mondosapore

Rising Rhode Island body count

I'm starting to wonder if there's anyone left to whack in Little Rhody.  It's such a small state.  A small state that's Texas-sized in corruption.

The bodies are stacking up in an embarrassing way as deals are made and betrayals unmake them. 

Which brother is a psycho killer?

I refer to the shenanigans on "Brotherhood", the Showtime series that is an Ocean State take on crime and corruption, only with two shocking, unSopranoslike twists:  it combines politics and misorganized crime, plus the miscreants are -- hold your breath -- Irish!  My people!

Of course these are radical, scarcely believable inventions, as anyone who fell in love with Camelot (JFK version) will testify. 

Seriously, the show's pretty good, with wonderful actors including Brian O'Byrne and Annabeth Gish.  The writing's getting better.  Rather dull last year, one looong exposition.

Still that body count.  Nearly all generated by two characters from the same Caffee family. 

Look, I used to live in Providence.  You coulda fit the whole state on the head of a pin and left room for a couple dozen angels to be doin' their oulde jigs now.  Except with them Caffees around there's lots more space for yer fookin' angels. 

What the show needs is more of the politics and less of the gangland killings.  What it needs, in short, is more politically motivated killings.  Like the kind Joe Kennedy used to arrange when he was a politico and a bootlegger.  Then art might begin to emulate life.

Nihil novum sub sole.

Wine drinkers, rejoice! Big sales coming

Word on the street is that holiday retail wine sales are so far disappointing.  Expect better than usual post-holiday sales, especially on mid-priced wines (say $20-40 or $50 a bottle), which are the soft underbelly of retail these days.

As usual, when the business cycle trends down, the middle falls apart while the high and low ends chug along pretty well.  Look for those bargains when you get those emails and flyers at the new year.

Suffering by comparison: Italian vs. French wine

No, friends, I am not here to write about the supposed inferiority of Italian wine compared with French wine. 

I'm here to ask why there is such a different mind set with regard to Italian wine compared with French wine.  And not solely or mainly on the part of the great buying public, but on the trade's part as well. 

In other words, why doesn't Italian wine receive the same respect as French wine, or at least the same openness to quality and distinctiveness that French wine enjoys?  No matter how obscure the appellation or minute the quantities produced.

Something a well-regarded Italian producer told me got my curiosity up -- and maybe my Irish.  He'd been with a couple of well-regarded US importers, both of whom specialize in France.  So why didn't it work out with them?  His answer: "They made it plain that French wines were the ones that mattered.  They see Italian wines as being Serie B [second class]." 

This wasn't the first time I'd heard of such a experience from an Italian wine producer.  It's unfortunate for the producer, but perhaps it's understandable.  No one in any category can be all things to all people, especially if you run a small, hands-on operation.  Everyone has his likes and dislikes -- his passion and his duty.  Very true in the world of wine; you go into it because Dionysus has made you a bit insane for the stuff and for the lands and the people and the traditions that make wine from (say) the Cote d'Or or Montalcino what it is.

But I think there's something else going on here.  And it hit me when I was reading the Kermit Lynch

Je suis partout... commentswise, anyway

Alfonso Cevola, the Italian Wine Guy (R) , occasionally chides / upbraids / ridicules / excoriates me for commenting all over the blogosphere.  Of course he knows this because he too is everywhere, reading, lurking and, ayah, commenting under one of his many noms de plume.

OK, I do have too much time on my hands.  I do have something of an irrepressible smartmouth.  I am an opinionated instigator.  All guilty as charged.

So, Alfonso, who may himself be suffering a time surplus, suggested that I make a roundup of my comments a regular part of this blog and, in fact, created a logo for the feature -- which logo could even be in the masthead of a new blog.  (No way.)

Here is his doodled creation:

The squiggle represents a mouse.  I thought it was an outtake from an old Rolling Stones cover




So sometime soon, I guess I'll start posting Comment Terry links to all the best wine places on the Internet -- The Pour, Jancis Robinson, Do Bianchi, On the Wine Trail in Italy, not to mention a bunch of Italian sites. 

However.  I never wanted to be an aggregator.  Not even of my own pearls.  Especially, you know, if it seems like too much work. 

Quickie: Dell'Anima, lower 8th Avenue

Last night I met Marquita Levy of Montecastelli for a drink.  She had recommended a very small, brand-new place called Dell'Anima ("of the soul"), which is located just above Abingdon Square in the west Village. 

Long story short: I arrived at 5:30, didn't lift my carcass from the bar stool till after 11. 

We ate -- just enough to keep from getting utterly wasted -- but mostly we drank from an enticing array of  wines, all from Italy and Slovenia.  The scandalously young proprietor, Joseph Campanale DWS, CWE who has roots in Puglia, asked us to try this wine and that wine, so many I lost count.  He capped it all off by serving a wonderful amaro, Amaro Nonino, which was saved from medicinality by a strong undercurrent of citrus. This enabled us to toddle out to the subway at 14th Street and not fall down the steps to the E train.

The crowd was young and nice-looking -- in other words, young professionals, not tarty glamour pusses -- and the decibels reached "nice vibe" levels without becoming obnoxious.  The bar is wonderful, stocked with a surprising range of rums, grappas and other hi-test goodies.   The staff is young but well-trained, and very unjaded at this point -- a refreshing change in this part of town. 

It's the sort of place that can become your hangout if you're in the right demographic. 

As I, of course, am not.

