Taste Franciacorta with me in Las Vegas, Monday October 17, 1-3 p.m. Click here for details. Hope to see you there!

What a stunning flight of wines from Edi Kante poured for me the other night by Kante’s Italian sales rep Edi Tapacino here in Houston!

Stupendous, really.

When I met Edi T (who was visiting Texas for the first time) and we tasted through this extraordinary flight, I couldn’t help but think back to 1999 when I was living in New York and the Italian wine renaissance was just beginning to take shape.

At the time Edi Kante’s wines were part of the new wave, as it were, and they were positioned and poised — thanks to the powers that were at the time — to become one of the next big things.

But a series of mishaps (let’s just leave it at that) led to Edi K’s wines falling off the radar. It’s great to see that Edi T is injecting the brand with some new energy in the States. I’ve always been a huge fan and I am thrilled to see that they are starting get the attention they deserve here in the U.S. Look out for them if you can…

Semi-related: Karst is the English word for Carso, btw. Just saying…

In other news…

This week, I was also stoked to taste the Tenuta Santa Maria alla Pieve 2010 Amarone with Giovanni Bertani who was in town to work the market with his new Texas importer/distributor.

Old-school and classic in style, this wine had that lightness — that unbearable lightness — and that lithe character that real Amarone has to have imho.

I really enjoyed the wine and had a blast (excuse the pun) discussing space exploration with Giovanni who had been down to NASA earlier in the day. A kindred spirits of sorts!

Great to see these wines finding their way to Texas and expand the availability of authentic Italian wines here.

In other other news…

Broccoli raab, yo! One of the dishes I made Tracie P this week for her birthday (below, one of her favs).

Thanks for being here everyone. Have a great weekend and come and see me in Vegas next Monday if you can. And Bob Dylan deserves the Nobel, people! I have a lot of thoughts to share on the matter but am too slammed for that today… Rock on!