The funniest thing happened on my last trip to Italy.

When I sat down last week to taste with Marina Savoia, one of the owners of the Coali winery in Sant’Ambrogio in Valpolicella, something didn’t add up.

The excellent wines were traditional in style, very old school but clean and focused. I liked them a lot.

There wasn’t a barrique to be found. All of their wines are aged in larger formats, casks that have been reused vintage after vintage, the way the old line producers there do it.

But when I picked up a bottle to reposition it for a photo, I noticed that the glass was extremely heavy and thick. And the punt was deep. The vessel had the classic “Napa Valley” shape, often used by producers of “important” wines that have American appeal for the American market. It didn’t align with the people that make these wines, the style, or the place where they are raised.

I asked Marina Savoia, above, why the odd choice of bottle format? After all, in my experience, producers like her and her family often like to use older, more classic formats, and they are keen to reduce their carbon footprint by using the lightest glass possible — the antithesis of the Super Tuscan craze of the aughts.

The answer was simple, she said. There were simply no other formats available. And she and her family were forced to use the one you can see in the photo at the beginning of this post.

Across Italy, winemakers are telling me that bottles are becoming harder and harder to come by and the cost is rising rapidly. Putin’s insanity-fueled bellic campaign is to blame, they tell me.

For sparkling wine producers, the problem is compounded by the rigid rhythms of vinification and aging. They can’t just let their wine sit another year in cask, like a producer of Valpolicella Ripasso, for example. When it’s time to bottle, it’s time to bottle and that’s it.

The major concerns, of course, are availability and costs. Demand is high and supply is lower than it’s ever been. The price hikes were are going to see next year will be owed in no small part to this critical issue.

And the fallout is also manifesting itself in surprising ways, as in the case of Marina’s wines.

You can’t just a book by its cover. And increasingly, you can’t judge a wine by its bottle.

Even after all these years of coming to Italy for study and work, I had never really spent proper time in the city of Turin.

This week, I spent a few nights and more days there and just fell in love with the place.

Did you think I was going to come all the way to Piedmont and not eat vitello tonnato (above), arguably my favorite dish of all time?

I only had a little free time to stroll the city’s beautiful porticoes but I was blown away by all the rare book shops. I even found a vintage record store that specializes in classical — one of my recent collecting interests.

The Egyptology museum blew me away! As a dog lover, of course, I was drawn to the mummified animals section, purportedly one of the biggest collections in the world beyond Cairo. It was amazing. The whole thing was amazing. There’s even a “tomb” designed by Renzo Piano. Not to miss.

Car culture, as one would imagine, is big in Turin. I was told that the automobile museum is great. Next on my list. And it was cool to see some of the crazy cars that people drive in the city.

One of the things that I really dug was how the city has retained its old-school feel. There’s not just a sushi place and a Burger King on every corner. Those are tajarin al Castelmagno at Porto di Savona — SUPER OLD SCHOOL and wonderful.

Still so much to explore there. I can’t wait to get back.

Thank you again Michele for inviting me!

I’m actually heading out again tonight for Italy to meet a new client (more on that later). And I still haven’t finished blogging about my early September trip!

That’s the fiorentina at the Osteria di Brolio, Ricasoli’s wonderful tavern on the grounds of the estate just down the road from the castle’s entrance.

My friend and colleague Maurizio Gamberucci, deputy director for the Italy-America Chamber in Texas and a native Tuscan, met me there for dinner on the very day that Ricasoli started harvesting its Sangiovese.

Beyond the steak — and wow, what a steak that was! — the menu there has become more creative and playful since chef Franco Sangiacomo returned.

Many east-coasters will know him from his celebrity turn as a chef in Washington D.C. where he cooked for a who’s who of American power players.

He’s brought a delightful contemporary touch to the classics at the osteria. Our dinner was fantastic.

It was one of the best and most memorable meals of that trip. I can’t recommend it enough.

I slept that night at Ricasoli’s “Agriroom,” a spartan but perfectly anointed bed and breakfast in the main piazza of the small village where the Ricasoli offices are located.

It was perfect and very affordable and the wifi works great. Breakfast in the morning at the “Agribar” on the first floor of the building.

Early the next morning, I headed up toward the castle for a daybreak run. I can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday night and Saturday morning in Chiantigiana.

If you’re heading to Chianti Classico this season, check it out. And the tour and museum — including a great survey of Chianti Classico soils — is so worth the price of admission. Francesco Ricasoli has done an excellent job of updating it and even the family’s private chapel in the castle is now open to the public. It’s stunning.

