Just a few photos snapped today, Saturday, just five days after the flooding. The whole area smells like rot.

This morning over on the Barone Pizzini-Pievalta blog (my clients), I translated excerpts from the official appellation regulations for olive ascolane, the moreish meat-stuffed and deep-fried green olives from Ascoli Piceno in the Marches (Le Marche).

Click here for the official stuffing recipe.

Thanks for being here, everyone. I finally have some downtime next week here in Houston and don’t have to get on another plane for another seven days… Stay tuned for more starting next Monday. Buon weekend a tutti!

I just wanted to write a quick note to thank everyone for the many notes and thoughts that have arrived from Italy and across the U.S.: the girls and our house are fine; there was a lot of flooding in our Houston neighborhood on Tuesday morning but miraculously our house and block were spared.

Below you’ll find a video shot by a neighbor of our using his drone (we don’t know him personally but Tracie P came across the short film via social media).

It shows the intersection of Braeswood and Chimney Rock, just 5 minutes from our home, a shopping hub that we visit nearly daily (supermarket, gym, bank, etc.).

I actually flew out of Houston on Monday night to LA. As I was going to bed around 11 p.m., Tracie P and I were texting and she was concerned about the strength and the duration of the storm. But neither of us knew what was really happening until the next day when we started seeing the images and videos on social and news media.

The good news is that our rental home, which was built in the 1950s, has never flooded according to our landlord. And of course, we always have flashlights and bottled water on hand in case of emergencies, a necessity when you live in a hurricane and tornado corridor. We were extremely fortunate. Not everyone was so lucky.

Thanks again to everyone for the notes and messages. They mean a lot to us.

All the way down to the pizza crust dipping sauces – ranch, Italian, and marinara (below) – it’s all about the nostalgia and kitsch at the newly opened Jon and Vinny’s, a homage to Italian-American and nuova italiana cookery on Fairfax in West Hollywood in the former Damiano’s (an old haunt from my grad school days).

But when I met a colleague there for a working dinner last night (thanks to an impossible-to-get reservation courtesy the management at Sotto where I co-author the wine list), it was more about my nostalgia for an old Nebbiolo friend, the Mimo rosato by Cantalupo, one of my favorite Novara producers.

Ops and beverage director Helen Johannesen’s list is mostly delicious natty and old school French but her Italian selection is also solid (if red heavy).

The Mimo was the only Italian rosé wine among healthy French options and it showed beautifully with the spicy red thread that ran through the dishes, from the “little gems” (now a pseudo-Italian standby) to the bucatini cacio e pepe (are italics even relevant anymore?).

Waiting for my colleague to arrive, I snapped this image of Canter’s Deli across the street where I spent countless late nights in my 20s when living, teaching Italian, and playing music in LA.

My night ended with me Ubering back to my hotel and soundly asleep by 11, something that rarely happened during that time in my life.

In those days matzah ball soup and beer were the daily victuals. Today Nebbiolo and pizza dipping sauce are the order of the day. But Canter’s still sits there, unchanged and unmoved.

My, how things must stay the same for everything to change.

Blogs are about remembering. “Web logs” is what they were called early on. They were and are diaries of their authors’ lives.

Every Memorial Day, I remember Melvin Croaker in the photo (above, right).

Every one in Tracie P’s family made me feel welcome when I first moved to Texas to be with her, to start a new family and a new life together nearly seven years ago now.

On the first Christmas Eve we spent together in East Texas in 2008, Melvin — a close family friend of my now parents-in-law — presented me with a cowboy hat and six-pack of Lone Star beer as he officially welcomed me to Texas.

I still have that hat and I still have one of those six bottles. We drank the others in his memory after he passed away in 2010.

Melvin was a U.S. Air Force veteran. When I wrote about sharing beers with U.S. Marines on their way back from Iraq while Tracie P and I were on our way to honeymoon in 2010, Melvin commented on my Facebook — I remember well — about how important it is to acknowledge their service and sacrifice.

There won’t be any grilling or beer cans popping today at our house. It’s just going to be a quiet day at home for me with the girls and Tracie P.

But today we’ll remember Melvin and all of the men and women who serve and have served our country.

As the Romans used to say, it’s a day to remember and to be grateful… memorem et gratum esse…

And so another trip to Italy comes to an end.

Every time I pack my bags, whether coming or going, I remember that very first visit in 1987 when I was 19 years old and came for my junior year abroad at the University of Padua. I’ll never forget that sensation and sense of urgency: record every aroma, flavor, view, and sound — I thought to myself at the time — there is something here that will reveal greater meaning in life’s time; I don’t know what it is yet but I know it’s there.

Now I’m 47 and nearly 30 years after that first sojourn, I still experience that same feeling — every time, coming or going.

