Category Archives: de cibo

Fusion: Cos Cerasuolo di Vittoria and smoked Texas ribeye

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Last night was a night of fusions and no one was taking sides at Trio at the Four Seasons (Austin).

The first was Washington state abalone, oysters, and salmon, paired with Prosecco. Chef Todd was cooking for a Washington state wine event in one of the event spaces at the Four Seasons hotel and he sent down some of the pairings to our table at the restaurant downstairs where a friend and client had asked us to join him with a Prosecco producer.

Perhaps the most extraordinary fusion came in the guise of a Texas smoked rib-eye paired with the Cos Cerasuolo di Vittoria. The Frappato character was powerful in the bottling we unstopped yesterday evening and the match between the bright fruit and the smokiness and fattiness of the beef was delicious.

But the most intriguing fusion came with a smile and rimless glasses. Daniele d’Anna, the current generation of the Bortolotti family of Prosecco producers. Daniele is the product of a “mixed” marriage: his father is Neapolitan and his mother Veneta. I’ve never met anyone like him: he can switch between a thick Veneto accent (familiar to me) to Neapolitan (familiar to Tracie P) on the turn of a dime. I was curious to ask him about what it’s like to live in a Veneto now dominated by the Lega Nord, the xenophobe Separatist movement.

The Lega Nord wants to secede from the Italian republic and form its own country, severing ties with central and southern Italy. Let’s just say that the Lega doesn’t look so favorably on southern Italians, their customs, mores, and life rhythms. The image from the left is taken from a bizarre Lega campaign that I saw when I was in Italy recently. “They suffered immigration,” it says. “Now they live on reservations. Think about it.” Pretty scary, huh?

I liked Daniele very much and he struck me as a highly educated, cosmopolitan, and enlightened fellow. I doubt he shares the xenophobic sentiments of his Leghisti brethren. He made an interesting point: anyone who wants to get something done in Italian politics today, he observed, needs to take sides. His girlfriend, he told me, joined the Lega so that she could run for mayor of her small town in the Veneto, Asolo (one of my FAVORITE and one of the most beautiful and historically rich places in the world). Does she share the Lega’s racist platform? No, Daniele said. She just joined the Lega as a means to an end, he explained. Do they talk about politics when she comes over to the parentals’s for dinner? No, he said with a smile, they don’t. The 31-year-old woman won the election by the way and now serves as Asolo’s mayor.

Only in Austin can a Salvadoreño (my friend and client Julio, above, left), a Methodist (Tracie P), a Jew (that’s me), and a Trevisan walk into a bar and order a Texas smoked rib-eye with a wine aged in amphora from Sicily. Sounds like a joke, but I’m here to tell you, people: it ain’t!

Buon weekend, ya’ll!

There’ll be more posts from my recent Italy trip coming up next week. Stay tuned…

The world according to Soldera

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Above: Gianfranco Soldera, legendary, enigmatic, and paradigmatic winemaker, a Trevisan farmer turned Milanese industrialist turned Montalcinese winemaker.

Anyone who’s ever had the good fortune to be invited to visit Gianfranco Soldera’s estate, Case Basse, in the southwestern subzone of the Brunello appellation will surely share my impression that his winery, vineyards, and contiguous botanical garden come together to form what is undeniably one of the most impressive estates in the world.

When he began looking for an estate to purchase in the early 1970s, the Piedmontese wouldn’t sell him a decent plot of land, he told me the other day when we visited. So he decided to to buy a parcel in Montalcino on the advice of a friend who had told him you could pick up a piece of land there for a boccon di pan, a mouthful of bread, in those days.

Above: The botanical gardens at Soldera’s Case Basse include a swamp (to create a maritime influence) and a white flower garden (to encourage nighttime pollination). “Ah, the white flower garden,” remembered wistfully my friend Dr. Lawrence O, the other day when he spied my visit on Facebook. Lawrence has visited there, of course.

When you talk to winemakers in Langa (Piedmont), many of the current generation still look to Soldera as a doktorvater (like Beppe Rinaldi, who told me that he often seeks advice and guidance from Soldera when the elder visits Barolo).

In many ways, it’s as if Soldera, when faced with the fact that he couldn’t make wine in Piedmont where he so obstinately desired to do so, decided to construct his own microclimate within the Brunello macroclimate. As he explains very openly, the remarkable botanical garden on his property (manicured by his wife) creates a unique ecological balance of plant and swamp life, including the “white flower garden,” so famous among wine insiders, intended to encourage pollination at night because the bright peddles attract the insects in darkness.

