During a September 2022 visit to the Anselmi winery in Soave, there was a worker burning weeds in the small parking lot across the street. He had a small blow torch and a canister of propane on his back.

As grower and winemaker Roberto Anselmi accompanied his guest to his Suzuki four-wheeler, which was parked in said lot, he explained that they were experimenting with weed burning because they want to avoid the use of any pesticides or other synthetic products.

Anselmi’s quasi-religious fervor in eliminating chemicals from the world was echoed this month in a press release issued by the family: for the first time ever, they wrote, they will be making wines using disease-resistant hybrid grapes that they have been experimenting with for more than two years.

But the reason they offer might not be what the naked eye expects.

The severe weather events brought on by climate change have made grape growing and winemaking increasingly challenging for Europeans. And there has been much chatter in recent years about how disease-resistant hybrids are one of the paths forward.

But as Anselmi points out, severe weather — prolonged heatwaves and drought, extreme rainfall and hail, etc. — has also caused grape farmers to rely increasingly on synthetic fungicides to protect their vines from disease.

Viticulture represents only three percent of Europe’s total agricultural production, he notes. But roughly 65 percent of fungicides used in European agriculture is employed by winemakers.

Disease-resistant hybrid varieties could reduce that number significantly, he believes.

Although not certified organic, Anselmi has practiced and proselytized chemical-free farming for decades. It’s a major part of his family’s approach to high-quality winemaking.

But as they underline in their statement, they are convinced that disease-resistant hybrid grape varieties are going to be a key element in combating Italy’s growing soil pollution.

The 2023 vintage of their iconic San Vincenzo is being made with three hybrids: Aromera, Riesling Resistente (“Resistant Riesling”), and Souvignier Gris.

I can’t wait to taste it.

Disclosure: the Anselmi statement came across my desk thanks to my client Ethica Wines.

Back in 2010, when wine blogging was trending like Taylor Swift, an Alba-based media company asked me to lead a group of writers to Piedmont. The occasion was “Barbera Meeting,” an early iteration of the big Barbera tasting and dinner they do each year in Nizza.

Barbera was the focus but the firm also organized some visits to other clients of theirs. One of those was Cogno in Barolo.

I’ve always liked Valter Fissore’s wines a lot (2005 Barolo Ravera anyone?). But the star of the tasting that day was a nine-year-old 2001 Anas-Cëtta (Nascetta). We were all really impressed with how beautifully this wine had aged.

So, when I got back to the States, I bought a case of the 2010 and put it in my cellar in San Diego. Over the years, we drank and enjoyed the wines immensely. But I saved one bottle for longer-term aging.

Last weekend, when Tra, the girls, and I were in La Jolla for my mom’s 90th birthday celebration, she and I opened the last bottle from our cellar after everyone went to bed.

It was astounding! It had a little bit of funk when first opened, but then it immediately blew off as the wine started showing tireless and extremely fresh white and stone fruit, with just a slight note of nuttiness and delicate oxidation (barely any). We were simply floored by this wine.

A pretty good investment for $25, no?

Chapeau bas, Valter! I’m so glad you turned us on to this extraordinary wine.

One of the ways that I keep the lights on here at Do Bianchi is through my retail and wholesale wines program in California.

It’s something that I started many years ago, took a break from, and then relaunched last year.

For this year’s (first) fall offering, I’m featuring two extremely compelling wines that I’ve been working with this year.

Starting late last year, I started consulting with a newish/oldish winery in Piedmont, Amistà, producer of Nizza — 100 percent Barbera from the most coveted subzone for the variety.

The winemaker is Luca D’Attoma, one of Italy’s top enologists and a passionate advocate for organic and biodynamic farming.

The farm is owned by my client and great friend Michele Marsiaj. He’s spared no expense in officially converting the farm to organic (certification will come next year although the vineyards have been farmed using organic practices literally for decades; biodynamic certification is on the horizon as well).

This is Luca’s first wine in Piedmont and he’s shooting for the stars. The 2019 Amistà Nizza is his first release for the winery and while I’m confident that it will age gracefully for the next 20 years or so, it’s drinking super beautifully right now, with elegant red and black fruit notes, wonderful freshness, and impressive depth and complexity.

I really love this wine and the people who make it. I’m pleased to be offering it this week at a competitive price.

