Monthly Archives: April 2010

Vinitaly observed from afar

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Vinitaly went on without me this year. As much I was glad to spend some time at home this week, after already too much time on the road in 2010, I can’t conceal that I was disappointed not to attend this year. But I’ve been following a lot of truly great blogging from the fair. Here’s a round-up of some of the blogs I’ve been following so that I can get my virtual fair on…

Avvinare really took it up a notch with some great coverage of the tastings she attended. I really liked her post on the Franciacorta seminar (and highly recommend all of her posts from the fair).

I’m also dying to read Tom Hyland’s notes on the Franciacorta tasting but his not-yet-posted notes on a Vermentino Nero (!!!) are the ones keeping me on the edge of my seat and glued to my screen. He posted some first impressions here.

A lot of folks received fancy awards, including Eric Asimov who was given a Grandi Cru d’Italia prize for best foreign wine writer, as reported by the excellent blog Consumazione Obbligatoria.

Ale over at Montalcino Report posted about a prize given to his family’s importer Tony Terlato (and to other Italian American notables) by the American Chamber of Commerce in Italy. I grabbed that picture of Ale’s stand, above, where I taste every year, from Ale’s Facebook fan page.

I also read about Italian president Giorgio Napolitano’s historic visit to the fair over at the ANSA English-language feed and I translated some of Mr. Franco Ziliani’s thoughts about lame duck agriculture minister Luca Zaia’s braggadocio over at VinoWire.

And of course, Vinitaly wouldn’t be Vinitaly without at least one day of rain, as Ale reported, and some Miss Vinitaly watching by top sommelier Andrea Gori.

But the blogger that’s really been killing me has been Alfonso, who’s been “turning Visentin” without me!

Xe sempre l’ultimo giosso queo che imbriaga…

Reunions and Indian Paintbrushes

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Prodottori del Barbaresco 2005 Barbaresco was the wine that I ordered to share with the adults on Saturday night in Houston at the Levy-Parzen-Rosenberg family reunion, although not everyone cared to try my selection. That’s Aunt Lilian (from left), cousin Marty, and father Zane. I guess reunions like this are bound to be sweet and bitter — the glass shared and the glass refused. It seemed only fitting that my wine of choice would be Produttori del Barbaresco since its flavors and aromas, its terroir and its ethos are red threads woven into the fabric of my life with Tracie P. The glass offered, the glass received, the glass refused.

Marty did a great job of organizing the dinner on Saturday night and cousins Dana and Neil treated everyone to a beautiful brunch on Sunday morning.

It’d be untrue for me to say that I wasn’t a little bit melancholy on the drive back to Austin from Houston. The sky was gray and cloudy but the fields were full of brilliant colors, like these Indian Paintbrushes.

The Texas countryside is beautiful this time of year.

Tracie P and I took our time getting home, making a detour around Zionville to enjoy the beautiful springtime scenery and to talk about the history of my family and the many kinfolk she met over the weekend.

And to remember the sweet fruit of the wine and its balance with the bitterness of its tannin.

Will brake for Bluebonnets and BBQ

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Tracie P and I traveled east today from Austin to Houston for the Levy family reunion this weekend, with a lot of Levys and Parzens and Rosenbergs coming in from the east and west coasts and Indiana.

It’s Texas Bluebonnet season and wow, what a gorgeous drive today from Austin, with folks braking everywhere to admire the beautiful springtime fields!

We couldn’t resist a quick roll in the Bluebonnets… ;-)

And I know BrooklynGuy will never forgive me but I also couldn’t resist Welch’s Grape Soda — icy cold, in a GLASS BOTTLE — at the Southside Market in Elgin, Texas.

The brisket was very good, the sausage excellent. Sides also tasty. Highly recommended, especially for the Southside Market hot sauce.

A disturbance in the Pour

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I felt a great disturbance in the Pour, as if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has happened.

The Pour has been folded into the The New York Times aggregate eating and drinking blog.

