Muddy Boots

Yesterday at Anfora

The place. The buzz. The wines. The cool

Yes, finally we held the trade tasting that was so long heralded. The wines showed well, and the three producers we had on hand were charming and informative.

A moderate-sized crowd showed up, including good media people. And some top-flight restaurant people attended as well. Very gratifying.

Today's follow-up has been gratifying as well. 

And why not? The Valpolicella wines of Luca Fedrigo of L'Arco drew a consistent crowd. This young man of 33 has been making wine, or involved in its making, since he was 17. He worked for Quintarelli for 11 years until he broke up with Signor Giuseppe's niece. Time to leave the vinological nest.

The relations between the established great of Valpolicella and the young man with a vision are close, cooperative and warm. On a personal note, Luca and his young lady are expecting a second child. This is man who gets up at 4 AM to Skype his wife and 3-year old daughter. This is also a man who says, "I make wines that I like." No trend-chasing here.

Charming was Francesca Ciani of Aquila del Torre, and the rave comments of her organic, unoaked Friuliano (Colli Orientali) whites centered on her Friulano and the Sauvignon Blanc. We loved these wines the first time we tasted them. They possess wonderful balance and finesse. On a Ciani family note, the first person we met of that family was Francesca's brother Michele, the enologist, who became a papà just a few weeks ago. Auguri!

This is the young Italian wine generation, striving to make ever better wines, committing themselves to this often unremunerative way to make a living because it's in their blood. I mean, what would Luca Fedrigo do if he didn't make wine? The question doesn't even compute.

In case you think I forgot Chiara Martinotti, the GM and guiding hand at Cascina Gilli, how could I? Looking as elegant as any chic Upper East Side lady, she poured the three wines that we currently import: the Freisa Vigna del Forno ("Nebbiolo in a bustier"), the surprise hit sparkling Malvasia, and the newly arrived Barbera d'Asti, unoaked and fresh as a bunch of spring's early violets. Whatever I once said about Barbera d'Asti -- fuggeddabbadit. This is delicious, well-priced vino.  

I have to cut this short. Must run to a Cascina Gilli tasting at Eataly. There will be photos of the Anfora tasting soon.

 

The way we drink today

I love titles of posts that sound authoritative, definitive, coma-inducing. This one is. "The way we drink today." Love it.

I am referring, of course, to a recent poll that found -- horror of horrors! -- that Americans, this unteachable breed, really do like to drink wine without food. As a cocktail, essentially.

According to the results of the Wine Opinions survey, as recently reported in the San Jose Mercury, us all's drink almost 60% of our wine without food -- never mind a meal, and without a snack in sight! Millennials, those born from 1980 on, are 80% likely to pop open a bottle to "kick back with friends." (Note to self: find out if people still say "kick back.") I'll throw in my grumpy old man comment here: "These kids today!"

As you might imagine, the wine blogosphere, obsessed with triviality and consumed by its own false importance, became rather unglued at this perhaps not so startling revelation. For one thing, consider all container-loads of snackless, mealless bottles of wine drunk by the Desperate Housewives (Casalinghe disperate, in Italian) hags, none of whom will ever see 40 again. (Exception: Eva Longoria.)

Or the grimly feisty old broads from Sex and the City. There was usually a girls-only bottle of Chardonnay in the frame, no doubt some plush, oaky monster that wine geeks would no doubt eschew.

These TV shows have habituated Italians to the fact that we indeed don't need a meal as an excuse to crack open a bottle of vino and "kick back." They and other Europeans may cluck their disapproval but, face it, our drinking culture has always been about alcohol in and for itself. I mean, did the Colonials go into a tizzy over pairing a rum shandy with whatever slop they were eating? Hardly. They wanted something to warm them up on cold nights and to ease the pain of a back-breaking day of labor. Plus they'd already polluted the water so badly that even little children routinely drank ale and beer for refreshment and nutrients.

We Yanks have always preferred to drink this way, as have our brothers and sisters across the Pond. The cocktail was principally an American invention -- the flavors were and are so intense, often with a great deal of sweetness, that they didn't lend themselves to accompaniment with food. 

I'd venture to say that the Millennials' predilection for wine marks a real shift in our drinking culture, but their preference for wine to "kick back with friends" indicates the survival of an ancient pattern in America.

