It seems that everyone in the Italian wine business loves to tell the story about how Chianti growers used to blend (white) Trebbiano into the (otherwise red) wines. Back then, they’ll tell you, before the “modernization” of Italian viticulture, Chianti was just another “rustic” wine. With a lot of character, yes. But not much refinement. Great for food but not worth the collector’s attention until the district’s post-modern era.

They all point to the famous blending “recipe” penned by Bettino Ricasoli, the Iron Baron and 19th-century Chianti patrician. It included Trebbiano Malvasia, yes, for wines to be consumed in their youth. And later, Chianti producers would use Trebbiano for blending their wines (thank you wine pro Jarkko Peränen for catching my oversight!)

But here’s what they are missing… and man, are they missing out big.

If you actually go back and read Baron Ricasoli’s letters to his friend and research partner, Cesare Studiati, a professor of agricultural sciences at the University of Pisa, you will find that Ricasoli came to two highly important realizations that would forever reshape Italian viticulture far beyond Chiantigiana’s borders.

The first was that acidity was the key to making wines with aging potential and more importantly shipping potential. That was the first big “wow” moment in Ricasoli’s writings. Acidity, he realized, kept the wine from oxidizing and it helped to prevent unwanted bacteria or other microorganisms from forming in the wine.

The second was his realization that Sangiovese grown in Tuscany’s limestone and clay-rich soils delivered the greatest results in terms of acidity levels, aromas, and flavors.

Think of that! At roughly the same time that Pasteur was studying yeast and fermentation (one of the major scientific breakthroughs of the era), Ricasoli was studying the role of acidity in wine.

Especially as young wine professionals prize acidity today, Ricasoli’s findings are literally epic in their scope.

Ricasoli famously grubbed up all other grape varieties at his Brolio farm in Gaiole in Chianti. He was convinced that native grape varieties represented the future for Italian wine. It’s another way that his and Chianti’s shared legacy continues to shape Italian wine today.

This is just one of the themes we will be covering when I lead a small seminar on Chianti at Vinology in Houston on Thursday, February 2.

Click here to register.

We’ll be tasting six wines, including a Vinsanto from Chianti. Those are Trebbiano and Malvasia grapes (above) being dried for the production of Vinsanto del Chianti Classico at Castello di Volpaia (from my September trip to Italy).

I hope you can join us.

One of the things that impressed me most during a visit to Pavia wine country a few years ago was the abundance of hazels.

When asked about it, one producer told me that Piedmontese hazelnut processors had been disappointed in foreign-farmed trees. In search of land suitable for growing the fruit, they had expanded their orchards to Pavia province.

The reason? The soils and growing conditions are similar to those found in Langa where Barolo and Barbaresco are raised.

Pavia wine country lies just south of the Po River in Lombardy, just a stone’s throw from southeastern Piedmont. Its limestone and marl-rich soils are nearly identical to those found in Nebbiolo’s spiritual homeland.

Oltrepò Pavese (rendered in English, the toponym means beyond the Po River) is considered by many to be the top Italian growing region for Pinot Noir. And while many know it for the appellation’s classic method wines, some would argue that still Pinot Noir is what really puts it in world class.

According to at least one soil study I found (commissioned by the Regione Lombardia), Pavia province has a higher concentration of surface area planted to vine than any other place in Lombardy (Franciacorta, I’m looking at you!).

Oltrepò Pavese and the Pavese IGP have been on my mind this week because my friends at Vinarius, the Italian association of wine retailers, just named Pavese as their biennial wine region to watch (here I’ve slavishly translated it as the “Vinarius Territory Prize,” the ninth time the body has recognized an Italian wine-growing district).

According to their press release, more than 13,000 hectares are planted to vine between Oltrepò Pavese and the Provincia di Pavia IGT (Pavia Province). Of those, more than 11,000 are used to make appellation-designated wines.

Oltrepò Pavese has also been on my mind over the last year thanks to the excellent educational campaign run by my friend, colleague, and fellow italophone Susannah Gold.

I’ve also heard chatter that a handful of prominent winemakers from other regions are looking at buying vineyard land there.

Are Oltrepò Pavese and Provincia di Pavese going to be the next big thing? No one can say for certain. But it sure is going to be fun to follow along as we find out.

Images snapped in 2021 at the Frecciarossa farm in Casteggio.

Above: the Nicodemi farm and winery in Abruzzo was one of my most compelling visits of 2022. The region is so much more than so many in our industry imagine.