Above: “You find no vineyards with larger berries nor smaller clusters,” said Soldera proudly of his fruit. The attention to detail in his vineyard management is truly stunning.

Soldera has famously stated that he makes “natural wine.” Whether or not that’s the case is something I’ll leave that to the experts in the thorny field. He does seem to meet all the card-carrying members’s requirements: manual vineyard management, no chemicals in the vineyards, ambient yeasts in the cellar, no temperature control, lowest possible sulfuring. While I was in his presence a few weeks ago, he scolded one very famous winemaker in absentia for using cement vats for vinification, noting that wood is the natural vessel for winemaking. He also scolded another very famous winemaker for suggesting that it was okay to use a starter yeast when he had trouble initiating fermentation in his cellar.

But is it natural, I wonder, to build a botanical garden using mountains of manure (however organically prepared) in a place abandoned by sharecroppers because nothing would grow there anymore? I’ve leave that one to the exegetic forces of the rebbes and erstwhile Talmudic scholars in our field.

One thing we can all seem to agree on is that his wines are among the best in the world (and accordingly priced). I had the good fortune to taste the 2008 (extremely good) and 2006 (exceptional vintage, one of the best I’ve ever tasted) out of cask with him in the cellar. And at dinner we drank the 2003: an infamously and remarkably difficult vintage for any winemaker in Italy yet a harvest for which Soldera delivered lip-smacking acidity and gorgeously nuanced fruit aromas and flavors in his Sangiovese. These wines are simply life-changing, mind-blowing, awe-inspiring… It’s true…

Above: Soldera with Roberto Rossi, chef/owner of Il Silene, arguably the best restaurant in southern Tuscany. The drive up to Seggiano is worth it if only to taste Roberto’s olive oil. The food and service were amazing.

Anyone who’s ever had the good fortune to be invited to visit Gianfranco Soldera’s estate, Case Basse, will tell you that Soldera keeps no secrets and he liberally shares his often salty opinions with those whom have been invited for an audience. (You’ll be surprised to find out that he has a website.)

Our conversation spanned many generations of Italian winemaking the other day when I visited him and you can imagine the controversial topics we covered. But the thing that stuck with me was what he said when I asked him what he saw for the future of winemaking in Italy.

“Commercial winemaking has come to an end in Italy,” he said referring to the recent Brunello controversy and rumors that the historic Barbi estate has plans to sell its property to Italian wine behemoth Zonin. “The nature of Italy cannot support industrial farming and commercial winemaking has run its course historically,” he told me. However many grains of salt there may be in the world according to Soldera, there’s certainly a grain of truth in this morsel of wisdom.

Above: Sunset at the Case Basse estate.

Another winemaker told me the same thing later on in my trip. Stay tuned to find out which one…

Tracie P’s pici

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In the wake of a comment on this blog by Tracie P (while I was in Tuscany) sharing her yen for some Tuscan pici (long noodles made with only flour and water), my good friend Federico aka Fred (export director for one of my favorite Montalcino wineries, Le Presi) appeared one day with two bags of dried pici by Panarese for me to take home.

Last night for dinner, Tracie P defrosted some of her excellent ragù and used it to dress a few nidi (nests) of the pici (also called pinci).

On the back of the label, the only ingredients listed are durum wheat flour and water. There’s something about pici, even when dried (and not freshly rolled out), that makes them ideal for meat sauces (or mushrooms). For all of their humility, the purity of the saltless flour and the texture of the noodles create a sublime pairing with the richness of the sauce. Simply delicious. We paired with a grapey, bretty, easygoing Valle Reale Montepulciano d’Abruzzo that was remarkably fresh and bouncy for an 06. A perfect Tuesday night dinner, catching up on the TV shows we missed (Tracie P sacrificed herself and did NOT watch the season finales of True Blood and Mad Men so that we could watch them together… THAT’S how much she loves me, she says).

How did I manage to get the pasta back without any breakage?

I used my cowboy hat, of course! I packed the bags of noodles on either side of the “crown” of the hat in my carry-on. It worked like a charm! That’s me, btw, above, outside the famous Osteria al Cappello in Udine, where hundreds of hats (cappelli) hang from the ceiling. (Photo by Joe Campanale.) The owner asked me if I’d give her my hat for her restaurant. “Un bel cappello,” she said. “A fine hat.”

