From the department of “shameless self-promotion”…

Above: me with little Paco and Lila Jane who is now a middle-schooler and plays cello in the top orchestra in her school’s magnet program.

Wednesday, September 18 – Los Angeles

This event got cancelled because of internal scheduling issues. But the October dates below are confirmed.

Sunday, September 22 – Houston

Please join me and Katie White at 4 p.m. for a set featuring her on vox. I can’t believe she roped me into singing a Michael Stipes song (there is personal history there btw). No cover.

Wednesday, October 2 – Boston

Presenting an Abruzzo seminar at City Winery. Trade event. Register.

Tuesday, October 8 – Dallas

Presenting seminars on Umbrian and Lombard wines. Register.

Thursday, October 10 – El Paso

Leading a seminar on Abruzzo. Register. El Paso is such a great town btw. Really looking forward to this.

Tuesday, October 15 – Los Angeles

Presenting an Abruzzo dinner for trade at Rossoblu.

Wednesday, October 16 – Los Angeles

Presenting an Abruzzo dinner for wine and food lovers at Rossoblu.

Friday-Sunday, October 18-20 – Boulder

Boulder Burgundy Festival. I’m not presenting this year but will be there blogging about the event. Awesome event btw. Register.

Monday-Thursday, October 21-24 — New York

I’ll be in New York leading at least one event and possibly more. Exciting news to come. Stay tuned for details.

Monday, November 11 — Houston

A very special new winery client of mine will be coming to southeast Texas. So geeked for this. Stay tuned.

Tuesday, November 12 — Atlanta

I’ll be returning to one of my favorite cities in America with the same client. Trade and wine lover events.

Monday, November 18 – Tulsa

TBD but I’ll be presenting a seminar on vermouth. I’m super geeked to get back to Tulsa. Love that city.

Thank you for your support and solidarity! Buon weekend a tutti.

Rolling up to Pasetti just south of where Pescara commune melts into Francavilla al Mare (Francavilla by the Sea), a wine professional may be struck by low-key profile of the winemaking facility.

But then, once the pleasantries are out of the way, you meet that tour-de-force of life otherwise known as Laura Pasetti, the family’s matriarch.

Where I grew up, they called it chutzpah. In the Bronx, they call it moxy. Whatever you call it, Ms. Laura has a contagious energy and warmth that inextricably draw you into her universe.

I wish you could see and hear me trying to keep up with her as I interpreted for her and our dream team group of sommeliers led by James Tidwell. They don’t prepare you at the UN for that much dynamism and drive! (I worked for a year as a UN interpreter way back in the day.)

More than two decades ago, the Pasetti family made the decision to sell their vineyards near the sea in Francavilla and buy inland vineyard sites at high altitudes in the shadow of the Maiella and Gran Sasso massifs.

If you look carefully at the photo above, the cloud line in the distance gives you a sense of how high this site lies. And just look at the limestone in that vineyard!

As Ms. Laura recounts it, the Pasetti family recognized the challenges of climate change early on and made a conscious decision to head to the hills, so to speak. Today, that gamble has paid off in ways that no one could imagine.

Their wines — especially their flagship Testarossa line — are among the best I’ve tasted from Abruzzo. The Montepulciano in particular has a freshness and drinkability that dance over the wine’s richness.

Ms. Laura’s son Davide is the family’s winemaker and there is perhaps no one better in explaining how Montepulciano’s high levels of malvidin (one of the five main anthocyanins) make it unique among red grapes. Its rich color gives the Abruzzo winemaker a broad palette, he explained. And you can achieve even dark color without over-extracting the wine.

I loved the family and the wines. And I highly recommend them to you. Fyi Ms. Laura is looking for a new importer in the U.S. after her longtime importer retired.

It was my junior year in high school when my mother told me that I would not be going to school the next day.

At the time, she was a programmer at U.C.S.D. Extension, the university’s community education department. She needed me to drive her and a visiting lecturer to Tijuana for lunch.

By the time I was 17, I spoke Spanish fluently because I had fallen in with a clique of Mexican schoolmates. I had also traveled with them in Mexico and spent my 16th summer at one of their homes in Mexico City. I knew Tijuana well, including some of the best spots to eat where my friends had taken me.

The visiting lecturer was none other than the then recently knighted Sir Roy Strong, art historian and then director of the Victoria and Albert Museum. He had come to San Diego to give a talk on campus organized by my mother. When she asked him what he’d like to do after his lecture, he said that he’d like to have lunch and go shopping in Tijuana.

I was the kid for the job.

After we had eaten lobster at a seaside restaurant in Rosarito in Baja California, my mother and her friend who had joined us excused themselves to use the restroom.

Alone at the table he told me that he was impressed with my language skills and my hungry quest to learn more about another culture.

“You should go to Italy and study Italian,” he declared before my mother and her friend returned to the table.

I had never met anyone like Sir Roy. And the meeting had a profound effect on me.

Four years later, I was on my junior year abroad in Padua and I never looked back.

Looking back on it now, it was as if Sir Roy was an image, an apparition sent to show me my path. It was one of the defining moments of my life and man, am I glad I listened to him.

Image via Sir Roy’s short-lived and long-abandoned Instagram.