The second wine is the 2019 Chianti Classico by Vecchie Terre di Montefili in Panzano in Chianti.

A lot of you will remember that I featured the 2018 last year.

This is another wine that I’ve been really excited about. It’s organically and biodynamically farmed by a young woman, Serena Gusmeri, who’s been making waves with the reviews she’s been getting from the top mastheads.

This is 100 percent Sangiovese from the highest altitude farm in Chianti Classico’s unique “biodistrict,” one of Italy’s first entirely organic communes. It’s still young, with a richness buoyed by the wine’s nuanced black fruit flavors and mouth watering acidity.

The soils are all alberese limestone and galestro clay, the classics of Chianti Classico. It’s a very special property and one of the new old school wines that we’ve been loving on our table.

Both wines are available with a 10 percent discount if purchased as part of mixed six pack and with a 15 percent discount with a solid six pack.

I also have all kinds of fun wines — Prosecco, whites, rosé, and other reds. I even have a few bottles of wonderful Champagne. Just let me know what you need and I’ll put together a proposal for you.

Prices below include tax (but not shipping/handling).

Available only in California. Wines will ship early next week. For San Diego residents, I can deliver the Amistà Nizza in the original wooden case (super cool) for solid six pack orders.

Thanks so much for your support and please just let me know what you need and I’ll do my best to make it happen.

These are great wines and I’m super stoked to share them with you.

Amistà 2019 Nizza $58
Vecchie Terre di Montefili 2019 Chianti Classic $33

Please email me at jparzen [at] gmail [dot] com and I’ll send you a proposal right away.

Most Italian-focused wine professionals in the U.S. face a sticky linguistic challenge: how to distinguish between the classic expression of an appellation and a vineyard-designated or riserva category.

And it’s not an issue confined solely to purely anglophone wine pros. Italian speakers often get tripped up by the tongue-tying conundrum.

For many, the knee-jerk reaction in such cases is to call the classic wine normale or normal.

Here’s how the Oxford English Dictionary defines normal:

“Constituting or conforming to a type or standard; regular, usual, typical; ordinary, conventional.”

I’m using Barbaresco as an example but this problem stretches across a broad swath of wines where single-vineyard and riserva designations are commonly used.

The moment you call the wine “normal,” it’s as if you are saying that it’s “ordinary” or “conventional.” Think of how many classic wines for which this couldn’t be farther from the truth!

And depending on who you talk to, many Nebbiolo growers, for example, will tell you that classic, blended expressions of their wines are often the ones they hold to be most representative of their appellations. It’s only in recent memory that single-vineyard and riserva designations have proliferated. This trend, in my view, is more driven by the market than the production.

There are also plenty of winemakers who decide not to use a designation, even though they could. Should those wines be penalized because their producers chose not to give them a fancy label?

My recommendation and my practice is to call non-vineyard and non-riserva designate wines “classic.”

And let’s not even talk about the people who call the classic expressions “regular.”

Wine isn’t gasoline, is it?

It seems like another world, doesn’t it?

The iPhone had only been existence for a year, Facebook was just beginning to take off, the financial crisis was in full swing, and Alice Feiring released her controversial book, The Battle for Wine and Love or how I Saved the World from Parkerization.

The year was 2008 and a bold new wine culture was emerging in the U.S. By that point, 30 years had passed — yes, three decades! — since Robert Parker introduced the world to his 100-point scoring system in 1978.

Wine Spectator adopted the 100-point system in 1985, some seven years after it was first employed by Parker. (The score-less masthead had been launched two years prior to Parker’s Wine Advocate, in 1976.)

But it took nearly a quarter of a century before Alice’s shot that was heard around the world.

It’s incredible to think how many years passed before anyone really seemed to care about wines scores — except for consumers and the winemakers themselves.

But by the end of the first decade of this century, “Parkerization” had become public enemy number one for the newly emerging hipster wine crowd.

At Slow Food University where I teach wine communications in the grad program, the students look up with glazed-over eyes when I do an overview of how scores affect wine sales and production. Most of them haven’t even heard of Parker or Spectator — no joke.

On the one side, detractors argue that scores reify wine through a purely subjective exercise.

On the other side, supporters contend that scores have made European wine more accessible to a generation of Americans. President Chirac didn’t make Parker a Chevalier of the Legion of Honor for nothing.