Another generational change at work today is their turning away from the "hedonistic fruit bombs" of their fathers and grandfathers, and their openness to new tastes and grapes and regions. I'll add that I think those of us in the major cities do overestimate this trend, especially since outside of a handful of big cities, opportunities to experiment with different grapes, regions, etc. are limited by the smaller selections on offer.

For my part, I don't care how or in what context Americans drink their wine. I just hope they keep drinking more of it.

11 days in Itly, lking 4 grt wine: a Twttr essay

 

Day 1 OMG, 1st stop totl winnr! Exc Valpol + blend lt harvest PASSITO Cab Fr (WTF) + usu Valpol blnd. WOW. UNICO, BELLO. Grazie Dr. JP!

Day 2 Top Barolo prodcr seeks new import love. We R all about Luv. FTW. Bacioni!

Day 3 W/ Paolo V @ Cascina Roccalini. Che sfigo chiacchierare con lui. Wines only getting better. Sigh of contmnt

Day 3 Went 2 see amico @tirebouchon, bravo, then to palazzo of Queen of Freisa @cascingilli. [hearts]

Day 4 Back to Verona. Mainly as pit stop. Thank Gd 4 La Bufalina + real pizza napol. Friuli on day 5

Day 5 To Savorgnano del Torre. Bello da morire. Nice weather. Grt young couple of Aquila del Torre. New agriturismo. Lady bug invasion :( but SOOOO BIODY!

Day 6 Tasting & eating. Meno male. My phrase of trip LOL ( = not bad) Fra & Pier so f’n nice 2 me. They don’t know me!!!! LOL!!!!!!

Day 7 Sun AM @ crazy winery in Venezia Giulia. Exc & low cost. Bar pours & flr stackers. Tall guy wore Formula 1 check flag glasses! Get me a container, stat.

Day 8 Alto Adige. Old castle w/ a baron. V nice wines of course. Even the gewurtz!! Hey, it’s Alto Adige. He wore Tyrolean hat + Nantucket red pants. Loved it!

Day 9 Carpaccio di cervo (venison) did me in. Sick all day. Foul. Hate Tyrolean grub. No tasting. Deadsville. Porca miseria

Day 10 Despite illness > Superb tiny winery high up (700 m), spectac wine blend Chard PB and incrocio Manzoni.OMFG Must have! Mamma made me rice :) 

Day 11 On plane home. Vinitaly = soon. No LOL   

 

Giro d'Italia, Winter 2011 edition

If this is Monday is must be...Veneto? Piemonte? Alto Adige? Friuli? Lombardy??

At this very moment it seems to be Alto Adige. I know this because it's chilly and there are steep snowy mountains looming over the - wait for it - Edelweiss Hotel.

The itinerary was made for road warriors. Milano > Valpolicella > Barolo > Torino > Verona > Friuli >Venezia Giulia > Alto Adige > Veneto > Marco Polo Airport. That's a lot of diesel fill-ups, baby. 

For a road warrior, since old Strappo is earning electronic speeding tickets all by himself. (Since the introduction of the damned Safety Tutor, driving in Italy is a lot less fun and fast than it used to be. What the hell is this 140 km speed limit all about? That's 80 mph, the speed grannies from Maine do. OK, I don't often obey the limit, but still.)

In a week so far I've hit 8-9 wineries spread all over the place, with a couple more do go before heading home on Thursday. I'm not prepared to write glowing articles about them, and indeed it would be imprudent to do so. Some shall go nameless here for those very reasons of prudence.

But I am prepared to share a few pix with you, beginning with one of our rising young stars, Paolo Veglio of Cascina Roccalini. Alas, I took no pictures of Cascina Gilli's Chiara Martinotti, la regina della freisa e malvasia, because she put me up at her house and it would have seemed like an insolent abuse of her hospitality.

