mondosapore

I, Diary

I am Diary.  You are Author. 

Your RAM is insufficient.  I am vastly stored in many places.  E.g. this web blog. 

Your short term memory is not able to hold enough specific data to devise year-end lists.  I possess insufficient data to devise one for you.  I can do simple deductive reasoning.  I can point to URLs of greater than average significance to you.  Those sentients with superior processing capabilities will be able to infer their own lists if categories are not equal to "conventional."

February 13.  First post of major Alto Adige tasting in New York.  You wrote four posts on the event.  You wrote:

I'm too excited by what I tasted today to beat around the bush. I'll go even further and state my conclusion right up here in the first paragraph:  The wines of this small area (just 12,500 acres) may offer one of the best price/quality ratios in the world.

The wines of Alto Adige (Südtirol in German, which is the first language of the area) are characterized by their "cleanness", their purity.  They are elegant, bursting with flavor...

March 15.  You wrote of your rediscovery of rum, the great drink of your region, for which you were homesick.  America's love of strong sweet drinks began centuries ago, you wrote.

April 8. You wrote the first of several posts on the biodynamic tasting at Villa Favorita, near Vicenza.  Several posts cascaded from that one here, here, here.  You especially enjoyed meeting Mario Zanusso of I Clivi and Francis Boulard of the biologic Champagne house Raymond Boulard.

June 14.  This was the date of the first of several posts about a visit to Puglia.  Your first visit.  Not your last.  (Go here also.)  (And here.)

July 3. On this date you posted the first of your articles satirizing wine people and wine mythologies.  Also here, here, here and here.

I must cease processing now.  Demands on resources are excessive.  Dates are being reset.  Calendar changes.  Another solar cycle terminates. 

Repose. [Standby mode.]

High praise indeed

Just a quick link to a very very nice mention on Dr. Debs' blog.  See item #2.  Thanks, Professoressa!

Check out her blog, "Good Wine Under $20", for well-written and sensible stories about less expensive but very good wines no matter where they come from.

Cheers!

My year in wine

Dear Diary,

It's that dreaded time of year.  The 10 Best and Top 100 lists are popping up everywhere in wine pubs and blogland.   Unfortunately and speaking only of Italy, the same names appear on damned near every one of them, from Dal Forno in the North to Carlo Hauner in the southernmost islands.  All those Californicated supertuscans.  Oh and let's not forget the fact that a doughty unknown from Piemonte was recently named best something or other by Gambero Rosso; his name would be Angelo Gaja.

I hope you know, caro diario, that I'm not a complete dick.  I recognize the quality these people offer, whether or not you agree with everything they do.  Gaja's sent traditionalists into a permanent tizzy in his zone, but it's his choice to chase after a certain market.  It's paid off for him. 

My problem, my cynicism, has to do with the lack of something crucial on the part of the wine media that results in the same evaluations and cliches year after year.  Lack of curiosity, of initiative, of motivation perhaps?  I think it's exemplified by the covers of Wine Spectator.  How many of them in any given year are beauty shots of some high-priced real estate in Tuscany?  It's more about a country-club lifestyle, an aesthetic-gastronomic fantasy, than it is about wine.  Where's the motivation to explore muddy vineyards in November and bump along back roads in wild regions searching for exciting new producers?  There is none.

Not that Tuscany

With this lack of editorial exploration comes a lack of retail choice, at least in most American towns.  Restaurateurs and retailers who can't afford the time and money to go traipsing all over Italy for themselves have to rely on what they read, what they hear.  Wine sales people, like all sales people, will sell what's easiest to sell.  Few will go out of their way to educate a restaurant owner who's interested only in price, price and scores. 

I'll anticipate what you may be about to say,

The rise of Italian dessert wine: More than Moscato

More than Moscato.  Thank God.

A recent wine marketing survey disclosed that the category of sweet Italian wines has grown rapidly in the past year or so.  (I can't reveal which survey because it might give away the person who leaked it to me.)