You were our only hope, Obi-Wan Cannubi.

You are a Jedi Master among wine bloggers: the Pour was what gives a Jedi wine blogger his power. It was an energy field created by all vinous things. It surrounded us and penetrated us. It bound the galaxy together.

The Pour will be with you, always.

Credit where credit is due: I owe the above punny title to Alfonso. In exchange I offered free use of “mishegas impossible.”

98 López de Heredia rosé and a gordita at Fonda San Miguel, anyone?

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fonda san miguel

As much as Tracie P and I LOVE Austin’s Fonda San Miguel (a restaurant considered by many, and rightly so, one of the best Mexican restaurants in the U.S.), it would be untrue for me to say that we are fans of its wine list (dominated by new world Cabernet, Merlot, Pinot Noir, and Chardonnay). But when we cozied up at the bar the other night for one of our favorite guilty-pleasure dinners, we were thrilled to find the 1999 López de Heredia Viña Gravonia (white) on the by-the-glass list and the 1998 Viña Tondonia Rosado Gran Reserva by the bottle. That gordita paired brilliantly with the acidity and fruit in this gently oxidative wine.

fonda san miguel

I couldn’t resist posting this photo Tracie P snapped that night. You can see the beautiful stained glass in the ceiling reflecting in the wine.

And on the subject of the 1998 Rosado, you can also find it by the bottle at a happy-hour price (too obscene to report here!) over on Josh Loving’s list at Fino, from 5-7 p.m. My advice? Run don’t walk…

In other Spanish-speaking news…

guerrero

Tracie P and I attended a fascinating lecture and presentation by our friend George O. Jackson Jr. at the University of Texas Ransom Center the other night.

George O. (as he is known) has been traveling in and photographing folk culture in Guerrero, Mexico for 20 years. These images are from the jaguar dances and competitions performed by Indian tribes there as an offering to G-d.

guerrero

The pain the participants endure in the dances, George O. explained, is one of the ways they offer sacrifice to their vision of the Judeo-Christian G-d in return for their bountiful rain.

His photos are not yet entirely available for viewing online, but you can see some of them here, from a previous exhibition. Truly fascinating stuff and simply thrilling images…

Happy Friday, ya’ll… I sure am ready to get my weekend on!

The Easter-springtime miracle of Vin Santo

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Today, as I watch the events of the Italian wine industry trade fairs unfold from afar, a Facebook friend from Padua, Andrea Fasolo, reminds me of a small miracle that takes place in the Veneto (where the trade fairs take place) and elsewhere in Italy during this time of the year: Vin Santo, via a post by VinoPigro from a few years ago.

It’s natural to think of Vin Santo as quintessentially Tuscan, since Tuscany is the region that continues to produce excellent expressions of Vin Santo with great commercial and qualitative success. But, however small the numbers in terms of volume, Vin Santo continues to be produced in other regions of Italy, notably the Veneto and Trentino-Alto Adige.

While most wineries finished vinification long before Christmas of 2009, producers of Vin Santo are only now pressing their dried grapes (like those in the image above, left) for fermentation. One of the possible explanations of the name Vin Santo or Vinsanto, i.e., holy wine, is that fermentation is carried during the period of Easter — springtime, renewal, rebirth — when “Christ rises” again. One of the unique elements of Vin Santo is that fermentation occurs not when temperatures are cooling in fall but when temperatures are beginning to rise in the spring.

But the Easter miracle of Vin Santo doesn’t end here. Once vinification takes place, the wine is transferred to small barrels and laid to rest in the attic of a farm house or barn. There, the wine will remain unmolested for two years and it will undergo at least two more fermentations, “rising again” next spring and the spring thereafter.

The images here — like the one to the right, where the grapes are being removed from the racks where they’ve dried during the winter — come from the Canoso winery in Brognoligo, the “hamlet with the most surface area planted to vine” in the “township with the most surface area planted to vine” in all of Italy, Monteforte d’Alpone, near the town of Soave, in the Veneto, just east of Verona. Canoso is one of the handful of wineries that still makes Vinsanto there.