 

Paolo Veglio in his cellar. We had a long chat. I tasted many future releases. They're only getting better. One is happy

A very nice bit of news: at the urging of Dante Scaglione, Paolo is going to make a Barbaresco Riserva. Release date around 2015 or so

This wine is ready for pickup and eventual delivery to you, my beloved customers

The vineyard right in front of Paolo's home. Alba lies in the mist yonder

 

I had approximately an hour to myself and so of course had to go into Torino to see me old blogging pal, Vittorio Rusinà. He bought me a Coke. I like it when people give me free things. It makes me feel like a real wine blogger

 

What was the name of that B&B again? I remember it was in Friuli and the hosts bought me outrageously good dinners, including one at a fantastic fish restaurant on Saturday night where we three were the only customers they had! The B&B was brand-new and spacious. I promised not to mention the lady bug invasion

 Vineyard porn, Aquila del Torre, Friuli

That's good luck in Friulano. Mandi!*

Mandatory vineyard + dog shot. Burro.The dog's name means buddah

 

Where I was this morning

 

Wilkommen. This is in the terminally quaint village of Partschins. Winery and home entrance

 
This is cellar porn. Dates from 1300. Original beams. One of the most atmospheric wineries anywhere. Their newer cellar (ca. time of Christopher Columbus) is where they hold tastings

There were dogs available for photographing, but, frankly, they didn't hold a sticka buddah to this kid, the enologo's daughter. She's destined for stardom, don't you think?

Ahhh. Che bello...

 
 
 

*Mandi = ciao

 

 

 

 

 

Kenyan wine

Fine, there is no "Kenyan" wine. If there were, it might be as watery as their weak beer or as unappealing as their bread.

In two weeks of tramping around that East African country, I discovered many good things to eat (superb pineapple, mangoes, melons, stupendous biriani, great vegetables), though not too many to drink. Besides bottled water, which Kenyans drink too because of the dodgy water supply, we fared best with rum and gin purchased at the ubiquitous Nakumatt chain and downed with local tonic water. (The tiny local limes were packed with zippy flavor.)

Wine selections were limited and, for the most part, oversweetened plonk from Chile and South Africa, neither of which appealed to me. Occasionally a halfway decent bottle of French wine appeared on a list, not to mention the very occasional presence of a bottle of wildly marked-up Italian wine (Orvieto -- meh).

Granted, I didn't go to Malindi, where there is a substantial Italian colony whose tastes, no doubt, are catered to satisfactorily. But Kenya is a big an varied country, and I did manage to glimpse a number of its distinctive regions. Wine is definitely not part of their culture, and I felt it very keenly come dinner time.

 Then again, lazing on a verandah overlooking the Indian Ocean pairs very well with a tall, cold G&T in the hot late afternoon.

  

 

Sustainable, biodynamic agriturismo: Terra di Vento debuts

Roberto Nicodemo is a serious man with serious dreams - and the means to turn them into reality.

He believes in growing grapes and making wines in the most natural way possible. He is a steadfast supporter of local artists in his part of coastal Campania, about 10 miles south of Salerno. And he has long been planning and building a special sort of agriturismo -- one that uses its own solar-generated power, recycles everything and provides visitors with a lovely all-round experience with locally-sourced foods, his wine and agricultural experiences on the 200+ acres of Terra di Vento.

There's a horse farm contained in the acreage, with lots of chances for equestrian fun (or terror, depending on your point of view). You can learn about organic farming of olives, fruit trees and, of course, vines.

Or you can loll.

Terra di Vento is at 200 metres above sea level, and you can see the Med from the property. You can get to the seaside quickly, since it's only about 5 miles away.

Roberto and his wife, Marialuisa Zottola, along with their children, run the agriturismo and the farm. This would be a great place for a weekend or to use as a base for excursions in southern Campania. It's easy to get to the Amalfi coast from Terra di Vento (and easy to come back for some peace and quiet from the Amalfi crowding), not to mention the Cilentano and Parco Regionale dei Monti Picentini, which borders Terra di Vento.

By the way, Terra di Vento makes delicious wines, which we are proud to bring to the United States: the 100% Aglianico "Petrale" and the 100% Fiano "Faiano." (This is a bit confusing. But Faiano is where the winery is located.)

For more information about the Terra di Vento agriturismo and further links, check out this article by Luciano Pignataro of "Il Mattino", Naples. (In Italian.)

 

 

The Faux Feast of Seven Fishes

Hold on to your cappelli, Italian-Americans: your ancient tradition of the Christmas Festa dei sette pesci is unheard of in Italy. (See Wikipedia article here.)

Last year about this time, Paola and Anna Chiara Mustilli were in New York to promote their wines. One day Paola, mystified, asked me what this festa was. Full of the confidence of the fatuous, I told her it was an old Italian custom, etc. That it originated in the South, possibly in Campania.