This bit of news makes me feel like Terry Zeitgeist, because only in the past year have I become aware of the new range of possibilities in Italian dessert wines.  I'm happy to report that there's so much more out there than the same old sweet Moscato they give you after dinner at an Italian restaurant in New York.  In fact, there's so much more than all the versions of Moscato that you see on the store shelves, from cheap to expensive, from Piemonte to Sicily. 

Moscato can be good.  At its best, it's peachy and round and luscious.  But at its frequent worst, it's sticky and leaves a bad aftertaste.  If you crave a different color, texture, aroma, you look elsewhere.

Aleatico to the rescue.

I've drunk two Aleaticos recently -- drunk, not "tasted" -- which excited me for their distinctiveness and their different producer characteristics.   Round and soft in the mouth, they both were saved from being stucchevole (cloying) by that all-important thread of acidity that is essential in a good dessert wine, whether it's a Port, Sauternes, Tokaji, or anything else.

The first was a barrel sample of the 2007 vintage at Cantine Polvanera.  This semi-sweet rose' was actually a blend of Aleatico with 30% Primitivo, the other specialty of the winery.  The perfume was luscious, melon with a hint of citrus, and the taste matched the aroma perfectly.  No disappointments in that respect.  At 13% this wasn't the strongest of dessert wines; it was refreshing and paired beautifully with almond cakes and other Puglian goodies.  It wore its oak lightly.

I also had this wine in its 2006 incarnation, in bottle.  The 2007 was less sweet and much more elegant and precise in its flavor and perfume, an improvement I ascribe to the young Puglian winemaker Luca Petrelli, whom Filippo Cassano hired to sharpen up his wines and make them more competitive in the local market -- and in his current northern European markets.  A wise move on Cassano's part. 

If this wine were available in the states, it would retail at about $12-14 for a 750 ml bottle.  Great for wine bars, by the glass.

Holiday hangover

What is it about the week between Christmas and New Year's?  Why do you feel like you've got a hangover every day even if you haven't been drinking?  And, OK, even if you haven't been drinking that much?

You have all this free time and just sort of piss it away.  It's like you're identifying yourself with the old, dying year.  And in this there is a strange kind of push/pull.  You want it to be over with, like a trip to the dentist.  Yet you hang back, not knowing what the new year holds in store for you.  Janus has a new relevance and rediscovered power to strike terror, or unease anyway, into your heart.

We usually go away at Christmas, busying ourselves with other sites and sounds, smells and tastes.  Couldn't manage it this year.  And after years of complaining "why can't we just stay home for the holidays?" I'm complaining "why did we have to stay here for Chrissake?"  Some people are born to bitch.  Guilty as confessed.

All I can say is, Kapalua would suit me to a T right now.

Groupie Coronation Moved to January 9

The lovely and talented Lisa Qiu has graciously consented to change the date of the Crunk Coronation by one day -- January 9 at 7 pm at Otto -- so that the visiting dignitary from Verona, Giampiero Nadali, may attend before he has to return home. 

Nadali is an excellent photographer.  I hope he will get some enlightening and entertaining shots of our hi jinks at Otto.  Eh, Giampi?

***

By the way, I met my son Eric, the Golden Error punk rock god, for his birthday dinner last night.  His band has an indie disc coming out soon.  Hardcore vinyl.  I tried to persuade him to attend our coronary event (ha ha) on the ninth of January. 

Whatever.  We had a great time and lots of good grub and too much wine at Barbone.  (Are you getting this, Marco?)  The duck ravioli was awesome.  As was the cucumber sorbet.  Wow.

I was reflecting last night how my life used to suck.  Not just with the occasional bad day or week, but deeply, seriously, consistently.  In vino vita.

Nightmare in Ferrara

This just in from Giampiero Nadali of Aristide.  His girlfriend Laura bought this...this thing in Merano, clearly not the Italian capital of good taste. 