I was happy to sit the wine fairs out this year since I’ve been on the road so much already in 2010. But I’ve been enjoying the coverage on blogs like Alfonso’s and Ale’s. If I were there, I’d just be complaining about being in my region, the Veneto, and not being able to visit with my many friends in Padua and Belluno. But thanks to Andrea, I can still taste the sweet must (above, not yet filtered nor fined) of the Vinsanto that they’re making now… one of life’s holy, small miracles…

An orange wine ante litteram

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The Latin expression ante litteram means literally before the letter, in other words, before the written word. I’ve recently had the opportunity to taste what I consider (and others are free to disagree) an “an orange wine ante litteram, id est, an orange wine that was created before the expression or notion of “orange wine” existed: the 1999 Trebbiano d’Abruzzo by Edoardo Valentini. We opened a bottle on Monday at the Orange Wine dinner at Vino Vino in Austin. This wine, made by Valentini himself (as my colleague John Paine pointed out), was fresh and bright, with youthful, powerful tannic structure, nuanced floral notes on the nose, and rich fruit flavor in the mouth. A wine, we agreed, still has many years ahead of it. Truly one of the greatest white wines I’ve ever tasted…

I wasn’t the only one who dug the Valentini and the other wines on Monday night: so did Michael Barnes, social columnist for the Austin American Statesman, who weighed in with this ambrosial post…

The last day of Passover and a time to begin again

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Above (literally “above”): I took this picture of the full moon over San Diego on the first night of the Passover, the night before the first day, during my family’s Passover seder.

The Passover is over. Yesterday was the last day. For the Jews living in Israel, there are seven days of Passover. For Jews living in the Diaspora, there are eight. Yesterday was the last day.

The Passover, Easter, and the Garden of Adonis… All of these rituals have their roots in an ancient (ancient before the time of the written word) cult of death, rebirth, and renewal. Doing some sleuthing this morning, I found this wonderful passage in The Golden Bough (33):

    At the approach of Easter, Sicilian women sow wheat, lentils, and canaryseed in plates, which they keep in the dark and water every two days. The plants soon shoot up; the stalks are tied together with red ribbons, and the plates containing them are placed on the sepulchres which, with the effigies of the dead Christ, are made up in Catholic and Greek churches on Good Friday, just as the gardens of Adonis were placed on the grave of the dead Adonis. The practice is not confined to Sicily, for it is observed also at Cosenza in Calabria, and perhaps in other places. The whole custom—sepulchres as well as plates of sprouting grain—may be nothing but a continuation, under a different name, of the worship of Adonis.

Indeed, the Passover and Easter “may be nothing but a continuation, under a different name, of the worship of Adonis.”

One of the interesting traces of this cult in the Passover is the “burning of the bread” in the Jewish tradition — the banishment of yeast from the home and the dinner table. Once the Passover is over, yeast is allowed again.

Tracie P and I have spent a lot of time thinking about yeast and how it relates to wine — natural yeast, native yeast, ambient yeast, cultured yeast, selected yeast, “killer” yeast — over the last year. One of the things that struck me about the Passover this year (something I’d never thought about before) is how the Passover ritual requires that we remove all yeast from our lives while requiring us to talk and think about yeast at the same time.

And so it is a time to begin again and watch the yeast do its work. In the words of one of my Italian colleagues, ricominciamo…

You just gotta love Italian T.V., right? And man, you gotta love a name like Pappalardo, literally lard soup. Leavened bread, anyone?

