It was impressive to watch last night as 60 Minutes journalist Lesley Stahl dived into one of wine’s thorniest issues: the impact of climate change on grape growing.

Doubly impressive when you consider that the overwhelming majority of commercial winemakers are deeply reluctant to raise awareness of the climatic issues they face now with every vintage. To talk about the severe weather events of the current or a past vintage, the thought process goes, would be to threaten the harvest’s commercial viability. And it’s not an off-the-mark attitude: by the time vintage notes make it to the layperson consumer, who knows and probably cares little about the nuance of vintage or terroir, a stigmatized vintage can radically diminish the retail value of a given wine in the mind of the uninformed buyer.

I highly recommend checking out the broadcast, which — it’s important to note in my view — had the following subtitle: “Drawing truth to power.” (Wow!)

I was eager to watch the show last night because I had been contacted by the producers during the Christmas break: they wanted to use a photo of frost damage that they had found here on the blog.

Dario Vezzoli, the author of the photo and son of Franciacorta grower Giuseppe Vezzoli, swiftly agree to let them use it (thank you again, Dario!).

But I also told them that the person they needed to speak to was Alberto Cordero, legacy grower at the Cordero di Montezemolo winery in La Morra, Barolo.

Where so many producers have been extremely tip-lipped about the effect of climate change in Langa, Alberto has spoken openly about the challenges his estate faced with the April frost in 2017. He also graciously agreed to let the show use his photos. (Alberto’s wines are imported to the U.S. by Ethica Wines, one of my clients; see their post on the show here.)

As it so happens, we opened Alberto’s 2017 Barolo Monfalletto during our (ongoing) Christmas break. Besides the 1998 Giacosa white label Barolo Rocche Falletto that a friend brought to our holiday party this year, the Monfalletto was one of the best wines we tasted this year. It was surprisingly approachable, with great freshness and drinkability, elegant and nuanced with wonderful balance between the acidity, alcohol, and tannin. We — Tracie, me, and another couple — loved it.

The fact that Alberto and his family decided to release their top wine from the now infamous 2017 vintage reflects their confidence that they were able to make great wine from the 2017 harvest — maybe not as much wine but great nonetheless, as the bottle in question showed.

It brings to mind an adage often attributed to the great Montalcino winemaker Piero Talenti (I’ve never been able to verify if and/or where he said or wrote it): there are no “bad” vintages; there are simply vintages when we make less wine.

As Alberto pointed out in his newsletter in February of this year, the frost caused the most damage in lower-lying spots where the freeze really took hold. Top vineyards, like his family’s Monfalletto, were high enough to be spared.

For Christmas Eve, Tracie and I opened a bottle of the 2017 Produttori del Barbaresco, a classic “blended” Barbaresco, sourced from multiple vineyards in the historic cooperative’s family of parcels.

This wine, one of my all-time favorites, also showed beautifully. My only lament would be that the fruit was very restrained when we first opened it. We drank it over three nights (one of awesome things about top Nebbiolo) and by last night, it had come into glorious focus (paired with pork loin tacos, black beans, and 60 Minutes!).

It was another example of how 2017 will be remembered for both its challenges and its great wines.

I know the 60 Minutes show will be endlessly parsed in coming days. Although I found it to be well balanced, it could have also addressed issues like copper, the wine industry’s true “dirty little secret.” It also could have taken a closer look at the many excellent wines that are being released from 2017 and will be released from 2021.

There were other issues — mostly lacunae — as well. But I think it’s fantastic that the mainstream media is beginning to make “climate change and wine” part of the cultural conversation. Maybe some of the oil barons here in Houston will start paying attention when they realize that their precious wines are under threat.

Above: I last visited Chianti in January 2020, not long before the lockdowns.

Please join me on Wednesday, January 13 in Houston for a tasting and seminar followed by a walk-around tasting of 20+ Chianti producers.

The event is part of the Chianti bottlers and growers association “Chianti Lovers U.S. Tour 2022.”

Click here to register.

I couldn’t be more thrilled to be presenting the seminar that day. And I’m looking forward to catching up with friends and colleagues for the first major wine event of 2022.

I hope you can join us. Glorious Sangiovese awaits!

