Monthly Archives: September 2011

“If it’s a blend, I will not attend!” (And the Texas fires)

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Cousin Marty had a hunch about what wine I’d be bringing to our BYOB dinner last night in Houston with friends. And when I arrived and revealed my bottle of 2006 Brunello di Montalcino by Il Poggione, he opened the evening with the line of the night: “If it’s a blend, I will not attend!”

Of course, he was referring to yesterday’s news that Montalcino producers voted NOT to allow international grape varieties in Rosso di Montalcino, a step that many of us feared would irrevocably reshape the appellation.

According to results posted by the Brunello producers association, roughly 2/3 of voting members voted not to adopt either of the two options proposed by oligarchy that controls the body’s technical council. One option would have created two categories of Rosso; the other would have created three; in either case, international grape varieties would have been allowed in wines labeled Rosso di Montalcino.

But that figure is misleading because consortium president Ezio Rivella had called for an “ordinary” assembly whereby the number of votes is allocated according to the size of the winery. In other words, larger wineries had more voting power than smaller wineries. If the voting had been based on a one-vote-per-winery basis, the results would have been a landslide against the proposal to change the appellation.

I am fully convinced that efforts by my colleague and partner in VinoWire, Franco Ziliani, played a fundamental role in shaping public awareness of the issues in question.

Chapeau bas, Franco! IF IT’S A BLEND, I WILL NOT ATTEND!

The 2006 Brunello by Il Poggione was gorgeous last night, rich in body, bright in acidity, with ripe red fruit and that wonderful horse sweat note that often distinguishes great Brunello. The wine was muscular and still very, very tight, young in its evolution. But the green notes that emerged the last time I tasted the wine about 6 months ago have disappeared. There’s no doubt in my mind that this is going to be a great vintage for Il Poggione.

In other and sadder news…

I wanted to share these photos that I took on Hwy. 290 from Austin to Houston of the Texas fires.

In the first photo, above, taken about 20 minutes west of Giddings, the fire had just started and the firefighters had just arrived. Man, it was scary and you could see the fear and the stress in the faces of the firefighters. G-d bless them.

In this second photo, you can see a plume northwest of Houston. Pretty spooky and so sad.

In this last photo, you can see the smoky haze over Houston this morning. That’s not morning mist. It’s ugly, brown smoke. My eyes are burning and my throat is itchy. It reminds me of LA during the riots when I was a grad student at U.C.L.A.

Tracie P and Baby P are fine and even though there are uncontained fires burning not far from our house in Austin, the smoke is not affecting us there.

Please say a prayer for all the folks who are suffering here… It’s so sad…

BREAKING NEWS: Secret ballot completed in Montalcino, Cignozzi threatens legal action

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My friends at Il Palazzone in Montalcino have just reported that voting in the secret ballot to change the Rosso di Montalcino appellation (to allow international grape varieties) has been completed. The Consortium is currently tabulating the votes.

Producer Carlo Cignozzi has threatened legal action: as Franco reported yesterday on his blog, Cignozzi believes that Ezio Rivella was not authorized to call a vote on such a sweeping measure without calling for a full “extraordinary” assembly where all members would have equal voting power (at the “ordinary” assembly called by Rivella, the number of votes assigned to each producer is based on the size of the winery).

BREAKING NEWS: Franco Biondi Santi speaks out against proposed Montalcino changes

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It would seem that the editors at Decanter and Gambero Rosso spoke too soon when they reported that Brunello di Montalcino great Franco Biondi Santi (left, photo via Weintipps) supported proposed changes to the Rosso di Montalcino appellation that would allow for blending of international grape varieties in Rosso di Montalcino (current legislation requires that Rosso di Montalcino be made with 100% Sangiovese grapes).

Last week, both publications cited him as a supporter of Brunello producers association president Ezio Rivella’s campaign to modernize the appellation. But evidently, neither contacted Biondi Santi — the grandson of the creator of Brunello di Montalcino and a towering figure in the history of the appellation — for comment.

“Three years ago I was in favor of the addition of softening wines or grapes to Sangiovese for Rosso di Montalcino,” said Biondi Santi in a phone interview today with one of Italy’s leading wine writers and top wine blogger Franco Ziliani, who quotes the signore del Brunello on his blog Vino al Vino. “Today, things have changed and my position is no to any change to the appellation.”

The proposed changes, he noted, would allow producers to transform 500 hectares of unsellable Sant’Antimo and IGT Toscana into Rosso di Montalcino.

“We would enter into the same thicket as 1966,” said Biondi Santi, “when the appellation ‘Vino Rosso dai Vigneti di Brunello’ was created.” [editor’s note: this appellation was changed to Rosso di Montalcino fifteen years later] “In the fall of 1966, Montalcino was obligated to found the Brunello Consortium, which became operative on January 1, 1967, with my father. After three months of negotiations with other producers, we decided not to enter the consortium because we strongly disapproved of how it was taking advantage of an equivocation at the time: the grape variety was also called Brunello and it was considered a subvariety of Sangiovese! Therefore, a no is indispensable in order to clarify.”

G-d Bless America, G-d bless us all

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Tracie P and I spent the Labor Day 3-day Weekend with Mrs. and Rev. B and family in Orange, Texas, on the Louisiana border, where Tropical Storm Lee kept the skies gray and the ground wet most of the weekend.

