mondosapore

My legacy

I feel kind of sorry for G. W. Bush.  He's probably spending a lot of time thinking about his legacy and ginning up the funding for that mausoleum of self-regard, a Presidential Library.  (Don't say what will go into his.  It's too easy.  But I will say that manga are a bit elevated for him.)

Anyway, forget Bush.  It's my legacy I'm thinking about.  Which is a hell of a lot more important than some legacy dunce from Yale's.

I've been thinking, to get specific and yes, to the point, in this blog-awards-giving-gushing season, about my Greatest Posts of All Time.

I mean, who can forget the trenchant The definition of dickhead post?  In which I picked on poor ole Fred Thompson, the sleepy ex-candidate for presdunt.  Please God don't let him go back on Law & Order.

Then there was my bid to become the First wine comedian.  In that I have much in common with Fred T., although I try not to nap as much.

And there have been my frequent outbursts of crankiness (as opposed to churlishness, which has happened from time to time).  This is known as having too much time on your hands.  You sit around and dream up all sorts of stupid shit, like WMDs and stuff.  Or groupie fests with dynamite young chicks.

And of course we have vast numbers of off-topic posts about TV shows like "Scrubs" and deceased jazz singers like Mildred Bailey and my depressive navel-gazing (I won't even try to give you links to those -- too many to list -- see all of 2006 and the first half of 2007).  And the gift that keeps on giving, Liev Schreiber in bloody undershirt.

Jesus, my legacy.  My legacy...!

OK, enough with the teeth-gnashing. 

Tell me, O faithful readers of this blog, my heart and soul and virtual blood spilt upon the screen, what are your favorite, most meaningful and/or most delightful/funny/amusingly contemptible mondosapore posts? 

I may not get any awards (ha) but I do have your warm regards...which, as a legacy, is one I'll have to make do with.

Jury duty

To complete a really terrible week, I rose from my sickbed and got down to Centre Street,  where I am sitting at a shitty  public access laptop in the jury room, killing time until the next excruciating session.  Well, may as well be sick and half asleep here as at home. And the City of New York pays me $40 a day! 

The keys stick on this machine, so I'll keep this as brief as possible. 

First, thanks to George Vare for his insights and perspectives on Gravner.  I don't know if it's a fitting conclusion to the thread, but it is useful to know.  I welcome any further comments.

Second, ciao to Elisabetta (scherzavo, capisci!) and Gianpaolo (sei gia' una maxipresenza su Internet!).

And to Vittorio, grazie mille, carissimo.

Final observation: given how much wasted time and waiting there is in the criminal justice system, no wonder lawyers get up to so much mischief.  You gotta fill the tedious hours somehow.

Special Correspondent at the Gambero Rosso Tasting in New York

Lisa Qiu, my beloved and devoted groupie, will be covering the GR Tre Bicchieri event for this esteemed blog on March 3. 

Lisa is a journalism major at NYU, so this is a big step in her nascent career.  Let's see how she handles the pressure -- deadline, fact-checking, maintaining Objectivity in the face of much crass hucksterism, not to mention the beguilements of many handsome Italians.  But she is wise for one so young.  She will meet the challenge head on and with aplomb.  By the way, one of the great things about having a blog is getting away with "aplomb" and "beguilements" and using too many adjectives.  Don't let that go to your head, Lisa Qiu.

Lisa had the photo taken last year in China.  It's nice to see how Maoist worker's clothes have evolved.

Download david_bowie_china_girl.mp3

Health-restoring pictures

I feel truly horrible today, again, with the flu or severe cold that's going around.  A headache nothing touches, literally breath-taking coughing fits, body aches down to the toenails.  Can't sleep, can't really stay awake.  The apartment's a big mess.

So I missed the wonderful Alto Adige tasting today, which was such an impressive event last year.  I can't really taste anything.  I can't stay awake long enough to read or even watch TV.  A sure sign of total impairment.

So.  I'm posting pictures of summer and warmth and beautiful places to help myself feel better.  Enjoy them on this rainy, rotten day.  A presto!

Two wine social networks you should know about

Wine social networks along the lines of Facebook and MySpace are popping up all over.  The software and navigational features are pretty similar, which makes it easy to join, exchange news and ideas, and expand knowledge of wines, regions, and especially the people who are involved with wine, whether as bloggers or -- whatever.  I suspect that the networks are a great way for people to connect and eventually do business. 

Yes, you already know this.  But read on, wine people.