Dell'Anima

38 8th Avenue

212.366.6633

www.dellanima.com

Lyle Fass and the eBob stink

I'm sort of fascinated by the tempest in a chalice regarding the expulsion of Lyle Fass, oenic bad boy and co-owner* of Chambers Street Wines, and Mark Squires, "Mao" Squires that is, moderator of eBob.  Everyone still makes so much of Parker and his acolytes -- it's a sick fascination that I don't understand. 

The comments on Lyle's blog come from plenty of the like-minded, including Alice Feiring and Joe Dressner. I have to quote one that I hope puts the whole RP obsession into some temporal context:

Have you seen RP lately?  Do you think he'll be around all that many more years to Hold Sway over wine?

Prediction: in a few years the new Emperor of Wine will be an ethnic Chinese Anglophone from Singapore. And he will of course have his Mark Squires.

To which I will add a prediction of my own: the new Emperor of Wine will be a Francophile with a strong preference for the order and stability of the 1855 classification...

* Lyle informs me that he is but an 'umble worker in the CSW vineyard.

Thomases awards high scores to a friend's wines. You won't like this...

I got a call a few weeks ago from Filippo Cassano, whose Polvanera winery is emerging in the province of Bari down south in Puglia.  I was traveling or busy or something, so I didn't listen carefully enough.  But the man was burbling, burbling with joy.

What happened was this.

The 2008 edition of the prestigious guide, I Vini di Veronelli, with a panel that featured Daniel Thomases, had awarded two Polvanera wines with the highest accolades of any Apulian wine.  This was a real coup for a small, upstart winery. 

As reported on the web site Eustachio Cazzorla, giornalista e sommelier (and himself from the province of Bari), Polvanera's Primitivo Gioia del Colle 17% (a locally prestigious appellation) won a score of 93...that 17 refers to the degree of alcohol.  17%.  So much for a low-alcohol reaction against wines that are too big and too strong. 

The other Polvanera wine to earn a high score (90) was their 16% Primitivo. 

This news arouses conflicting thoughts and feelings.

First, I'm delighted for Filippo, who is in essence a self-taught winemaker.  Winemaking isn't his primary business, a wholesale fruit company is.  Winemaking is, however, his passion and his dream.  Bravo.

Second, I've tasted the wines in question and they were, gulp, good.  Amazingly good, and the 17% Primitivo seemed no more potent than a good, full 14% red from a warm climate.  It was, in fact, his best and most successful wine.  I'll say more: it was distinctive.  A well-made Primitivo from this appellation should do pretty well in the market.

But, ladies and gentlemen, a 17% wine at table?  And this is no vino da meditazione but a real food wine.  Good God, what sorts of pairings do you dream up for this one?  A whole steer?  Standing elephant rib roast?

My own inclination is to back off the alcohol and head for the 12-13% wines.  Yet this one is very good, very satisfying.  Quindi my little ideology of less-is-more starts to look woefully inadequate. 

This is the sort of dilemma that only more tasting can resolve.  Which I will be doing very very soon.

A new farm crisis -- server farms

I have to vent.

Holidays usually see site traffic take a dip, sometimes a big one.  Thanksgiving is one of the worst because people travel a lot and it's four days of eating, drinking, watching football and shopping. 

But this Thanksgiving saw my site traffic, as measured by Site Meter, cascade by something like 50%.  I knew something was up whenever I tried to access the Site Meter statistics.  Loading times were glacial -- glacial, as in before glaciers started racing to the sea -- and there were suspiciously long gaps in new visits posted.  Meanwhile my mean daily traffic numbers have plunged from their recent highs.

So now I discover that from Friday till Monday -- the 23rd to the 26th -- Site Meter and many other servers on the farm (mooo) melted down because of the heaviest Internet traffic in history.  All that online shopping. 

So, dudes, like those numbers are gone baby gone?  For like EVER?

I don't give a shit about RP or WS scores.  I care deeply about my own numbers.  And November was going so damned well...

My wine of the week: A Dolcetto d'Alba

At Lemaire restaurant in Richmond's Jefferson Hotel our Thanksgiving dinner consisted of a tasting menu that can only be described as a cornucopia of excess.  You think a tasting menu means somewhat smaller portions when there are five or six courses. Especially when each is accompanied by a different wine. But not here. 

After courses of local shellfish and of ham and of all sorts of indigenous fruits and nuts, came the turkey.  And not some ironic post-modern hommage to the traditional turkey-with-all-the-trimmings course, but the real thing.  All so much and so good and ultimately, by me anyway, not to be eaten. 

The wine that was paired with this course was the course's salvation, in my opinion, because it was just weighty enough to harmonize with the meat and starches (potatoes, stuffing) yet fruity and acidic enough to take away some of the heaviness.  It matched perfectly with the homemade cranberry sauce.

It was also the first red wine they gave us, and I said, "Finally the red!" when the harried sommelier brought it to us.  Four different whites and one red?  Better rethink that one, boys.

The wine in question:  "Fosco" Dolcetto d'Alba 2004 by Salvano Vini.  Unlike the winery's top line (Barolo, Barbaresco, etc.) this one sees no wood.  It weighs in at a modest 12% alcohol, a good thing when you've been getting enormous glasses of wine with each previous course.  At the end of the pleasing fruit there is a slightly bitter sensation on the tongue, which I think kept it from seeming too soft, too friendly. 

The rather suave "Fosco" costs about $20 in the States. 

Eve of Destruction

Remember the stirring words of that New Christy Minstrels sage, Barry Maguire?

The eastern world
it is explodin'
violence flarin'
bullets loadin'

"The Easter 1916" of its generation.  Without, you know, the vision and grandeur of Yeats.  But still...

I just had to bring it up.  How much do things ever change? 