My musical link (below) kind of says it all, IMHO.  Feeling a lit-tle trip-py...

Download season_of_the_witch.mp3

The wine-marketing ploy that trumps all

Blame it on Columella

One thing you can't take away from Italy: It's old.

Traditions go back for generations, centuries.  Even millennia.  And thousands of wine producers never let you forget it.  Here is a typical excerpt from an About page on a producer's web site:

Casalvecchio da Morire has been in the Da Morire family's possession since 1489.  That was the year the founder of the family, Pancrazio Mattaraio, drove indebted sharecroppers from the original three hectares and began growing vines according to the best practices of the day.  Improvement has followed improvement, triumph followed triumph till the present day, when the Casalvecchio's wines are known and esteemed throughout the province of C___ and the former East Germany for their fervent belief in the value of terroir and their strict use of autochthonous grapes, mostly.

Nice enough. Colorful. But you see versions of this all over the place.  Producer self-glorification aside, it's hard to know for certain whether the wines the producer makes are any good, and whether or not he used to grow grapes to sell to the local co-op for awful bulk wine.

I especially like the less common positioning that appeals to a more distant and august past.  You know, the producers who go for broke and claim some kind of lineage from the Romans, Greeks and even the Etruscans.  They name their products after ancient worthies, or at least use names that vaguely call up those classical peoples and their bon-vivant decadence.  (By the way, the photo is of a Roman winery near Trier, Germany.)

The Greeks, who settled our commune in 650 BC by driving out the local tribe of Uticans, began an enduring tradition of winemaking that has carried on till today.  They introduced the grape varieties that continue to make wines such as those Alcibiades praised in Plato's Symposium, and which were widely praised in the Roman era by such illustrious personages as Tiberius and Caligula.  For this reason we have named our wines Skata and Stercus.  These are Moscatos of the highest quality, the type of wine that was most highly prized in the Classical World, charmingly oxydised, viscous and round and sweet.  Perfect with hummingbirds' tongues and honey cakes, not to mention foie gras and plum pudding.

Ha ha.  There I go again.  But seriously, folks,  I don't think this sort of fanciful linkage to a wholly invented past is too convincing or helpful.  It's a form of borrowed interest that to me, as an ad and marketing guy, reeks of desperation and/or laziness.  It also demonstrates the danger of falling back on your oulde liceo education, which is still so heavily rooted in The Classics.  Another avoidance of engagement with the modern world in all its crassness -- and its commendable habit of getting to the point? 

Buon Natale, Merry Christmas

Once I loved Christmas.  Once it represented hope and a respite from the disillusioning grime of the world.  Now it seems all too filled with the world's tawdriness.

But some little part of the soul still wishes to believe in miracles and in the possibility of a better world. 

In that spirit of disappointed hope, with all the freight of the years' sadness and hopeful expectations...Merry Christmas.

Download otis_redding_merry_christmas_baby.mp3

Crunk Coronation of My Groupie: January 10 at Otto

Hear ye hear ye!

I will crown my first official groupie at a special event on January 10 at Otto, which is at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 8th Street.  We will start about 6pm, before the place gets mad crowded.  We will finish when we're too crunk to continue.

The coronee will be Lisa Qiu, the lovely, talented, Italian-speaking and wine-mad NYU student who has graced these electronic pages with her witty comments and droll observations.

Special guests, I hope, will be Giampiero Nadali (Aristide), his very good friend Laura Buosi and, I believe, their pals Alessandro and Giorgia. 

All are invited.  But you come, you pay for your own drinks.  Unless you're Lisa Qiu, of course.  For her, nothing is too much and nothing is too good. 

She's a good demographic, too.

Fortunato Sebastiano: Rising star in the South

Before embarking on my recent trip to Campania, I asked the well-known wine and food journalist, Luciano Pignataro, for some recommendations on interesting little wineries to visit.  He replied with a list of about five or six.  Three of them were under the heading of Fortunato Sebastiano, a consulting winemaker who comes from the upland zone around Nola and Avellino. 

