Thanksgiving vine

November 29, 2009

It’s that time of year again and the holiday season is upon us…

A recent post by Vinogirl on the ubiquitous Vitis californica of my home state got me thinking about the miracle of the vine and its fruit.

Not so long ago, in a comment to my post on grapes under an earlier Tuscan Sun, Vinogirl noted sagaciously that the vine provided “food, drink and firewood for man, leaves for oxen and seeds for pigeons…”

This morning, as Tracie B and I sit around as we do on most Sundays, sipping coffee, surfing the internet, and listening to This American Life, my Sunday New York Times tells me that today the U.S. food stamp program helps feed “one in eight Americans and one in four children.”

It made me think about what winemaker Dora Forsoni (below right, with her partner Patrizia) told me last year when I visited her and she brought out table grapes for us to munch on as we tasted her wine. “My father was so poor,” said the Tuscan native Dora, “that he couldn’t afford fruit for us kids to eat. So he planted a vine so that we’d always have fruit.” Even without tending, the vine will naturally render fruit. The grapes tasted sweet and juicy.

vino nobile

For Tracie B and me, finances are tight (as we try to put away some money for our upcoming wedding) and the business of wine sales continues to be an uphill battle. But the miracle of the vine continues to give us a livelihood, even in the tough economic climate.

The Thanksgiving weekend is almost over and tomorrow we’ll pick it up again after taking the weekend off (a rarity for us these days). In these tough times, when a lot of folks in our country and across the world are struggling, we sure have a lot to be thankful for: love, health, and the miracle of the vine.

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Posted by Do Bianchi

An East Texas Thanksgiving (a marriage of Sangiovese and down-home fixings)

November 27, 2009

jeremy parzen

Way back when, in the late 19th century, did the “Iron Baron” Bettino Ricasoli know that Sangiovese would make for such a great Thanksgiving wine?

thanksgiving

Uncle Tim’s brined and roasted turkey. Brining is the secret to keeping the breast and dark meat moist and flavorful when roasted. Aunt Ida Jean and Uncle Tim hosted all 31 of us!

jeremy parzen

Uncle Tim’s cornbread dressing, including chopped hard-boiled eggs.

thanksgiving

Aunt Gladys’s homemade biscuits.

thanksgiving

Aunt Ida Jean’s sweet potato pie (I was surprised at how well the Chianti Rufina paired with this dish).

thanksgiving

Mrs. B’s eight layer salad. (For those of ya’ll who don’t know what an eight layer salad is, have a look at this Wikipedia entry.)

thanksgiving

Tracie B’s green beans sautéed with onion and garlic and seasoned with nutmeg.

Thank you, Family B, for making me and Mama Judy part of your Thanksgiving celebration! :-)

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Posted by Do Bianchi

Happy Thanksgiving (and some culinary anamorphism)

November 25, 2009

ginger bread

Details from the Ginger Bread Charity Diorama at the Four Seasons Hotel, Austin, Texas. Photos by Tracie B.

Maybe it’s the little boy in me… I’ve always been fascinated with culinary anamorphism — a cultural phenomenon whereby food is refashioned to resemble something else, edible or otherwise.

ginger bread

The tradition of fashioning food to look like buildings stretches back to the Renaissance. One of the most famous examples is torrone nougat: on the occasion of the wedding of Bianca Maria Visconti to Francesco Sforza, October 25, 1441, the bride and groom were presented with a nougat replica of the city’s church bell tower, the so-called Torrione (today known as the Torrazzo) from which the sweet derived its name.

ginger bread

Another such example from recent memory is Abe Lebewohl’s depiction of Manhattan’s Twin Towers, fashioned out of chopped liver from the Second Avenue Deli.

ginger bread

The Art of Cooking by fifteenth-century Italian chef Maestro Martino (which I translated for UC Press, 2005) offers many examples of culinary anamorphism, mostly for the sake of recreating milk and eggs on days when they were forbidden by the Catholic church.

ginger bread

Last night Tracie B had to drag me away from the ginger bread diorama in the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Austin. Our good friend chef Todd Duplechan oversees the creation and construction of this wondrous little city. Each edifice is auctioned off for charity (last year, a celebrity loved it so much, she paid for it to be recreated and reassembled in Las Vegas, “just so she could show how cool Austin is,” said chef Todd).

