Monthly Archives: March 2010

The Barbera 7 ends its journey at the legendary Felicin in Monforte

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The Barbera 7 ended its week-long tour of tastings and winery visits in Asti and Langa with some old Nebbiolo at the legendary Da Felicin in Monforte d’Alba. The last wine we opened together was a 1978 Franco-Fiorina Barbaresco, a bygone bottle, to borrow Eric’s phrase. Not everyone agreed with my assessment of the wine but I thought it was fantastic (Frank and Charles would have loved it, I’m sure, for I have drunk many old expressions of such great Nebbiolo with them).

Owner, chef, polyglot, and showman Nino Rocca’s food was excellent last night. His asparagus with savory zabaglione was superb.

His cooking is colorful and creative, riffing off the Piedmontese canon, like these tajerin dressed with ragù and new garlic.

The décor at Felicin is elegant 19th century, the atmosphere warm and jovial, and the cellar… aaaahhhh… the cellar… That’s an artist label 1989 Bartolo Mascarello created especially for the restaurant. A little out of my price range… but, wow…

Nino and his wife Silvia are extremely sweet folks. He and I like to joke that he looks more Jewish and I look more Italian…

Come valanga scendo come tormenta salgo (I descend like an avalanche, like a blizzard I climb). Nino showed us how partisans used to leave messages for one another by scribbling notes on the back of paintings so that the Germans wouldn’t find them. The text on the back of the frame he showed us was the motto of the Alpine battalion “L’Aquila” (“The Eagle”) when it fought for the liberation between 1944-45.

Bye-bye, Barbera 7, I’ll miss you guys. It’s been an incredible week and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate your support — professional and personal. You’re the best…

From left, clockwise: Thor, Whitney, Cory, Fredric, Stuart, me, and Jon.

I’ve been gone for a week now and the homesickness is really beginning to get to me. One more day of meetings and then an evening in Milan with friends… I can’t wait to hold my sweet Tracie P in my arms and tell her over and over again how much I love her…

Denis Lin, one of the coolest cats, and the best tajerin

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Chinese wine writer Denis Lin was one of the coolest cats I met on this trip. He draws the label of many of the wines he tastes in his tasting book. “This way, I don’t get drunk,” he said. His drawings are amazing.

One of the cool things about Barbera Meeting was the folks I met from all over the world. There were a lot of Asian buyers and writers here…

Denis, above, is currently in talks to appear in the sequel to The Barbera 7, scheduled release 2011, working title: The Barbera 8.

In other news…

The best tajerin I’ve ever had.

At Ristorante Antica Torre in Barbaresco with Gaia Gaja.

Thanks again, Gaia, for an unforgettable meal, from The Barbera 7! :-)

Ristorante Antica Torre
Via Torino, 64
12050 Barbaresco
0173 63 51 70

Highly recommended…

The Marchioness of Monferrato

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Above: Yesterday we “tasted” the terroir in a cellar in Monferrato at one of my new favorite wineries, La Casaccia. The unique, sandy tufaceous subsoil of Monferrato is what gives the wine its outstanding minerality and savory flavors. As per Monferrato’s tradition, La Casaccia’s cellar was literally excavated out of the subsoil. Remarkably, the crumbly walls need no support.

Long before I really knew much about Italian wine, other than the fact that I loved it, I was intrigued by the wines of Monferrato.

As Boccaccio recounts in the first day of his Decameron, when the king of France called on the Marchioness of Monferrato: “Many courses were served with no lack of excellent and rare wines, whereby the King was mightily pleased, as also by the extraordinary beauty of the Marchioness, on whom his eye from time to time rested.”

The wines of Monferrato were already famous by the middle ages and long before the current renaissance of Italian wines, Grignolino and Barbera grown in Monferrato enjoyed wide fame and graced the tables of nobility and clergy.

Above: I also really loved the wines of Marco and Giuseppina Canato, children of share croppers who now grow and vinify excellent Barbera and Grignolino and run a homey bed and breakfast. Just look at them! You can’t help but adore them.

I don’t have time this morning to post any further, as I have been re-posting vigorously over at Barbera2010. The Barbera 7 are a loquacious bunch!

Above: I also loved this single-vineyard Grignolino “Tumas” by Scamuzza and the inimitable Laura Bertone, who paired her groovy, mineral-driven wine with oysters!

I’m exhausted after 3 days of interpreting and blogging and tasting. I miss Tracie P terribly, and in the spirit of honest blogging (something we’ve been talking about a great deal, here in Asti), I cannot conceal that a very good friend of mine has broken my heart… Yesterday was a tough day but the Barbera 7 rallied around me, with cheer and words of support, and sweet messages from my beautiful wife through the night assuaged the hurt…

How can you mend a broken heart?

The Barbera Boys and Girl make headlines in Italy

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That’s my fellow “Barbera Boy” Fredric Koeppel reading one of the articles that has appeared about the “bloggers” who have come to Asti to taste Barbera. Photo by Thor Iverson.

It seems that the novelty of our visit here in Piedmont has raised a few eyebrows. Yesterday in the local edition of the Italian daily La Stampa and today in the national edition, headlines have appeared, talking about the “Barbera Boys.”

This morning, the third day of Barbera Meeting, we’re tasting Barbera del Monferrato and I’ve been frenetically reposting the others’s posts on our aggregate blog, Barbera2010.com.

Above: Last night, we read the article that appeared in the national paper when it came online using my Blackberry. Photo by Cory Cartwright.

