I love you Tracie P.
She Can Change My Whole Wide World
I love you Tracie P.
Category Archives: de austinopoli
make music not war (heading back to austin)
Smells like horse shit and I’m glad I stepped in it: 01 Taurasi by Struzziero
“Smells like horse shit,” said Tracie P last night with no small amount of satisfaction when she and I opened a bottle of 2001 Taurasi Riserva Campoceraso (field of the cherry tree) with our friends, sommelier Mark Sayre and chef Todd Duplechan at Trio in Austin. I bought the bottle, a current release for Taurasi, back in February from my friend and fellow champion of the wine proletariat Roberto when I was out in Los Angeles.
Whenever I teach a class or lead a tasting, the attendees are often surprised when I tell them that “I want my red wine to smell like horse shit and fruit and taste like fruit and rocks.” Smell like shit? Yes, and be glad you stepped in it!
Of course, the canonical descriptor for aromas like these is barnyard and you’ll often find it used for certain categories of Pinot Noir, most famously for example, from Burgundy.
The 01 Struzziero — probably my favorite producer of Taurasi — was meaty and salty, with bright acidity, and showed rich black fruit and savory flavors in the mouth. And as the barnyard and a little bit of Bret Michaels wore off, delicate notes of red berry fruit began to emerge on the nose.
When chef Todd tasted the wine, he ingeniously created a pizza inspired by the flavors of the wines: speck, eggplant, shallots, blue cheese and Parmigiano Reggiano, and dried fig… I loved the pairing and I thought about how wonderful it is to break the chains that bind so many of the world’s noble wines, like this Taurasi. Too often, in my experience, people insist on pairing a wine like this with braised meats. Yes, traditionally, that’s what you would pair this with. But the whimsical — capricciosa — pizza culled unexpected bright notes from this rich and intense wine.
In other Texas news…
I’m super stoked to see that Mark and Todd are tweeting these days. I’m following and you should, too. These guys perform magic nightly at the restaurant and they’re now sharing some of their enogastronomic insights with the world (Tracie P and I are hoping that Todd will write about some of the baby food he and his wife Jessica, an awesome pastry chef, are cooking up for their newborn).
In other other Texas news…
Did you see that Alfonso and I are leading a panel on wine blogging at this year’s TexSom conference? You think “horse shit” is outrageous? Wait ’til you hear what Alfonso and I are going to talk about! NC-17, for sure. Now, if we could only get young Texan wine professionals to stop saying “som”!
Natural wine and LSD
Yesterday, when Lewis Dickson poured me a glass of his recently bottled 2010 Du Petit Lait, a saignée of estate-grown Merlot and Black Spanish, I couldn’t help but be reminded what my friend downtown Michael told me the other day, as we sat in his office overlooking the San Diego Harbor and chatted about the vicissitudes of Natural wine.
“When you taste Natural wine,” he said, “it’s like you taste the fruit in technicolor.”
There was a pause. We looked at each and I think we both knew the thought that was going through the other’s mind.
“It’s like you’re high on LSD,” he said, beating me to the punch.
Here’s my tasting note for Lewis’s juicy, technicolor, and super delicious rosé:
Picture yourself in a boat on a river,
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies.
Somebody calls you, you answer quite slowly,
A girl with kaleidoscope eyes.
Cellophane flowers of yellow and green,
Towering over your head.
Look for the girl with the sun in her eyes,
And she’s gone.
Lewis, who grows and makes Natural wine about an hour and a half’s drive south of where Tracie P and I live in Central Texas, had come to town to partake in Pink Fest 2011 (a rosé wine tasting at our fav local wine bar and my client Vino Vino) and he brought a bottle for us to taste with him. Lewis, the inimitable Bill Head , and I also really loved the Zoë rosé by Skouras (Greece), made from mostly Agiorgitiko with a smaller amount of Moschofilero.
Tasting Lewis’s rosé reminded me of those countless times that we’ve offered a glass of a Natural wine to someone who’s never tasted one before. It’s always followed by a wow, I’ve never tasted anything like that before, that’s DELICIOUS…
As I headed back to my desk and the piles of work that awaited me on an otherwise gorgeous Saturday afternoon in Austin, I couldn’t help but ponder the notion that Natural wine may not be for everyone… Maybe it’s only for those of us who are ready to open their minds and walk through the the doors of perception…
Buona domenica, yall!…
LOVING the list at Fonda San Miguel…
The list at one of me and Tracie P’s FAVORITE restaurants in the world, Fonda San Miguel (Austin), is OFF THE CHARTS ROCKING right now. Earlier this week, a close friend treated us to dinner and a bottle of the 2000 Gravonia white by López de Heredia. Man, that wine is INSANE right now. Wonderful fruit, great acidity, and the oxidative note that takes those wines over the top. Great pairing with the queso and the sopecitos.
Next we paired the 09 Produttori del Barbaresco Langhe Nebbiolo with our entrées. I had the carne asada tampiqueña… A match made in heaven (I wrote about it today over at the Houston Press for my “Odd Pair” rubric).
Produttori’s 09 Langhe Nebbiolo is one of the more light-bodied vintages in recent years and its bright fruit and acidity were fantastic with the dish and stood up beautifully to its intense flavors and spiciness. Seriously, one of the best meals of the year so far…
How cool is that? The best Mexican restaurant in the U.S. and they have Produttori del Barbaresco on their list! Love it…
Buon weekend yall…
In all fairness to Gallo rosé…
You may remember my post from the other day, Rosé and just how far America has come.
In all fairness to Gallo rosé, I found the above Gallo spot from the 1950s. Pretty sexy, huh? I love it when the lady bites into the chicken as the dude is pouring the pink wine… (This video was posted the other day and I wonder how long it will take before Gallo yanks it.)