BTW, Hadrian knew enough to pull out of Mesopotamia after Trajan, that mad fellow Hispanic, had gone to the trouble of conquering it.  So what's wrong with our "usual gang of idiots"?

I'm just sayin'.

Speranza del farmer impoverito, distilleria. Legale

Interessante un articolo sul New York Times d'oggi. Per titolo "Farmers still quench a thirst for local spirits", racconta una nuova tendenza di fare spiriti "autoctoni" dai farmer ormai impoveriti dall'emergenza dell'economia agriculturale globale e dell'agribusiness.  Riemerge un'antica conoscenza della distillazione --  nata secoli fa in Irlanda e in Scozia, poi continuata nei monti Appalachian di Kentucky, West Virginia ecc. -- adesso sotto l'egide dello stato, purche' sono pagate le licenze. 

Foto: Seth Fox fece di pezzi di scorta la sua distilleria.  Aveva $100 in banca

(Foto di Ed Zurga, NY Times)

E' un fenomeno parallelo all'emergenza due decenni fa delle "microbreweries" (microbirrerie) che hanno travolto il mondo della birra, minacciando la supremazia dei grandi come Budweiser, cui vendite sono in calo. 

Fenomeno che segnala un profondo desiderio per prodotti locali, genuini, da provenanza verificabile e interessante. 

Insomma, anche in America si prova le sete per le cose buone e del territorio.  Non solo quelle prodotte a massa. 

Stessa tendenza che in Italia, dunque, ma sempre col pericolo di esser "co-optati" dai grandi, quando essi bussano alla porta con un pugno di dollari e incazzano le cose che intendono per la propria rigenerazione.  Almeno un farmer disperato come Seth Fox dell'articolo, avra' la sua Mercedes e una casa sul mare in Florida.

Glad to see this out my window

...After three days in Richmond, a city that seemed to have suffered from a neutron bomb attack.  It was dead dead dead.  And for the first time it looked quite down at heel. 

Now that the long, sort of brainless hiatus of Thanksgiving is over, there are things to be done, preparations to be made, articles to be written, wines to be tasted. 

Bring. Them. On.

Thanksgiving AM in Richmond. And what Kermit said

The temperature here is very warm, the skies are partly cloudy, a strong wind is blowing.  Trouble is coming, rain and thunder later, but for now it's beautiful. 

After Manhattan, it's almost shocking to see how far along the leaves are here.  Back home most of the leaves are still green.  Here, several hundred miles to the south, the leaves have almost all turned brown, red, almost purple in some cases.  There are lots of maples and oaks here, few in Manhattan (I guess they don't do well in so much air pollution).  In any case, it really looks like autumn here, even though it doesn't feel like it at all.

Since we're in Richmond it's important for a wine-mad guy like myself to point out that wine lists are dreadful almost everywhere you eat.  Dreadful.  Distributor lists of the worst kind.  Boring, bad shit at disgraceful prices.  This is when you long for Manhattan.

Which leads me -- smooth eh? -- to a short meditation on wine pricing and imports. 

Yesterday Eric Asimov published an interview with the pioneering importer and, I'd say, transformer of wine tastes in America, Kermit Lynch.  In the piece Lynch echoes something that friends of mine in the wine biz say from time to time, whether they are salesmen for distributors or producers: "There's no real justification for any bottle of wine to sell for more than $10-15 a bottle."  OK, some types of wine that require a lot of hands-on interventions, like real Champagnes, may justify more.  Maybe $20? 

What Lynch actually says in the article is:

“How can anybody say that French wines are all expensive?” he asked. “I’ve never seen the dollar this low, but French wines are still the best values.”

He makes an excellent point.  There are plenty of good, wholesome, even ravishing wines from all parts of France, especially the Southwest, which cost far less than their supposed counterparts from California or Italy.  On many a wine shop's shelves in New York you can find dozens of interesting, flavorful, characterful wines from L'Hexagone.  For under $10 all the way to, say, $30 -- in other words, in the low-to-mid-priced category.  Drop for drop for better values than wines from anywhere else when you consider their quality. 

This upsets me as far as Italian wine goes, since I see so much silly pricing from Italy.  There's a strong aspirational component to it, where some good maker of authentic wine sees a neighbor selling inferior but "international" wine at 12-20 euros ex-cellar.  [Translating to about $35-60 retail in the US.] This guy says to himself, "So-and-so is making shit.  He's got a name now, he's got points attached to his name, but damn it, I should be getting at least 9.50 for my best!"

As usual, there's a parochialism of viewpoint that is not an Italian monopoly -- Californian pricing strikes me as suffering from the same tendency.  Regardless of that, the producer should look at pricing in a broader context, such as:

In a given market, what is the available universe of wines which have roughly the same quality and characteristics?

In the case of a good, "authentic" wine producer from Campania, for example, he should realize that in a world wine marketplace like the US, any wine shop worth its salt will have dozens of similarly priced "Mediterranean" wines from France, Italy, Spain and any number of other "old world" countries.  Delicious, food-friendly wines with perhaps a taste of the macchia (maquis) or the tang of the sea.  Red, white, pink.  Dozens, all competing at the same price points. 

So our mythical producer will sell a hell of a lot more of his stuff at $10-12-13 than $20-25.  Further, unless he's hopelessly inefficient and incompetent, he'll make money on it.  Maybe not get rich and swan about in a new 4matic, but he'll do all right.

