Above: Tracie P and I lived in Austin from 2008 until last year. Ginny’s Little Longhorn was one of our favorite honkytonks and Tracie used to go there back during her college days at UT. I tried to get Ginny’s to host our tasting but Vino Vino, the “best little wine bar in Texas,” seemed like a better fit.

Just enough wine was left over from our Feb. 4 Franciacorta tasting in Houston that I have critical Franciacorta mass for a Feb. 25 in Austin at Vino Vino.

Spaces are extremely limited: we only have one bottle of each wine from the Houston tasting.

And Jeff Courington, Vino Vino owner (and my client), is graciously and generously giving us one hour in the back of the bar to taste through these bottles. We’ll start promptly at 4 p.m. and will close shop at 5 p.m. sharp when Jeff’s happy hour starts.

Click here to email me and reserve your spot.

Click here for event details (in case you don’t know where Vino Vino is).

And of course, I’ll be hanging out at Vino Vino afterwards if you want to sip and nosh together. Later that night you can catch me at Ginny’s… Feb. 25 is “Hot Rods and Customs Day” in the parking lot and Carl Hutchens Band is playing that night in the bar.

I know it’s been a little bit Franciacorta-heavy over here on Do Bianchi. We’ll get back on track tomorrow. Thanks for being here!

Above: we poured twenty-two expressions of Franciacorta from eleven wineries yesterday in Houston (photo by David Keck, co-owner of Camerata, Houston’s coolest wine bar, and co-founder of the amazing Houston Sommelier Association).

Last year, in the days that followed Vinitaly (the annual Italian wine trade fair held in Verona), I met up with Franciacorta consortium president Maurizio Zanella for a chat and tasting at his Ca’ del Bosco winery.

We had just tasted though an extraordinary flight of his wines when he asked me a question that took me entirely by surprise.

“What do you think is the best way to market Franciacorta in the U.S.?” he asked (he speaks impeccable English).

Wow, I thought to myself, here’s the guy who singlehandedly built the Franciacorta “brand” in the U.S. and one of the most revered and powerful winemakers in the world. And he’s asking me for my opinion.

I took a deep breath and told him the truth.

“The problem,” I said, “is that Franciacorta has always been positioned as the step-sister of Champagne.” (See my post “Franciacorta and the ‘C’ word” from last summer.)

“Unfortunately,” I explained, “samples are sent to editors at high-profile mastheads who don’t normally write about wine. And when they finally wrap their minds around Franciacorta they invariably call it ‘Italy’s answer to Champagne.'”

“If I were asked to work on a Franciacorta campaign,” I said (and at this point, I could feel a bead of sweat roll down my temple), “I would reach out to the growing number of U.S. wine professionals who are thirsty for Franciacorta knowledge and who have the technical preparation to understand the uniqueness of these wines. They are the ones who work on the front lines of wine education every day and they are the ones that can turn perceptions around. I’d create a blog especially for them and I’d organize ’round-table’ tastings where they could share their impressions of Franciacorta wines.”

Above: the vibe at the Houston Sommelier Association is super friendly and inclusive. Everyone is super professional and the cost of admission is polishing glasses at the end of each meeting.

In November of last year, I met with Maurizio at the offices of the Franciacorta consortium in Erbusco in the heart of the appellation. And he and his team gave me the go-ahead to launch my “Franciacorta, the Real Story” campaign.

For the next eleven months, I’ll be blogging about Franciacorta regularly and leading a series of tastings for wine professionals across the U.S.

Please check out the blog here.

Please follow the blog on Twitter @ClassicMethod.

Please like our new page on Facebook here.

But most importantly, if you’d like to host a tasting, if you’d like to contribute to the blog or if you’d simply like to learn more about Franciacorta, please send me an email by clicking here.

I truly love Franciacorta and I am extremely excited about this new project. You can check out notes from yesterday’s tasting here.

And I’m currently working on doing a mini-version of the same tasting in Austin later this month (stay tuned for details).

All images, except for top photo, by Ryan Cooper.

In case you can’t attend our Franciacorta tasting today at the weekly meeting of the Houston Sommelier Association, please click here for the tasting book and some useful images.

I’m really excited about the event: twelve wineries, twenty-four expressions of Franciacorta.

Thanks again to the Houston Sommelier Association for hosting this extraordinary event.

Above: a view from a hillside vineyard looking out on to the valley floor in Valpolicella (image courtesy the Venturini winery). In a general assembly in May 2013, Valpolicella Consortium members approved a change in appellation regulations that would allow Amarone producers to blend hillside and valley floor fruit in the wines. Some prominent producers and growers groups have vehemently opposed the change.

Members of the Valpolicella Consortium gathered at the Palazzo della Gran Guardia in Piazza Brà in Verona over the weekend to present the 2011 vintage of Amarone (click the link for the list of presenting wineries).

But as top buyers (some from as far away as the U.S.) and leading Italian wine writers and bloggers tasted the soon-to-be released wines, a shadow of controversy hung over the event.

In May 2013, the Consortium proposed a change in appellation regulations that would allow winemakers to supplement hillside-grown fruit with valley floor-grown fruit for the production of Amarone.