Next stop: Turin. Wish me luck and wish me speed!

From the department of public service announcements…

Earlier this month, the Italian association of wine shops, Vinarius, and its partner group, the association of Italian wine shop and wine bar professionals, AEPI (Associazione Enotecari Professionisti Italiani), launched the second annual Best Italian Sommelier Competition.

Qualified candidates include “owners and staff of classic wine shops and public-facing wine and spirits-focused businesses,” write the organizers on their website. Their goal is to “foster dialog and offer a platform where wine professionals can gain a deeper understanding of the challenges that the wine trade is currently facing.” It seeks to create an environment of “collegiality and inspiration that will help all members of the trade to grow.”

And like last year, the first in the competition’s history, there is a special category reserved for Italian sommeliers working abroad.

Given how many Italians are currently working in the U.S. wine trade, I encourage my U.S.-based Italian colleagues to compete. No pressure but… let’s bring it home to the U.S.!

Visit the competition’s website for rules, dates, and info.

Thanks to everyone for the wishes for our new house! It’s been a crazy week between moving and unpacking. But we are settling in nicely to our new home. Thanks for thinking of us. It’s great to be finally getting back into the groove…

The world of wine is encyclopedic in breadth and scope. No matter how much you know, you’ll never know everything there is to know about wine.

That maxim came to mind the other day during a virtual tasting with two Italian winemakers (via the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce in Houston where I work as a media consultant, content creator, and presenter).

While I’m certainly not the first to notice the eco-friendly icons on the back label of a bottle of wine, it was my first time seeing the above markers — bottom, left — that guide the end user on how to recycle the various elements in wine’s detritus: the cork, the bottle/glass, the aluminum capsule, etc.

“Check recycling guidelines with your local authorities,” says the note underneath the images. “Separate the components and recycle them correctly.”

I’ll never forget going to Italy for the first time in the late 1980s and seeing battery recycling kiosks on every block. Why don’t we have that in America? I thought to myself.

I’ve always been impressed how Italians and Europeans in general see recycling and, more broadly, eco-awareness not as a “feel good” campaign but rather as a civic responsibility.

In the Italian wine world today, you see this nearly everywhere.

I really liked the wines by Usiglian del Vescovo in Pisa province where the owners grow Sangiovese and international grape varieties. The wines were fresh and vibrant in their aromas and flavors. And the prices ex cantina were excellent. The linguistic element may prove challenging for non-italophones (you had me at “Usiglian”!). But these wines would work great in a by-the-glass program anywhere in the U.S. I’m dying to try their whole-cluster Chardonnay and Viognier blend aged in amphora (which wasn’t in the flight I tasted the other day).

Great, well-priced wines in search of a U.S. importer.

I also have to give a shout out to the excellent wines of Gianni Tessari.

Before our virtual tasting the other day, I had only tasted wines he has made for another winery in Veneto. It was my first time tasting his eponymous label and I was blown away by the quality, the varietal expression, and the restrained alcohol. I loved the Soave but was also impressed with the Pinot Noir he grows, something very usual for Veneto. It clocked in at around 13 percent alcohol. Great!

That’s his daughter Valeria in the image above.

Virtual tasting is one of the legacies of the lockdowns. And I have to say that I like it a lot!

Tracie, the girls, and I couldn’t be more geeked to share the good news: earlier this month, we closed on a house in the same Houston neighborhood where we’ve been living for the last eight years.

It’s all thanks to Tracie, who started working full-time in April of last year as a realtor.

Because of her hard work, it only took about a half of a year for us to shore up our finances after the financial calamity of the 2020 closures. She didn’t just double our family’s income. She took it to the next level.

I have a big confession to make: I’ve been sleeping with my realtor!

Tracie’s insight and experience and her finely honed skills as a negotiator made it all possible.

It was stressful for both of us and especially her. But she got us the house and the mortgage we wanted, even as the rates were going up (that’s how good she is).

It’s been a surreal and magical time for all of us and maybe most of all for the girls.

The biggest news in their world is the fact that they will each have their own room. They are SUPER STOKED about that. And so are me and Tra.

When I think about the arc of our peripatetic lives — after all, Tracie was living in Italy when we first became aware of each other and I had been living in New York — it’s incredible and wonderful for me to think about how we finally got here.

I can’t imagine anywhere else in the world for our girls to grow up healthy and strong and surrounded by people of every gradation of humanity.

I simply can’t contain the happiness the new house has brought to all of us. Poo poo poo, as the old folks used to say. It’s a dream come true.