By the way, it is also a better long-term marketing strategy to begin humble -- selling good, reliable wine of character at $10-12 -- and then move up market.  This has proven successful again and again in every conceivable category of product.  This is where wine producers need to stop thinking like peasants, grabbing what they can while they can, before Persephone heads underground again, and more like business people.  People who invest.  And "invest" means more than in capital equipment.  It also means the intelligent management of long-term risk through considered decisions in order to reach higher goals for bigger rewards.   This is what successful branding is all about, and it need not be the exclusive possession of multinational wine corporations.

Put simply, build a sound relationship with your consumer base and learn from each other.

Thanksgiving in Virginia

We leave today for a few days in Richmond to visit my daughter.  Julia was born there, and when she was just two months old, the four of us -- Julia, my wife Marcia, my mother-in-law Gert and I -- drove down to Berkeley Plantation, about 30 minutes away.  (It's pronounced "Barkley" there, as in Berkeley Square.)

It was a very warm November day, and we enjoyed the well-maintained grounds of the old place.  The young tour guide, a very light-skinned woman who she said she was related to the original owners, gave us a great deal of historical background.  The garconniere -- the separate and almost equally opulent house that stood not too many yards from the main house -- was of great interest, since the men of the household kept their mistresses there, presumably slave women of progressively lighter complexion as the years wore on.  (Forget miscegenation, what about in-breeding?) 

Well.  It's always nice to learn about the saucy side of American history, which is usually so hagiographic.

Then there was the Thanksgiving story.  At that time it was just beginning to be bruited about the Old Dominion that the "first Thanksgiving" feast in English America was held at Berkeley Plantation in 1619, two years before the Pilgrims' more famous shindig in Plymouth, up there in drafty ole Yankeeland.

Berkeley Thanksgiving.  So where the hell's the turkey?  The Smithfield ham biscuits?  The Jello mold?

As a native of a place called, in a sociological study of the 1930s, "Yankee City," I took great offense to this.  My wife and her mother, Richmond-born, were delighted and tormented me with this additional example of Virginia's firstness in damned near everything. 

My defensive response was to snarl, "For Chrissake, they were always falling on their knees and thanking God for everything in those days.  Big deal."  They weren't buying it.

I tried a historical perspective.  "But the American tradition of Thanksgiving is based on the Pilgrims' precedent, on their menu and the whole story about Squanto and the Indians helping them survive" (no good deed goes unpunished, eh) -- I mentioned cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie.  "Over the River and through the Woods." No go.

This is what I'm talking about.  Their puritanism did not extend to alcohol.

My Jewish wife was a lot more flexible on the celebration of Christmas than she was Thanksgiving.  In fact she went ape over Christmas as soon as we got engaged, to an extent that became alarming, since we hadn't celebrated it so enthusiastically as I was growing up. 

On this Thanksgiving matter, though, she was Virginian through and through.  No yielding.  Marcia Sue was brought up in the Capital of the Confederacy after all.  "We had the first Thanksgiving, and you can tell all your Yankee friends that's that." 

So.  We fly to Richmond today.  We go to the Jefferson Hotel for their splendid locally-sourced Thanksgiving dinner with, unfortunately, not that many Virginia wines.  And we go with the flow.  If someone brings up Berkeley Plantation, fine.  Sure, sure, they had the first Thanksgiving.

But in my heart I know which one counted.

THIS JUST IN: Eric Asimov "Big Fan" of Mondosapore!

Watch and learn, kids, how movie ads using critics' quotes are crafted.  It pays to know your punctuation.  Here is my version of that time-honored cut-and-paste technique, which has proven invaluable to those plundering Rex Reed's reviews:

In his interview on Tom Wark's Fermentation today, influential critic Eric Asimov, chief wine writer of the New York Times' "Wines of the Times" column and The Pour blog, declared that he is "a big fan" of Terry Hughes' Mondosapore, declaring that Hughes' blog is "As far as wine culture goes... raw intelligence.

"My guess," Asimov went on, "is the wine industry, like the restaurant industry, has rabbit ears" for the quirky but incisive Hughes point of view.

Mr. Hughes was unavailable for comment.  Someone close to the situation revealed that "Terry's meds are off" but that he was "very pleased and grateful" to Wark and Asimov for raising his site traffic to "the dozens every single day, even Saturdays and Yom Kippur."

Speculation was rife on Bloggers' Row in New York that Asimov would recruit Hughes to one of the Times tasting panels.  This rumor was scotched by the Dallas-based, self-styled "Italian Wine Guy," Alfonso Cevola, who scoffed at the notion.  "Wannabes like Hughes just sit by the phone waiting for the great New York Times to give them a jingle.  Never happen."  Cevola paused.  "These social parasites ought to go out and get a real job like the rest of us."

It was later learned that Cevola had just returned from a two-week, six-region wine tour of Italy.

Thanksgiving wine, courtesy of Italy

Post #600 -- How I slave for you

I wrote last year that I think all this pseudo-agonizing over the wines to serve with Thanksgiving dinner is overblown.  I guess it's an issue for people who don't drink wine much. For those of us for whom "Un giorno senza vino e' un giorno senza sole" (A day without wine is a day without sunshine.  Take that, Anita Bryant)...it's almost a bizarre question.

So with that grumpy preamble done, let me suggest a couple of good wines for the trad American turkey dinner, two each of red and white.  And BTW let's dispense with all this precious stuff about serving this white with that course or such-and-such a red with this part of the meal, etc.  Assume people will drink whatever they want whenever they want during the meal.  That, amici miei, is the American way.