Right away I'll stop the more cynical and hard-bitten among you from dismissing him with, "Oh great, another 'oenologist' who's contributing to the dumbing down and homogenization of Italian wine."

Fortunato isn't one of those winemakers.  I admit he has a bit of a rock star quality, but he's the antithesis of the self-involved, rather pompous consulente that you find all too often.  He is an upbeat guy who cares deeply about his clients, all of whom are small and far from wealthy, and about the kinds of wines they are able to produce in their respective terroirs. 

I would characterize Fortunato and his clients as collaborative artists.  Art requires a deep cognitive knowledge of one's tools and medium.  It also requires a capacity for surprise and joy.  These qualities we found in a number of the wines Fortunato introduced us to.

We spent all of one day and parts of two others with him; on the full day alone he drove us something like 400 kilometers from one part of Campania to another, and I had guilty thoughts at the amount of money he was spending on gas.  Together we tasted wines from three of his eight producers, one of which is the fine and well-established Mustilli, who hired him recently to raise their level of quality with his precise touch.  The wines we tasted were all clean, clear and highly typical of their varieties.  With just one of two exceptions (producer experiments), they were admirably balanced and persistent.

We were particularly wowed by the wines of two producers who live among their small land holdings at high elevations (translation: fucking cold, well over 2000 feet up) in the Greco di Tufo and Aglianico di Taurasi DOCG zones.  Their annual production ranges from a few thousand to perhaps 20,000 bottles.  Wisely, under Fortunato's direction, they are focused in what they produce.  No spumantes or passitos here.

The first stop was the so-called Angela Rosa winery, perched high on a steep mountainside in the

Mondosapore wine groupie get together is a go!

I am such a mondosapore groupie, I can't wait for a little post holiday party. Trust me, little creeps me out---- maybe Arnold Schwarzenegger. A night out to get crunk with a master?!!!??!?! Count me in!

Lisa Qiu, your fan.

Thus has the lovely and talented Lisa Qiu, official mondosapore groupie, said yes yes yes I will yes to doing a wine thingie for her official coronation as MWG.  This event will be in January, date TBD, as Lisa has many fans in many places, and her Blackberry is in the shop for repairs. 

Even so, I hope we can celebrate this wonderful occasion in the period from Jan. 7 - 10, when Aristide, eminence blog of Italian wine, will be visiting our fair city.  It would be nice if more Young People could attend the event, including the lovely and talented Sarah Newton all the way from Rome.  Probably not, but we live in hope.

Lisa also wrote, "Oh, and you can show those punks who think I'm ugly this picture."


I can hear David Bowie in the background singing, Lisa, that song...

Invasion of the Wine Snatchers

Inspired by recent adventures, observations and conversations in various parts of Italy.

Yes, it seemed my dream of Tuscany was come true...

I was thrilled, thrilled when I received an email from Count Visone to join him and a bevy of wine essayists, journalists and even bloggers at his magnificent Tuscan estate, La Lupanaia, for a vertical tasting of his famed Brunellos.  To be honest, I was just as excited to meet some of these writers as I was to taste the wine.  Also to be honest, I had never tasted the wine before because it costs at least $95 retail (for the 2002), well beyond my modest means.  I wanted to find out for myself why the Count's Topaia Riserva earns 95+ scores almost every year and was named wine of the year by the Gambero Rosso five times.

As I drove up the long, dramatic road to the castellate mansion in my rented Fiat Punto I saw helicopters whirring all around the broad lawns at the top of the mountain where the palace lies.  I wondered if there had been a terrorist threat but soon came to realize that influential international wine writers and certified Italian journalists had been given rides. 

When I arrived in the parking area as big as a soccer field, a brutal unspeaking man with tattoos on his shaved head pointed me to a spot in a far corner.  As I staggered to the house with my bags, a scowling girl who was clad in black Versace, and who had a scarf wrapped tightly round her neck, led me to the door, impatiently beckoning me on.  She led me to a stairway and dropped a key into my hand.  "Terzo piano, ultima camera, da' sul garage."  Fourth floor, last room, overlooks the garage.  She shook her gelled ringlets and went away muttering.