Yesterday, following the last seminar and tasting at the TerroirMarche festival in Ascoli Piceno (three mini-verticals of jaw-dropping Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi), I made what might have been the most beautiful drive of my life.

Departing from Ascoli, I drove through the Apennines to Norcia as the sun was setting before me in the west. And as I headed on from Montefalco and Trevi toward Pisa (where begin my journey back to the states today), I drove past Lake Trasimeno at dusk. Awe-inspiring!

All in all, it was a five-hour drive but it seemed to go by in a flash.

In another time in my life, it was poetry and literature that opened a window on to Italy and Italian culture for me. Today, it is a wine glass that I see through but darkly.

As for Petrarch who, upon discovering a manuscript of a work by Cicero, remarked that he was enchanted by the words even though he did not [yet] know what they meant, Italy is for me a text that I continue to parse with great and joyous curiosity, scanning each syllable and scratching its surface looking for a greater and deeper meaning in its rhythms.

Arrivederci, Italia, you never cease to amaze me. Thank you to all who hosted, poured, and shared their thoughts and impressions. It was a long and rich trip for me. Thank you.

Now to get back to my love and the place where I belong…

One of the things that’s so cool about the Marche (Marches) is that there hasn’t been a lot of industrial development here. Driving to the tasting this morning in Ascoli, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the way that the Italian countryside looked fifty years ago.

Here are some photos I took this morning at the Agriturismo Fiorano in Cossignano village where I slept the last two nights (great place, btw).

Great seminar!

Marche wines as an expression of mountain viticulture.

Nearly every restaurant you visit in Langa serves the Piedmontese classic vitello tonnato (one of my all-time favorite dishes).

Of the three places (in two and half days) that I was served the dish, my number-one, top, best was Osteria More e Macine in La Morra.

Just look at that sexy presentation and the yellow of the tuna sauce (from the rich egg yolk used to whip the housemade mayonnaise).

Another highlight of my sojourn was a vertical of six vintages of Barolo Ravera by Elvio Cogno with winemaker Valter Fissore yesterday.

Such beautiful, elegant, and focused expressions of Nebbiolo. My favorite vintages were the 2008 and 2011. Look out also for the 2006: it’s very tight at the moment but I’m sure it is going to deliver in the long term.

Thank you, Valter!

Posting on the fly this morning as I head down to Montefalco and then on to Ascoli Piceno…

It’s been a crazy couple of days here in Langa, the land of Barolo and Barbaresco, where the weather already feels like early summer.

In the photo above, you can see the cradle of Barbaresco. From left: the Asili, Martinenga, and Rabajà crus (with the Marchesi di Gresy’s Martinenga estate house in the center; click the image for a larger version).

Note the tower of Barbaresco village in the top right.

Those vineyards are considered by most to be the heart and soul of appellation.

I grabbed this detail from the Barbaresco consortium’s official map.

You can see the t-shaped Martinenga house in the center of the vineyard (compare with the photo above).

I took the photo yesterday from the Cascina delle Rose, the winery and home of Giovanna Rizzolio, one of my favorite Barbaresco producers.

She lives atop the Rio Sordo cru on the other side of this small valley and is a top producer of Barbaresco Rio Sordo (one of my favorite wines). The screenshot of a Google map below gives you a sense of the distance between Tre Stelle, the village where she lives and makes wine, and Barbaresco (about 30 minutes on foot).

Life on the road is often hectic for me and my visit with Giovanna was unfortunately cut short by unforeseen work obligations that came up at the last minute.

I was really bummed about that: I was eager to dig into her new vintages and update my notes on her wines, which I love.

The good news is that new business opportunities will be bringing me back to Langa soon and I’ll hopefully get a chance to catch up with her and her wines in coming months (the wines are available in Texas, btw, via Rootstock).

I came to Langa this week to celebrate bromance Giovanni Arcari’s fortieth birthday. That’s Giovanni, left, wearing his “Greatest American Hero” t-shirt, and Barolo producer Ferdinando Prinicipiano, who gave Giovanni a 12-liter bottle of one of his top crus (Boscareto in Serralunga).

Good friends Paolo Cantele and Adua Villa also joined for a fantastic dinner celebration and fat flight of wines on Tuesday night in Cissone village (more on that later).

He and I generally speak to one another in Italian. But over the course of his many trips to Texas and California, he’s picked up on my very Californian habit of addressing all my friends as “man.” Everywhere he and I travel in Italy together, people laugh about that…

Happy birthday, man! You’ve been and wonderful friend to me and my family and I am so glad you were born.

What a week it’s been in Langa! Great wines, great times…

So much to tell and so little time. Today is my last day in Langa and tomorrow it’s off to Montefalco and then Ascoli Piceno. Crazy, right!