White wines for your dinner

1. Falanghina.  This is a no-brainer.  Dry but not too dry, with plenty of fruit and an ability to go with anything from oysters to white turkey meat, not to mention a wide range of condiments, Falanghina is the grape that put Campania on the modern white wine map.  There are a lot of good to excellent producers available in the States, including Mustilli, Mastroberardino, Ocone, Feudi di San Gregorio, Petilia, Cantine del Taburno, etc. etc.  Do not ever pay over $17-18 for a bottle of this wine.  Don't buy a bottle from before 2004 or so -- it's best when young.

An excellent, typical Falanghina -- other brands may be easier to find in your area -- none of them expensive

2. I Clivi Brazan.  This is a richer, more complex wine than the Falanghinas, but it will enhance the flavor of your turkey, especially the darker parts of the bird.  I Clivi is a biodynamic (all-natural) winery on the northeastern border of Italy (with Slovenia).  Brazan is a blend of local Tocai and Malvasia varieties, and its deep color and rich aroma are seductive if you want a lush but not too heavy or sweetish whitw wine with dinner.  This one will cost about $26-30 or so.  It isn't for everyone, but no harm done if you buy a bottle for the feast. 

The white wines of I Clivi have been favorites of mine since I first tried them in Italy.

Other rich, complex, really fascinating white wines from this border-crossing wine region include the more expensive Movia and Gravner.  They could overwhelm the food with their individuality and power.  On the other hand, Thanksgiving dinner can be a bit bland.  (Sorry, grandma.)

A couple of tasty reds

1. Valpolicella. This is pretty obvious, but I list it because even if you live in an ABC state like Pennsylvania you can find a couple of decent Valpolicella Classicos. Simple and undemanding, these wines are light to medium bodied and pair well with almost anything you can put on the table.  Some easily available, reasonably priced ($11-15) examples are Allegrini, Bertani, Masi, etc., etc.  For another level of depth and complexity, you may go for a Classico Superiore from these and other producers.  They will cost you more (to about $30 depending on brand) but will surprise you with their combination of power and finesse.

Allegrini is one of dozens making good, basic Valpolicella -- simple, easy-drinking reds that are versatile at the table

2. Frappato.  This is a Sicilian grape that I have written about several times.  I love its lightness, freshness, good levels of acidity and the fruit that recalls strawberries and raspberries.  This makes it a great partner with cranberry sauce and some of the tarter condiments in the Thanksgiving table.  The same qualities lighten up the stodginess of the white meat.  A Frappato that's easily available in NYC is from Della Valle d'Acate. There are also more substantial blends with Nero d'Avola, the premier red wine grape of Siclity.  These bottles will be in the $14-19 range, sometimes less for the 100% Frappato from Della Valle d'Acate.

Click for bigger view of the Frappato label!

Skip the dessert wine this time.  Desserts are something we do well, especially the traditional pies and so on.  Cap off the meal with a good varietal grappa -- Drano for your innards.  It'll set you up perfectly for that post-turkey nap, to.

Sweeter than a kiss: some delicious dessert wines for winter

One of the great strengths of Italian wine is in the dessert section, which is a good thing since in most parts of Italy desserts are pretty boring.  The sweet vino goes a long way in correcting that rare Italian food "deficit."

Oh God no, mamma, not tiramisu again!

Purtroppo, the variety and increasingly high levels of quality you find in Italy's after-dinner wines is not well appreciated in America, for which we may blame ourselves and, especially, lazy restaurateurs.  And their sommeliers, who are manly men chasing after red skirts.  They don't have much interest in this class of wines, so they usually fail to offer interesting ones to their patrons. 

So we have become inured to flabby Moscatos, sparkling or still, or some boring vinsanto, both usually too stucchevole (sticky, cloying) to be interesting.  This represents a lost opportunity for the chef to cap off the meal most memorably, to end on a high note the diners' their experience of the restaurant.

Recently I have been lucky enough to taste outstanding dessert wines from several hitherto-unknown producers.  They hail from different parts of Italy, they use different grapes and methods to make their sweets, but they all have this in common: their wines are distinctive, superb on their own and even better with well-chosen desserts -- and all have a thread of acidity and structure that makes the wines taste light and alive (relatively), not heavy and sleep-inducing.  And they have a long finish that will take you home savoring your meal.

Wines, in short, to brighten otherwise dreary winter nights.

Every step you take

One of the more surreal experiences I ever had was in the Aran Islands off the west coast of Ireland in 1983.  There we were, my late wife and I, tramping around the prehistoric stone forts and ruins of early churches as it rained then grew tropically hot and sunny and rained and grew hot and so on and so forth.  We went back to the main town of Inishmore, Kilronan, walked into a little shop for a cup of tea and heard the staff and local customers chatting away in Gaelic.  The people had a look and rhythm all their own, and it seemed consistent with all the ruins and man-made landscapes we had seen.

And then on the radio came the worldwide megahit of that year, "Every Breath You Take" by the Police.  All that finely constructed love-paranoia coming our way on this otherwordly island.  A little absurd and strangely beautiful. 

The people in the shop stood quietly, attentively, rapt as they listened to this message from another plane.

I had a milder but perhaps even more surprising surreal experience lately when Tony Sasa of, among other things, the Enoteca Pontevecchio in Florence, revealed to me that our good friend and the excellent winemaker, Paolo Caciorgna, was now about to make the wine at the Tuscan estate of Gordon Sumner himself.  To you honkies, that's Sting.

I wonder.  Will an early bottling be called "Roxanne"?  No.  More likely "Synchronicity."

"Christ, you pillock, not THE Sting!

One way of telling a good winemaker from a not so good one

My Italian counterpart* Giampiero Nadali (aka Aristide) was saying to me the other day that he's discovered a sure-fire way to know up front if a winemaker is any good or not. 

