For years, San Diego and Long Beach wine friends have been raving to me about Michael’s on Naples, the top destination — by all accounts — for fine wine lovers there.

Last night, I finally made it there and wow, what an awesome restaurant and wine program!

That’s wine director and general manager Massimo Aronne, above.

His list includes a solid offering of California (folks here, as elsewhere in the state, like to drink domestic, after all). The prices were so reasonable that I was tempted to do a bottle of Kistler, one of my guilty pleasures.

But I was with Italians and we were going all Italian last night. And Massimo’s Italian program is one of the best in the country in my experience.

There’s plenty of top Tuscany and Piedmont for you to dive into. But the thing that blew me away was the breadth of “Italian wine people” wine.

A bottle of aged Lugana by Montonale, anyone? It’s one of my favorite Italian wines of all time and Massimo had it on his list at an obscenely low price.

We ended up drinking a bottle of Derthona by Borgogno, also extremely reasonably priced (not far off from retail actually).

The food was Italo-California. The salumi were expertly sliced. The texture and flavor of the lasagne sheets reminded me of my Emilia days, although the creative fillings brought me back to the state of my upbringing (I grew up in San Diego).

The pork chop and ribeye were so flavorful that they had all of us swooning.

I really loved this place and can’t recommend it enough.

And of course, I’m super proud of the fact that Massimo is working with Amistà, the Nizza winery that I rep in the U.S. I love the wines and the people who make them and it’s so awesome to see people like Massimo who have the depth of knowledge in Italian wine to appreciate it.

What a great night! And thank you to Massimo and everyone who took such great care of us. Special thanks to Paolo Cressi of Ethica Wines who set it all up.