The earliest wine network that I got involved with was Filippo Ronco's original site,TigullioVino, a few years ago.  Based near Genoa, Filippo is a young entrepreneur whose passion for wine is exceeded only his by inventiveness and ambition to pull together disparate strands of Italian winemakers, restaurateurs and lovers of wine and food, not to mention enotourism in that country.

The latest example of Filippo's drive is the Vinix "Wine & Food Social Network" has been up and running for well over a year now, it has 3700 members, and now a great deal of it is in English.  I've met some interesting people through Vinix.  Filippo would love to have a greater presence in North America, so feel free to look at the site and sign up.

 

______________________________________________________________________________

Another site, brand-new and based in California, is the OpenWine Consortium.  Joel Vincent is the moving spirit behind this network, which is filled with top-grade bloggers and not a few producers from California as well as Spain, France, Australia, Italy, South America and so forth.  I joined last Saturday and I can tell that I've racked up quite a few "wasted" hours on it already.  Really, OWC is well worth the time you spend on it.

"My movie is more primal than your movie!"

Don't have much time to surf and scribble today.  But I couldn't resist the urge to make a few comments on the Oscars last night.  Their great boon to mankind, by the way, is to stretch time so that we feel we've lived too long and are ready for the big sleep.

"No Country for Old Men" as best picture?  No no no no no.  The Coen brothers as best directors?  Often in the past they've deserved it, but compared to Paul Michael Anderson in his film, no.  Anderson should have won for the visionary, hellish and visually stunning "There Will Be Blood."  At least Daniel Day Lewis got the statuette he deserved. 

"There Will Be Blood" is the more primal film, a "Moby-Dick" of American filmmaking.  Except, you know, not as sinfully boring.

Meanwhile, a couple of unhellish scenes of Italy to soothe the troubled soul.

Tre Bicchieri New York Update

The location of Gambero Rosso's tasting on March 3rd has been changed to

583 Park Avenue.

That's on the east side of the avenue at 63rd Street.

The Young Ones

This is no country for old men.  -- W. B. Yeats

Not any more it isn't.

Lately I've been struck by the extreme youth of winemakers (enologi) that I've met in Italy.  Energetic guys in their early-mid 30s and even their 20s, completely immersed in the life of the winery or wineries they work for.  Experimenting, taking on and discarding the results of those experiments, always seeking to improve the wines, express their territory better and, not coincidentally, make the wines more sellable.  (A shock to romantics everywhere: it's a business, stupid.)

Photo above: Gianluca Scaglione, boy enologo at Pianbello

The final product may vary in its quality or, shall we say, market-pleasingness, but the dynamism of these kids' approach bodes well for the future. One reason I say this, to generalize a little longer, is to contrast the wines of an established personage like Riccardo Cotarella with those of the Young Ones like Bruno Tamagnone of Cascina Gilli or Gianluca Scaglione of Pianbello, two small wineries in Piemonte.

Bruno Tamagnone and boss in background.  Bruno is how old??

Last April I attended a dinner at the stunning Villa Avredi near Verona in honor of Cotarella.  We were served bottle after bottle of Cotarella's wines from all over Italy.  My dinner companion, Danielle Pollack, and I looked at each other after a while.  She had a look on her face that telegraphed exactly what she was going to say.  "Well.  What do you think?"  she asked.

"I think they all are good..."

"And they all taste exactly the same."  We turned around the bottles and found a Nero d'Avola and a Chianti or Brunello and something from Piemonte.  Who could have told otherwise?

Contrast a tasting of the wines made under the guidance of these young winemakers.

Chiara Martinotti of Cascina Gilli told me that these out-of-place palms were the rage a century ago.  "To bring some exoticism to the inland territories."

Obama Sinister

We have a true and definitive reason to vote for the Great Unificator.

Yes, he has decent policy recommendations on healthcare and all that.

But the real reason to vote for the guy is that he has something in common with poets and dyslexics and  geniuses and colorful misfits (like me!).

He's left-handed.  Behold!

Sinister liberation!

Another Friulian winemaker speaks up

God knows, I'm not one to cause trouble or fan the flames of controversy.  However.  Whenever anyone becomes the center of a cult -- of personality or winemaking or anything else -- my built-in bullshit-o-meter goes crazy.

By the way, I will provide an ad hoc definition of cult: uncritical acceptance of someone's song and dance.  Which seems to me the essence of Gravner's reception in this country.

I have been emailing back and forth with a winemaker in Friuli, Michele Ciani, who runs a family winery called Aquila del Torre.  To get another viewpoint, on the ground, I asked him for his thoughts and opinions on the cult winemaker Josko Gravner.  Michele's comments are perhaps more measured than Mario Zanusso's but still critical.  And they add an interesting new wrinkle or two to the brouhaha.