"If they don't drink anybody's wine but their own, danger ahead!  Their wine will terrible."  He cited a couple of examples of wine producers in northeast Italy that we both know.  "These guys are the ones who think their wine is so great and everyone else's is crap.  If they did go out and open themselves up to other people's wines, they'd realize how bad their stuff is.  And they would improve."

We also spoke of winemakers like Mario Pojer and Stefano Accordini, who do indeed drink a wide variety of wines from many many producers, and not just from their own appellations.  We both know these excellent producers, and Giampiero's point seemed very apt in their case. 

In vino this veritas also:  "The truth will set you free, signor produttore."

* Not exactly.  He is far more serious and scientifically inclined than this bucking bloggeroo. 

Scelta americana, olio O vino

Quando parlo con produttori vitivinicoli italiani, mi chiedono se sono interessato a rappresentare anche il loro olio negli Stati Uniti.  "Sorry, non andrebbe in America."

"Ma perchè!?  Non ti piacciono i nostri vini?  Sembra!"

"Senz'altro.  E mi piace il vostro olio.  Tanto.  Però il vino e l'olio fanno due filiere diversissime in America, non hanno contatto, e ci hanno due organizzazioni governativi (a livelli federali, statali, e municipali) a monitorarle e ad estrarne le imposte ecc."

In Italia questa separazione è impensibile.  Olive e uve formano un tema unito da secoli, perfino alla Grande Distribuzione.  Da noi, purtroppo, no -- le regole del gioco sono completamente diverse.

Quindi se vuoi fare esportare i tuoi prodotti in America, sarai costretto a trovare almeno due importatori o broker.  Uno per il vino, uno per l'olio.  Almeno due, ripeto, grazie all'enorme territorio del Paese.  E grazie alle esigenze legali di cinquanta stati e staterelli...

Mah.  E' così.

SIC

ET

NON

Agenbite of inwit: Don't I feel better now

My New England conscience has fully reasserted itself.  I am now cleansed of all stain, leached of all dishonour.  I am paying my way.  Fully and without discount.  All is bright, all is right.

I am now a card-carrying Purple Pager again. 

What are a few dollars -- 119 of them -- when the grace of the soul is at stake?

God bless you, Mrs. Robinson.  Here is confirmation:

You are now a purple pager - Registration    

						Rispondi a tutti Inoltra Stampa Aggiungi JancisRobinson all'Elenco contatti Elimina questo messaggio Segnala phishing Mostra originale Il testo del messaggio contiene caratteri incomprensibili?
		JancisRobinson <subscriptions@jancisrobinson.com>

Dear Mr Terence Hughes,

Thank you for your subscription to purple pages, the meatiest part of jancisrobinson.com. We hope very much that you enjoy what you find.

AVVISO! Domenico fa tournée del Mezzogiorno

Un certo Domenichino pescatore
viveva in assoluta povertà
...[ma non avrà in testa un gran turbante, allora sarebbe impossibile varcare la Security degli aereoporti.]

Ah Domenico mio, pescatore di uomini produttori di vini oramai sconosciuti e di soldi per campare, questo alter ego mihi si troverà in Puglia e Campania tra qualche settimana.  A scopo d'incontrare produttori e di continuare le sue indagini ai vini promovibili delle zone segnalate.  L'America, si sa, ama il vino italiano e anche in Stati misteriosamente stupidi ed arretrati si vede Aglianico, Greco di Tufo, anche il Teroldego.

Domenico -- cioè il Sottoscritto, non quello della foto accanto -- ha una mission per far 'sti vini tipici conosciuti in varie zone del suo vastissimo Paese.  Domenico Terenzi, Apostolo del Vino italiano 'n Ameriga.  Bello no??

Inviate comunicazioni al signor Terenzi a domenico.selections@gmail.com, e se gli scrivete date sempre del tu.  E' un po' cafone ma il cuore è pien d'amor.  E vuol fare vendere del buon vino in USA.

First wine comedian

To be the first wine comedian.  The first basic-cable satirist of the wine universe. The Jon Stewart or the Stephen Colbert du vin. 

This is my dream.

It's a good dream.  The world of wine is sooooo serious.  All the swirling of the juice and the waterspouts of pontification and points-whoring, the industry of making people feel like bums if they don't buy this or that wine and drink it with the glass juste.  And when the wine press talks with and presents the POV of a producer, it's usually with some pompous corporate character who's straight from central casting for a Philippe Patek photo shoot or else a humble contrarian with dirt under his nails, comic relief like the gravedigger in Hamlet, a "colorful character" who's to amuse and reassure us that the whole world of wine doesn't go a-suckling.

Therefore ladies and gents, I nominate myself as the host and provocateur of a new basic cable show called "Wine In Your Eye" in which the pipette would be dumped out on the pompous and silly among wine writers, producers, importers, distributors, and "experts" of all types.  The next level of detail in my dream would be to steal "The Daily Show" writers and some of their correspondents, especially John Oliver (brilliant, and how do the Brits do dentition so comically?), Rob Riggle (essential for getting the gay audience, woof), and Samantha Bee (the B is for wine bitch, and we all love a wine bitch). 

If Stewart himself is too busy to get the show produced, Stephen Colbert would be fine.  Maybe better, because his blowhard over-the-top persona is a good match with mine.  Plus, as has previously been pointed out, I too have a sometimes visible deformity, as does Stephen C.  (Mine is the Popeye eye, his is a Catholic-school version of a cauliflower ear.)

