Category Archives: de austinopoli

Txakolina, Txakolina, Txakolina!

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Above, from left: Importer of Basque, Spanish, and French wines André Tamers, Vino Vino owner Jeff Courington, and Tracie P at a Txakolina tasting in Austin on Saturday.

When I moved back to California from New York, a lot of concerned friends asked me, “what will you blog about? what will drink in California?” When I decided to move to Texas nearly two years ago, people admonished: “there won’t be anything interesting for you to drink there!”

Above: My favorite in the flight was the Ameztoi Txakolina, so bright and fresh in the glass, with white fruit and spice on the nose and in the mouth. Low alcohol and gentle spritz. At under $20, the wine quickly shot up the charts to reach a top-five slot in my favorite wines of summer.

Well, folks, I’m here to tell you: I’m alive and well in Texas and drinking good juice!

Over the weekend, Tracie P and I attended a fantastic Txakolina tasting, hosted by André Tamers (the wine’s main proponent and Svengali in this country) and Jeff Courington, my client and friend, owner of the best little wine bar in Austin, Vino Vino.

Like manna from heaven, my sheer enjoyment of reading Eric the Red’s recent article on Txakolina was redoubled with a flight of the wines, poured personally for us by the dude who is making the synonymous Txakoli and Txakolina (pronounced CHAHK-oh-lee, CHAHK-oh-LEE-nah) household words here in the U.S.

Above: I also really loved this rosé by Gurrutxaga. It had a crazy spicy note on the nose and was wholly sexy in the mouth. A truly and utterly “original” wine on my palate.

The world of wine is encyclopedic in breadth and I am constantly reminded that, beyond my love affair with Italian wine, there are so many fantastic wines to learn about, to taste, to pair with… now, more than ever, thanks to small importers like André, who launched his company more than 10 years ago when he was living with his wife and painting (oil on canvas) in Spain.

Txakolina is a truly “original” wine, to borrow a phrase I once heard Angelo Gaja use in a speech. Like Nebbiolo from Langa or Chardonnay from Chablis, it could be made in no other place in the world. It tastes of the place where it is raised and the people who make it. (Again, please see Eric the Red’s recent article on Txakolina for a great profile of the region, the people, and the wines.)

Being the self-appointed philologist of the enoblogosphere, I couldn’t help but nose around the interwebs in a search for the meaning and origins of the name Txakoli (Chacoli in Spanish, also spelled Sakoli). The lemma txak seems to denote small or little from what I can find in Basque language dictionaries available online. The editors of the Diccionario vasco-español-francés (Alfred Mame et Fils, Tour, 2 vol., 1905-1906) often translate the term (which appears in numerous instances in the two tomes) as vinaza (Spanish) or petit vin (French), literally, little wine, akin to the Italian vinello, an easy-drinking, light-bodied wine. According to the dictionary, the term also is used to denote wine must used to obtain distillate.

Above: Tracie P and I munched down an entire plate of Chef Esteban’s excellent fresh Manchego, dressed with basil, roast peppers, and olive oil. A sublime pairing with the Txakolina.

Beyond the great music and people here, the Texan lifestyle and the fact that the love of my life loves this town, Austin is such a great city because it attracts some of the brightest and best people I’ve ever met. Txakolina is sold in 26 states. Texas is one of them. When I asked André why he flies here especially to attend the tasting (now in its second year), he told me “because Jeff [owner of the venue] is a friend.”

The whole world may be talking about the wines of the Basque country these days. But here in Austin, we’re drinking it!

I love you, yes I do

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It was on the fourth Sunday of August 2008 that I got on a Southwest jetliner and came to Austin to take Tracie B on a date to dinner — our first meeting after nearly two months of emailing each other. Mole enchiladas at Polvos, dancing at the Continental Club to the music of Hey Bale, and a first kiss I’ll never forget…

Sit yourself down next to me
Let me hold you near
Sit by my side close to me
There’s something you should hear

If I have not made it perfectly clear
I love you girl
I love you girl yes i do

Before we met I was lost
On life’s carousel
Spinning around like a top
Never slowing down

I don’t recall how I got here at all
But I love you girl
I love you girl yes I do

There comes a time in your life
When you know it’s right
Dark comes before love arrives
With the morning light

So long ago when I was young I had a dream
That I would find my love find my love
So many years, so many tears it took before
I found my love when you appeared