She looked at me as if I'd just emerged from a flying saucer.

She asked her sister.

They shrugged their shoulders and both looked at me as if I'd just emerged, etc.

Well. Lesson learned. A lot of "old-country" traditions are no such thing. They are hyphenated Americans' reactions to assimilation and the loss of old cultural bearings, evolving rapidly over the course of a few generations.

Paola learns of the Feast of the 7 Fishes

Fortunately for those of us who love wine, things don't stand still in Italy. By and large, competitive pressures have spurred Italian winemakers to higher levels of quality and, after the fad for oak-bombs, wines that let the grapes' character shine through. The producers are respectful of their traditions, but they're not enslaved by them.

And if you insist on celebrating the Feast of the Seven Fishes, you'd do well to try some of the Mustilli wines: the basic Falanghina for lighter seafood dishes, the rounder Vigna Segreta Falanghina for creamy, richer fare, and the delightful Piedirosso, a light red that pairs well with tuna, salmon or eel.

 

 

 

Pairing our white & dessert wines

Yesterday we did a quick survey of food-matching the red wines currently in the Domenico Selections portfolio. Today it's time for the whites and the dessert wines.

A word of caution: these are the briefest and broadest of brush strokes, driven by a somewhat subjective assessment of a wine as light & crisp, full & rich, etc. 

Pairing our wines

Just the other day I posted something about Thanksgiving dinner and a wonderful wine to pair with turkey and the traditional fixin's here in the USA. The wine in question is the luscious Vigna Segreta, a single-vineyard Falanghina made by Mustilli. (Yes, Falanghina is the grape. It comes from Campania. That's in the south. Naples is the capital of Campania. Yes, you see a fair amount of garbage in Naples. Yes, the mozzarella di bufala is wonderful. I'm sure you love Tuscany, but Campania is actually nicer in a lot of areas. Not to mention the food.)

Anyway, several Facebook and Twitter friends asked me for more information of this sort, covering all of our small but choice portfolio. (I'm looking at you, Jerry Rymont.)

The problem with a self-imposed assignment like this -- aside from my initial stupidity in assuming it -- is how to organize the subject matter. By wine? By color? By relative richness/lightness? By foods to be paired with?

Since I've had no brainstorms of any kind lately, I'm not about to push for one now. Let's plunge in and see how this exercise goes -- today with the reds only, whites to follow soon. (Yes, it is exciting. Molto! Watch Strappo make a completer ass of himself.)

Only the Reds for now...

 

Aglianico: what's in the name?

Domenico Selections has six Aglianicos in the portfolio. You may assume that we love Aglianico in all its clonal offshoots and territorial richnesses. It is, truly, the great noble red grape of southern Italy and reaches its highest expression in small pieces of Campania and Basilicata. 

Aglianico in the snow. Boccella winery, Taurasi zone

After tackling the pronunciation of the word (ahl-YAH-nee-ko), people want to know what it means and where the name came from. The standard explanation is that it's a derivation of the Late Roman word ellenicum (Hellenic, Greek), and it became distorted over the centuries in the local dialects and/or with the intrusion of Spanish rulers in the 16th century (since ll in Spanish sounds like gli in Italian -- the sound in millionaire).

That never convinced me. It smacked of after-the-fact reasoning and seemed, in fact, too reasonable. I was discussing it with Fortunato Sebastiano, the young enologo who is behind all our southern wines, and his take was quite different.

Aglianico first appeared in print around 1500 -- many centuries after the Greeks had colonized Campania. It appears to have been a Latinizing adjective for llano, the Spanish word for plain, which in Italian is pianura. Aglianico in this case applied to wines from a flattish zone north of Naples whose wines were highly regarded. And, according to a new article in Gazzetta Italia, the local name for the grape was a' glianica  well into the 19th Century.

Given the patterns of change in Campanian dialects over the centuries, this explanation seems more credible than the old ellenico saw. But still...

For an interesting discussion on how tricky it is to find the roots of Italian names, see this thread on David MacDuff's blog. 

Aglianico, Musto Carmelitano, Basilicata

 

Coming soon: Domenico Selections website changes

Within a couple of weeks a new edition of the Domenico Selections web site should be up. New producers will finally have their pages. Some "first-generation" producers will have disappeared, each for different reasons. There will be a separate page listing our distributors and somewhat longer listings of the restaurants and shops where our wines are available. 