I am translating from Michele's well-considered email to me.  The original is included to assure you that I'm not taking undue liberties or slanting Michele's comments. 

Menu from Il Birichin, Turin

I'm publishing the menu that Nicola Batavia prepared for us when I was in Turin two weeks ago.  It's in Italian and I'm not translating it, sorry, but even so, you can discern what a vast array of flavors and textures he gave us on that memorable evening.  Even though most of the plates were small, we left the restaurant feeling stuffed to the gills, and not a little tipsy, from all the wine and special sipping rum after all the dolci. 

What fantastic food.  What wonderful breads and sweets, made by Nicola's mother.  And what delicious chocolates, supplied by Gobino. 

I had a great time with Sandra (the well-known food blogger untoccodizenzero, which means "a pinch of ginger"), her fiance Roberto and the lovable Vittorio Rusina'.  With their company and Nicola's cooking, Turin really vaut le voyage.

FYI: Il Birichin means "naughty boy" or "scamp."

Il Birichin, Torino 08 02 2008
 

Appetizers

Spuma di baccalà e patate su crema di fagioli neri e foglia di pomodoro essiccato

Bocconcino ripieno di pomodori secchi

Alici crude con uova di salmone Balik ed

erba cipollina

Crunchies

 

Pane servito

Alla zucca, alle cipolle, al sale di Mozia, al nero di seppia, focaccia di farro integrale, grissini al finocchio e grissini al naturale

 

Menu

 

Filetto di coniglio con patate alle noci, foie gras caramello al aceto balsamico e topinambur croccanti.

 

Lingua brasata su cipolla rossa,barolo chinato e zucchine al burro nocciola

 

Uovo affogato su sedano rapa salsa al foie gras ed

olio di zucca.

 

Tajarin (mia madre) al castelmagno e nocciole.

Risotto Carnaroli cotto con la Mica (special Piedmont salami) crema di topinambour su fonduta di Cevrin (Special sheep milk cheese) ed ostia.

 

 

Il segreto

Su carciofi al verde, polenta gialla e ristretto al Barbaresco

 

 

Pre-dessert.

Spuma ghiacciata di caki e latte su crema inglese.

 

Ganache di cioccolato su salsa al moux e liquirizia, sale alla vaniglia e tartufi piccante con wafer di nocciole.

Birra Toro - Birrificio Beba di Pinerolo (Torino)

 

 

Caffè con piccola pasticceria:

Bon bon –lecca-lecca- chupa-chupa-

Pasticceria fresca e preziosi di Batavia

 

 

 

V.V..Monti 16/a

Torino 10126

011 657457 / 334 8740797

www.birichin.it

Jancis on Gravner, I Clivi

I thought I'd give you this extended quotation from an article Jancis Robinson wrote on her site in 2005.  Here is the link to the entire piece.  I quote this to show that Mario Zanusso, whose comments on Gravner have generated some mail and commentary, is not a whingeing wannabe but an accomplished winemaker.

There are many driven, small-scale producers in the region. Gravner’s wines are highly individual, but perhaps just a bit too individual for me. But I came across recently the wines of Ferdinando Zanusso of I Clivi in Corno di Rosazzo who has 12 hectares/30 acres of particularly old (40 to 60 year-old) vines from densely-planted hillside vineyards in both Collio and Colli Orientali which he seems to transform into the entrancing wines. He apparently leaves them for two years on lees in stainless steel before bottling – and they certainly taste super-natural. No low-temperature fermentation aromas or evidence of any extraneous yeasts. I tasted his Clivi Galea, Colli Orientali del Friuli bottling of old Verduzzo and Tocai Friulano from the vintages 2001, 2000, 1999 and 1997 the other day and was extremely impressed by all of them – even the eight year old was still going very strong and the 1999 was quite stunning for current drinking. The wines are apparently imported into the US by Kermit Lynch of Berkeley and Ballantynes of Cowbridge are considering importing them in to the UK. They say they would charge between £15 and £20 for these vintages, truly rewarding essences.

I will follow up with some of my own tasting notes and impressions in the near future.

Gabrio hits the big time: See and hear him in today's NYT

A blogger's dream has come true.  My friend Gabrio Tosti di Valminuta (call him Count Gabrio) is one of the tasting panelists on today's Chianti roundup in Eric Asimov's column.  Check out this link to actually hear Gabrio, Florence Fabricant, Charles Scicolone and Eric himself. 

Bravo, amico mio!