If I have not made it perfectly clear
I love you girl
I love you girl yes I do

Jeremy P to Tracie P, August 22, 2010

97 Barolo, mole, and blues pair well in Austin, Texas

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From the “damn, I love this town” department…

Our friends Mike and Magaret (whom we know because they come to nearly every wine tasting I lead here in Austin!) wrote the other day saying they had a very special bottle of wine they wanted to share with Tracie P and me: Guido Porro 1997 Barolo Lazzairasco (!!!). We were thrilled, of course…

Regretfully, not many places allow corkage in Texas (in part due to the fact that the Texas Alcohol and Beverage Commission discourages it, even though it’s not illegal). But working in the wine business has its perks: my friend and colleague Brad Sharp, wine director at one of our favorite restaurants in the world, Fonda San Miguel, allowed us to bring in this bottle, which Mike hand-carried back from Barolo in 2001. (Btw, whenever we BYOB we always buy a commensurate bottle from the list, in this case some López de Heridia, and we tip generously, keeping in mind that the bill is less than it would have been had we ordered a second bottle at dinner. Fyi, Fonda does not allow corkage.)

In Piedmont, summer months are for Barbera, Pelaverga, and other lighter-bodied red wines that pair well with the lighter foods of warm months. In Mexico, however, heavier foods like mole (a chocolate and chile sauce used to dress meats and enchiladas) are served all year. And so in the spirit of transnational culinary fusion, I paired with carne asada tampiqueña and a cheese enchilada dressed with mole sauce. The combination was FANTASTIC!

Like its brother cru Lazzarito, Lazzairasco (just a few hectares) is one of the great vineyards of Serralunga d’Alba, where some of the richest and most austere Barolo is produced by the appellations oldest subsoils (on the east side of the Barolo-Alba road which divides the “natures” of Barolo).

Although it was one of the indisputably great harvests of a remarkable string of excellent years in Piedmont, 1995-2001, 1997 is not one of my favorite vintages: it was the warmest (as was 2000) and while it was highly praised in the U.S. for its ripe fruit, it didn’t have the balance of, say, 1999 or 2001 (my favs).

Porro is one of the great traditionalist producers of Barolo and this wine entirely surprised us with its lip-smacking acidity and its wild berry fruit character. I knew we were going out on an organoleptic limb with this pairing but wow, did it deliver a sensorial treat — an usual pairing that rewarded us for our daring.

And in keeping with the Austin cosmic cowboy spirit, after dinner we headed over to meet other friends at the Gallery at the Continental Club, where Jimmie Vaughan was sitting in with Hammond B3 player Mike Flanigin. The Gallery at the Continental only holds 50 persons and the “guest” musicians are not advertised (you have to be in the know to find out about which super stars might be appearing on any given night).

Jimmie’s riding high these days, with an awesome new album (that we LOVE) and world tour. He’s also a super sweet guy and he took a moment out for me to snap this photo of him and Margaret.

The dude is a living legend. I mean, how many people in world once lent a wah-wah pedal to Jimi Hendrix?

If only they served Nebbiolo at the Continental Club…

“Rock is no longer a dirty word in Austin”: The Armadillo at 40

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Above: “On August 7, 1970, a new music venue opened at 525 1/2 Barton Springs Road in Austin. The city would never be the same. The Armadillo World Headquarters.” (“The Armadillo at 40,” KUT.org).

An article published by TIME Magzine on September 9, 1974, entitled “Groover’s Paradise,” recently came to my attention. Here’s the opening paragraph:

    Back in the good old days in Austin, Texas, say 1970, a guy could risk trouble for deriding country-and-western music, or merely hollering the words “rock ‘n’ roll.” This was, after all, the ancestral home of Texas Swing, where the Light Crust Doughboys had helped elect a flour salesman, W. Lee O’Danile, Governor in 1938. Even such talented native Texas as Singers Janis Joplin and Johnny Winter, blues rockers both, had been forced to head as far away from Austin as possible to make the big time.

That was just four years after the Armadillo World Headquarters opened in the Texas state capital, about a ten-minute drive from where Tracie P and I live now.

This week, KUT.org, the University of Texas at Austin radio station is playing every artist that ever played at the ‘Dillo (as it is affectionately known). And I’m here to tell you, people, that I’m glued to my radio, whether in the car or at home working on my computer.

You can find the stream by visiting KUT.org (9 a.m. – 3 p.m. local time).