There’s a good reason that wine appeals to the intellectually insatiable: no matter how many wines you’ve tasted, no matter how many appellations you’ve visited, and no matter how many winemakers you’ve interacted with, there is always something new to explore and discover.

That adage was foremost in my mind during my harvest tour of Abruzzo in early September 2022, one of my most compelling central Italian swings of the year.

A deep dive into the dynamics of pergola vs. tendone training and solar radiation in a time of climate change. A discovery of a new but ancient aging vessel for age-worthy wines. Discussing the highly cadenced world of Cerasuolo. Tasting a skin-contact lees-aged Pecorino (that blew my mind).

Perhaps more than any other Italian wine region, Abruzzo is often brushed off as a land of sprawling cooperatives and cheap plonk. Nothing could be farther from the truth.

I couldn’t be more thrilled to be presenting an Abruzzo seminar at one of the first major walk-around tastings of 2023 in Texas.

On Wednesday, February 8, I will be leading three seminars at Eataly Dallas: Moscato d’Asti, Pinot Grigio delle Venezie, and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo.

What a way to start the year off!

Click here to register.

There are also travel funds available for importers, both Texas-based and out-of-state, to help out with gas, airfare, and hotels. Please DM me if you want me to put you in touch with the organizers.

Thank you for the support and hoping to see you next month in Dallas!

“Get in good trouble, necessary trouble, and redeem the soul of America.”

These are the words of the great civil rights activist John Lewis, who died in July 2020 after a lifelong and historic effort to power change in this country.

People often ask me and Tracie why we continue to protest the Neo-Confederate memorial in Orange, Texas where she grew up. It was erected in 2017 along Martin Luther King Dr., one of the city’s main arteries, where it intersects with Interstate 10 not far from the Louisiana border. (Click the link to see it.)

After all, they say, the Sons of Confederate Veterans built on private land and there’s nothing that can be done to remove it.

I don’t want to point you to the Sons’ website (every click helps them). But I would like you to take a look at the bibliography by the Kennedy brothers, the pseudo-intellectuals who run these scumbags’ “media and public relations.”

They include titles like Myths of American Slavery, Was Jefferson Davis Right?, and The South Was Right!. Don’t believe me? Check out the Amazon thread. I can only imagine who Lincoln’s Marxists were.

Some people claim that the Sons are just a bunch of loser re-enactors who get a thrill out of racist cosplay. But it only takes a little bit of digging to discover that the driving force of their organization is white supremacy.

On Monday, January 16, Martin Luther King Day, 2023, Tracie and I will be protesting their “Memorial of the Wind” in Orange from 1-3 p.m. Please join us if you can. We’ll have plenty of signs and water to share.

We’ve been protesting the site since it first was erected. We’ve chronicled our efforts on our site RepurposeMemorial.com.

And every year, we raise a MLK billboard across the road from this racist, white supremacist eyesore (see below). Thank you to everyone who donated to this year’s GoFundMe. We raised enough money to keep the billboard up throughout Black History Month. Surplus funds will be applied to next year’s campaign.

As a celebrated Italian winemaker once said, sometimes the battles you know you are going to lose are the most important ones to fight.

The Sons once sent a menacing anonymous letter to a family member of ours. One of them, their local asshole in chief, Granvel Block, even showed up at the church where my father-in-law served as pastor. People yell nasty things at us and throw cigarette butts when we protest. They burn rubber and “roll coal” to intimidate us. One asshole famously told us to “get the f*ck across the border… Jesus f*cking hates you.”

These women and men are cowards who hide behind their cosplay and Neo-Confederate pageantry.

Please join us if you can. Please share this post if you can’t. And please take the day off on Monday, January 16, the day we celebrate the life and words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and get into the good kind of trouble — necessary trouble.

Email me at jparzen@gmail.com for more info on the protest.

Among the La Jolla High School graduating class of 1985, many of my fellow alumni have had brilliant careers in the restaurant and wine business.

Most notable among them are the fisherpeople who stopped selling their catch to the big San Diego canneries and launched fresh fish-focused restaurants.

But I think it’s fair to say that none of us would have ever expected a great Italian restaurant to rise in our hometown. And if you added a great natural wine list to that mix, they would have told you to go cash in your marbles.

There has never been anything like that in La Jolla, a sleepy beachfront town known for its preppy look and its insular culture (I’ll just leave it at that). Until now…

Not only is Marisi, the newish Italian concept that’s located right in the heart of downtown La Jolla, one of the most beautiful restaurants you’ll find in southern California. It’s also one of the best Italian menus I’ve tasted over the last 12 months — hands down.

