We're happy to announce that Domenico Selections will be represented in the Bay State (Strappo's home state) by Hangtime Wine. Hangtime is owned and operated by Jeff Slavin and has a choice roster of customers in the Boston area. Among these is The Wine Bottega in the North End of Boston, the traditional heart of the city's Italian population, run by italophile Kerri Platt.
See here for a wine-shop review by Robert Dwyer.
Grazie, Beantown!
He says the list started at 63, which he had to whittle down to a more manageable 25. We are very glad one of our wines made the cut.
Click here to see all about that wine. (It comes from Veneto.)
I refer to today's article on Bigger Than Your Head by Fredric Koeppel.
With his customary thoughtfulness, FK lays out what his criteria are, methodically listing them in non-points order. (He eschews points.)
The two DS wines he included in his top 50 list are:
Borgo di Gete -- a very old-vine, 100% Tintore rarity from the small Amalfi area winery of Luigi Reale.
Serra del Prete -- another very-old vine wine -- this time made of Algianico del Vulture -- by the extremely young and talented Elisabetta Musto Carmelitano.
(By the way, these vignaioli share the same enologo, the Irpinia (Campagna) native, Fortunato Sebastiano.)
As you may have read here or on mondosapore many times, I regard Fredric as the best wine reviewer around. Unmoved by ideology and fads, he writes clearly and precisely about each wine. A fine palate tempered by decades of tasting and reviewing, Fredric gives you a vivid preview of the wine's sensory effects, from perfume to initial taste, to its finish. And he never fails to relate sensory impressions and perceptions of quality to price -- something too many well-known reviewers fail to do. While his prose is crystalline, and his mastery of both matter and medium evident, he never indulges himself at the expense of the wine. Really, it is all about the wine with him.
Grazie per il riconoscimento, Federico.
Cascina Gilli Freisa d’Asti 2006. Grade=Amazing. Simply based on cool factor alone, this really left-of-center selection comes courtesy of new-found friend in the biz Terry Hughes, and his comrades at Domenico Selections. With this wine, you get a red that in the nose, is every bit like a Russian River Zinfandel, yet on the palate, you get a lively, fruity red with well-balanced tannins and acidity. This wine would be extraordinary with some slow-cooked pork belly with rosemary.
Ve are amused by the veb of references to some sort of vine Bolshewism, Tovarich Keith!
I have lifted this entire review from the Fredric the Great, the excellent reviewer of wines, from a longer article about epiphanous sparkling wines from all sorts of places. (Click here for entire review.)
The estate of i Stefanini makes some of the best Soave wines in the Veneto, especially from the 
Classico and Classico Superiore regions [actually, differing appellations from the same district]. Now the family turns its attention to a sparkling wine, the i Stefanini Spumante Brut. Produced completely from chardonnay grapes, this charming sparkler, made in the Charmat process, displays a limpid pale gold color and enticing aromas of pear, lime peel, orange blossom and dusty acacia. It’s a caressing fabric of delicate heft and presence, soft yet bright and crisp, and displaying, amid hints of slightly spicy stone fruit, just the right modicum of limestone. A pretty sparkling wine, dry, appealing and great as an aperitif. Very Good+. About $16.
Imported by Domenico Selections, New York.
The Veronelli wine guide is one of the most prestigious in Italy. In the 2010 edition the reviewer, Daniel Thomases, rates the Mustilli wines pretty highly, especially the 100% Aglianico "Cesco di Nece", a single-vineyard wine.
Here is the relevant excerpt from the guide's Campania chapter.
In the Veronelli Guide, 3 stars is the highest rating. A 3-star wine in blue means that the editors have deemed this an especially fine vintage for the particular wine receiving 92 or more points.
A couple of these wines have been discontinued, I think sensibly. I'm of the party that believes winemakers tend to make too many different wines. Whether it's because they're hedging their bets or trying to be all things to all people, they lose focus on what they are doing best and should be doing more of. Here, less really is more.
The Vini Buoni d'Italia guide is another to have awarded Mustilli with good scores and high praise this autumn. While giving good reviews to a number of wines in the Mustilli lineup, they singled out the Piedirosso Sant'Agata dei Goti for especially warm praise. The Gold Crown is given to a relatively few wines that the editors find highly expressive of terroir and very rewarding to drink.
Here is the page in question.
(See after the jump for the translation of the intro paragraph.)
You can click on the image to enlarge it.
Before moving on to the translation, I think it's worth pointing out a few things.
1. The Mustillis make wines with only local grapes. They discontinued the practice of also growing some international varieties for blending a few years ago.
2. The hiring of Fortunato Sebastiano 3 years ago as consulting enologo has given their wines a greater focus and stronger individuality. He has also carried them much farther; they now practice all-organic agriculture and are on the way to biodynamic certification.
3. Amazingly enough, the euro prices aren't too different from the dollar prices that you pay for them here. The Mustillis are smart business people and don't practice the same herd thinking that bedevils so many Italian wine producers.
4. Vini Buoni reviews and rates only wines made from local or "autochthonous" grape varieties.
Now to the translation...