Now, who would be the wine-world equivalents of John McCain, Lynn Cheney, Pervez Musharaff, Bill Clinton and numerous think-tank robots with their policy-advocating horseshit...

...Help me out here, guys.  You know you want to...

[See continuation for a night in the life on a comedian on the wine trail.]

The right way to compose an Italian wine business letter

Lucia Raimondi of Villa Monteleone in the heart of Valpolicella Classica was telling me how she is scolded by her Italian business associates for her brief business letters.  Although Mrs. Raimondi was born and raised in Bogotá, Colombia, she lived for over 20 years in the United States - – that is to say, all of her early adult life – and absorbed American ways of doing things, especially in terms of professional and business activities.

She was telling me that her business secretary writes three long pages to say what would require a few paragraphs in America.

As Lucia pointed out, correctly, “If someone in America today got a business letter like that, they’d throw it away without even attempting to read it. They look at anything over one page as a waste of time.”

Very true. For generations we have dispensed with all the flowery salutations and expressions of good will toward the recipient’s family and ancestors, and their Lares and Penates, and so forth. And we prefer to get directly, sometimes brutally to the point, preferring not to couch our complaints and objections in a passive-aggressive manner.

I offer my modest examples of such letters now, since I’m feeling more than usually satirical at the moment. Here then is the letter all’italiana. Note how few paragraph breaks. Another survival from the near-universal study of Cicero.

Egregissimo Dottor Professor Andrea Ferraro,

I send my most sincere greetings of respect and admiration, in hopes that I am not disturbing you in this critically sensitive period of bottling the first fruits of your estate’s venerable and magnificent vineyards of the (alas) sometimes difficult 2007 season. I think often of the many happy days we have spent in the vineyards and cellars of your achingly beautiful property, La Paperonaia, observing the operations of Nature guided by the knowing and masterly hands of your agronomo Ciccio Manipulitj, not to mention your cellarmaster Pamposino Linguaporporana and of course the highly esteemed, and seemingly ubiquitous, because in such acclaimed and international demand, the inimitable Consulting Oenologist Stefano Cacciasoldi; experiences and relationships rendered no less precious by the skill of your eternally young Spouse and Helpmeet, La Contessa Cunegondina De’ Scacciaffetti, in directing the kitchen staff to prepare lucullan feasts which served cunningly to enhance the obvious characteristics of your wines (to say nothing of your monovarietal oils, worth every eurocent of their 25€ a 500ml price!).  We received four days ago your shipment of 100 cases of your charming 2005 “Rovereto in Ogni Bottiglia IGT” Merlot-Syrah-Primitivo, a vintage which is, I think we can agree with fully frank and honest appreciation, a sterling year for the wines of your zone, and not only, since through much of our beloved country Nature blessed us humble wine folk in that harvest of 2005 with her choicest delicacies in the grapes of all kinds, with perfumes and fruits not encountered since that halcyon year, 2001.

You will forgive a mere wine merchant’s observation, dear Dottore, that the wines in the bottle do not have the same organoleptic characteristics as those which flowed like fruited nectar from the barriques in your cantina. While they are still laden with fruits of the woodland floor and the richness of the latest harvested grapes, providing a hedonistic flood of sensuous associations and moods, our staff have noticed something of a too-ripeness in virtually each bottle hitherto opened, unconcealed by the sumptuousness of your new small French oak, acquired with such discernment and at such impressive cost, as we are fully aware, an organoleptic impression only reinforced by the abundance of greenish material at the ends of the corks, again on which you spared no expense, resulting in a long finish redolent of what the Anglo-Saxons so colourfully term “wet dog” and “rotten fruit.”

This must be very distressing to one of your integrity and precise insistence on the best of everything, but I believe that you must wish to hear of any and every instance of possible compromises to your personal and estate reputation. Believe me, dear Professore, it devastates me as much as to you, perhaps even more, since I have assumed a considerable personal burden in purchasing yet again this year your normally lovely wines. I invite you with all my heart and good feeling to telephone or write me an electronic post to resolve this untoward situation. Now I must fly and prepare for a tasting competition and dinner at which editors and tasting committees from several of our greatest national guides will be in attendance and full fellowship of sharing and cordial delight.

I await your kind and courteous reply, my dear old friend, and please remember me to your lovely wife the Countess and your no less charming and delightful Mother, Matildodoxa.

With my most cordial and warmly distinguished wishes,

Your ancient friend, colleague & client,

Ing. Alessandro Di Contaquattrini,

Direttore Responsabile WineMart SpA

 

So the American version would be:

Domenico's plaint and a dastardly confession

Domenico passed on to me today several cranky notes of his travels around his homeland.  "I arrive home in a shitty mood," he wrote me late last night.  "A big, pushy customer pushed into me when I was leaving the Duomo in Florence.  My glasses fall off.  Then he step on them and they were crush.  These were new glasses and they cost me - I don't wish to say, it is embarassing - too many hundreds of euro because I don't see well and I paid extra for those stupid Prada frames. Now I am walking around all day and all night like Stevie Wonder!  My sun glasses are also for vista [prescription] so at least I can see but I feel dumb because the epoch of Marcello Mastroianni is finished! Plus they aren't so good at night, Rome is not like Manhattan, Terry, there isn't light everywhere so you don't fall off the sidewalk and down all these damn steps."