Happy Thanksgiving, ya’ll!

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Our date with the City, part 2: the best natural wine bar in the U.S.?

November 24, 2009

beaujolais

Above: I may be going out on a limb here when I say that Ten Bells seems to have captured the title of the “best natural wine bar in NYC” but I’ll go ahead and say it anyway. The selection of stinky cru Beaujolais was pretty impressive, even after affable owner Fifi Essome had sold out of many of the labels for his Beaujolais festival the Thursday before our Sunday visit. Photos by Tracie B.

Whether it’s Saignée, Wine Digger, Eric, Alice, or McDuff, it seems like all of my fav bloggers are either writing about or hanging out at The Ten Bells on the Lower East Side of New York City (which takes its name from the homonymous and notorious London pub).

So after Tracie B and I finished lunch with Michele at Kesté, we took a stroll over to the east side and picked up Alice in SoHo and walked down the Bowery to Broome and Orchard on the Lower East Side and tasted a few of the by-the-glass Beaujolais selections that were leftover from the wine bar’s Beaujolais festival the previous Thursday — and what an impressive, if picked-over, list it was!

alice feiring

Above: Alice Feiring is one of my dearest friends and one of the persons I have known the longest in New York. Her book The Battle for Wine and Love was recently released in paperback.

Beyond Lou on Vine in Los Angeles, which remains my favorite American winebar, I can’t think of anywhere else you will find a greater selection of natural, stinky wines. And while Lou can trump nearly any joint for the hipster celebrity sitings on any given night, The Ten Bells seems to have become the official backdrop for the natural wine dialectic of our fine nation and seems to be the official satellite office for visiting natural winemakers.

I liked the way McDuff put it best: “The Ten Bells is mysterious… The Ten Bells is dark… The Ten Bells is Dangerous…” Just quickly scanning Fifi’s hand-written chalkboard wine list as Tracie B, Alice, and I caught up after our last meeting in Paris at Racine’s, I eyed at least a score of labels that I wanted to try. The oysters looked fantastic, too.

We had lots to catch up on but the main topic of conversation during our all-too-short visit was Alice’s recent and heated exchange with The Wine Spectator’s James Suckling, who was finally hipped to natural wine by our mutual friend (and jazz guitar great) Anthony Wilson. I’ll be connecting with Anthony early next month and I’ll be sure to get the juice behind the juice he turned Suckling on to!

Our date with the City was too short and there were so many folks and places that we would have loved to have seen. I can’t say that I miss living in New York but you gotta love the buzz of that city, the energy, and the wine. With London, Paris, and Rome, New York is right up there as one of the great wine destinations of the world — whether you’re drinking old Nebbiolo at Manducatis in Queens or stinky, natural Beaujolais on the Lower East Side at The Ten Bells. I sure don’t need it everyday… but a beautiful, crisp, clear fall day in November, with some yummy Beaujolais in our tummies, catching up with some dear friends, felt just right…

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Our date with the City, part 1: pizza at Kesté

November 23, 2009

faicco

Above: It was such a beautiful fall day in Manhattan yesterday, perfect for some noshing, tasting, and strolling. Before we hit Kesté Pizza e Vino, I took Tracie B for some rice balls, prosciutto balls, and potato croquettes at Faicco’s Pork Store on Bleeker (old school, no website). There aren’t many things I miss about living in the City, but Faicco is one of them. (Photos by Tracie B, except for this one, obviously.)

Ever since reading Eric’s post in April, Tracie B and I have been dying to get to Kesté in Manhattan. We both needed to be at work on Monday morning so we only had a few precious hours yesterday to visit the City before we jumped on a plane to head back to Austin. (That would be The City, the apotheosis of cities!)

Above: The Regina Margherita at Kesté. Tracie B also ordered another Neapolitan classic, Broccoli Raab and Sausage (white) Pizza, and pizzaiolo Roberto also sent over his signature Battilocchio, yesterday with figs and gorgonzola.

Who better to eat authentic Neapolitan pizza with than our good friend Michele Scicolone? Charles was otherwise occupied on his way back from Montefalco and the “Experimental Classification of Montefalco Sagrantino DOCG tasting” and conference so it was up to me to accompany these two beautiful ladies to lunch.