The weather didn’t stop the kids from playing football here but we mostly stayed in and visited, as they say here in the South.

Tracie P and I are six months pregnant now and it was wonderful to watch the children on Saturday night as they listened to Baby P’s heartbeat with sister Misty’s stethoscope.

On Sunday night, we ate dinner at memaw and pepaw’s (Rev. B’s parents, both in their 90s now) and they talked to us about what it was like to raise children in their day.

Over the course of the long weekend, we talked a lot about the outreach program at Rev. B’s church and the many people here in East Texas (and elsewhere, in the U.S. and all over the world) who are facing seemingly insurmountable challenges as they work (or look for work) to feed and cloth their families.

Today — on Labor Day — I wanted to share the video above: I shot it yesterday at Rev. B’s services, where Sunday prayer always begins with a tune by one of my favorite songwriters, Irving Berlin.

Happy Labor Day, everyone…

Boudreaux’s Butt Paste and Boudain Shopping in Port Arthur, Texas

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Here in Texas, everyone says that Boudreaux’s Butt Paste is the best. We’re only 6 months pregnant but we’ll be stocking up on butt paste pretty soon.

Crawfish boudain: if that ain’t country, I’ll kiss your ass.

Pork boudain. We also got some smoked boudain and some green onion pork sausage.

Folks around here are serious about their seasonings.

Impulse buy at checkout.

Nick’s Grocery: HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

George the Gator

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After services at Rev. B’s church this morning in Orange, Texas, we headed over to Peggy’s on the Bayou where I met George the Gator (above).

Technically, George is “homeless,” one server told me, but he returns every couple of weeks for the French fries and other food that guests offer him. I’m not sure how they know that George is a he but they recognize him by the hole in his snout that never healed after someone shot him there.

Here in Coonass country, “po’ boy” can be pronounced with the accent on the second syllable: poh-BOY.

The oyster po’ boy was pretty good.

We got there too late for the gumbo (they’d sold it all already)… :(

Peggy’s not kidding when she says her place is on the bayou!

I fall in love again every time…

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…I point my camera at her.

…even when it’s over sausage and sauer kraut kolaches at Hruška’s on Texas Hwy. 71.

Mamma and Baby P are healthy and happy and pregnancy cravings have evolved into “snack attacks” (as they are called in Parzen parlance) and Tracie P is more beautiful than ever.

I just keep falling in love over and over again…

Merlot di Montalcino: Italian Grape Name and Appellation Pronunciation Project

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Ragazzi, siamo alla frutta…

“Merlot di Montalcino”

Starring Federico Marconi.

With a special appearance by Jeremy Parzen.

Directed by Edoardo Bianchi.

With music by Calvino di Maggio.

Montalcino fait accompli? New developments today…

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Above: Mt. Amiata as seen from Castelnuovo dell’Abate (Montalcino). I took this photograph in September 2010. Click the image for a high-resolution version of the image.

According to the chatter, it would appear that a change allowing international grape varieties in Rosso di Montalcino is a fait accompli.

Neither I nor Franco have access to the Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino charter. And so we are not privy to voting protocols.

But all words on the street indicate that the September 7 assembly of Brunello producers will be given two options to vote on: 1) Two categories of Rosso di Montalcino, including one that allows for international grape varieties; or 2) Three categories, including one that allows for international grape varieties. The option not to change the appellation regulations is not on the table, evidently. It’s also not clear what type of consensus the technical council of the consortium needs to achieve in order to pass the changes through.

Regardless of consortium president Ezio Rivella’s sprezzatura, one thing is abundantly clear: the big business interests here — Masi (Rivella’s partner), Frescobaldi, Antinori, Banfi, Zonin (?) — are going to push this change through one way or another, come hell or high water.

I cannot help but be reminded of what I heard Teobaldo “Baldo” Cappellano say in the Brunello Debate of October 2008: sometimes the battles you know you will not win are the ones you must fight for most passionately.

The only voice of reason coming from Montalcino these days seems to emanate from my friends at Il Poggione, who have stayed above the fray, avoiding any commentary on what’s happening there and containing their observations to their blog’s harvest report series.

Yesterday, they posted a detailed report on the heat spike of August. And they suggest that the problem may not be one of whether or not to add international grape varieties to the Montalcino brand wines. Emergency irrigation, they write, could help growers to produce healthier Sangiovese in hot years like 2003 and 2011:

    We believe that in the future it will be indispensable to insert in the appellation some technical parameters like emergency irrigation, a practice that would allow growers to overcome these periods unharmed, even if limited by the great heat.

It’s possible that Rivella’s urgency in modifying the appellation may be due to the fact that, as Francesco Illy pointed out, “Grapes that were ripening have been dried up in quantities that vary between 5-50% depending on the zone and the age of the vines.”

In any case, it was inevitable that the big business actors were going to push this through.

It all makes me very, very, very sad.

Yesterday, I posted an English translation of a moving vignette written by my good friend Paolo Cantele on his family’s winery’s blog.

His grandparents, post-war wine merchants, he wrote, wouldn’t recognize the Italy for which they had sacrificed so much to build.

Ain’t it the truth?

If all goes according to plan, Wednesday, September 7, will be a dark day in Montalcino’s history.

Es muss sein…