Scenes from an orange wine dinner

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Tracie P and I had a blast at the orange wine dinner last night, at Vino Vino in Austin, where I poured and spoke about the wines. Life could be worse… Here are some “scenes from an orange wine dinner” for your virtual and vicarious enjoyment… Photos by Tracie P…

movia puro

Got it all going with a little bit of 2000 Puro by Movia, disgorged tableside (not really an orange wine, but a great place to start).

paolo bea

The first three wines were all by the hand of Giampiero Bea. Man, the Arboreus was outta sight… and I always love the Santa Chiara. The Coenobium, always a go-to for us.

gary clark jr

Shared a little Lunar by Movia with B3 player Mike Flanigin and Gary Clark Jr., who played later that night. Man, only in Austin: killer orange wine followed by some of the most insane blues musicians I’ve ever heard… I’m not shittin’ you, either…

lewis dickson

I was geeked to taste with Lewis Dickson, arguably the best winemaker in Texas and probably the only one who uses native yeast and a natural approach to winemaking.

seared flounder

Chef Esteban’s cooking was OFF THE CHARTS AMAZING last night. Seared flounder with purée of English peas. For the complete menu, click here.

vodopivec

I had a second glass of the 2005 Vodopivec Vitovska. Man, I dig that wine.

gravner

No, that’s not old man piss. It’s GRAVNER (2003 Ribolla Gialla Anfora)!

FRANCO ZILIANI ARRESTED FOR DRUNK DRIVING!

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well, not really… but he’d like to be arrested… read on…

Above: Unidentified man is subjected to a random breathalyzer test somewhere in the Province of Como. Photo courtesy of La Provincia di Como.

According to a blog post published Sunday by Italy’s preeminent wine blogger and re-posted by numerous wine websites and blogs, including the LaVINIum blog and InternetGourmet, said blogger Mr. Franco Ziliani wants to be arrested for drunk driving. More precisely, he wants his alcohol blood content to be tested as he leaves the gates of the annual Italian wine fair — along with that of thousands of other attendees — before he ever gets behind the wheel of his car.

At issue is Italy’s newly instated (quasi-)zero tolerance drunk driving law, enacted in August 2009, whereby a .05-gram-per-liter-of-blood alcohol level is considered intoxication by police. (I found the most up-to-date text of the new Italian legislation at this breathalyzer sales site and for background and for general info on the legal limits allowed across the world, see the Wiki. Most states in the U.S. consider .08 grams the legal limit.)

The legislation was intended to curb excessive alcohol consumption and a rash of drunk driving incidents, mainly involving young people leaving discotheques on Friday and Saturday nights. The new laws require local police to set up random check points and subject drivers to breathalyzer tests, even when said drivers exhibit no outward signs of intoxication.

As a result (and I’ve heard of myriad cases of this during my recent trips to Italy), a number of individuals have lost their driver’s licenses even after only moderate alcohol consumption.

The bottom line: even one glass of wine at dinner can put you over the legal limit, depending on the wine and your body weight at mass etc.

The new laws have been widely criticized — even by Italy’s now former agriculture minister, Luca Zaia — as excessive. Many, including respected wine journalists, have called them a form of neo-prohibition and even neo-fascism applied through the use of unreliable devices by unprepared law officers. The legislation was intended to curb drunk driving among young discotheque-goers, not wine professionals attending tastings or average folks enjoying a bottle of wine at a country trattoria.

Italian wine writer

Here’s where it gets really interesting: Italy’s annual wine trade fair, Vinitaly, begins Thursday in Verona. If you’ve ever been to the fair, you can see what’s coming: of the thousands of people who attend each day, most are wine and restaurant professionals who taste in moderation, spitting, but tasting (as I do) up to 80 wines a day. This is the first Vinitaly since the new legislation has been enacted.

Mr. Ziliani is asking like-minded attendees to gather — in the thousands, he hopes — and march (or be bussed) down to the local police station, where he and his followers will “turn themselves in” and ask to have their alcohol blood levels tested without ever getting behind the wheel. He hopes that the overwhelming number of tests to be administered will demonstrate the absurdity and infeasibility of the law.

Mr. Ziliani’s protest may have “arrived a little too late,” notes the author of the LaVINIum post. But you can email Ziliani here to get protest details.

Me? I decided to sit this Vinitaly (and Vini Veri) out: I’ve got better things to do. ;-)