Above: Michele is the author of countless tomes on Italian cookery. She and Charles are another thing I miss about living in New York.

I wish I could share with you the joy of dining alla napoletana with Tracie B, who lived for nearly five years in Ischia off the coast of Naples: at Kesté, she was like a kid in a Neapolitan candy store and with her eagle eyes, she swiftly selected a wine that wasn’t on the list and that I had never tasted before, Lettere.

Above: I had never had a wine from Lettere (Penisola Sorrentina) before. It was delicious.

But you’ll have to tune into her blog My Life Italian for a report on that part. As they say in Latin, ubi major minor cessat: I don’t know anyone else in the world who knows more about Campania wines than her and she’s promised us a blog post about this wonderful bottle.

I guess there are a few things (bagels, pastrami, pork stores, friends like Charles and Michele, not necessarily in that order) that I miss about living in Manhattan. But without Tracie B at my side, they just wouldn’t be any fun, would they?

We had a great time on the East Coast but we were both so happy to get back to Austin where we belong. There’s no place like my new home, Dorothy…

Tomorrow, part II: tasting natural Beaujolais with you-know-who (who else?). Stay tuned…

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Posted by Do Bianchi

Congratulations Eileen and Greg!

November 22, 2009

What a great wedding…

Eileen and Greg are a gorgeous couple and their wedding was an immensely joyous occasion. I have never seen so many people cry tears of happiness at a wedding ceremony (myself included!). Not a dry eye in the house!

The Vajra showed beautifully, too. The bartender told me she’d “never poured so much red wine at a wedding. Everyone loves it. What is it?” Great choice, Greg!

Greg’s been such a good friend to me and I love him a lot. It was SO MUCH FUN to join him on stage and do my toast. That’s Dan (aka Jean-Luc Retard, bass, Nous Non Plus) stage left.

jeremy parzen

We’re a little rough around the edges this morning but it was worth every moment… such a great feeling to celebrate a couple so in love…

CONGRATULATIONS EILEEN AND GREG! A great wedding, a great couple. We love you…

Happy Sunday ya’ll.

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Posted by Do Bianchi

Bolly and NJ pizza: who could want for more?

November 21, 2009

Tracie B and I are going to have a hard time topping the wedding guest welcome gifts left for us by betrothed Eileen and Greg. When we arrived last night at 2 a.m. to our hotel in West Orange, NJ, we found a chilled bottle of Bollinger Special Cuvée (the official wine of the band that both Greg and I play in, Nous Non Plus) waiting in our room. Today, as we are primping for the wedding and I am practicing the Beatles songs I am to perform during the ceremony, Tracie B ordered peperoni pizza and broccoli raab from Enzo’s in West Orange and we popped the cork on that bottle. Who could want for more? (A funny thing: Tracie B grew up in West Orange, Texas. No genuine Italian-American pizza there!)

We’re really looking forward to the wedding tonight and celebrating with Eileen and Greg!

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Posted by Do Bianchi

Antonio knows that pleasure is the child of pain

November 20, 2009

From the “run don’t walk department”…

Last night, after leading an Italian wine tasting in Houston, I finally got the chance to sit down with cousins Marty and Joanne for a proper dinner at Catalan, where — and I’ll just cut to the chase since I need to get my butt on a plane in a few hours — wine director Antonio Gianola’s list just blew me away. Joly by the glass? Erbaluce, Vin Jaune from the Jura, Edi Simčič Pinot Grigio, López de Heredia, Nikolaihof, 1989 Domaine des Baumard????!!! There were just so many great wines that I wanted to taste… and that was just in the chapters devoted to white wine! Antonio’s list is precise and informed, informative and fun, easy to navigate for the neophyte and thrilling to leaf through for the connoisseur. There is a threshold where a wine list becomes a thrill of its own and a form of profound dilectio for wine lovers (remember this piece by Eric?). Antonio’s list passes through that threshold with ethereal and seamless celerity. And the best part? His prices are among the most if not the most aggressive I’ve seen anywhere in the U.S. Click through to the restaurant’s website to read his list (which Antonio seems to update like clockwork). And check out this profile of importer Neal Rosenthal by Houston Chronicle wine writer Dale Roberston where Antonio is featured (and where I lifted the photo).