A day in Friuli: I Clivi

I spent a long-awaited and satisfying 18 hours in the Collio Orientale denomination, hard by the Italian-Slovenian border last week.  The destination was the biologico winery I Clivi, a small family winery owned and run by Ferdinando Zanusso and his son Mario.  I had encountered Mario for the first time at one of the Vinitaly fringe events, VinNatur, last April.  Since then I had seen him several other times.  The purity and complex flavors of the wines fascinated me, and I was eager to get an up-close view of the vineyard and the men who run it.

Above: Galea vineyard southward view.  This vineyard surrounds the Zanussos' house.

I Clivi has been in existence for less than 20 years.  The name means "steep hillside," and the roughly 8 hectares of vineyards live up to that description.  The terreno of the winery consists of two small parcels.  One is the vineyard that surrounds the house itself, called Galea.  The other, Brazan, is several miles away on an equally steep hillside.  Brazan is closer to the Adriatic, and Mario told us that its hill is the first to receive moderating, refreshing breezes from the sea.  The entire area around I Clivi is well-insolated and quite windy, which keeps mold and rot away from the plants.  Such natural protections against common vineyard scourges are essential if you are growing vines with little or no chemical intervention.

Mario Zanusso

The soil is calcareous, lending the wines minerality and structure.  The clay in the soil enables the vines to avoid water starvation during the relatively parched summer season. 

One of the things I didn't expect was to find, at both vineyards, a great many old vines of 50-60 years, and even older.  The varieties grown here are Tocai Friulano, Malvasia and Verduzzo.  The Zanussos do produce a red, which is light and pleasing, but the whites are the story here.

Before I write about the wines we tasted -- which will have to wait till another post -- I think it's important to air a couple of Mario's and Ferdinando's strongly worded comments about a certain wine-making philosophy (or cult?) that has grown up in their area of late, not to mention a certain scorn for "oenologists."

As we drove around inside Slovenia -- less than a mile as the crow flies from the Zanussos' house -- I asked Mario what he thought of the Gravner thing with the amphorae and so on. We were speaking Italian, so I'll condense his comments to a few bullets in English.

* Gravner's experiment is ludricous, a gimmick, a marketing strategy. 

* Gravner's wines are dirty.  "Technology gave us cleanness, and this is a huge advance for winemakers.  We can make cleaner, more healthful wines.  They taste better.  They don't make you sick or go off.  Why throw out the benefits of modern methods along with the overmanipulation?" 

* Gravner's prices are absurd.  "Especially since he's not spending a lot of money on oak!"

* Perhaps most damning of all, "Gravner is not part of the community here.  He doesn't give anything back.  He doesn't share or take part in things.  And if you question his methods, you're attacked as if you've violated a cult.  There's no rationality, so no basis for learning or the improvement of the area's wines."

I confess that I find such "dirty" wines interesting but no more.  Certainly I wouldn't spend a great deal to drink them; I'm not sure I could drink, as opposed to taste.  (And spit.)

At dinner, Ferdinando was no less adamant about "oenologists," at least the breed that is turned out by Italy's oenological institutes.  "They're trained as chemists, and they approach wine with formulas as to what a 'great' wine should be like, what chemical elements it needs to have in it."  In other words, these enologi are as much to blame for the homogenization of Italian wine as anybody from the United States.  "It is assumed that every wine should possess such characteristics."

An interesting point of view -- not the first time it's been expressed, that's for sure -- but it is fitting that Ferdinando and Mario are producing subtle, interesting and very drinkable wines that don't easily fit into the usual categories.  Their wines, nearly all blends of the local grapes listed above, age gracefully and develop for years.  Although their retail price in the States is in the moderate $25 range, they are definitely vins de garde, or worthy of being such.

View from I Clivi house and Galea vineyard.  Just beyond the hill with the church tower is their Brazan vineyard

Where the visitors come from now

For at least two years after I started this blog (October 2005), the preponderance of visitors was from Italy and the US.  At the very beginning there were more Italian visitors than American.  Not any more.  Since I abandoned the effort of writing in Italian, the site's traffic has gone up considerably -- most notably, it leapt up after Tom Wark published a Bloggerview of yours truly last September (Thanks again, Tom).  You do the math -- how many more people read English than Italian?

What shocks me is how low the percentage of Italian visitors has become. 

I'm almost as shocked by how the US percentage has decreased lately -- from over 60% to just about half.  Canada, the UK and Spain have surged. 

By the way, the site traffic here was 3190 visitors and 5272 page views in January 2007.  Last month the numbers were, respectively, 8288 and 12,829.  Most of the growth came after the interview on Fermentation. August 2007 had just 4046 visitors and 5943 views.

And let's look at the languages on the visitors' computers.  There are some surprises, like the presence of Arabic, for example.