I cultivated positive thoughts I as lugged my things up the flights of stairs.  I foresaw the gala tasting that evening, meeting and exchanging ideas and information with the best and brightest of the world's wine writers.  In this spirit of pleasant anticipation I settled into my little room, which had a single tiny light hanging from the ceiling.  It was very hot and stuffy.  The bed was possibly an antique, especially the mattress.  Still, I was in heaven.  Here I was, a mere blogger, in the company of the aristocracy, as it were, of the wine flack world!

The tasting was to begin at 7 sharp.  I descended the stairs and was of course the only writer in the great hall as the staff placed glasses and little plates of bread at each taster's seat.  I went back upstairs after they glared at me, then snickered and whispered among themselves.  I was out of breath and it was already 7:15.  Hot as the room was, I fell asleep.  I had a dream that I went downstairs and met Andrea Immer Robinson, who goggled at me, and only then did I realize that I was naked.  I think I was disassociating myself from my Joseph Bank blazer with a missing button and 8-year-old Ferragamo loafers, which I had had reconditioned for the occasion ($90). 

I woke with a start and ran down all the stairs at 8 o'clock.  I felt something was wrong. 

No one was "tasting."  They were all standing around drinking cocktails.  They were eyeing one another competitively.  There was a knot of English people which kept looking over its collective shoulder at a very large pumpkin-headed American and his claque.  The French, Italians and Germans wandered around freely; they were in Schengenland after all.  The Chinese were decked out in Prada and the Japanese in Gucci, and they gave each other chilly smiles over their straight whiskeys. 

Presently a gong rang and we looked for our place cards.  I expected to sit in a chilly dark corner, but somehow I found myself among a group of high-powered wine writers and critics from several nations, including the pumpkin-headed man.  In front of each person was a line of 10 glasses.  On the "programme" were written descriptions of ten vintages, including the dreaded 2002.  The earliest was 1967.

As the tasting finally began, I knew something was wrong.  Very wrong.

NYC wine: an observation or two

Here in the US capital of wine, there is a malaise.  You go to this or that restaurant and see so many of the same wineries, same grapes, same tiny array of vintages.  (I think it's clear that I can't and don't frequent the temples of oenogastronomy, where there will nevertheless be a predictable glut of insanely priced Barolos, Supertuscans and Grands Crus.) 

Despite the riches of the wine world being parked at our door, and available in the better wine shops, too many restaurant people are playing it safe.  It's all the about the food at too many eateries.  Which is too bad because isn't the wine supposed to enhance and glorify the food?  Too much about artistic displays of  each course, too little about the way the food tastes and feels, especially when combined with wine.

I hear there's a trend, maybe more a trendlet, among young sommeliers and wine buyers to veer away from the superbig reds, for reasons of both cost and taste, to livelier wines, often from unheralded areas.  Wines that are more food-friendly with higher acidity and less toasty sugariness.  We live in hope.

What do you think?  How does the current restaurant wine situation strike you, whether you live in the City or Out There?

Horror tale set in posh Tuscany

Just back in the USA, ah ha ha, oh yeah, and both too busy and too pooped to write much on this my beloved blog.  I shall endeavour to write more, my friends, because site traffic takes a trip to the dumper when you don't post like EVERY DAY.  And I have much to tell you.

Stay tuned for hair-raising tales of wine (and oil) horror, entitled "Invasion of the Wine Snatchers."  not to mention sober-sided in-depth reports from the zones I've just visited.  You know me, I like to offer a little something for everyone.

Meanwhile, a photo for your meditative pleasure:

Montecucco, the next big Tuscan thing?