“Naw,” I told her. “This hat will be riding home with the San Diego Kid back to Austin.” I’ll post more on the AMAZING MEAL I had at Osteria al Cappello in an upcoming post.

In the meantime, we’re sending lots of love to Pam and Melvin Croaker today. Melvin, you may remember, gave me my cowboy hat late last year.

Prosciutto bloggers unite!

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Just had to share this link and send some blog love over to the Prosciuttificio D’Osvaldo in Cormòns (Friuli). That’s a photo I snapped of the D’Osvaldo collection of pigs the other day when I visited with the Ponca 10 (below, later that evening on the Gulf of Trieste). I’ll be posting about D’Osvaldo and what I learned, saw, and tasted there in a few weeks (but first Tuscany and the Veneto!). Stay tuned…

How do you like those jazz hands? ;-)

Beauty (and ugly) in Italy

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Above: A wasp feasts on newly picked Ribolla at Venica & Venica.

A quick post today, on this autumnal Monday back at my desk in Austin, comprised of photos from my trip, some of the most beautiful things I saw through my lens while in Italy. It was an incredible journey, replete with felicitous confluences, some serendipitous and delightfully unexpected, others grounded in epistemlogic contemplation and convex self-reflection.

Above: Pancetta offered to weary travelers, also at Venica.

In the days that follow, I’ll begin posting in-depth accounts of my conversations and tastings with winemakers and restaurateurs in Tuscany, the Veneto, and Friuli. I am so grateful for all the comments, emails, Twitter mentions, and Facebook notes encouraging me and sharing insights into what I photographed, smelled, tasted, drank, and masticated over the course of the nearly three-week trip. And I am especially thankful for the incredible hospitality and generosity of spirit of my (literally) myriad hosts and guides.

Above: A view from one of the dining rooms at Trattoria al Parco in Buttrio (Udine).

Immense and extreme beauty is offered to the willful traveler of the Italic peninsula: from her generous landscape to her innate and intrinsic humanity (both historical and topical), Italy continues to inspire me (and hopefully you) by revealing some of the mystery and joy of life through her topographic, aesthetic, and sensual pleasures.

Above: A view from the Abbazia di Rosazzo in the Colli Orientali del Fiuli.

While I thoroughly enjoyed her bountiful intellectual and sensorial gifts, I was however acutely aware of the seemingly insurmountable societal and cultural issues and turmoil faced by the inhabitants (Italian and otherwise) of this profoundly gorgeous land.

Above: Hay for Chianina cows near Pienza, Tuscany.

Whether it’s Berlusconi patently using one of his media outlets (in this case, Il Giornale, a top national daily) to sling mud at his rival Fini (now embroiled in a sticky familiar real-estate scandal) or the impending expulsion of Roma (following the highly controversial and contested model employed by Sarkozy), Italy and her peoples find themselves in circumstances eerily however distantly reminiscent of the “era between the two wars.” When I commented on the recent changing of the guard in the political regime of the region where she and her family make wine, one winemaker observed wryly but not inronically, “we were better off with the fascists in power than the [newly instated] separatists.”

Above: Sunset in Montalcino (Tuscany), viewed from the estate of Il Palazzone.

Perhaps it’s this precarious balance of salt and sweet that makes Italy always taste so great and greatly on our tongues. Thanks for reading…

The Ponca 10 bid Friuli adieu

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The Ponca 10* visited cult prosciuttificio D’Osvaldo yesterday in Cormòns: Matthew Turner (head sommlier, Michael Mina, San Francisco), Brent Karlicek (wine merchant, Postino, Phoenix), Jamie Garrett (sommelier, Sonnenalp, Vail), Bobby Stuckey (wine director, Frasca, Boulder), Steve Wildy (beverage director, Vetri, Philadelphia), Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson (chef, Frasca, Boulder), Lara Persello (our handler, Turismo FVG), Shelley Lindgren (wine director, A16, San Francisco), Mario Nocifera (director of operations, Frasca, Boulder), Joe Campanale (beverage director, Dell’Anima, New York).

The group gave handler Lara a Hermès bracelet to thank her for her superb job herding cats.

The crudo at the Regione Friuli good-bye discothèque party was extreme.