Tyranny of great vintages

At long last, Eric Asimov has written an article about the tyranny of great vintages.  He first mentioned his interest in writing it on The Pour a year or two ago, and while I was away he published it on February 13.

In the piece, Eric succinctly examines the very old habit of puffing up vintages that the wine trade and press have declared to be "great" (now expressed most clearly in Parker's 95+ scores), with the effect of ignoring merely "good" and even "very good" ones.  As he notes at the end of the article, there's a big component of "mass psychology" involved.  Irrationality, anxiety and status-seeking are all at work.

This is to me the key paragraph:

When it comes to wine, though, the focus on greatness comes at a significant cost in both pleasure and money. This is most obvious in terms of wine ratings, where consumers irrationally (at least from a wine lover’s perspective) chase after bottles that critics have awarded 90 points or more, but shun those in the 85 to 89 range, even though the lower-rated wines may be cheaper, more flexible with food and readier to drink.

I've long wondered about this tendency on the part of winelovers to fetishize the "best", the "greatest", the "vintage of the century" and so on.  When I was in my 20s and worked in wine retail down in Richmond, Virginia, I'd read the glowing reviews a particular vintage and domaine had received.  I'd try the wine and say, "Oh that's good."  Then there would be another bottle from the same domaine but a different vintage -- it was a golden age of low-cost but superb Burgundy -- and I'd say, "Well, this is wonderful too!  I think I like it better than the big-deal one!"  For that second-rank vintage may indeed have given us a wine that was "more flexible with food and readier to drink." 

The inordinate emphasis placed on one vintage over another struck me even then as mistaken.  I think this is where anxiety may best explain what happens in such cases.  My suspicion then, as now, was that most winelovers don't know very much.  They need and want to be led, to be told what to value and why.  In short, they aren't winelovers so much as people who wish to accessorize their lives with "fine wine" and a line of patter that will enable them to hold their own with those they imagine to be their social betters.

I don't wish to portray myself as some sort of American rebel, a loner, some malcontent trailblazer who is impelled to Find His Own Way.  (Please, somebody, don't supply the road less traveled here.  Please.)

Still, when I realized just how much bullshit there was in all of that swooning over particular vintages and properties, I decided to branch out, to allow myself to try new wines from a range of different regions, countries, grapes, etc.  As a consequence, one of the great revelations I had, circa 1973, was a 1949 Rioja from Bodegas Bilbainas.  Its aged grace and complexity floored me, and I still remember the pleasant shock on my tongue when I first sipped it. (To my shame I thought, "It's so Bordeaux!" Of course I knew about the migration of Bordelais winemakers to Rioja when phylloxera struck; and I had read everything I could find by Hugh Johnson and Andre Simon.  But still.)

Another was my pleasure at drinking a Gattinara from Travaglini.  Back then most Italian wine available in the States was dreadful slop.  This Gattinara changed my perception of Italian wine and its potentialities.  And you know, I still prefer the lighter, northern take on Nebbiolo to the heavy Barolo one. 

These instances of wine epiphany aren't exactly in the same league as Proust with his madeleines -- a good thing, too, since he was impossible to curb after it. 

Before I go on too long, let me just end by saying that love of wine isn't determined, or even much conditioned, by vintage charts, let alone scores and reviews.  Granted, those can be useful signposts on the wine journey.  But the greatest pleasure is to find a wine that surprises you in some way -- a wine you may never have heard of before -- and to have the wine at that moment, in that place, with those people out of all the infinite possible moments, places and people.  A theologian might call that the scandal of particularity.  But there is no scandal in such a blessing consecrated by the wine you have in your cup.

Il Nuovo Galeon, Venice

Since you Brits are always searching for information on this restaurant, a mid-priced seafood gem in the Castello, I thought I'd make your task easier.  Here are links to two posts on mondosapore:

1. Recently posted, Venice reconsidered

2. Two years ago, based on an experience at the restaurant five years ago, here.

Enjoy your meal!

Sergio and Donatello of Il Nuovo Galeon.  Sergio is the colorful waiter.  Now without mullet!

New pix added to recent posts at last

Up early due to the change in time zones, I've spent the past 6 hours editing pix and adding some to recent posts.  In some cases, I've changed the copy a little too.

Here you go:

Venice reconsidered

In-depth tour of Slovenia

I just waddled in from dinner at Il Birichin

From the province of Asti

Just for the sheer joy of it, I'm putting up a few more pix in the continuation. 

A presto.

Venetian picture gallery

Many shall remain captionless.  The name of the photo usually provides all you really need to know. 