The proposed change was ratified in a May 2013 consortium member vote. But it has yet to be approved by the Italian agricultural ministry’s committee on wine. A number of prominent producers and growers associations, including the Federation of Independent Grape Growers (FIVI) and the Amarone Families group, have vehemently and vociferously opposed it.

The as-of-yet unchanged appellation regulations state that grapes grown in “fresh soils on the plains or valley floor must be excluded” from Amarone production (article 4, section 2).

The Consortium had proposed deleting this wording, calling it an obsolete “discrepancy” and a “typo” in an official statement.

While the proposed change would not technically expand the production area, it would allow producers to use inferior quality grapes for the production of the wine — the appellation’s flagship.

“The problem with the valley floor was evident in 2014 because of the heavy rains,” wrote Ilenia Pasetto of the Venturini winery in a recent email exchange. “Valley floor vineyards suffered greatly and the fruit was heavily damaged. At the same time, thanks to the varied shape of hillside vineyards, the rainfall flowed down from the hills toward the valley. Because the water didn’t stagnate and because the hillside vineyards are more ventilated, quality was good even though they produced a smaller amount of grapes than usual. The warm, sunny weather started at the end of August continued through September and it helped to dry the bunches and prepare them for [the Amarone] drying [process].”

Some trade observers have speculated that the Consortium’s move was inspired by the impressive growth in Amarone sales in recent decades.

According to a report published in 2013, the number of bottles of Amarone increased from 2,480,000 to 8,570,000 between 1998 and 2008.

Roughly 90 percent of the wine produced are sold outside Italy, according to the Consortium, mostly in northern Europe, the U.S., and Canada.

In a phone call today, a Valpolicella Consortium representative said it’s unclear when the proposed change will be reviewed by Italian government officials.

Looking back on some of the great meals of 2014 that haven’t yet found there way into my feed, the one that really resonates and reverberates in my mind was a late fall supper at Osteria Le Logge, Laura Brunelli’s amazing restaurant in the heart of Siena’s historic center.

It’s a wonderful place to visit for classic Tuscan cookery (ribollita, fiorentina, etc.).

But the main attraction, at least for me, is Chef Nico Atrigna’s creative cuisine. That’s his mackerel “ceviche,” above.

Chef Nico has cooked so many of my “best” meals in Italy over the last few years. And my visit in early November 2014 didn’t disappoint.

His dishes are never overly complex. He culls from the mediterranean bounty of materiae primae and masterfully accentuates their aromas and flavors.

This puntarelle salad, above, with citrus was a wonderful study in sweetness, acidity, and astringency.

But the plat de résistance was the spaghetti aglio, olio e peperoncino with spiny lobster.

I can’t imagine a more humble dish more nobly executed. It was one of the best things I ate all year last.

Mirco, Le Logge’s wine director, recommended the 2009 Altrove by revered Ligurian winemaker Walter De Batté.

According to an interview I found on the AIS (Italian Sommelier Association) Liguria site, it’s a blend of “Bosco, Vermentino, Rossese bianco, and Marsanne,” but “primarily Roussanne,” in Walter’s words, a grape that the nineteenth-century Italian ampelographer “Gallesio had identified as ‘Nizzardo.'”

The word altrove means elsewhere in Italian. I loved Walter’s post-modern explanation for the wine’s name, which can be found on the back label.

“In the Mediterranean,” he writes, “infinite elsewheres are hidden in every where.”

Notes of thyme played against this macerated wine’s rich minerality and breadth of stone fruit flavors. An extraordinary wine (at a great price).

Mirco, who knows my palate well after all these years, never misses a beat (ask for him when choosing your wine at Le Logge).

Dulcis in fundo (Latinists among us will get the paronomasia), Laura has finally opened her subterranean music venue and wine bar called “Un Tubo” (Italophones will get the irony).

The night I was there, a classic rock cover band was seriously rocking out the house.

But from what I glean on the club’s website, jazz is the genre best represented there.

Anyone who’s ever spent any time in Siena knows that the dining and nightlife options there are next to nihil.

Laura has done an amazing and single-handed job of changing that. Beyond the extraordinary daytime sight-seeing there, the trip to Siena is worth it just to eat at her restaurant and drink a glass (or two) of Franciacorta at her super fun music joint.

Above: the Houston Sommelier Association is one of the coolest and most friendly wine “study groups” in the country. The mood is always convivial but serious and everyone, even laypersons, are always welcomed with open arms.

Please come out and taste with me: I will be leading a Franciacorta tasting this Wednesday at the weekly meeting of the Houston Sommelier Association.

Here are the details:

Franciacorta “Real Story” Tasting
Wednesday, February 4
10:30 a.m.
Camerata
1830 Westheimer
Houston, TX 77098
(713) 522-8466

It looks like we will have wines from each of the five six Franciacorta wineries currently available in Texas.

And we will also have a number of wines that are not sold in Texas.

It should be a super fun event and if you are in town, please join us.

The event is free: polishing a few glasses at the end of the tasting is the price of admission.