This aggiornamento (update) is overdue. So is telling the story of a favorite producer who was forced out of business just as we were starting to import her wines in the initial months of our operation. One day in November 2008 we got a phone call from Marcella Turziani who, with her son Riccardo Rolla, ran La Schiaccionaia in the Montecucco zone of Tuscany. She told us that because of the credit crunch, she had had to sell their biodynamic farm to a big outfit. She was done with wine. Their Tuscan dream, in which she and her husband, Dagoberto, had invested everything (and borrowed a lot) -- their Tuscan dream had crashed. They were going back to Rome after eight years of unending labor.

We had discovered La Schiaccionaia the year before at Prissiano, a side event to the big Merano show. Prissiano was devoted to organic wines from various regions of Italy and Austria, all of a high level of quality. We tasted with Marcella and Riccardo and made plans immediately to visit their farm in Tuscany. The wines were strongly individual. 

When we visited in December it was freezing. Technically part of the Maremma, Montecucco, in the shadow of Monte Amiata, is of another climatic zone entirely. From many parts of the area you look way down at the Montalcino zone, which is just a few miles away as the crow flies. As a result, the staple of the area, Sangiovese Grosso, tends to be a bit leaner and more aromatic than at lower elevations. 

In addition to wine, Marcella and Riccardo, helped by other members of the family, made a fine olive oil and an array of organic preserves and so forth. Their vision was to make Schiaccionaia a sort of one-stop shopping point for people desiring high-quality natural products for the table.

  

The day Marcella called us she was stoic. But her voice was heavy with exhaustion and defeat. We loved her and her family. We loved their wine. 

And now it's gone.  

   

   

California tasting memory: Visual by @ubriaca

This is truly a lazy man's post. A picture taken by someone else of the detritus of a tasting.

This was taken by that well-known Twitter scourge @ubriaca last week in Glendale, California. 

The place: Jeff Zimmitti's cool, newly expanded Rosso Wine Shop.

Such nice people and such a good time tasting with them!

 
  

Quality time in Los Angelese

Strappo is home again, home again, jiggety-jig. After a red-eye flight, mercifully upgraded, he landed at JFK on time yesterday, got home and promptly fell asleep till some time in the afternoon. Now he thinks it's time he quit referring to himself in the third person. He hates people who do that.

I did get to meet with a number of terrific people in SoCal, calling mostly on enotecari, notably Lance at The Wine House, Samantha and her crew at Wine Country (in Iowa-by-the-Sea, as she calls it), Simon at Larchmont Village wine, Jill at DomaineLA, and -- last but in no way least, Jeff at Rosso Wine Shop in Glendale. Their enthusiasm for Italian wine was evident, and their appreciation of our wines -- reeking of terroir, reasonably priced -- seemed genuine. In fact, one of the things that struck me as I drove (and drove, and drove) around was the sense of camaraderie among these people as far as Italian wines are concerned. Everybody seems to know everybody, and they have a common goal: to expose their customers to a broad range of authentic Italian wines.

This attitude of openness and "wine evangelism" was evident in a conversation with Max Stefanelli, manager at Terroni restaurant in West LA. He put the two wines from Elisabetta Musto Carmelitano on the list. One of them is the aged-in-cement Serra del Prete, a stunning Aglianico del Vulture. Max is serving it by the glass (we like that) even though he thinks he could sell more of the aged-in-wood Pian del Moro, since the latter is clearly more in line with Calimerican tastes. But he says, "I want people to taste the [less expensive] Serra because it is a more typical expression of the terroir. In it you can taste Vulture."

Imagine that.

 

 

   

A vineyard walk in Soave

At I Stefanini, Soave

Back in January Strappo took a walk in the vineyard behind the Tessaris' house in Monteforte d'Alpone with Francesco Tessari, his uncle Giuseppe and two German Shepherds (Alsatians) borrowed from Mondovino.

Strappo recorded this walk, conducted mostly in Italian. It's posted here in several segments -- truthfully, where he stopped and started the camcorder. Why has it taken six months to post this educational experience? Because Strappo intended to learn how to edit and produce a fine video. Now he knows better: he'll never get around to it and he never really wanted to. Play it as it lays, baby.