I spent a couple of fascinating days in the Montecucco zone of southern Tuscany.  This is not tourist Tuscany.  There are no big hotels or lavish "wine estates", and certainly no palm trees -- it's way too cold anyway.  Inland from the Maremma and just south of the Montalcino DOC area, this is a lightly populated part of an often overtrampled region, as different from the Florence area as you can imagine.  The geographic centrepiece of Montecucco is Monte Amiata, nearly 1800 metres high and an enormous influence on the weather of the zone.  Indeed, you could consider all of Montecucco as the Monte Amiata uplands. 

Although you can see the Tyrrenian Sea from some parts of Montecucco, this is most definitely a cool climate zone.  Yes, it is warm and sunny during the summer, which means good ripening of grapes.  But it cools off tremendously at night, which is good for the perfume and fruitiness of the wine.  In winter it's freezing, which is good if you run a biologico winery.  More pests killed, you see.

The wines that I tasted were especially clean and precise in their attack, indicative of both good winemaking and an excellent terroir (which includes the climate).

I liked the area a great deal in this my first visit.  Rustic, unspoiled by the special ugliness that is the Italian version of modernity, there are beautiful hilltop borghi (fortified villages) everywhere you look -- unfortunately, most of them inhabited by old people, since the young have to leave for big cities to find work that pays.  The agriculture is mixed and gives none of that impression of monoculture that you get either in the posher Chianti zone or in Puglia, where the Roman latifundia seem to have persisted into the present. 

There will be more about Montecucco in future posts, because it is so near yet so far in terms of Tuscany.  Before posting a few pictures, though, I want to mention a couple of key points of great interest to winelovers.

1. In this highland zone, you are at the limit of Sangiovese.  Above 550 or so metres, it doesn't flourish.  Other, earlier maturing grapes do better, Merlot being a typical example. 

2. According to several people I talked with, this area was the source of many of the subvarieties of Sangiovese that are well known today, including Brunello.  You can see Montalcino quite easily from certain parts of Montecucco, since there you're at the boundary of the Montalcino DOC and the province of Siena.  So close yet so far.

In the continuation are a few photos of the landscape and the people I had the good fortune to encounter.

Some winter views of vineyards, Campania and Puglia

You know you're jaded when you go to Rome, the Eternal City and home of the magnificent Pantheon, and you don't bother to leave the hotel and you order a club sandwich (30 euros) because you're so sick of running around in the cold.  And, really, how many times can you fight the crowds to stare at the Trevi fountain for five minutes?

Ah me, life is tough.  Compare this with me a year ago, joyously crossing the East River to Roosevelt Island to teach every day, wondering if I could get the tramway door open and jump into the icy drink before they could stop me. 

I exaggerate but not by much.  Not much at all.

Anyhow, it's late and I'm too tired to write anything really insightful and witty and so forth.  I will share a few pix of various places I've been on this magical winery tour into the hinterlands of Bari, Avellino and Montecucco, fascinating and beautiful areas that relatively few Americans visit.  (Cuz they ain't  RomeFlorenceVenice and not many people down there speak English, which means Yanks won't show up at all.) 

I do have to say that, South or North, the people you meet are overwhelmingly hospitable and charming.  You easily bridge any language problems you might have.  And you have a hell of a lot of fun, which oceans of good wine help keep going.

Vineyard of Domenico Mazzone near Ruvo, Puglia

Francesco Mazzone with his vines (biologic)
















Francesco's Italian Jewish mother, if you get my drift


















Can you read this?  Immensus.  Immensely good, a dry Malvasia

Wine tour of Italy continues...with a big gripe

I've been scouring the hinterlands of Italy, cold and windy (that's just indoors), meeting a lot of great small producers of wine in several regions.  What a wine education it's been.  More to come when -- and this is the cause of this brief, complaining post (God knows I never complain) --

When will I get a decent Internet connection again?

When will Italy get with the 21st Century and make the Internet, oh I don't know, easily accessible. especially wi-fi-wise?  I was talking with Mario Zanusso of I Clivi earlier and he agreed, "Living without the Internet is like living in Pre-history." 