Our hearts and prayers go out to families impacted by the Kentucky tornados. Click here to learn how to donate to relief efforts (via the Lexington Herald Leader). As residents of Houston, we know all too well how natural disasters continue to affect families long after the media attention has waned. Please consider giving.

Above: “Dante and Statius Sleeping with Virgil Watching,” ink on tracing paper, after William Blake’s illustrations to the Divine Commedy, by John Linnell. Source: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (Yale).

What a thrill to learn that the New York Review of Books published a new translation of Dante’s “Purgatory” earlier this year!

The excellent English rendering by poet D.M. Black fills a much bemoaned lacuna: while the “Inferno” has been translated countless times, often by leading poets, the “Purgatory” and “Paradise” have too often been relegated to seemingly hermetic English-language versions nearly impenetrable for the layperson of Dantean hermeneutics. This is owed in part to the challenges of translating the Purgatory and Paradise where Dante elevates the register of his language. It’s also owed to the fact that the Inferno, with all its blood and guts, has always been the most accessible and appealing to the greater reading public.

The drawing above, traced from William Blake’s illustration from the 27th canto of the Purgatory, shows Dante and the Roman poet Statius sleeping as Dante’s guide, Virgil, looks on. As they ascend the rings of Mount Purgatory, Virgil relies on Statius, a Christian, to explain “eternal truth[s]” of Christian theology that Virgil is unable to comprehend or explicate because of his pre-Christian status.

In the passage below, gleaned from the 25th canto, Statius explains to Dante how an embryo is transformed from a living being into a being with a soul.

In order to help Dante understand this miracle of G-d, Statius makes an analogy with how the heat of the sun transforms grape must into wine. It’s a powerful passage that, for reasons abundantly apparent, is of great interest to me.

I’m overjoyed to share the lines, transcribed here. But please check out the new translation, published on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death.

Open your heart now to the truth that follows:
and learn that in the embryo, as soon as
the brain’s articulation is completed,
to it, and joyfully, the Prime Mover [G-d] turns,
and in his joy at Nature’s handiwork
breathes a new breath into it full of power,
which takes what it finds active there and draws it
into its substance, creating a single soul
to live and feel and center on itself.
To make what I am saying less surprising,
think of the heat of the sun, that turns to wine
when joined with the juice the generous vine produces.

I’ll be discussing these lines, and acclaimed actor Edoardo Ballerini will be reciting them, on a Zoom call this Friday evening. Click here to learn more.

Above: the deceptive facade of Corti Bros. offers little clue as to what treasure lies inside this storied structure.

Those who have never visited Darrell Corti’s legendary Corti Bros. “specialty grocers” in Sacramento, California will be surprised to discover that the store is much, much more than a mere retailer of great food and wine. The shop, they will find, occupies a space that also serves as museum, library, and bookshop.

In many ways, the food and wine at Corti Bros. is actually a “front.” Not in the sense of a criminal operation. But rather by virtue of the fact that the food and wine are a pretext for what 16th-century European humanists would have called a “gallery of memory.”

Above: a display of ravioli cutters dating back to the 16th century. Click the image for the “label” as we call it in museumspeak.

In Renaissance (with a capital R) Italy, knowledge was considered a means to power, like weapons or gold. And the key to knowledge, it was believed then, was memory. To bolster memory, humanists would create what Italian scholar Lina Bolzoni has called galleries of memory — physical spaces that helped them to organize and retain knowledge in their memory. They were actual rooms where the walls were covered with paintings, drawings, and writings.

Strolling around Darrell’s shop earlier this year, I couldn’t help but feel like I was traveling through Darrell’s mind, revisiting all the nuggets of knowledge — aesthetic and otherwise — that he has gathered over a lifetime of curiosity and unbridled gastronomic adventure. That space, I concluded, is his gallery of memory.

Above: breadcrumbs and books. How many food shops have you visited that double as a library? Darrell’s food and wine-focused collection rivals those found in some of the best libraries in the U.S. No joke. I’ve visited those libraries, too!

The story of how Darrell and I met is as funny as it is indicative of what a mensch – a wonderful human — that he is.

