The U.S. government’s sea change in Russia-U.S. relations and the resulting Russia-U.S. alliance are shameful abjurations of values held by generations of Americans.

The mineral rights shakedown of a vulnerable people by an emboldened MAGA movement is despicable.

In the light of these aberrations, I am ashamed to be an American. And I feel compelled to speak out and I hope that other Americans will feel the same.

I recognize that most Americans don’t even know where Ukraine is. They could hardly care about what happens to a people in a faraway land, an ocean between us.

But I also believe that a majority of Americans, from all stripes, know that Russia’s leader is a cutthroat, malevolent dictator who has murdered and imprisoned his opponents, exploited his people for personal gain, a cunning dissembler who has sent hundreds of thousands of people to their deaths.

The U.S. government must acknowledge that Russia started the war in Ukraine. The U.S. government must stand up to the Russian dictator and call him out for what he is.

Realpolitik is unavoidable in world affairs. Russia’s gains in the war might be irreversible.

But if America doesn’t stand up to dictators and murderers any longer, then we must speak out and up. We must call for policy change.

The current administration’s push to reshape the government and its role is misguided and potentially dangerous in my view. The American people seemed to have wanted upheaval in their governance and social services. Fair enough. Let’s see what happens.

The Putin-Trump alliance is a step too far — way to far. It undermines everything our country stood for throughout my lifetime and my parents’ lifetimes.

Political consultant James Carville’s recent Times editorial where he called on democrats to stand by and do nothing is bullshit — an immature, irresponsible, and unacceptable response to the emetic reshaping of American values by the MAGA movement.

It’s time to speak out and up, people! Thanks for being here, thanks for the solidarity. Thanks for believing that there is hope for American dreams and ideals.

One of the most compelling visits of my 2024 in wine was with winemaker Giovanna Trisorio who runs the Cincinnato cooperative in Latina province south of Rome.

I’d tasted the wines over the years and after she and I connected at Vinitaly last year, I wanted to get my boots on the ground and try to wrap my mind around why Cincinnato’s wines and so many other wines from this area are so good.

For the record, the Cincinnato cooperative is located just off the ancient Appian Way about an hour south of the capital. It’s one of the most stunning drives you’ll ever make.

First you travel through the Castelli Romani where it’s hard not to miss the renaissance of grape growers there. Make sure you stop to look at the gorgeous lakes which were formed by the ancient craters of a volcano. It’s such an important element to understanding the volcanic legacy of the winemaking there.

But then you drive down into the Latina plains. The best vineyards, I discovered, are those that rise up in the foothills on the eastern side of the valley. There, where you can feel the maritime influence of the sea, the volcanic soils make for some of the best wines produced in central Italy. It’s such an amazing place to see. Check out the topographic map of the area below.

As you can see from the images, the soil is richly volcanic. But as you can see in the photo of a newly planted vineyard, there is also a limestone component.

These soils were created thanks to the eruptions of a volcano that would form the high-altitude lakes, Albano and Nemi, in the Castelli Romani.

Giovanna’s wines are fantastic, very focused, and very market ready. The whites in particular really impressed me. But the reds have the power and depth — again, thanks to the soils and unique exposure there — that the market looks for.

For the record, the cooperative is named after Cincinnatus, the ancient Roman statesman and farmer whose story inspired our own George Washington.

The coooperative also has one of the best tasting rooms and hospitality programs in the region. I highly recommend the wines but also encourage you to make the journey yourself. You won’t be disappointed!

Above: Langston Hughes signs autographs after a reading. Image via Washington Area Spark’s Flickr (Creative Commons).

As long as I live, I’ll never forget reading the poetry of Langston Hughes in my sophomore year in high school. The words seemed to jump off the page in my American lit. anthology. His marriage of literature and music danced on the page and in my mind. The blues were literary! I was hooked. In the college years that followed, I would play hooky by finding old first editions in the University of California libraries and poring over them again and again, even transcribing some of the poems to better understand their prosody. And prosody — versification, metrics are synonyms — would become my focus during grad school.

But even more profound than the poetry’s effect was the collision between me and Hughes’ autobiography The Big Sea.

“Life is a big sea full of many fish,” he wrote. “I let down my nets and pulled. I’m still pulling.”

From his tales of Paris to his journey to Italy, the words felt like that gulp of fresh air you take halfway through a long run, filling your brain with blood and your veins with energy.

I knew that I longed to escape my life, to escape my hometown. And Hughes’ big sea called to me, pulled at me, nagged at me.

Some 40 years later, I’m glad I listened to and heeded that calling. I can’t wait for my children to be old enough to read and appreciate this book. And I highly recommend it to you.