I didn’t have time this morning to translate the entire article but here’s what I was able to do… More later… and More on the heated exchange that occurred last night between Belgian wine writer Bernard Arnould, my good friend Charles Scicolone, and legendary winemaker Michele Chiarlo. Suffice it to say, sparks flew, and I’m not talking about volatile acidity. Please check out Barbera2010.com for updates.

Here’s the link to the entire article in Italian, “Barbera Meeting: this wine is good and I’m going to write about it on my blog.”

    Most arrived with their notebooks in hand and their laptop computers to take notes. These tasters were invited to the province of Asti to take part in “Barbera Meeting,” a conference open to food and wine writers, a tasting and debut of Piedmont’s Barbera…

    The tasters have 120 labels available to them. “Four days organized (and financed) by the Province of Asti to attempt,” says alderman Fulvio Brusa, “to reach beyond the borders of the province and seriously share our wines with the world.” It’s going to take some courage: this year, the invitation has also been extended to the bloggers, the “irreverent” plumes of the web.

    Since Monday, six Americans and an Englishman have been filling up the pages of their blog, http://www.barbera2010.com, with lively notes. They’re doing so in real time, as they taste the wines, together with their impressions of their trip, praise, and criticism. They also include their photos: the last one today, a photo of Nizza Monferrato covered with snow. It’s also possible to converse with them in real time: “Today alone, we’ve had nearly 1,000 page views from America,” says Jeremy Parzen at the Enoteca in [the town of] Canelli, where the delegation was invited to attend a conference led by viticulture experts, including [professor and enologist] Vincenzo Gerbi and Michele Chiarlo.

    It’s the first time in Asti, Monferrato, and the Belbo Valley for the “Barbera Boys,” as they call themselves. “I’ve been to Alba many times,” confessed Jeremy, “but this area has proved a surprise.” He offers some advice: “Don’t let Barbera become a Californian wine. Let the wine speak for itself, with the voice of its terroir. Have faith in the wine and have faith in yourself.” …

    Have a good time surfing the web!

A face for radio (my Radio Marconi interview today at 11:50 Italian time)

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Above: A face only a mother (and Tracie P could love). Photo by Alfonso.

Yesterday, my friend Samanta Cornaviera, radio personality for Radio Marconi in Milan, interviewed me, asking me questions about Barbera and Barbera Meeting 2010. You can here the interview here at 11:50 a.m. Italian time.

Thanks again, Samy! :-)

Zero sulfite unfiltered Cortese, killer Ruchè and why they eat cat in Vicenza

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Ruche

One of the stand-out wines for me yesterday was the 2007 Ruchè by eccentric winemaker Marco Crivelli. I wish I had time this morning to report our philosophical confabulatio but I’m rushing to get ready for today’s tastings. Among other things, he pointed out to me that every Italian citizen owns Euro 40,000 worth of Italy’s cultural heritage. He’s as nutty as he looks and his wines are off-the-charts good.

Marcarino

But the wine that really, truly, and entirely rocked my boat, was this unfiltered, no-SO2 added (i.e., no added sulfite) Cortese by Paolo Marcarini. The wine will be filtered before bottling, but, man, I could drink it, as is, every day. I loved this wine and the only thing that could possibly make it better would be if I were to get to taste it with my Tracie P. Some day we will…

In other news…

Alfonso’s comment on the cat recipe scandal and Vicentine winemaker Fausto Maculan (who very publicly came to the cat-eater’s defense) brought to mind an old saying that they have in the Veneto: venexiani gran signori, padovani gran dotori, vicentini magnagati, veronesi tuti mati (Venetians are fancy folks, Paduans are learned folks, in Vicenza they eat cats, and in Verona they’re all crazy).

Breakfast in Italy

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Italian bread

The bread was still warm when I had breakfast this morning at our hotel in Asti. Pillowy on the inside and firm but not too crunchy on the outside. I like bread and butter for breakfast in Italy or bread with one of the many spreadable cheeses.

Italian cuisine — la cucina italiana — has conquered the world over… Pizza, pasta, al dente, panino, focaccia are just some of the words and expressions that have become sine qua non phonemes of the culinary lexicon. (Even cats in America enjoy “Tuscan” cuisine, a fact I find ironic in the light of the recent cat recipe scandal in Italy.)

Above: You’ll find a great breakfast spread even in a modest hotel.

Italy-bound travelers spend so much time thinking and talking the great lunches and dinners but we often neglect to annotate one of the most important meals of the day in any country: breakfast, la prima colazione, literally, the first collation, a first “coming together” etymologically speaking (according to the OED, “A light meal or repast: one consisting of light viands or delicacies (e.g. fruit, sweets, and wine), or that has needed little preparation (often ‘a cold collation’). ‘A repast; a treat less than a feast'”).

Above: We’re in Piedmont where robiola is a queen among cheeses. Robiola, it’s what’s for breakfast, as Robert Mitchum would say.

My “Italian” breakfast usually consists of bread with butter or cheese, fruit juice, and coffee. But the Italian breakfast spread always includes a selection of stewed and fresh fruit, yogurt, charcuterie and cheese (for the German visitors).

Above: Sometimes a pear is more than just a pear. But it’s too early in the morning to go into the Freudian implications of fruit.

This trip, so far so good. We had a fun dinner last night at what seems to be Asti’s most popular Sunday-night pizzeria, Pizzeria Francese, including a stunning Renato Ratti 2001 Barolo Marcenesco (yes, I drank wine with my pizza!).

Tasting starts today at 9 a.m. so I gotta run! More later… Thanks for checking in… and, btw, we’ll be updating the Barbera blog with minute-to-minute updates on our impressions of the tasting… well, not, really minute-by-minute, but you get the picture!