That’s the rigatoni with spicy tomato above. The richly flavored homemade pasta was cooked perfectly al dente and I loved how the kitchen went for bold heat in this dish.

When’s the last time you had a pesto trapanese outside of Sicily?

In Trapani township in the western part of the island, pesto is made with fresh basil and almonds (instead of the classic Ligurian pesto with pine nuts).

The word trottola means spinning top. It’s a shape similar to what we know today as fusilli (or as my daughters would say, curlicue pasta). I loved the way the pesto dripped from the twisty noodles. And the gently pickled cherry tomatoes gave this wine a creative pop that we all swooned over.

My friend Tony Vallone, the great Italian-American restaurateur who took Italian cooking to new heights in Houston, used to say that for Italian cuisine to be truly authentic, it has to be creative.

The above interpretation of carpaccio really blew both Tracie and me away. Italian purists would have scoffed at this dish. The concept is to feature the quality of the thinly sliced beef, they would say, with minimal adornment. But we were practically licking the plate as we fought for who would get the last bite. Here heat was robust but it didn’t eclipse the flavor of the well-marbled beef. Not traditional by any means. But 1,000 percent delicious.

Or should I say radical, to borrow a phrase from my youth.

The most radical thing about Marisi is its natural-focused wine list by Chris Plaia of Bay Area fame.

I can’t imagine that any of my foodie high school friends would disagree: La Jolla is still an unabashed “Cab” and “Chardonnay” town where “oakiness,” unbridled alcohol levels, fruit-driven, acidity-poor wines still shape the viticultural hegemony. “Natural wine” is not exactly the first thing that comes to mind when you mention dining in La Jolla (which was once famous for the bar where Raymond Chandler drank himself to death, no joke).

Chris has done an extraordinary job in putting together a list that you would be more likely to find in San Francisco or Silverlake.

Tracie and I went for Giovanna Maccario’s Rossese, a longtime favorite of mine (and Giovanna is one of the coolest winemakers I have met, bold in her support for the emarginated). But there were so many other lots we could have picked.

Before 2009 you could have been hard-pressed (excuse the pun) to find a list like this beyond SF or LA. But Chris has broken the glass ceiling in the most unlikely of places.

We were there on a chilly Wednesday night in January (not exactly the “on” season) and the restaurant was packed. It was a great time and it’s great to know that my hometown, once dissed by Tom Wolfe, has grown into a true fine dining destination.

I highly recommend it. Dulcis in fundo, that’s the tiramisu below.

Back in early September as the red grape harvest was just about to begin in central Italy, I visited the Montefili farm and winery in Panzano in the heart of Chianti Classico. It was a glorious and highly photogenic time to be in the vineyards. But the thing I was most interested in photographing was the rocks.

Disclosure: the estate is owned by my friend and former employer Nicola Marzovilla.

Those are classic examples of galestro above and alberese below.

Note how the galestro is almost yellow in color while the alberese is nearly white.

Philologists don’t entirely agree on the origins of the term galestro but some believe it comes from the French glaise meaning clay.

The word alberese, most agree, comes from the Latin alba meaning white.

Although these types of rocks can be found in other parts of Tuscany, Chiantigiana is where you’ll find their highest concentration. And while rocks similar to alberese are found in other parts of Europe, galestro seems to be unique to the Tuscany.

Alberese is generally defined as limestone, in other words, calcareous deposits formed in ancient seabeds.

The best definition I can find for galestro is that penned by wine writer and Tuscan wine expert Monty Waldin as “a rock formation of stone (mudstone or clay but not compact clay) and sand which will become clay, but has not yet reached the full clay stage.”

As the great Chianti-focused vineyard manager Ruggero Mazzilli writes, galestro is typically found at the highest altitudes in Chianti while alberese is found closer to the valley floors.

I highly recommend his excellent post “How changes in vineyard altitude within the Chianti Classico region affect climate and soil factors” where he discusses these and other Chianti soil types in great detail. (Scroll down for the English translation.)

In my experience, galestro soils tend to deliver wines with a more robust fruit character while wines made from fruit grown in alberese soils can be more mineral and savory.

One thing however is certain, as Mazzilli writes, “Sangiovese, as a varietal, has an enormous capacity to adapt its behavior based on the environment in which it is grown.” And as he notes, these soil types (and others present in Chianti) are an important element in shaping their unique qualities.

I still don’t have all the details but I will be leading a Chianti seminar at Vinology in Houston on Thursday, February 2. We’ll be tasting wines from different parts of Chiantigiana and talking soil types and growing conditions. It’s going to be a fun time for sure. Please save the date!

Happy new year!