Thanks to everyone who has been rooting for us. We finally made it! And thanks for letting me share our joy here.

Happy Thanksgiving! We’ll be moving this weekend. Come give us a hand!

As I stuffed myself silly a few weeks ago at my friend Jeff Berlin’s new Georgian restaurant in Sebastopol, California, I couldn’t help but remember a restaurant that opened in 1998 in New York called Bondì.

At the time, faux “northern Italian” cuisine was still the benchmark for fine Italian cookery in the U.S.

The menu at Bondì was a breakthrough because it was being hailed as “authentic Sicilian food.” In other words, even though “Southern Italian” — aka Sicilian or Neapolitan — was passé, this was something brilliantly new and deliciously old at the same time.

And perhaps even more important to some big city dwellers at the time (including this lapsed New Yorker) was the fact that Bondì was serving “authentic” Sicilian wines and “native” Sicilian grape varieties.

Some here are old enough to remember that the late 1990s wave of the “new/old” Italian gastronomy was preceded by a new wave of Italian wine that focused on — excuse the pleonastic — the authentic and the native.

As I filled up on walnut paste appetizers at Piala, which is named after the traditional eastern drinking cup, I thought to myself, could Georgian cuisine be the new Italian of the up-and-coming generation?

I was blown away by how good the food was at Piala.

But I was even more impressed by Jeff’s attention to detail in recreating his cherished experiences in situ — the fruit of his many visits to Georgian wine country.

His maniacal passion reminded me of a few brave restaurateurs who courageously journeyed beyond the ne plus ultra of culinary complacency in the late 1990s in New York and California.

In retrospect, those italophilic entrepreneurs were on the cutting edge of a movement that would reshape the way citizens of the U.S. and the world would dine. They transformed an “ethnic” cuisine (ooooooo! how I despise that term!) into a world cuisine. And they had a “new” wine to lead them.

Just like a pseudo-Georgian I know in a sleepy wine country town on the west coast.

I highly recommend it.

Above: Francesco Ricasoli, legacy Sangiovese grower and Chianti Classico producer, with technicians in the Ricasoli winery’s laboratory.

Researchers at the University of Pisa department of agricultural and food studies believe they have found one of the holy grails of viticultural science: a direct correlation between soil types and aromas in wines made from grapes grown in those soil types.

Their initial results were informally presented to an Italian wine trade observer on a September 2022 visit to the estate. They plan on publishing their results in 2023.

In a partnership that echoes the historic collaboration between the Iron Baron, Bettino Ricasoli, the current owner’s ancestor, and the University of Pisa’s agriculture department in the second half of the 19th century, the Ricasoli winery has allowed the scientists to use his large laboratory on the grounds of the estate. But more significantly, Francesco Ricasoli has also allowed them to use his grapes and wines for their work. Because the expansive Ricasoli property is planted primarily to Sangiovese, it offers the researches a unique opportunity to analyze aromas from a wide array of parcels, wines, and soil types.

Using gas chromatography, they have identified the compounds associated with aromas in wines from the different vineyards. And while the correlation between soil type and aroma has been studied and documented in the past, the scale of the current studies represents a breakthrough that could have global implications for the wine trade.

The effect of soil on wine has been a highly controversial topic in certain circles of the wine world. While some believe there is a direct relationship between the two, others have argued that the connection is much more nuanced and arguably not immediately apparent to the untrained olfactory.

The Pisa-Ricasoli research could definitively change that dialectic.

Please join me on November 29 and 30 in Houston for a tasting of wines from Sicily, Calabria, and Abruzzo. It’s an Italy-America Chamber of Commerce gig and should be a fun time. Vinology (one of my favorite Houston wine bars) and Caracol (me and Tracie’s go-to anniversary and birthday destination, one of our favorite restaurants) are hosting. I’m sure some more bottles will be opened after each event. Hope to see you then and thank you for your support! Details follow.

On Tuesday and Wednesday, November 29-30 in Houston, the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce South Central is proud to present two wine tastings featuring three Italian producers: Cantine Bruni (Calabria), Isula di Pantelleria (Sicily), and Citra (Abruzzo).

The seminars will take place at Vinology on Tuesday, November 29, 5:30-7:30 p.m.; and Caracol on Wednesday, November 30, 5:30-7:30 p.m.

The events are open to qualified trade and food and wine-focused media members. Seating is limited and is available on a first-come-first-served basis.

Click here to sign up for the Tuesday, November 29 event at Vinology.

Click here to sign up for the Wednesday, November 30 event at Caracol.