It was great to see the response yesterday to a new entry in the Italian Grape Name & Appellation Project. Thanks to everyone for all the retweets!

Since I’ll be heading to Los Angeles later this week to work the floor at Sotto (where I curate the wine list) on Thursday and Friday nights, I also wanted to post this entry (above) on Taurasi by one of my favorite producers, Struzziero.

Struzziero is old-school Taurasi all the way and we’ve featured a vertical of the wines — 92, 97, 01 — on our list since we first were able to secure an allocation last year.

I love the wines…

And I couldn’t resist making this “outtake” video of my “shoot” with Mario Struzziero at Vinitaly.

With true campano style, he added a short gloss using a word that has a particular meaning in Italian: peripezia or peripeteia (“In classical tragedy [and hence in other forms of drama, fiction, etc.]: a point in the plot at which a sudden reversal occurs. In extended use: a sudden or dramatic change; a crisis,” Oxford English Dictionary). It’s an ancient Greek word that is still used regularly in Italian today, especially in Rome and southward. In workaday language, it means simply mishaps or vicissitudes. But in this case, his usage has layered meanings… It’s one of the things I love about Italy and Italian language…

And I love his family’s wines…