Sometimes wine is work. Sometimes it’s fun. When the two overlap, it’s always a joy. But when it’s pure fun, the experience can be truly transcendent.

That’s what it felt like when I visited the Smith-Madrone winery on Napa’s Spring Mountain in late December.

That’s Stu Smith, one of the founders, in the image above, with his new dog Tucker (both are sweethearts).

That’s a view of the northern tip of the Napa Valley as seen from Stu and his brother Charles’ property. They first planted grapes their in 1972. Today, their wines are one of California’s top wines. Think of that! 1972! Think how the world was different then and how different our perceptions of wine.

I was actually in wine country for an Italian client of mine, believe it or not (that’s another story for another time).

But I was long overdue to visit one of my childhood friends. And she happens to be married to Stu. When they learned I’d be in the “neighborhood,” they invited me over for delicious lasagne and Hanukkah candles. Julie Ann, who’s just a few years older than me, was my babysitter when we were children. Back then, we lived just a block away from each other in La Jolla where we grew up. Our parents were close friends.

I’ve always been a huge fan of the wines and I was stoked to get to spend some extended time with them when I worked on the Slow Wine Guide.

When you taste these expressions of Chardonnay, Riesling, and Cabernet Sauvignon (“86.5% Cabernet Sauvignon, 6% Merlot, 7.5% Cabernet Franc” in 2018, to give you an idea), the first words that come to mind are clarity of fruit, focus, balance, and that unbearable lightness of power that the Spring Mountain District and winemakers like Stu and his brother seem to capture more nimbly than farms and winemakers in other subzones of California wine country.

During our vineyard tour, we talked about training methods (he likes cordon for his Cabernet Franc), about row orientation (he’s done some interesting things with contour vs. non-contour planting), and fire prevention.

Stu and his brother have managed to avoid the worst of recent megafires thanks to their work to protect their farm. But it’s a constant struggle, he told me. And the worst part, he said, is their literally Herculean efforts “do nothing to improve the wine,” he said. They just keep the grapes and the people safe.

After dinner, I said to Julie Ann, “wow, that was like getting to have dinner with Bruce Springsteen!” It’s not every day that you are invited to sit at the table of one of the winemakers you admire most.

But then again, I had to remind myself, I’m just a lucky son of a… well… gun, who happened to grow up on the same block as Julie Ann.

It was a night I’ll never forget. And man, the lasagne and the Cabernet Sauvignon… off the charts good. Tasting the Riesling with Stu and his brother the next morning at the winery was one of the most magical experiences of my life in wine. It was just pure fun.

Image via the Fattoria dei Barbi blog.

Francesca Cinelli Colombini, grape grower, winemaker, and matriarch of one of Italy’s most iconic families in wine, has died. She was 91 years old.

After the passing of her father Giovanni in 1976, she took the reins as director of her family’s historic Fattoria dei Barbi winery and farm in Montalcino.

Under her leadership, the property became one of the first major Italian producers of fine wines to ship their wines beyond Italy’s borders.

In a time in the U.S. before the current Italian wine renaissance began to take shape, she envisioned an international future for the Sangiovese of Montalcino. She guided her family’s estate through a major shift in how Tuscan wine was produced and how it was perceived throughout the world. The early commercial success of her family’s wines in north America was a reflection of her talents as a winemaker. But it was also the fruit of her acumen as an entrepreneur.

By the time she stepped down from her position as director in 1990, Brunello di Montalcino was already well on its way to becoming one of the most coveted and collected wines in the world today. She is widely known — in Montalcino and across the globe — as the “signora del Brunello,” the “Lady of Brunello” (with a capital “L”).

News of her passing was reported by the Italian mainstream media. She was also remembered in a blog post by the Fattoria dei Barbi, today led by her son Stefano, and a Facebook post by her daughter, Donatella, owner of the Donatella Cinelli Colombini winery, also in Montalcino.

After stepping down from her role as director of the family’s estate, she authored a number of highly acclaimed books on her own life and times in Tuscany.

I only had the opportunity to meet her once (when, disclosure, I worked as a media consultant for her son Stefano). She was a truly “larger-than-life” character. My brief encounter with her reminded me of times I met Hollywood stars during my years as a student in Los Angeles. Anyone who ever met her would agree: she was one of Italy’s first “celebrity winemakers.” Her high profile was another way she revolutionized the Italian wine world. And she did it in a time when the trade was still rife with chauvinism — a trailblazer and a genuine original.

Sit tibi terra levis Francisca.

You are an inspiration to generations of Italian grape growers and winemakers.