Well, after another winery tour tomorrow, back to Rome to a hotel where they offer excellent wi-fi, where I can write and write and actually download pix from my very own laptop, which I have lugged all over the country for the past 10 days, more or less uselessly.

As to the wineries and the family producers of some thrilling vino, I must admit that it probably is more useful and informative to meet them now than at most other times of the year.  They're stuck in their country fastnesses and are pretty damned happy to see an Americano asking for a taste of their wines.  The intrusion of Yanks and their funny ways breaks the monotony.

And these hospitable people serve you amazing lunches (12 courses or so) of mostly homemade meats, home-grown veggies and just-baked bread and from-scratch sweets to accompany the wines, bacchanals that go on all afternoon, nearly till darkness falls.  Then they may also press you to follow that up with dinner too.  So you stagger out of a restaurant at midnight or later, having spent something like 8-9 hours at table that day. 

No wonder so many importers and other wine folk are, let us say, husky. 

That, sadly, is a huskiness that I am now sharing. 

Which Primitivo?

Much has been written about Primitivo, the Italian grape with (they say) a Croatian genealogy and a genetic double in California's own Zinfandel.  The cliché is that Zin is big, alcoholic, rich, a little sweet with residual sugars and susceptible to heavy oaking.  And that Primitivo, its frère and semblable, is the same.  As with all clichés, there's a bit of truth in the statement and the image, but of course the reality is far more interesting and varied.

When you're in Puglia you taste the different versions of Primitivo, some of them big and rustic, some cheap and thin (usually heavily blended with Montepulciano d'Abruzzo), some elegant and balanced.  The latter don't seem to make it to America very often, in part because of the belief that we Yanks only like those big Zin type monster wines.  Obviously we do.  But, when you look at any reasonable restaurant list or at the shelves of a decent wine shop, you know that a wide range of taste profiles, to use a fairly gawky phrase, are being catered to.

So there is indeed a Primitivo for every taste.  The real "problem of the Primitivo" is that the price and the quality are sometimes so wildly off the mark that you wonder if you've hit the Twilight Zone.  A few days ago, without naming names, I related some peculiarities of pricing and self-perception on the part of some producers, and of their respective target markets -- so far as anyone in Puglia seriously considers "target markets." 

I have to say that the garden variety Primitivos I've drunk in the States have been underwhelming. A kind of grapy cough syrup clearly intended to steal Zinfandel drinkers away from their beloved drink.  Which is a ludicrous tactic.  It will never work. 

In my oh so humble opinion Primitivo producers ought to be setting their sights on Nero d'Avola drinkers because that vino has become so expensive relative to its quality and due to the fact that Nero d'Avola isn't always in the bottle as labeled.

Primitivo still has or should have a good price-quality ratio, with a good to very good bottle retailing at about $12-16 or so (New York prices, which are I think a little more competitive than in many places in America). 

The only caveat I have is to try and find out if the Primitivo you get is 100% Primitivo.  A great many of the bottles that are available as "100% Primitivo", both in Italy and the US, are really blends (again, usually with Montepulciano d'Abruzzo).  A lot of producers say, "You have to blend it because it's too difficult to make a really drinkable one in purezza."  This is true if you're not a very good winemaker and can't adequately work with the raw material, the premier grape of your region.  The good winemakers make really wonderful Primitivo with no blending.  It pays to know your producers -- and to be on the outlook for new ones, that is, new to American wine store shelves.

I nominate, as the first mondosapore groupie...

Lisa Qiu, NYU student and all-round swell babe (as they said when I was 5 years old).

Lisa reads mondosapore diligently, does her wine homework and is a credit to her post-slacker generation. 

And she comments often, the youngest person ever to comment on a blog frequented by (mostly) the silver-threaded and infirm.

On those slim qualifications, therefore, I nominate, second, carry, vote and delcare winner of the mondosapore blog, the lovely and talented Lisa Qiu!

