory at east 106th Street, Central Park)

 

This is what they saw. Naples West, insomma