My highlights for today were Jerry Jeff Walker’s version of “Mr. Bojangles” and his “London Homesick Blues” (and for guitar geeks out there, Eric Johnson’s early band The Electromagnets).

The title of the TIME Magazine article is culled from one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite Cosmic Cowboys, Doug Sahm, and it ends with a quote from him:

    The Armadillo is filled each night night with a curious amalgam of teenagers, aging hippe women in gingham, braless coeds, and booted goat ropers swigging Pearl beer and swinging Stetsons in time to the music. Doug Sahm, a 32-year-old fugitive of San Franciso psychedelia, who sings there regularly, says that “leaving Austin now is like climbing off a spaceship from a magic place.” As he put it in a song, the whole town is a groover’s paradise.

O, man, I can almost smell the doobage wafting up Lamar Blvd.!

Picking grapes with Tony Coturri in Texas

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Above: The cowboy hat that Melvin Croaker gave me isn’t just for show. I can probably do more damage at computer keyboard than I can with pruning shears in the vineyards but this singing cowboy managed to fill a crate or two with Blanc du Bois in the Texas sun yesterday.

There are many mysteries in this big ol’ world and many of them leave me scratching my head. But one of the ones I find the hardest to fathom is why every single wine professional in central Texas doesn’t head down to Comal County to get a glimpse of natural winemaker Tony Coturri, who arrives promptly each year to harvest grapes and make wine with maverick winemaker Lewis Dickson of La Cruz de Comal winery. (For a recent and truly wonderful interview with Tony, please see this excellent post by my friend and blogging colleague and fellow Californian-Texan Amy Atwood. And for a profile of Lewis and his wines, please see this post I did for the 32 Days of Natural Wine.)

Above: No, that’s not Billy Gibbons, it’s Tony on “the Gator.”

It was a thrill for me and Tracie P to get to “rub shoulders” with Tony in the vineyards and the thought of getting to hang with him even got us out of bed on a Sunday morning at the crack of dawn (can you believe that?). Harvest of Lewis’s Blanc du Bois grapes began yesterday at daybreak in Comal County on the southern side of Canyon Lake (about an hour and half from our place in Austin).

cruz de comal

Above: Tony and Lewis destemming the Blanc du Bois harvest. From the quality and quantity of grapes, it appears that Cruz de Comal will have one of its best vintages of Blanc du Bois, which is used to make the winery’s Pétard Blanc, one of my favorites and white with remarkable aging potential.

In case you don’t already know Tony, he’s a leading Californian grape grower and winemaker and a pioneer of natural winemaking in the Golden State… AND he makes killer wines. I love what he said to Amy in the interview she did:

    The basic principles and procedures of my winemaking haven’t changed over the years. I have remained a believer in natural, and traditional and additive free winemaking. If anything, refining the natural process has been the change. As my understanding of the development of all aspects the vineyards through the use of organic and biodynamic practices deepens I realize that I’m not so much a “winemaker’ but a custodian of grapes. The wine is made in the vineyard. My job is to take care of it. The magic is in the vineyard not the winery.

O mamma, you’re speaking my language!

cruz de comal

Above: A little grape porn for ya’ll.

Tracie P and I are both a little sore from picking those grapes yesterday but we’re no worse for the wear. And what a good night sleep you get after a day of working in the vineyards in the sunshine and fresh air! Man, I can’t wait to taste that wine…

I’d rather trust a man who works with his hands,
He looks at you once, you know he understands,
Don’t need any shield,
When you’re out in the field.

—Peter Gabriel (can anyone name the tune? Thor, I’m counting on you!)

Rock the Gulf Benefit at the Shuck Shack Austin

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Can you think of a better place in Austin to hold a Rock the Gulf benefit than the Shuck Shack? This tasty little seafood joint is at the top of our list for summer outdoor Gulf Coast-style dining. You see, for all of ya’ll who ain’t never been down to the south too much, Gulf Coast dining spots dot the highways and cities of the Lone Star State from Orange on the Lusiana border (where Tracie P grew up) to Austin, the cradle of the west. All of these businesses, many of them locally owned liked the Shuck Shack, have been affected by the oil spill disaster.

The Shuck Shack is one of Tracie P’s accounts (and one of her favs, I may add) and she helped to rustle up donations for this exceedingly well organized (I must add) event held last night on the south side of Austin. That’s owner Katherine Fertitta and manager Bill Garcia.