So, as you go through the various segments, try to ignore the choppy camera work, the incoherent questions of Strappo and his panting as he endeavors to walk uphill, shoot the footage and chew gum at the same time. (Figuratively speaking. Strappo does not chew gum.)

Introduction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWWe_TudXCs

Part 1, including Mondovino-style dog footage! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TThua9hPtvc

Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oImFuV4Oyro

Part 3: Missing. We thought 8 minutes was a safe length of time but, alas, YouTube rejected it as too long. Pazienza.

 

Wine pricing and the Italian mentality

I can almost hear your groans. "Oh God, not that again! Can't Strappo stop crabbing about producers' wine pricing?"

Well, folks, this time Strappo isn't crabbing. He's categorizing. He's attempting to bring crystal-clear order to a most fuzzy topic. 

Background: At TerroirVino in Genoa, the Strappo in question gave a brief presentation (on PowerPoint, yet! God forgive him!) entitled La Brutta Realtà del Mercato Americano. In 12 simple slides he showed how and why a 6 euro bottle of wine became nearly $30 on a retailer's shelf in the USA, hence very very hard to sell in these endless days of Great Recession. Jaws dropped. There was despair in the audience. There were testy questions after. But recent experience tells us that pretty much any wine that the producer sells for over 5 euros will tend to languish on the shelf here. To sell at all well it has to represent something extraordinary in quality and character.

Which is not to say that Domenico Selections hasn't recently taken on some wines that, from the cantina, exceed that magic price of 5 euros. We have. We are talking with some producers about more. Still, all parties are aware that the wines will be ordered by the pallet and not by the container in the foreseeable future.

With the many encounters we've had with wine producers, I think we can distill the pricing strategies into 4 categories.

Two weeks sulla Strada del vino

Liguria > Piemonte > Marche > Veneto > Friuli > Alto Adige

Back in Rome now, glad not to be driving hundreds of kilometers at a clip, parked in a nice boutique hotel where it's cool and there's free WiFi. (The WiFi situation is vastly improved here of late.)

We tasted many producers' wines, and I have to say that, with notably few exceptions, the wines we've been tasting are well above average in quality and (alas) often in price. Producers eagerly point to the stronger dollar as a way of partly excusing themselves from high prices. But exchange rates are volatile these days, and a recent recovery of the euro means that no American importer can let down his guard on pricing.

Over the next several months the new wines will begin to be phased in. After a label re-design and approval, we will have a Pinot Grigio -- yes, we will have a Pinot Grigio -- from a family azienda called La Prebenda. It is located in far northern Veneto, a township over the border from Trentino. Paolo Zanoni, the winemaker, and his sister, Rita (sales and marketing) make a number of wines from local varieties, of which this is the first we are taking.

Clean and bright with acidity, this well-priced wine is made of 100% Pinot Grigio, which in itself is pretty unusual. We'll be taking the 2010 vintage as soon as it's ready.

Among the other highlights of our sourcing trip were a top-notch maker of Verdicchios and Rosso Piceno in Marche, all 100% organic. (No names yet.)  A really tasty, high-quality Prosecco from the Treviso area. And a number of excellent producers in Alto Adige, where the altitudes, acidity levels and prices are all pretty high. The crisp and often amazingly complex whites from that region are justly famous, and they fit our personal flavor profiles exceedingly well. Let's hope we get them to work out for us. 

You can see that we are striving to strike a healthy balance between crowd-pleasing wines and those which are a bit more esoteric. You need both to build a name and build a business. Let me tell you, we have sniffed, tasted and grimaced at more Pinot Grigios, Proseccos and Sangioveses that you can imagine. To have found pleasing, natural-smelling/tasting ones at good prices hasn't been easy. All too many Proseccos, for example, have had a spuma like laundry soap suds and a chemical odor to match. Some have been so vile that Jeff and I have sniffed the glass and tossed the stuff out. After a while you laugh about it, mostly in disbelief: Do those people actually drink their own swill? 

Well, we test the swill so you don't have to. It's our public service to you, the wine retailer and consumer. 