I did go a little wild taking pix there.  It's hard not to.  Enjoy a few vicarious hours there anyway.

 

The espresso here at Bar Ducale is the best north of Naples, I swear.  And not overpriced, either.

Taken from the hotel room.  Gondolas were full of Spanish high school kids who egged the gondoliers on to a series of races.  Loud and a lot of fun to watch.                    

Recent pix to be posted soon

Gentle Reader, we are back.  Tired and lagged but ready for the sales on Presidents' Day.  Not that we have anything left to spend.

Ah never mind.  The pix that I promised in endless posts will begin appearing in said posts -- and some whimsical new ones, you know how I love whimsy -- the usual tripe of vineyards and happy peasants smashing grapes in their wellies.  Plus endless pictures of quaint, mouldering buildings and the like. 

When you travel to a place a lot, you find the usual beauty shots of famous sights so suspect and phoney, certainly incomplete and removed from any contemporary human context, that you want to go out and shoot photos of dumpster boats in Venetian canals and the sad and mysterious vu compra's that line every tourist strip in Italy, selling the same counterfeit purses and other down-market versions of luxury goods that they sell in New York, Paris and every other First World metropolis, I'm sure.

Before I sign off for now to eat and drink some cheap wine and watch a little TV in English, trying all the while to go to sleep at a normal hour, I have to say that, as so often in major Italian cities, the typical wines available in modest restaurants and bars in Venice are at best just drinkable and, at worst, pretty sad stuff.  Vino sfuso that claims to be Montalcino, Chianti, Valpolicella and so on.  Whatever. 

On the other hand, none of it's over-oaked with a sweet finish and 16% alcohol.  That's a blessing. 

Venice reconsidered

I admit it.  I hated Venice the first time I went there.  A big phoney historical Disneyland where they rip you off in unparalleled ways.  The weather was atrocious.  And we were with a couple whose mutual hatred poisoned the atmosphere around them. 

Oh, and I think we simply stayed too long.  That much irreality and you feel bad about yourself - you know, "why aren't I succumbing to the magic of the place the way Hepburn did in Summertime?" -- that sort of thing.

Foreign tourist ponders fiscal mortality at Il Nuovo Galeon.

One bright spot was when the two of us went to the Castello section and found a place on via Garibaldi for a truly splendid dinner.  It was called Il Nuovo Galeon, and even though it carried the nautical motif all through the interior design, it was still excellent.

After a couple of sun-drenched, bone-dry days,we headed back there yesterday for lunch.  If the grub wasn't as spectacular as we remembered, it was still extremely fresh seafood, of which the canistrelli, baby scallops, were the absolute best.  The whole anchovies and baby shrimp, two of many denizens of the deep in the fritto misto, were also sensationally fresh and flavorful.  We washed lunch down with a very crisp Tocai Friulano.  Maybe it was a little too acidic for a Tocai in the sense that acid may have been added to it by the producer.  Even so, it paired very well with the vast amount of seafood we ate.

Although the desserts weren't ready and were prepared for the much busier dinner period, we did get a sensational home-made limoncello made with milk, a sort of Italian Bailey's Irish Cream, that the co-owner, Donatello, served us.  He said his sister made it.  I'll take his word for it, although Ken just bought a couple of bottles at the airport duty-free.  We had more than one glass -- I insisted on taking a picture of him with the bottle and with the stuff in your yet-again-replenished glasses. 

We saw again the waiter Sergio, who made such a colorful impression the first time.  He is a character.  I called him a weisenheimer in my earlier article.  Yesterday I wrote the word out for him phonetically.  When he asked what it meant, Ken said, "sarcastic."  I added, "Una persona sarcastica e spiritosa"  -- more or less, witty, spirited, etc.  He liked that far better than the "grumpy waiter" moniker he earned from the Telegraph in England.  I told him he wasn't grumpy at all.

Sergio, left.  Does he look grumpy to you? 

We got out of there stuffed to the gills and well-oiled with alcohol to the tune of 111 euros.  A relative bargain in a city where everything carries an exaggerated price tag.  And no sconto veneziano for us.

Il Nuovo Galeon

Castello, 1308

Tel. 041.52044656

Closed Tuesdays.  All major credit cards. 

If you go at lunch, it's pretty much all locals eating there.  In the evening it gets very international.  If you go, tell them that the Newyorkese from mondosapore sent you.  Then maybe I'll get the sconto next time.

Here's Donatello with the limoncello his sorella made. Sinfully delicious.

PS--I took pictures but...you know the story.  Wait till we get back to NYC.  I took a picture of Signora Graziella, who makes the desserts.  It didn't turn out. 