Not long before I visited Sacramento in the mid-aughts to make a record with my band Nous Non Plus there (at the famous Hangar, another great story for another time), I had traveled to Tuscany to meet with Baron Bettino Ricasoli, Francesco Riscasoli’s father. I was searching for a copy of his ancestor’s famous letter wherein he offers a “recipe” for the production of Chianti. It was one of the most memorable visits of my career and Bettino and Francesco were lovely. They pointed me to where I would find the letter and I later translated it for the blog.

During a luncheon of classic Tuscan-style tripe (Bettino’s favorite), the Baron asked me if I had ever met Darrell Corti. No, I told him. He said that if I ever were to visit Sacramento, I must absolutely seek out Darrell. My interest in food and wine history, he told me, reminded him of Darrell’s.

“If you ever do visit him,” he insisted, “please tell me that I sent you.”

Above: the dried pasta selection at Corti Bros. takes up an entire aisle — a “gallery of [culinary] memory.”

Not long after the band arrived in Sacramento, the keyboard player and I headed to Darrell’s place for supplies (I always cooked and served wine at our recording sessions).

When we arrived at the store, I asked one of the cashiers if Darrell was there. She said she didn’t know but would call the back office to find out.

“Please tell him that Baron Ricasoli sent me,” I told her. She said she would.

But here’s the thing: we were rockers. I had shoulder-length (if already thinning) dyed-sandy-blond hair, mustache and goatee. Ryan, the keys player, also had a mustache and goatee and dreadlocks that literally stretched below his waist.

When Darrell appeared, he was livid!

“Who are you?” he demanded with a tone that barely concealed his understandable annoyance.

“My name is Jeremy Parzen,” I answered, “and Baron Ricasoli has sent me with his regards.”

Darrell suddenly pivoted and began to walk away.

“Stay right there,” he said.

Nonplussed, Ryan and I were convinced that we were about to be expelled from his shop.

But when he reappeared, he had a book in his hands. It was my translation of Maestro Martino’s 15th-century recipe collection, published by UC Press a year or so earlier.

“Would you please sign this?” he asked me. And thus a friendship was born, one that has profoundly shaped my intellectual and professional life over countless conversations, emails, and the occasional meal.

When I saw Darrell earlier this year, he reveled in retelling the story.

“They looked like the kind you have to follow around the shop,” he told one of his employees.

Above: Darrell graciously let me snap this photo of us together, an image that I cherish greatly.

Once when I visited Darrell during the annual California grape growers conference (he was the keynote speaker), one of the attendees pulled me aside and asked me if I knew who he was.

“He’s a national treasure,” she whispered, the hushed timbre of her voice a reflection of her reverence.

I don’t know that my career as a food and wine historian would have been as rich had it not been for the role model that Darrell represented for me. His friendship has been a blessing in more ways that I can count.

Gratias tibi ago magister optime.

Some may remember my post from September of last year, “How to open a wine shop during a pandemic,” about Vesper Wine owners and founders Aisha Savage-Shirley and James Oliver (above) who opened their retail program in Houston at the height of the lockdowns.

We had all become friends in 2019 after James took part in an Italy-America Chamber of Commerce trip to Vinitaly (I’m a consultant for the chamber).

I’ll never forget the last time we were all together, in the late fall of that year. We connected at another Houston wine shop and wine bar for what turned out to be a holiday party — one of the last before we were all stuck at home.

When I found out that they had decided to move forward with their plans for a new wine shop in an underserved neighborhood of our city, I called James to see if they would be up for a video chat to share on the blog.

You can view our chat on YouTube here. In the video, James explains how they swiftly reimagined their business model to focus on home delivery and curbside fulfillment. More than a year later, Vesper Wine is going strong and has expanded to in-store and off-site tastings as well.

On Friday of this week, James, Aisha, and I will be presenting a flight of three Italian wines paired with a menu from Roma restaurant (where I’m the wine director). We’ll also be spinning some Yé-Yé pop, a throwback to my rock ‘n’ roll days in New York with the French band Nous Non Plus.

It’s going to be a super fun event and tasting. And who knows where the night will lead us!

If you’re in Houston this week, please join us. Click here for details.