De vinographia: Perhaps the greatest wine writers of all are the authors of great wine lists.

Antonio loves the desert, Antonio prays for rain…

Tracie B and I are on our way to New Jersey for the wedding of one of my best and dearest friends in the world (and the drummer in Nous Non Plus). Stay tuned… I heard something about some Vajra being poured tomorrow night and some Beatles songs… mmmmmm…

*****

“Antonio’s Song”

—Michael Franks

Antonio lives life’s frevo
Antonio prays for truth
Antonio says our friendship
Is a hundred-proof
The vulture that circles Rio
Hangs in this L.A. sky
The blankets they give the Indians
Only make them die
But sing the Song
Forgotten for so long
And let the Music flow
Like Light into the Rainbow
We know the Dance, we have
We still have the chance
To break these chains and flow
Like Light into the Rainbow
Antonio loves the desert
Antonio prays for rain
Antonio knows that Pleasure
Is the child of Pain
And lost in La Califusa
When most of my hope was gone
Antonio’s samba led me
To the Amazon
We sing the Song
Forgotten for so long
And let the music flow
Like Light into the Rainbow
We know the Dance, we have
We still have the chance
To break these chains and flow
Like Light into the Rainbow.

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Posted by Do Bianchi

An Italian wine walks into a bar…

November 19, 2009

austin wine merchant

Above: Yesterday, I tasted through the current releases of Fèlsina with my friends, from left, Craig Collins (who works for the winery’s distributor in Texas), John Roenigk (owner and manager of The Austin Wine Merchant), and Chiara Leonini, Fèlsina’s export manager. For the record, Fèlsina is pronounced FEHL-see-nah.

It’s a labor of love and it’s my self-appointed duty: I just spent the first hour of my day translating Franco’s editorial on the list of The Wine Spectator’s top 100 wines and the Italian showing in the list. You’ve heard me say it before: Franco (the “Giuseppe Baretti” of Italian wine) is a friend, a colleague, a mentor, a partner, and one of the wine writers whom I admire most. I encourage you to read what he has to say: here in America, where few read the Italian wine media, we are often unaware of how the Italians view us and our wine media and how our wine media generally ignores the wines and the styles of wine that Italians hold to be the best representation of their enology.

In another editorial published today, by a young wine blogger and marketing consultant based in Apulia, the author writes: “Just think that the first wine in the list is an American wine that costs $27 and the second is a Spanish wine that also costs $27. In order to pay the tidy sum of $110, you have to get to the eighth place in the list for a Tuscan wine that costs a hefty $110!”

Today, I’ll leave the editorializing and pontificating to others, but I do encourage you to put it in your pipe and smoke it, so to speak.

As it just so happens, yesterday I tasted with the export manager for a winery that landed the thirteenth position in the magazine’s list: Fèlsina, whose Fontalloro, a barriqued 100% Sangiovese that has long been a popular wine in the U.S.

“Some would call it a Super Tuscan,” said Chiara (above), “even though I don’t like that term.” And, in fact, the wine actually qualifies as a Chianti, even though the winery has chosen historically to declassify it, initially to vino da tavola status and now IGT (it was first released in 1983, she said, the same year as the first release of the winery’s “cru” Chianti Classico, Rancia).

I’m a bona fide fan of Fèlsina but my favorites are always their entry-level wines, made from 100% Sangiovese grapes, vinified in the traditional style, and aged in large old-oak casks that have been used over and over again. The wines generally cost under $25 and I highly recommend them. The 2006 harvest was a good vintage for these wines, 2007 a great vintage. (I also had fun trading notes with Chiara about our university days in Italy. She studied Chomsky and generative linguistics at Florence, around the same time I studied the history of the Italian language and prosody at Padua and the Scuola Normale in Pisa. We knew a lot of the same professors!)

I’ve spent enough time in front of the computer this morning and it’s time for me to head to Houston, where I’ll be speaking about and pouring Italian wine tonight. So I’ll leave the punch line up to you Italo Calvinos out there…

An Italian wine walks into a bar…

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Posted by Do Bianchi

The Piedmontese are coming! Cavour’s “enological crusade”

November 17, 2009

If we want everything to stay the same, everything must change…

visconti

Above: To watch Visconti’s battle scenes is to see the hand of a Renaissance master in motion. I highly recommend this epic classic.