I owe you these articles, dear readers

Four days without an Internet connection -- it's agony, folks.  Try it, I dare you.  The Blackberry is a godsend, but it's pretty hard to compose long and witty posts with your thumbs.  You get your emails, check the NYT and site traffic (this is key).  But the comfort and format to compose a brilliant post, ah no.  So.  Aside from lots of pictures of various Italian landscapes and winemakers, I will settle down at home and write some articles on interesting people and wines and places, including:

* Ferdinando and Mario Zanusso of I Clivi.  You can see Slovenia from there!  But there's more than that to recommend their long-lived vini naturali.  Plus their comments on "oenologists." 

* Pietro Cirio of Pianbello.  Question: If you like Berlusconi, does that make you a bad person?  A bad winemaker?  It's a complicated world.

* Gianni Vergnano of Cascina Gilli, Freisameister. 

* Profile of an American wine importer.  Funny.  But funny ha-ha or funny hhmmm?  You caucus.  You decide.  It's what we call democracy.

And so much more.  It's what we call Plenitude.

In-depth tour of Slovenia

I am excited to tell you that I went to Slovenia!  Yesterday, for all of 30 minutes, with Mario Zanusso of I Clivi, when he went to buy gas.  I'm ready to write the definitive American travel guide on that exotic country.

It was entering another world.  One minute you're in Italy, the next -- through a now-deserted border station that looks like a beer drive-thru outside an Indian reservation -- you're getting gas for 20% cheaper in a country where they speak a language full of diacritical marks!  It's like having ants on your tongue!

Slovenia's like Friuli, really, only sort of run down.

 

It's a wine wonderland.  Their vineyards are full of international varieties.  They use quaint training methods for their vines.  I heard that some winemakers not only use ancient-style amphorae to vinify and store their wines, the most innovative among them are beginning to use the tin bathtubs of their forefathers (a prized possession of the rich), rain barrels and shallow ponds to lend the wine ever-greater naturalness and authenticity.  It's a dizzying mixture of worlds, Old and New, of eras, Modern and Prehistoric, and of orientations, International and Village, that promises stunning new oenological developments.  They use the euro too.  Slovenia has it all.

I took pictures of this amazing place, staying ahead of the Secret Police every step of the way, but of course I forgot the cable that would enable me to download them.  Alas, you will have to wait a long time to see them, possibly till next Monday.

Slovenia from I Clivi

 

Re: Italian wine tours

It's a joy to have a good Internet connection.  We're in Milano and I'm killing time till we go out to dinner.  There's a lot of noise outside -- sounds like drunken sports fans -- and a fair amount of traffic noise, raised from the mundane by the clang-clang-clang of the trolley bells every now and then.  A lot like being at home, overlooking First Avenue, just at a lower floor.

With this time to think about the places we've been, the people we've met and the wines we've drunk, it's inevitable that a recessively introspective person like myself deconstruct and analyse my experiences.  If you have a similarly boring nature, do read on.

My first observation, which will lead to an anecdotally supported generalization, is that Italians are really quite provincial.  Which is surprising given their geography and their proximity to a slew of other languages and cultures.  When you get out there, you'd better speak Italian.  Even many of the people who are assigned to escort you around speak English in a very broken way or not at all. 

"Ha!  Are you Americans any less provincial?  Do you speak a lot of languages?"  No and no.  But in the wine world, no one in Virginia is betting their life on exports to Italy or anywhere else. And you can always find a Panera or someplace like that for Wi-Fi access in the States, which is highly unusual in Italy. 

Their image of America and its people is full of contradictions, of course.  The USA is stupendous, exciting, great, especially New York and San Francisco.  It's also a hellhole of racism and poverty, we are imperialist destroyers of innocent indigenous cultures and, worst of all, we Americans don't know shit about living or eating well.  We all eat frozen dinners at 6 and drink cappuccino into the evening.  We are uncouth and hopelessly naive in the ways of the world.

I think that's quite wrong, even if the electorate has plenty of members who believe in the Literal Word of God.  (News flash: It's OK to stone cheating wives and daughters to death!  However, James Dobson is still debating how literally we should take the food proscriptions of Leviticus.  I'll get word to you when I read it in Grit.)

Another striking thing is that while many wine folk here portray themselves as simple farmers (contadini) and -- of course, this is pretty much de rigueur wherever you go in the world entire -- defenders of the terroir and ancient wine-making tradition, they drive around in expensive cars and live in rather large villas.  Most of their fellow Italians are driving something a lot smaller and cheaper and more beat up and they live in cramped apartments.  These guys are doing all right.  Better off than some other people I could name.  (Hint: Me.)