Today, retailers and collectors across the U.S. rely on scores. In Asia, by all accounts, scores are a key element in how wine is marketed.

There’s more than some validity to the argument that historically scores have helped to raise the status of wine as a luxury product across a wide demographic, global swath. To that point, aligning oneself with those against scores is also a means for promoting a wine.

Future generations may not care about them, but they continue to drive the industry in intuitive and counter-intuitive ways.

Congratulations to my client and above all friend Michele Marsiaj and his winemaker Luca D’Attoma on the 95 point score their Amistà Nizza Riserva has received from James Suckling. It’s the first Nizza, they believe, to be awarded such a high rating. Now, that’s something, isn’t it?

Above: picking dates came about two weeks later than they did in 2022 according to WineNews.it. “Harvest has finally begun,” wrote the Stanig winery (Friuli) on its social media today. “The challenges of climate uncertainty in recent months have made us focus even more of our energy and attention on the work that needs to be done.” Image via the Stanig Facebook.

In a series of posts this week, one of the leading Italian-language resources for wine industry news, WineNews.it, reports that central and some parts of southern Italy will experience a drop of 20-40 percent in production owed to widespread outbreaks of peronospora (downy mildew), severe hail events, and a prolonged heat wave with record temperatures.

In the north, there will be a slight drop in production: -2 percent in Piedmont and -4.5 percent in Emilia-Romagna. In Veneto there will be an increase of 5 percent and in Lombardy 15 percent.

But as you head south, the numbers start to drop: -20 percent in Tuscany and Latium; -25 percent in the Marches; -30 percent in Sicily and Puglia; and -40 percent in Abruzzo.

In Tuscany, Chianti Classico has been severely impacted, the authors of the posts report. According to the presidents of the Chianti and Chianti Classico consortia, there will be areas with significant drops (up to 40 percent) while others will experience a much smaller decrease, if any.

Earlier this year, the Brunello consortium predicted a 5 percent drop. But its president hasn’t spoken publicly about the crop forecast since late July. Some observers believe this estimate to be overly optimistic.

Even with widespread issues and challenges caused by climate change, including record high temperatures this summer, Italy should see just a 12 percent drop in its overall production.

See the WineNews.it posts here and here.

Remember the song from the 70s by Orleans?

“We’re still having fun and you’re still the one.”

That lyric kept going through my head as a couple of wine industry friends and I dined at A16 the other in San Francisco.

A16 changed the way Americans viewed southern Italian food and southern Italian wine when it first opened in 2004 nearly 20 years ago.

This is a restaurant — an institution! — that has weathered the financial crisis and Covid. And the best news is that the restaurant continues to perform at an extremely high level.

Shelley was swamped with fans when I ran into her a few weeks ago at TexSom near Dallas. She was there for a signing of her new book Italian Wine (Random House). By my count, that’s her fourth tome!

I don’t think anyone would disagree that Shelley is one of the greatest advocates for Italian wine and food in our generation. Her truly pioneering work has created opportunities for so many of us, including me.

And after all these years, she’s still rocking it.

One thing that really impressed me about our wonderful experience was the positive energy you felt while interacting with the servers and even the chef (we sat across from the open kitchen). You really get the sense that they love their work and they love their community at the restaurant. That’s increasingly hard to find these days. And it speaks to Shelley’s legacy as one of the top Italian-focused restaurateurs in this country.

Here’s some more of what we ate and drank. The food was so spot on. I had never tasted Tecce’s fantastic rosé. No surprise that she would have it on her list. The Quintodecimo Fiano was stunning. And as busy as she was, she found time to drop some compelling Pompeii wines at our table. The restaurant was working hard. She made it look easy.

Thank you, Shelley, for an incredible evening! And thank you for all you have done and continue to do for the world of Italian food and wine!

This was the best chickpeas and chicory I have ever had in the U.S. It was insanely good.

The caponata was another classic that really impressed.

This was just one of the three pastas we had, each excellent.

Our family’s hearts and prayers go out to earthquake victims in Morocco. Click here to donate to Unicef relief efforts (there are plenty of other platforms where you can donate as well).

That’s an image captured in the Fernet Branca bottling facility on Desbrosses St. in lower Manhattan just south of Canal St. It was taken sometime in the 1990s.