Over the course of creative life, I’ve set Langston Hughes to music; I’ve thrown Langston Hughes reading parties (Sean, remember???!!!); and I’ve returned over and over again to the poetry and prose when I needed that gulp of fresh air to keep me going.

At my funeral, I hope someone will read the lines: “Life is a big sea full of many fish. He let down his nets and pulled.”

Happy Black History Month!

I cannot share any of the photos I took at the Amorotti winery in the picturesque village of Loreto Aprutino, which lies roughly 30 minutes by car inland from the Adriatic coast in Abruzzo.

That’s because legacy grape grower and winemaker Gaetano Carboni wants to isolate the unique community of bacteria and yeast that populate his ancient cellar. Visits are extremely limited (I was honored to be received) in part because he doesn’t want to upset the balance of microorganisms that have allowed him to ferment spontaneously in the space since his first commercially released vintage in 2017.

Why are photos not allowed? He let me take them but asked me not to publish them. Gaetano, I discovered, is the nicest person and extremely polite and proper. But he is afraid that too much exposure will ultimately bring too many visitors and threaten the delicate biome he has captured.

What I can show you is the above photo of the Gran Sasso massif, snapped in the village of Cappelle sul Tavo, about halfway along the windy road that leads to Loreto Aprutino from the seaside.

As you drive up to the hamlet, you realize that you are surrounded by seemingly endless olive groves. The olive oil raised there is considered by many to be among the best in the world.

But when you get there and look back on the sea, which you can see clearly from the hilltop village, you can literally taste the dolce aere, the delicate breeze that kisses the groves and the patchwork of vineyards interspersed among them. Then you look to the west to the massif and you notice how it protects the hamlet like a sleeping giant.

It’s then that you realize what a unique and special growing zone this is.

Loreto Aprutino is home to some of Abruzzo’s most famous and oldest wineries: Valentini, Ciavolich, Torre dei Beati, just to name a few.

Gaetano’s family can trace their history back to the Renaissance, just like those above. But it’s only been in recent years that he has begun making wine from vines that were once reserved solely for family consumption. His family, like the Valentini, for example, are among the region’s most important producers of olive oil.

The wines are excellent, the story compelling. I highly recommend them. And when you do visit one evening before dinner on a chilling winter night, look out for the cats that rule the streets of this magical village.

Owing to the sensitive nature of the weekend’s top secret mission, details of where we dined cannot be revealed.

I did however want to share my joy in drinking a bottle of mostly Merlot from Lis Neris in Friuli. I’ve known and followed the winery for years and have loved the wines.

When I saw a 2016 Merlot-Cabernet Sauvignon blend for a reasonable price, I snagged it and man, was I rewarded with freshness, rich but buoyant fruit, hallmark Merlot flavors, and a great pairing for a perfectly aged prime New York strip topped with Roquefort.

As much as we all (wrongly) dissed Merlot from Tuscany and Umbria in the 2000s (me included), I never stopped drinking Merlot from Friuli (and from Veneto) where diluvial and limestone soils deliver some of the best Italian expressions of the grape variety (the other place where I’ve had great Merlot is the volcanic-rich soils of Latium).

At eight years from harvest, the Lis Neris was at its peak of fruit and earthiness. What a great wine! And what a great value!

Oh, and the secret mission, you ask? It was a success!

Social media and the internet overflow with heartfelt tributes to Italian philosopher, critic, educator, and wine writer Giampaolo Gravina, who died today.

According to numerous posts by both mainstream and wine-focused media, Giampaolo, 58, passed away in Friuli where he was attending a wine event. A sudden and unexpected health crisis was the cause according to posts on social media.

The red thread that pulses through all of the remembrances is Giampaolo’s gentle yet immensely powerful way of writing and talking about wine. I believe many of my colleagues would agree that his unique approach to wine and wine criticism was a reflection of his personality — brilliant, erudite, wise, reserved, precise, judicious, and beautifully human.

As noted Florentine sommelier and wine writer Andrea Gori put it in a social media post, “Giampaolo, you were the exception.”

Author of numerous books on wine, including well-received tomes on Burgundy and the Italian new wave, he was also a longtime wine critic for L’Espresso, the high-profile news weekly. He also contributed to academic journals with scholarly essays on aesthetics, the focus of his studies at the University of Rome. These included his musings on wine tasting as a cultural and intellectual experience and enterprise.

Giampaolo was also my colleague: we were both professors in the graduate program at the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Piedmont.

I knew and tasted with him many times over the years. He would often tease me that I was his one friend from Texas who wasn’t interested in sports or the Houston Rockets — passions of his.

Please head over to social media to see the tide of posts about his unending warmth and humanity. The world is a dimmer place today without him.

Sit tibi terra levis Ioannes Paule.

Screenshot: Intravino.