Fried catfish, Texas caviar, biscuit, and corn on the cob. Uh huh…

I couldn’t resist the “Bloody Shame.” Tracie P had a “Tar Ball Lemonade” (with muddled blueberries playing the starring role).

The music (I also must say) was excellent, but, then again, that happens nightly in Austin (how do you like my Texas swagger?). Tracie P even won a donated raffle prize! How about that???!!! An Eddy Summer Sausage basket that will be greatly enjoyed this estive season Chez Parzenella!

To find out about how you can help, check out the Gulf Restoration Network.

Jimmie Vaughan’s 1967 Fender Coronado (how friggin’ cool is that?)

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From the “does this town rock or what?” department…

1967 Fender Coronado

Above: Guitar legend Jimmie Vaughan’s 1967 Fender Coronado and Ronnie James’s 1967 Fender Coronado bass. Photo via Hair by Felice.

My friends often hear me say that moving to Austin to be with Tracie P was the smartest thing I’ve ever done. The second smartest thing? Moving to Austin to be with Tracie P.

One of the coolest things about living in this central Texas town is how you can run into a guitar hero at the super market and then see him take the stage that night at Antone’s.

When the super cool lady who cuts my hair showed me the above photo of Jimmie Vaughan’s 1967 Fender Coronado and the matching 1967 Coronado bass that he got his bass player to take on tour with them to support Jimmie’s new album, I BEGGED her to let me put it on my blog (you see, lady in question, Felice, goes steady with Jimmie’s bass player Ronnie James).

And I gotta say, Jimmie’s new album is some pretty, bad-assed smoking music that puts some seriously deep-fried boogie in your butt. So far Tracie P’s favorite track is “Wheel of Fortune,” which features Lou Ann Barton on vox.

We’re going to miss Jimmie’s show next weekend at Antone’s ’cause we’ll be out of town but that’s okay. I know I’ll run into Jimmie at Whole Foods market when we’re back…

If you still had any doubt that Austin is America’s most rockin’ city, check out this photo I snapped yesterday by our favorite hippy-dippy convenience store/gas station.

Buon weekend, ya’ll…

I Am Love (I Am Cinema) and good things we eat and drink

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Above: Over the weekend, Tracie P made cabbage leaves stuffed with shredded pork and rice and then braised in puréed tomato. Delicious…

The same way some of my favorite wine bloggers share my passion for music, like McDuff and Eric the Red, many of my blogging colleagues share my passion for cinema, like Lyle and Tom. (They tell me I know a little about cinema and Italian cinema in particular.)

Over the weekend, Tracie P and I finally went to see I am Love, the (relatively) new (to American audiences) movie by director Luca Guadagnino. We both loved it and I highly recommend it (and I thank Comrades A and H for nudging us to see it!).

Above: Summertime means PANZANELLA chez Parzenella… so yummy…

There are plenty of insightful reviews of the movie but I wanted to make one (I feel) important point about it. So many reviewers have made reference to Guadagnino’s homage to Visconti in this work (and there is a Viscontian influence here, no doubt). But there are many other cinéaste and cinephilic references here.

I’m not the first to note that Pasolini’s Teorema is a patent model for this work, where chef Antonio is a parallel to Terrence Stamp’s character in the former.

But I may be the first to point out that Antonioni’s influence is also immensely felt here: the shots of Milan and in particular industrial Milan are clear references to Antonioni’s tetraology, L’Avventura, La Notte, L’Eclisse, and The Red Desert. And even more significantly, the characters’s sense of alienation and the “substitution” of one relationship for another in the search for elusive happiness owe much to Antonioni’s thoughtfully two-dimensional world.

Above: Some southern girls knew how to make fried green tomatoes even before they went Hollywood! Gelatinous on the inside, crispy on the outside.

Most significantly, I Am Love is a film that is aware of being a film and being part of a great cinematic tradition: I am Cinema. The shots of industrial Milan and the textile factories, for example, evoked a genre of Italian nationalist documentary filmmaking that first emerged during fascism and reached its peak during the “economic miracle” of the 1960s. The use of Giacomo Giulio da Milano’s font Neon in the credits and captions was a sort of epicinematic allusion that paid homage to the grand tradition of Italian design at its peak in the 1930s (Neon was forged in 1935 at the Fonderia Nebiolo in Turin). Those same “happy years” of fascism saw the Recchi family expand their influence, power, and wealth (remember the conversation between Edoardo and his colleague?).