I’ll be tasting more than 40 pink wines tomorrow at the best little wine bar in Austin, Vino Vino, where they’ll be pouring more than 40 rosés at the 5th annual Pink Fest 2011.
Austin was buzzing last night… with food and wine… Chapeau bas Diane!
Above: The social media was orgiastic last night at Diane Dixon’s excellent Somms Under Fire event at the W Hotel in downtown Austin. That’s top Austin food blooger Miso Hungry (center) with her better half and photographer @HopSafari.
Not only is Diane Dixon one of sweetest and most generous souls I’ve met in the nearly three years I’ve lived in Texas, she is also the first lady of Texas food and wine. Her events — like the Somms Under Fire dinner and competition, held last night at the swank W Hotel in downtown Austin — bring together the best and the brightest of the Texas food and wine scene. They offer young food and wine professionals the chance to interact with top names in the field and they give the public an opportunity to meet food and wine celebrities and get a peek behind the scenes.
Above: Top Austin sommelier June Rodil took home yet another title last night. That’s her with presenter and local wine celebrity in his own right, Devon Broglie.
When I left New York City back in 2007 and then abandoned my beloved California in 2008 to come to Texas, many of my well-meaning friends expressed their concern: what will you drink?
Well, I’m here to tell you that we get some good vino out here in Texas, too!
My highlight was this 1996 Mongeard-Mugneret Grand Échezeaux that somehow made it to my table. Still very tight but what a thrill to drink a glass of that wine…
I was also geeked to see and taste the 08 Rosso di Montalcino by Il Poggione, which showed great last night… always a great value for real Sangiovese…
There were roughly 10 bottles of wine — samples from the competition — on each table of eight persons and even the VIP tickets for the four-course dinner were under $60! A pretty good value IMHO for the experience…
Chapeau bas, Diane, for another great event and for another chapter in your noble quest to inform the next generation of food and wine lovers in Texas! I enjoyed myself thoroughly…
And when I woke this morning to read that Esquire has called my friend and client Tony Vallone (Houston) one the top Italian restaurateurs in the U.S., I couldn’t help but think to myself, we’ve got a pretty good thing going down here in Texas, don’t we?
A wine that Joe Dressner AND Robert Parker like (and a Fellini movie)
People are going to wonder why I continue to write about wines imported by Louis/Dressner. In the light of Mr. Joe Dressner’s myriad waspish attacks, I’ll probably regret writing about the below wine. My blog is about our life and the wines and foods and poems and songs and films and joys and challenges that we embrace and face every day and I just couldn’t omit this wine. As the ex-Wine Digger once pointed out to me (and he was right), wines are an expression of the places where they are made and the people who make them — not the tertiaries who import them. And I certainly hold nothing against Mr. Dressner and only wish him a speedy recovery.
What a thrill to get to taste (FINALLY) the FRV100 by Jean-Paul Brun! The name of this gently sparkling 100% Gamay from Beaujolais is a rebus (as they say at the counter at Brooks Brothers in Manahattan, there are those among us who know Latin and those who don’t): FRV100 for eff-er-ves-cent, effervescent or sparkling in this context.
I loved everything about this wine: the low alcohol (around 7.5%), the gentle fizziness, the wonderful WONDERFUL fruit on the nose and in the mouth, and the playful, bright packaging (the winemaker uses the rebus as an acronym for a wonderful plaisir, a prosodic form adored by the early Occitan poets). FRV100 and barbecue? FRV100 and mole from Polvo’s? FRV100 and Tracie P’s nachos? HELL YEAH! I think it’s safe to say that this will be our wine of the summer of 2011.
But inasmuch as I believe that all wines are an expression of epistemological reflection, this bottling is all the more remarkable because — as I read in Mr. Dressner’s glistening marketese — not only does the Pope of Natural Wine like this wine, but so does Mr. Robert Parker, Jr.! The Emperor of Wine has called Brun’s wines “beautiful” and ranked the winery as a four-star affair, according to the Pope’s site. Felicitously unbelievable!
I loved the wine so much that I’ve paired it with a screening of Fellini’s 1957 Le notti di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) on May 18 at the Alamo Drafthouse Ritz in Austin, where I’ll be speaking about the film and the pairings (btw, the paperback version of my translation of Brunetta’s narrative guide to The History of Italian Cinema was recently published by Princeton University Press).
Why did I pair it with Fellini’s transitional classic (one of my favorite movies of his, btw)? You’ll just have to come to the screening on May 18 to find out!
@JoeDressner and @RobertMParkerJr: I’ll be happy to comp either or both of you if you’d like to attend!
We will not be drinking Coors…
at tomorrow’s Tuscan wine party in Austin…
There are still a few spots open… Should be a fun event… Click here for details…
THANK YOU to everyone who came out to support Japan last night!
From the department of “just another day in the Groover’s paradise”…
What a rush to get to play with David Garza last night at Vino Vino to raise money for the American Red Cross fund for victims of the Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami!
It’s such a trip to be around David: he breaths music (as Céline Dijon noted when we were recording together last month in Austin). On stage, you never know what wonder-filled notes will stream from his voice and his fingers. My favorite number was a medley of “Electric Avenue” and “Pass the Dutchie” — in a minor key!
Later in the evening, the amazing Suzanna Choffel sat in a for a few numbers and all the while legendary Austin music photographer Todd Wolfson played percussion. A truly and utterly incredible experience for me.
And the 2008 single-vineard Erbaluce Cariola by Luigi Ferrando was awesome at the end of the night: gorgeous popping acidity, bright fruit, and righteous alcohol at 12.5%. Great wine…
We raised more than $1,200 for the American Red Cross fund for victims of the Japan Earthquake and Pacific Tsunami (if you’d like to contribute, just click here).
Do Bianchi 