     

 

Alto Adige, where even the crummy wines taste good

So here we are, amici, in the German-speaking part of Italy so beloved of wine writers like Franco Ziliani (NB: irony) and so many American wine geeks (no irony). We're staying at an extremely beautiful hotel in an extremely beautiful village overlooking great swathes of sub-Alpine fields, chalets and forests, not to mention looming stone-faced mountains. Tomorrow are the appointments with a pair of excellent winemakers from a bit south of here (we are a bit north of Bolzano, the wineries a bit south of that pretty provincial capital). 

 After another long drive, we sat reading on the terrace of the Turm Hotel sipping various local wines as we waited for a thunderstorm to cool things off. Even our least favorite, a Chardonnay by Elena Walch, was crisp and clean. Ken remarked, "These cool climate wines really are wonderful." He allowed as maybe they're better than comparable wines from hotter zones.

In the photo: Fie' allo Scillar. Turm Hotel is a little lower and to right of church & its tower 

That's a broad statement, but it's certainly true that if you're in the mood for a zingy, flavorful white wine to quench your thirst on a hot day, it's hard to beat the ones from Alto Adige. 

Not that all this liquid goodness comes cheap. It does not. But even up here, in a prosperous area where the small amount of terrain suitable for cultivation of grapes raises prices, the effects of La Crisi are felt. Prices, people tell us, are inching down. Tomorrow we'll know if that's true or not.

If it is, you'll see us still here on Tuesday, haggling.       

What we tasted in Genoa

 Part of the repurposed Porto Antico in Genoa

TerroirVino 2010 was arguably the biggest and the best of the annual manifestazioni that Filippo Ronco has organized over the past decade. He finally found the ideal location in the nicely repurposed Magazzini di Cotone (Cotton Warehouses) at the Old Port, an area that reminds one of Baltimore's Inner Harbor, only really really big. There's still a lot of seedy stuff close by, and lots of louche characters, the flotsam and jetsam of the entire world, all keeping it real. Darling Florence it ain't. 

(NB: Someone brought the wrong recharger for the camera. Someone should be shot.)

TerroirVino presents a stimulating mix of up-and-coming young winemakers and wineries and well-established wineries whose wares reflect their respective terroirs. It's the sort of event where it's pretty easy to find wines that were aged in cement, in some cases because the owners couldn't afford to convert to steel tanks or new barriques. You're also hard pressed not to find interesting, obscure grapes rescued from oblivion by a farmer who's fanatically attached to his land and its traditions. All good things.

Filippo is not only a young entrepreneur, but he's also a (cough) "social media guru". All of Sunday was dedicated to a seemingly infinite series of brief presentations by, well, social media gurus, marketers and clowns, wine producers and, yes, even the odd -- very odd -- importer. Each presentation was meant to last just 5 minutes, and to be interactive, informal, very unItalian. In fact, a number of them were a talking-head snoozefest. That wasn't Fil's fault; old cultural reflexes are hard to let go of.

What we tasted were a lot of interesting, well-made wines, all too many of which are currently imported into the USA. We did taste some eligibles (currently not imported wines) that were really marvelous, mostly from Liguria, Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto, and Friuli. This show has a definite northern slant, but not a Leghista mentality, which wouldn't work in Genoa anyway. 

One wishes one could be specific about what one tasted but one would be premature, wouldn't one?  Follow-up visits are in order, subito.

Now, as one writes this, the strong winds are tearing through a very pretty agriturismo on the outskirts of Treiso, a place with stunning views at the summit of a ridge with precipitous drops on either side of a tiny little road.  Steep hills and vineyards and woods and farmhouses are spread like a banquet for the eyes all around you. The land is green and fertile. The people are reserved and yet welcoming. You look around and say, Oh God, I really am in Italy, aren't I? 

In June, my friends, it's as close to heaven as most of us will ever get.

   
 
 

Why everything tastes the same on wine junkets

The whirlwind wine trip of the "Barbera Boys" finishes up today. And when the seven bloggers have time to reflect and compose longer, more thoughtful posts, we'll see what a long half-life their experiences will enjoy. I think it's safe to say that the Barbera d'Asti zone won't be quite the same.

Still, having followed their posts and tweets with keen interest, one aspect of this trip that leaps out at me is the relative uniformity of the wines that have been presented to them. The cries of "too much oak" and "too much tannin" have echoed through each communique. I attribute this sameness to five factors:

1. The selection committee, however composed, has picked wines that they believe will appeal to international (American) consumers.