Above: The 2008 Sauvignon Blanc by Clos Roche Blanche is probably going to be my white wine of the summer. At under $20 (available at The Austin Wine Merchant, where we got it), this delicious wine paired stunningly (and affordably) well with the pork medallions that Tracie P served with shredded cabbage and homemade pear chutney. Really and truly one of those sublime pairings.

The overarching theme of Gaudagnino’s film and story is one that belongs steadfastly to Italian cinema, especially when viewed in its inherently Marxisant paradigm: the alienation of a sense of humanity through the reification of the body.

And, here, I am confident that Gaudagnino would agree with me: Antonio the proletarian chef, whose craft brings him into contact with an otherwise elitist and esoteric group (after he “beats” Edoardo in the race), becomes a conduit that allows the characters to “return to nature” using a Leopardian and ultimately Rousseauan lexicon.

The food porn sequence (where Emma eats a shrimp, how phallic is that?) and the farm-to-table sex sequence (a symphony of cross pollination) represent the triumph of nature over materialism.

After all, when the chef at some chichi lower Manhattan restaurant regales her/his patrons with tales of the farmhouse where she/he has sourced her/his heirloom cultivars of elderflowers used to infuse her/his coulis, is it not an extravagant (in the etymological sense of the word) attempt to cheat materialism for the sake of a false Mother nature?

I hope that Emma will find what she’s looking for in Antonio, but somehow I don’t think she will…

I am love, I am cinema, and I am a fried green tomato. Thanks for reading…

And buona visione, as they say…

Ginny appreciation week at the Little Longhorn Saloon: No Cussin’, No Fussin’, No Hasslin’, No Wrasslin’!

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Above, from right: three generations of Ginny, Ginny Kalmbach, her granddaughter, and her daughter. All three manage this national treasure.

On Friday night, Austin music icon Dale Watson emceed “Ginny Appreciation Night” at the Little Long Horn Saloon in Austin, Texas (on Burnet Road, on the north side of town, not far from where Tracie P and me live).

ginny's little longhorn saloon

Above: I’ve been to many great honky-tonks across our fine nation but Ginny’s — let me tell you, people — is something special (and I say this in a town famous for its honky tonks).

We were at Canyon Lake (in the Texas Hill Country) with family on Friday night but we took friends Brenna and Jason, who were in town from Orange, Texas there last night: no night on the town in Austin would be complete without a stop at Ginny’s.

Above: Ginny showed us her new Lone Star hat, which she had made especially for her.

Ginnny’s real fond of Tracie P (can you blame her?) and every time we visit, she and her daughters ask to see her wedding ring. There’s a sign up at Ginny’s that reads: “No Cussin’, No Fussin’, No Hasslin’, No Wrasslin’!”

jww and the prospectors

Above: Last night, JWW and the Prospectors were playing. You really can’t go wrong at Ginny’s. I’ve been blown away by the caliber of musicianship we’ve seen there.

Folks like Ginny rarely win Kennedy Center Honors or Congressional Medals but, man, she and her saloon are true national treasures, if only for the traditions and music that she fosters and if not for the immense joy that she brings into so many folks’s lives with her bright spirit and motherly affections.

Above: You’d expect Jason to get your back in a bar fight but you wouldn’t expect him to turn to his lovely wife Brenna and say, “damn, it honey! I forgot to cook that beautiful asparagus we have in the fridge.” Jason is an amazing cook and writes a food blog via Facebook. He and I also share an obsession and fascination with Doug Sahm. But more on that later.

Ginny’s was one of the first places Tracie P took me when I started coming out to Austin to visit her. Whether it’s with friends visiting from out-of-town on a Saturday night or just getting our honky tonk on on a Tuesday, we try to get there as often as we can.

Above: If you ever meet a woman who loves country music and knows how to play Chicken Shit Bingo and speaks Italian and cooks a mean ragù, thank your LUCKY STARS!

Ginny, we can’t imagine a world without you.

Bumping into (the) stars of (the) Austin (wine scene at the airport)

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At the Austin airport, me on the way to San Diego, these two dudes on their way to San Francisco where they’ll be tasting with top sommeliers in preparation for the Master Sommelier exams in August. Two of the coolest “buds” I have in the biz here in the ATX, Devon Broglie (left) and Craig Collins.

I know your exams are still a ways off but as the Italians say, in culo alla balena!