Well, I should shut up before I foment an international incident -- I mean between Arkansas and New York -- so I bid you all a fond adieu.

 

Arrivederci Torino

We're leaving soon for Milano.  A trip to the US consulate because someone lost his passport.  Wasn't me.

Then to Verona tomorrow afternoon. Then Friuli on Wednesday.

I have an important announcement:

This is Richard Kaplan's birthday! My boyhood friend is 62.  He has the enthusiasm and affection for life of a kid.  Happy birthday, Dickie.

Other odds and ends before leaving Turin...

Americans are rare as hen's teeth here.  Most of those who come to Turin are probably business travelers.  This isn't an town of easy and obvious charms.  But I suspect it's more interesting than the tourist meccas; it seems to have an Inner Life.

It's smoggy here.  The smog capital of Italy?

From the charming Chiara Martinotti of Cascina Gilli we learned a hilarious Italian expression.  It has to do with the fact that so many Italian women are very very thin; from behind they look young, but the face less so.  Chiara told us the expression to describe that is:

Di dietro liceo, di fronte museo.

High school behind, museum in front.

Get it?  Unusually pithy for Italy, eh?

I know it's a disjointed post.  But I have to get Google Reader View going again for all of you, my fans.

Since I went away

I happen to like the WW II film with Claudette Colbert and Jennifer Jones, Since You Went Away.  Both sentimental and indicating a gritty new reality: women left alone too long get horny.

 

Obvious studio still.  They sucked then and they suck now.

So.  Anyway. Again from Turin, while I still have good Internet access.

A couple of things preoccupy me -- euroenglish for "worry me" -- since I've been away from NYC.

One.  Site traffic suffers terribly when you don't post every day.  I shall translate that into demotic American English: it goes down the terlet.  My question:  "Oh ye of little faith...what gives???"

And B: Will I recognize our country when I return home in a week?  Or will there be new flags flying and new gangs goose-stepping their happy socialist song? 

Kidding, kidding. 

My real anxiety is that Huckabeasts will be preaching creationism and selling me End Time insurance (accented on syllable #1) at the airport.

If Gomer Pyle runs for VP with McCain, I think I'll have to move.  And not just to Canada, America's ice-cold Comfort Zone to the north.

What you can get for 22 euros!

Well, I'm just back from a very interesting dining experience at a local haunt called Osteria FIAT (Fate infretta a tavola = Hurry up and eat!).  It's right near this fancy business hotel, diagonally across from Eataly, which was so crowded we said fuggeddaboutit, and the sort of place where, as Ken observed, Trixie and Norton and Alice and Ralph go for supper. Certainly it's atmospheric, with all sorts of FIAT memorabilia all around.  It's a company town, Turin.

The big news: We ate cheap.

22.50 cheap.  For two.

It would have been less but we ordered a whole litre of mineral water -- for 2.50!

Here's what we got for the 10 euro menu' del giorno:

Rolls

A quartino of very very young red wine apiece -- it seemed like a vivace (slightly sparkling) Bonarda but it did the trick.  It had alcohol, after all.

A primo of raviolini molto al dente with prosciutto inside in a red sauce (only complaint: a bit too salty.  They like salty in Turin, even in the chocolates.)

A secondo of roast pork and peppercorns with spinach.  Dry and cut thin, just the way Ma would have done.

You know, it wasn't all that bad.  Not exactly up to the level of Il Birichin but a small fraction of the cost.  At this point, I'm happy to save a few bucks.

And the joint soit'nly had atmospheah.

Strolling around Turin

This trip to Italy we've enjoyed wonderful weather.  Lots of sun, mild days, crisp evenings.  Yes, the vineyards are muddy, as my shoes can attest, but walking around the towns and cities has been pleasant. 

We've been staying on points at the very cool Le Meridien Lingotto south of the city center.  The building is part of an old Fiat plant, retrofitted in an elegant, understated style.  The ceilings are high, the spaces are large, the furnishings the best sort of modern Italian design.  (The worst sort, hideously ugly and cheapo, is way too easy to find.)  They gave us a huge suite overlooking the railyards, with the tooting of trains and old apartment blocks redolent of the Mussolini era, a real 1930s panorama.  I think they took pity on us because, thanks to subway construction and shitty signs, it took us 45 minutes to get from the other Meridien hotel in this area (right across from the Eataly edifice, which is a retail shrine of the Slow Food, pronounced Zluffud, movement).  Anyway, it's enormously comfortable.  As always in Italy, the bathroom is large and beautifully equipped.

T