Last night, as Tracie B and I watched the first 90 minutes of Visconti’s 1963 technicolor classic Il gattopardo (The Leopard), I couldn’t help but think of the passages we read from Count Camillo Cavour’s epistolary in my “Italian Wine and Civilization” seminar last week at the Austin Wine Merchant. In the opening sequences of the movie, the Prince of Salina reads aloud from a letter sent to him by courier from his brother-in-law: “My dear Fabrizio, I am writing to you in a state of utter collapse. Such dreadful news in the paper. The Piedmontese have landed. We are all lost.” The backdrop for the movie is Garibalidi’s Expedition of the Thousand: in 1860, General Giuseppe Garibaldi landed in Sicily with an army of “a thousand” and defeated the forces of the Kingdom of Two Sicilies. In doing so, he implemented the final (and historically symbolic) stage of the Unification of Italy, orchestrated, in large part, by Count Cavour in Piedmont.

visconti

Above: The banquet and ball sequences of Visconti’s film are among the most celebrated in international cinema history. Scorsese is a fan…

A very short 15 years before, and three years before the first Italian War of Independence in 1848, Count Cavour — the architect of Italian unity — was planning another crusade of sorts, an “enological crusade”:

    To Giacomo Giovanetti, Novara

    I openly confess that the excellent wine of Sizzano has almost convinced me that luxury wines can be produced in Piedmont. To a great degree, this wine possesses that which bestow prestige on the wines of France and which our wines generally lack, bouquet. The bouquet of the Sizzano does not resemble that of Bordeaux but rather the bouquet of Burgundy where wines like Clos Vougeot and Romanet [Romanée] enjoy supremacy over all the wines of France for their delicate qualities.

    Therefore, it has been proven that the hills of Novara can compete with the hills of Burgundy. In order to triumph in this struggle, [estate] owners must diligently oversee the production of their wines so that the wines will be rich, elegant, and indulgent. I hope to take part in this enological crusade [italics mine] and I will do what I can in the circles within which I move. In order to act expeditiously, it is crucial that you inform as to whether or not these wines of this caliber are available for sale and what is their price. If Count Solaro ever gives up his post — something I doubt he’d ever be willing to do — I will send the wines of Sizzano as a gift to all the diplomats. In the meantime, I will drink them with my friends and toast to your health.

    Turin, July, 1845. (Translation mine.)*

viscontiAs the letter reveals (in my unpublished translation), it was a wine from the township of Sizzano (in the province of Novara, Piedmont, not far from Gattinara) that first inspired Cavour’s “enological crusade,” to make wine in Piedmont that could rival the wines of Burgundy.

With this in mind, I couldn’t help but find uncanny Franco’s post today, announcing a wonderful tasting of Langa Nebbiolo and Burgundies this weekend in the town of La Morra (in the heart of Langa). The tasting, entitled Their Majesties (aka, Nebbiolo and Pinot Noir), is intended to create dialog and discussion of the affinities and differences between these two noble grapes and terroirs.

Today, as Italy’s tenuous unity teeters more precariously than ever on the divide between north and south, it might seem to some that Cavour’s enolgoical crusade has been the more successful. “If we want everything to stay the same,” says the Prince of Salina, “everything must change.” (That’s the cover of the editio princeps of the English translation of Lampedusa’s 1958 novel Il gattopardo, published in 1960, and given to us by Tracie B’s dear friend Lena.)

visconti

Above: Tracie B’s ragù was so good last night with a bottle of the 2007 Dolcetto by Marchesi di Gresy. We love that wine…

I wish I could spend the whole day reflecting and writing about Cavour and Nebbiolo, Lampedusa and Visconti, Nebbiolo and Pinot Noir… but, alas, it’s already 9 a.m. and time to get to work and hit the market and “move some boxes,” as they say in the business. I’m headed to San Antonio… Stay tuned… We’ll be watching the second half of the movie tomorrow night…

In other Nebbiolo news…

I love it when McDuff writes about one of his favorite producers of Nebbiolo, Vajra, as he did today… Check it out…

* Translation copyright Jeremy Parzen 2007.

6 Comments | de photographia, de vino, de vinographia | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Do Bianchi

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