The photo arrived in my inbox last week. It was among a group of images sent by a photographer named Ken Tannenbaum. He and his family lived in Tribeca back in the late 1990s and at some point, the Tribeca Trib (a local paper) asked him to take some photos of the space.

I don’t know what inspired him to search for other people who would remember the space. But somehow he found me.

Back in 1999, when I first broke out as a freelance writer, I landed one of my first gigs with the new management at the Fernet Branca space. I helped them to launch and publish a monthly print newsletter.

Fernet Branca was still a widely available product in the U.S. in the 1980s. In the 1930s, the brand was so popular here that the company opened the bottling facility.

But as I understand it, they continued to sell Fernet Branca as a medicine rather than as an alcoholic beverage.

If you talk to Italians and Italian-Americans of a certain age, they will tell you that they didn’t drink Fernet Branca to party. They “took” it when they felt under the weather. Many people, usually about 10-20 years older than me, have told me that their mothers gave them an espresso spiked with an egg yolk and a shot of Fernet Branca every morning.

In the 1980s, the FDA came down hard on the brand. Evidently, they had never re-registered it as an alcoholic beverage.

At some point during that decade, the U.S. government shut them down and they abandoned the facility.

When Fernet Branca called me in 2000, they were relaunching the brand and had seen something I had written about it.

They invited me to see the space. It was like a scene out of Mel Brooks’ “Young Frankenstein.” Evidently, they just picked up and left and left everything behind.

The image above comes from the space’s counterfeit testing lab. Hence all the test tubes.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I was heading to the Atlantic Avenue stop to catch the 2 train that would take me to the Fernet Branca space. Before I left my apartment, I called one of my colleagues to confirm a 9 a.m. meeting.

He screamed at me: “Are you fucking crazy? Turn on the TV!” And then he hung up.

I went upstairs to my landlord’s apartment and we watched — in absolute disbelief and absolute horror — as the second tower was struck by the plane.

Had I not called my colleague, I would have been traveling underneath the World Trade Center right around the time that the second plane hit.

I was extremely fortunate. I’ll never forget the singed documents that rained over Park Slope, Brooklyn that afternoon.

G-d bless everyone who lost their lives and suffered that day. G-d bless their families. G-d bless America.

Thanks for reading.

There’s a long Californian tradition of growing Italian grape varieties that stretches back to the early wave of Italian immigration to the state in the late 19th century.

Barbera, for example, was widely grown in what we now call California wine country. It was planted there by Piedmontese migrants who fled extreme hardship in their home country. Had Prohibition not come along, we’d be probably be drinking Californian Barbera instead of Cabernet Sauvignon today.

Over the last decade or so, there’s been a revived interest in Italian grape varieties in California. Idlewild Wines in Healdsburg became a pioneer in this movement with its focus on Piedmontese grape varieties.

The winery’s general manager, Thomas DeBiase, has now branched out with his own line of Italian grape varieties. It’s called Jupiter Wine Co.

That’s his super popular Vermentino above. You’ll find it, he told me, by-the-glass at some of San Francisco’s hippest spots. The label was designed by artist Evan Dorkin (who just happens to be an ex-schoolmate of Thomas’).

All the wines are spontaneously fermented. And little to no sulfur is added.

I really loved how varietally expressive these wines were. One of my big disappointments with Italian grapes grown in California has been their lack of classic character, probably due more to winemaking than to growing practices.

Thomas seems to have threaded that needle with this project. The Vermentino tasted like Vermentino (perhaps more peninsular than insular but totally spot on). The Sangiovese had that unmistakable plum note and the wonderful lift that fresh Sangiovese has when it’s good.

I also really loved how clean the wines were. That’s another tricky issue for producers of uninoculated wines.

His years of working with Idlewild, where the new line is made as well, have allowed him to hone his skill as a winemaker. And it shows in these fresh, youthful expressions of Italy via California.

The labels take it over the top.

We tasted the wines yesterday at his food and wine shop in downtown Healdsburg, Ciao Bruto (adjacent to the winery). I love chatting Italian wine with Thomas. He’s one of the best Italian-focused tasters I know and his approach to everything he does is so thoughtful and soulful. Profits from Jupiter Wine Co. are invested in housing solutions for the houseless.

Thanks again, Thomas, for a great tasting! And congrats on the success of your new project!