For years now, I’ve been smuggling Bele Casel Prosecco Col Fondo into the state of Texas. (I confess, TABC! You got me, Three-Tier System Crusader!). The motivation for my illicit activity was the fact that Bele Casel wines were not legally available in my adoptive state. Without an importer or licensed distributor here, you could […]
News of his passing first began to appear on Sunday: Ernesto Cattel, Prosecco col fondo pioneer and organic and biodynamic advocate, died last week. The cause was an unspecified long-term illness. He was 54 years old according to most media reports. “Our motto was let’s start at the bottom and rise up from the cloudy […]
Above: Giuseppe Rinaldi at his winery in Barolo in 2010. Aggressive enforcement of EU regulations and the prospect of steep fines are forcing him to change the names of his wines. Across the Italian wine world, producers and trade observers have been loudly protesting and denouncing new European Union regulations that restrict what wineries can […]
Posting on the fly this morning on my way to mxp: check out my client Luca Ferraro’s response to a col fondo detractor, including my translation of the comment that sparked the debate.
Bele Casel Prosecco Colfòndo isn’t “officially” available in Texas, but we managed to sneak some in for Christmas eve on the bayou and paired it with Uncle Tim’s east Texas gumbo. For those of you who’ve never had gumbo, it’s a stew made with roux, filé (finely ground sassafras), and meat and/or seafood, and often […]
We’ll be tasting Riccardo Zanotto’s Prosecco Colfondo in San Francisco on Friday, August 17 at the amazing Ceri Smith’s Biondivino from 6-8 p.m. The following post was originally published in March 2011 and provides some background on what exactly Prosecco Col Fondo is… I’ll be at Sotto in Los Angeles tomorrow and Wednesday nights (August […]
Above: Zanotto Prosecco Col Fondo is the Prosecco that I tasted back in the early 1990s when I was living in the Veneto. Bottle fermented, lees aged, unfiltered, salty, crunchy Prosecco made from 100% Glera. That’s the traditional glass, btw, for real Prosecco. No flutes please! The story of how Zanotto Prosecco Col Fondo got […]
Last month, a new consortium of Prosecco ColFondo producers was born in Treviso province, Prosecco’s spiritual homeland: ColFondo Agricolo or the ColFondo Farmers Union. The project, spearheaded by ColFondo advocate and Italian wine authority Gianpaolo Giacobbo, includes “the 10 ColFondo Agricolo Commandments,” production requirements and guidelines for members (below). For those of you who missed […]
“Colfondo” trademark owner Francesco Drusian appears poised to give the designation to the Prosecco DOCG consortia, according to a report published today by the popular Italian wine blog Intravino. “After twelve years,” writes Intravino contributor Giovanni Corazzol, “Drusian has expressed his willingness to give the trademark to the two consortia [Conegliano-Valdobbiadene and Montello-Colli Asolani]. The […]
Most experts agree that there is no incontrovertible fact behind the many theories regarding “labor-inducing foods” and other tricks. But they also agree that, at 39 weeks pregnant (like us; actually 39+), most mothers-to-be would do just about anything to induce labor. We’ve been doing it all (I won’t go into the details). But Baby […]
Do Bianchi 