Since the new ratings are indeed in Italian, I'll pass them along to you one at a time; translation is never as quick and easy as it seems it should be. Plus, some people have been hibernating a lot these past few days and would rather sleep through these short, gray days than actually do anything.
The first review is from the Duemilavini 2010 guide of the Associazione Italiana Sommelier (AIS), which selects 2000 (duemila) wines from around the country as the best and most characteristic of their particular regions or zones.
Jump to the continuation (below) to read the translation of this review.
I was delighted to see a positive review of Serra del Prete, Betty's unwooded, all steel-and-concrete-fermented Aglianico del Vulture. "Betty" is Elisabetta Musto Carmelitano, whose story I've told before. (Click here. No one fails to be impressed by this story or this young woman. Domenico Selections loves Betty!)
"Va bene, Strappo," you may reply, "but what positive review? Is it from any old Tom, Dick or Harry?"
"No!" I may retort. "It's by the man who writes many of the best wine reviews in the English language. Even if he lives in <gulp> Tennessee. Memphis. Tennessee. About a half a mile from that Mississippi bridge."
I refer, of course, to the wunderbar Fredric "Don't Call Me Fred!" Koeppel.
He pronounces it "Kepple" but I'm sure back in days of yore it sported an umlaut. Kööööööpel.
All joshing aside, here are a couple of highlights from Federico's review. (Go here for the whole article, which includes other wines we don't care about.)
"...my friends, this staggering wine spends six months in stainless steel tanks, four months in cement vats and two months in bottle before it is unleashed to an unsuspecting world."
Nice buildup, wot? Wait.
"The grape in question is aglianico del vulture — 'vool-CHUR-ay' — and it provides Serra de Prete 2007 with a color that’s like some nocturnal Lovecraftian deep purple shading into black; with intense and concentrated scents and flavors of licorice/oolong tea/tar-stained black currants; with a dense, supple, chewy texture that draws on the power of fathomless tannins; and a tone somber and brooding but not rustic or truculent. In fact, the blessing of keen acidity keeps the wine unexpectedly vibrant and resonant."
This guy can throw adjectives around like no one else. The only thing I take issue with is a factual one. The accent is on the first syllable: VOOL-too-reh.
Plus, I went to Brown and I hated Lovecraft and his icky fictions, even if he was a homey.
Note: Domenico Selections just got a new shipment of Musto Carmelitano wines, including the oaked-but-not-too-oaky Pian del Moro, a big-shouldered Aglianico that has the stuff to last a long long time.
Paola Mustilli just sent me a notice that the Mustilli Piedirosso won a Gold Crown from the Touring Club d'Italia and will appear in the Club's "Vini Buoni d'Italia" guide. To learn more about this particular wine, click here.
You can click on the image for ease of reading. But let me translate the small type in the center:
Wine of excellence awarded with the Crown of the guide "Vinibuoni d'Italia 2010
for its quality, enjoyability, drinkability and faithfulness to its terroir
Implied here: this delicious Piedirosso represents good value for the money. (Which it is.)
Well done.
That's my translation of the newest book by the tireless chronicler of southern Italian wine and food, Luciano Pignataro, who has been the food and wine columnist of Il Mattino (Naples) since 1995.
The full title, if you can't quite make it out in the cover picture, is "101 Wines to Drink at Least Once in Your Life While Spending Very Little."
The book is available Italy (here), although not in the States.
I did ask Luciano if any of "our" producers' wines were in the book. Yes, he said. I'd have been shocked if the answer'd been no.
Well, what is this wine? Which is the producer?
You'll have to jump to see.
Continue reading "101 Wines to Drink at Least Once in Your Life" »
I love this wine, OK? This is a wonderful Freisa, one with more depth and length and body than any of the others I have drunk. Yes, that would include Mascarello's.
Chiara Martinotti, the marketing director of Cascina Gilli, sent me an email the other day saying that, purtroppo, there was no 3 Bicchieri for them this year. (Honestly, given the way Barolo is fetishized, not least by the Gambero Rosso tasting panel, with other variants of Nebbiolo to boot, it will be a cold day in Daniele Cernilli's office when a Freisa is given three glasses.)
But enough of that.
Chiara did tell me that the 2007 Vigna del Forno had been awarded a Golden Star by Vini Buoni d'Italia, a group that encourages and extolls wines made from native grapes throughout the country. Bravo to the team of Cascina Gilli, not least the enologo Bruno Tamagnone and owner Gianni Vergnano.
Bruno, Chiara, Gianni
Worth everything for that little golden crown
Fredric Koeppel awarded this new Domenico Selections wine a "Very Good+" in his just-published review of a yummy dinner at home and three wines.
Mr. Koeppel wrote, in part:
Charming, yes, but with plenty of stuffing. (The grape is the freisa.) Black raspberry and black cherry scents and flavors are permeated by baking spice, bitter orange and a hint of tar. The grape’s typical acidity makes the wine unabashedly lively and appealing, while a texture that’s slightly taut and sinewy reminds us that charm can have a serious side.
Click here for the entire article.
See this post for a bit of background on Cascina Gilli and its Freisas. And here.
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