2. The producers are afflicted with group-think and are convinced that the high-oak, concentrated route is the sure path to success.

3. The same producers are the ones with sufficient clout to get themselves selected. Think intense involvement in the C of C, Rotary Club, Lions, etc., or their Italian equivalents, and you see how small-town networking pays off for the assiduous glad-handers.

4. Fear. A perennial favorite. Along with it, risk-averseness. An unvirtuous feedback loop is established.

5. The exclusion -- or self-exclusion -- of smaller players vastly reduces the chance of tasting wines that don't conform to the prevailing style. Visiting writers receive a fairly representative overview of the zone's production, but necessarily an incomplete one. The prevailing style is consecrated as "official," even to the detriment of the production zone.

I wish I could reveal how going against this grain has benefited Domenico Selections in finding a true gem in Barbaresco, but I won't until the deal has been signed. Suffice it to say that you aren't going to find "hidden" gems by hanging around consortium offices or the local Chamber of Commerce. The quality outriders don't play that.  

 

  

The word "importante" in the Italian wine lexicon

As I wrote earlier today, the Barbera 2010 confab is generating a lot of press that its creators never thought possible, or at least likely. No doubt the assumption was: 

Well, blogging is in. We have to have bloggers. We're hip and with it, after all. It'll be a cinch. The regular American wine press are such pushovers, and in exchange for the all the free stuff and the chance to swan about il Bel Paese, they write the nicest things about our wines. Just think what these nerds from the sticks will write! 

It must have seemed what, in the 80s, was called a win-win-win. I mean, if you get three wins, how can you lose? Right?

As wine-market historians will long note, this event was when It All Changed. For now we know for sure that wine writers may indeed bite the hand that feeds them.  

I can't help it. The Schadenfreude is too delicious. I must savor it. 

Now to the announced topic: Importante

In a post by Saignee, the word important was bandied about quite a bit in a heated confrontation between the bloggers and the producers of the Barbera d'Asti appellation. Saignee's post began with:

What is an “important” wine? Does history and culture deem a wine “important” by the simple fact that a wine is tied to the land and the people that make it? Or is a wine “important” because it is massive, tannic, structured, “bold?”
Yesterday at the barbera meeting we attended two events where the conception of importance was central to the debate that seems to define this event.

Later in this near-brawl:

And then someone asked the question point blank. “Why are you doing this to these wines? Why is there so much wood? Where is the acid, where is the beautiful simplicity of barbera? Are you going so far as to add tannins to these wines?
What can only be described as a shouting match broke out. A sore spot had been touched. These are structured, elegant wines, important wines, the producers protested. 

"Important." I hear about "important" wines from producers all the time, in which case the word is code for "an overpriced, overoaked, overconcentrated mess that was concocted for you wine barbarians in America."  Imagine their outrage when we tell them, "Actually, this isn't your best wine. It's obviously created for the American market, but the market's flooded with such wines. Why would we want to bring them in to fight for shelf space against Argentina, Chile and every other low-priced producing country?"

"But we used only the best new French barriques!"

"I'm sorry. You should have saved your money. We prefer the wine you made in the tank. It actually tastes like it came from here."

And so on. 

Whether the word "important" is meant to delude us or is a form of self-delusion, I won't try to discern. Maybe it's a bit of both. Certainly the desperation of throwing the word "important" around is all too clear. They do it with big, clunky bottles -- "And here our cru is in an important bottle --"

"Why is the bottle important?"

"Well, you see, it's so big and imposing -- so thick. Like for an important wine. Like Burgundy!"

"No one in America cares. Anyway, how long will this wine improve?"

"At least four or five years!"

"Not like a Burgundy. Buy a cheap bottle and put your money in the wine, please."

In the case of fracas in Astilandia, the producers are acknowledging that their traditional wine styles aren't important, that they are destined to be also-rans in the great wine olympiad -- the Jamaican bobsled team of Piemontese wine. You can easily imagine their dark thoughts: "There they are over in Barolo and Alba, raking in the dough with their big-name juice and celebrated terroir, and what have we got? Bupkas! And I spent 60 cents for each bottle!"

It must gall them on the best of days. But on the day of the bloggers it must have shattered many a carefully built house of mirrors. 

The truth will set you free, boys. If you choose to heed it.