Take a bow, Lisa, and SELL it, baby...

Producers' prices: R U 4 real?

So I too am on the Italian wine trail, this time in the sunny (but chilly) south, Puglia to be followed by Campania), and I'm tasting vino and comparing this Primitivo with that one and so forth, and what I'm tasting is surprisingly evolved, elegant, balanced - as well as raw, uncouth - frankly unpleasant wines, of which we have an abundance at home, thank you veddy much.  No need to flood out poor suffering land with more of those.

Sure, naturally, that's to be expected.  What I find so weird, and so hilarious, is the notional, aspirational pricing that producers attach to the wines. 

Example:  last night I tasted some really elegant, let's go along with the producer and say "hand-made" Primitivos.  The price out of the cellar was about 12€. Not cheap, even after the customary USA-only discounts, but understandable. 

Today: a gigantic cooperative dealing in millions of bottles a year, not 100,000, where some simply OK Primitivo (cut with plenty of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo, which is usually the case here, no matter what the label says) -- and they're asking as much or more.  The guy says, "They love this in Albania and Russia," etc., etc. 

Two thoughts spring to mind:

1. The Albanians and Russians will buy anything if you charge enough for it.

2. They don't know shit from Shinola about wine to pay (as the very nice gentleman explained) up to $200 a bottle for the stuff in Tirana. 

My response has to be, "Nobody is America would pay anything like that much for such a wine.  For one thing it isn't from Tuscany or Piemonte, and it isn't an Amarone.  Charge $12 and you'll sell some."

This is a common occurrence in Italy.  All too often there is simply no rational correlation between the price asked and the realities of the market. Of the American market if not the Albanian (!). 

As Gabrio once commented here, there IS generally the listino pressi America, which is the lowest of the low, because we have, in most states, a cut-throat pricing environment. (It's nearly enough to make you long for the old old days of Fair Trade pricing, ie, fixed by common agreement, such as is still often the case in Europe.)

Regardless of which, the food in the Mezzogiorno is always superb and there's a friggin' banquet at every meal.  I think it was Hugh Johnson who first wrote, "The great genius is Italy is in spreading a feast'" or something close to that.  How true, and therein lies the true beauty of the country's wines.

More about that later too, when I can lift my bulk up from the table long enough not to collapse...

Winter's come to New York. Really.

Summer lasted till about the first of November. 

Today I woke up to snow.  The temperature's stayed below freezing all day.

I haven't left the building.  I detest snow.  It's been dark and dreary all day.  I loathe this time of year.  I'd like to hibernate till April.

I'm not about to leave the building till I leave for the airport tomorrow.  Thank God for free food delivery.  Thank God for a gut-warming Primitivo or Nero d'Avola.  Or maybe an Aglianico this evening.  To go with the Turkish lamb dish I'll order.  A wine that gives you back a bit of that southern sunshine.

The wine comedian's cry

Today's been a good day for me, aspiring wine-comedian-wise. 

First, a strong two thumbs up from Tom Wark.  (See my comments.)  Hey, if you can make that serious-faced dude laugh, you got something.

Second, an endorsement from one of the Younger Generation, the lovely and talented Lisa Qiu, NYU.

So why has no one from The Daily Show or Comedy Central so much as written me a fuck-you-very much reply to my email of entreaty?  Fools, blind fools.

I take heart from Mr. Jimmy Cliff:

Well they tell me of a pie up in the sky
Waiting for me when I die
But between the day you're born and when you die
They never seem to hear even your cry

(Underscore mine.)

But then...

So as sure as the sun will shine
I'm gonna get my share now of what's mine
And then the harder they come the harder they'll fall, one and all
Ooh the harder they come the harder they'll fall, one and all

I'd add the part about

Well the officers are trying to keep me down
Trying to drive me underground...

But that may be perceived as a terrorist threat and then I'd be in deep shit indeed.

Blessed be the wiseacres, for they shall