Bobby (left) and Lachlan (right) posed on the red carpet with Colli Orientali del Friuli consortium president Pierluigi Comelli and his lovely wife.

Do Bianchi dug the musetto.

Kristian Keber’s Edi Keber Collio ROCKED!

A stroll through Trieste on a Saturday night was magical, electric.

THANK YOU FRIULI FOR YOUR WONDERFUL HOSPITALITY AND THE GOOD VIBRATIONS!

*ponca, Friulian dialect, the unique sandy marl (flysch), Eocene seabed, typical of the Collio and Colli Orientali del Friuli appellations.

Lunch at Zidarich, one of the most amazing wineries I’ve ever visited

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Posting quickly from a bar in Udine. So much to show, to tell, to share… In the meantime, a few images from lunch today at Zidarich. My goodness, probably the most interesting facilities I’ve ever visited…

Porcini frittata.

Pumpkin soup.

Friuli: the obligatory dignatory dinner

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Simpatico Chef Andrea Gabin (left) of the famous Ristorante La Taverna posed for my camera with Chef Lachlan at last night’s obligatory dignatory dinner, regrettably a sine qua non of these government-sponsored trips, held at the picturesque Castello di Susans in Maiano (Udine).

The food was surprisingly good for a dinner where more than 200 guests were seated, including all the fat cat pols who revel in their their Rolex and 12-ply cashmere habits at such functions. That’s Chef Gabin’s EXCELLENT “white chocolate sphere and white grape sorbet” paired with Bianco Tal Luc 2007 Friuli Isonzo by Lis Neris, one of my favorite wineries here.

That’s Andrea Di Giovanni (left), director of the Friuli department for development and Francesca Ghersinich, program director for the MIB school of management, who was asked to address the large group of foreigners gathered for the event because of her command of the English language. They were very nice although completely disinterested in our group of top-flight American restaurant professionals (enogastronomic tourism does not seem to be a priority in this duly industrious region).

The one pleasant surprise of this otherwise entirely ennui-driven event was my discovery that young Friulians are wonderfully proud of the great 20th-century poet, cineaste, novelist, and essayist Pier Paolo Pasolini’s association with his native Friuli.

The cast of last night’s event certainly could have made a cameo in one of his films… I’ll let you ponder which one…

Frico! At Trattoria “Al Parco”

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Damiano Meroi took me up into the aging attic for Picolit at his family’s winery in Buttrio (Udine). Slammed for time right now, but, man, I can’t WAIT to post about my chat with him…

Fried frico, made with aged montasio cheese fried into the form of a “nest” and filled with light, creamy yellow polenta and montasio fondue and then sprinkled with freshly grated smoked ricotta.

FRICKIN’ AMAZING!

Sweet gnocco (served during the savory menu) stuffed with plums and sprinkled with powdered sugar and cinnamon.

The whole crew agreed that this was the best lunch so far… truly unforgettable people, truly unforgettable food and ambience… and the wines… the Picolit is incredible!

Running on to the next two winery visits (including Radikon!) and then the gala dinner tonight… STAY TUNED!

Friulian aquaculture, lunch on the island of Ravaiarina

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The team, from left, clockwise, each a taste-maker in her or his own right: Matthew Turner (head sommlier Michael Mina, San Francisco), Steve Wildy (beverage director, Vetri, Philadelphia), Brent Karlicek (wine merchant, Postino, Phoenix), Shelley Lindgren (wine director, A16, San Francisco), Bobby Stuckey (wine director, Frasca, Boulder), Jamie Garrett (sommelier, Sonnenalp, Vail), Joe Campanale (beverage director, Dell’Anima, New York), Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson (chef, Frasca, Boulder), Mario Nocifera (director of operations, Frasca, Boulder), and Lara Persello (our handler, Turismo FVG).

This morning we departed from Grado and headed toward the island of Ravaiarina.

The antipasto.

Turbot with its brodetto and white polenta.

A classic of Friulian viticulture.

The island has its own fish farm in the form of a humanmade saltwater lagoon and the chef fishes his catch with a fishing pole as needed, like this orata (Mediterranean sea bass). Ingenious…

The fishery is perfectly attuned to the island’s aquaculture and mariculture.

La Ravaiarina
tel. 0431 845 84576

To reach the island and restaurant, you take a taxi boat from Grado.