Well, Domenico found consolation in heavy-duty expenditures he could in no way afford at the utterly wonderful Scuola del Cuoio at the famous Church of Santa Croce. If you go to Florence and want fine leather goods of all kinds (except the kind with whips and tit clamps), you go there.  The stuff is made by local artisans (and, yes, apprentices).  That is, they work locally but the artisans themselves are drawn from all over the world.  go to the Scuola del Cuoio at Santa Croce.  Domenico is deliriously happy (how fast moods change) because he got "on sale" a stupenda cartella di elce (a superduper briefcase made of elk) for the superduper bargain price of 480 euros. (About 720  zlotys, I mean US chiclets.)

What's wrong with my life? Despite any impressions you may receive from these pages, I usually eat at the local diner and drink $7 vino chez moi, sob.

I confess, reader, it was I!

Now for something completely different...

For those of you who follow tempests in wine pots, there was a to-do last summer when well-known Sacramento wine retailer Darrell Corti banned wines of over 14.5 % alcohol from his store.  (He made an exception for Amarone, for which some also excoriated him for inconsistency.  They have never considered the wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson, possibly because he was named Ralph Waldo.)  Even the athenic Jancis Robinson was disapproving.  Many of course saw this as an attack against another wine deity, the Saturnine Sage of Hedonism.

On Robinson's site someone from Verona named Giampiero Nadali leapt to Mr. Corti's defence.  This was seen by Mario Pojer, he of the recent Merano gig, who told his buddy Darrell Corti that someone in Verona was on the side of the angels and, I reckon, Amarone.

Reader, it was I!

Giampiero told Mario that I often write in Giampi's name on the Robinson site because we were too cheap to fork over for two subscriptions.  He signed up and I paid my portion for access to one of the best wine sites and to foment trouble wherever I could. 

I am delighted to be a blip on the Pojer radar, not to mention Darrell Corti's.  I just hope Jancis doesn't scold me...she's a hell of a lot more formidable than the schoolmarm from Grantleigh (or was that Penelope Keith??)

Photos from Merano

Domenico has just emailed me a few edited pix from the recent events at Merano. 

Lucky I have insomnia tonight (meds are off again!)...allora...here are a couple of highlights according to Dom.

Accordini, the next generation.  Tiziano's son Giacomo, of the excellent producer of Amarone and more (Stefano Accordini -- the name of the winery of the name of Giacomo's grandfather)



































The dynamic and utterly engaging Mario Pojer of Pojer & Sandri.  The wines do reflect the passion and intelligence of the man.  Doesn't he remind you of a famous American writer who died not long ago?






























Madhouse at the Kurhaus





















And the antidote...

Five things they don't teach you in Italian class

Color me bemused.  Whenever I read things from my Italian friends and, especially, when I speak with them, I am struck by the words and phrases that never appeared in the texts when I was learning the language.  (Yes, ha ha Gabrio, when Leopardi was in diapers.)

Comunque.  Anyway.  Here are 5 of dozens of things...

Highlight wines of Merano according to Domenico

As you can see, the poor guy was exhausted last night; his last post was almost delirious in its language.  Perhaps I shouldn't have published it as was, but it seemed to reflect his state quite well.  We've all been there in our travels and on business trips, which for Domenico this sort of was.  (He's decided to leave his day job to follow the wine trail -- with a nod to Alfonso Cevola for the phrase, who will probably be demanding royalties.  For Dom the new year brings a risky new career in vino.  He lives at home and his mother Costantina is delighted because it means he won't be able to move out now.)

It seems Domenico wasn't alone in thinking the Merano Wine Festival was big mess.  Casino (mess) was indeed the word all my Italian friends used in their calls and emails.  As Aristide has written in years past, and will no doubt again soon, the Kurhaus, where the event takes place, is a beautiful building but it is far too small to handle the crowds, and the logistics of the entire event are ill developed. 

You know things are going to suck when you get Italian efficiency combined with Teutonic flexibility.

Still, Domenico did send me little email reports here and there about really excellent wines and lovely wine people.  Some he had met earlier and was pleased to see again and taste their wines, like Mario Zanusso of I Clivi, whom he mentioned in yesterday's post.  Aside from their obvious quality, a huge attraction of Zanusso's wines is that they are certified "biologic" (sort of like saying organic in the US).  This aspect of them is, of course, an obvious factor in their wonderful taste and impression of cleanness, purity.

The wines of Pojer & Sandri of the area around Bolzano leave a similar impression of purity and well-madeness (does that sound like a German compound?).  They also have a hard to define aliveness, a topic Eric Asimov wrote about a few months ago, which may have something to do with Mario Pojer's dynamic and engaging personality. 

By the way, Dom told me that Mr. Pojer is good buddies with Darrell Corti, the highly respected, intimidatingly well educated and sometimes controversial retailer from Sacramento, California.  Perhaps even more impressive, if Domenico understood correctly, is Pojer's personal knowledge of and respect for the best of all possible wine writers, but who is himself no Pangloss, Hugh Johnson.  I bow at your feet, Mr. Johnson.

Even though I give the kid (Domenico) a hard time, it tickles me that he has many of the reactions that I have when I encounter something I think is great (or awful, for that matter).  One of those things would be the elegant Valpolicellas and Amarones of Villa Monteleone, an estate that is nestled up against the larger Masi property just outside Verona.  I had these wines last summer (2006) and was wowed by them; they did a great deal to elevate Valpolicella in my opinion.  "Oh, these are serious wines!" I said and Ken agreed wholeheartedly with me.  Dom had a similar response.  Like us he also warmed to the kind welcome of Lucia Raimondi, the lady of the estate, which was begun as a serious producer by her and her late husband, a Chicago-born surgeon.  (An Italian-American and an ardent italophile, ie, a kindred spirit to me.)

There were others, of course.  But it's lunch time and I haven't had anything but coffee since 6