Category Archives: de cibo

“History has yet to be written in Bolgheri”

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Above: Winemaker and owner of Le Macchiole Cinzia Merli — producer of one of Italy’s most talked-about wines — at Fraîche in Culver City, CA last night.

Last night found me in one of the most talked-about restaurants in America together with one of Italy’s most talked-about winemakers, Cinzia Merli of Le Macchiole.

Ever since Frank Bruni included Fraîche (Culver City, CA) in his top 10 list of restaurants that “count coast-to-coast,” friends (from the left bank and right) have raved to me about its food. One of the guests at dinner last night told me you need to reserve four months in advance (although another noted, “we didn’t need Frank to tell us how good Fraîche is”).

It’s unlikely that I could ever get a reservation there but Cinzia Merli certainly can: her winery has been touted (pun intended) as the new Super Tuscan supreme and at least one of her bottlings has attained a Midas-touch 100-point score (conferred by the sole arbiter of such accolades). Her high-end, handmade wines retail for upward of $250 these days.

Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I am generally not a fan of Super Tuscans — wines by definition aged in new oak. But who could resist an invitation to dine with Italy’s newly anointed megawatt star at one of the hottest tables in America?

Above: Branzino with escargot tempura at Fraîche. I regret to say that the the restaurant was disappointing. I was expecting simpler, locally driven fare. But escargot tempura? The service was excellent but more than once our table had to send back stemware that smelled like a sewer (I’m not kidding). When you’re pouring $250+ bottles of wine, you’d hope that someone would pay attention. There didn’t seem to be a sommelier on duty that night. The vibe of the restaurant felt like a scene from Altman’s 1993 film “Short Cuts.”

Conversation with Cinzia was truly fascinating and all in attendance were keen to discuss her preference for monovarietal (single-grape variety) wines in an appellation that has historically favored Bordeaux-style blends.

“I believe that monovarietal wines are the greatest expression of Bolgheri’s terroir,” said Cinzia. “In the past, Bolgheri winemakers have felt that blended wines best expressed our terroir. But today the same producers who weren’t so thrilled about my monovarietal wines are now lobbying to change the appellation regulations and allow monovarietal wines [to be classified] as DOC.” (The Bolgheri DOC currently does not permit monovarietal wines.)

“Even though we have very important models for winemaking — Sassicaia and Ornellaia — the history of Bolgheri has yet to be written,” she told us.

Some notes from the dinner…

  • The name of Cinzia’s Paleo (today made from 100% Cabernet Franc) comes from a Tuscan word for tarraxacum, a dandelion that grows wild in Bolgheri. She does not weed her vineyards, thus allowing naturally occurring grasses and weeds to flourish. Tarraxacum was prevalent during the first vintage (1989). Paleo was originally made from a blend of Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon, and Sangiovese but became 100% Cabernet Franc with the 2001 harvest.
  • Messorio (her 100% Merlot, the most famous of her wines) is an archaic term for wheat farmer. Before Cinzia’s family planted their land to grapes, wheat was the most important crop grown there.
  • Her 100% Syrah is called Scrio, a Tuscan word for pure: Scrio and Messorio were first produced in 1994 and have always been vinified as monovarietal or “pure” wines.
  • It is believed that Le Macchiole, the name of Cinzia’s estate, comes from the Italian macchia or maquis, the dense scrub or brush that defines the landascape of Maremma (the Tuscan coastline).

    • Of all of her wines, my favorite is the Paleo because the bright acidity of her Cabernet Franc makes it her most food-friendly wine. The 2005 Messorio and the Scrio were opulent, rich with flavor, and they showed great minerality and depth. It will take some time (5-10 years?) for the wood to integrate in these wines but this vintage of Le Macchiole is clearly destined to be a benchmark for Bolgheri in years to come.

    My feelings about oak and the history of barrique aging in Italy continue to evolve: hopefully, my path will cross once again with Cinzia and I will get the chance to taste these powerful wines when they have had a chance to evolve.

    Colorado Day 6: Aspen, under the big top

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    Thanks everyone for checking in this week. When I get back to California, I’ll post on some of the tastings I attended. In the meantime, here are some images from opening day at the 2008 Aspen Food & Wine Classic…

    The first session of tasting seminars at the Aspen Food & Wine Classic

    Under the big top: a view of one of the main tents at the festival.

    Martin Foradori (owner Hofstätter) and New York restaurateur Danny Meyer share a laugh after Danny led tasters in a chorus of “Alto Adige” to the tune of Mel Brook’s “High Anxiety.”

    Ran into Ed McCarthy and Mary Mulligan, the first couple of the U.S. food and wine scene.

    Celeb sommelier Richard Betts wanted me to try his new Mojito at the bar at the storied Little Nell hotel.

    Drank 1996 Jacquesson for lunch.

    My friend Aldo Sohm — the best sommelier in the world — poured me some great Rieslings.

    1988 Massolino Vigna Rionda Barolo was fantastic. Note the clear, brick color of the wine, a standout for me on this trip.

    Evening found me in the home of collector. The views in Aspen are amazing.

    Colorado Day 5: Aspen Celeb Watch! (or my new career as paparazzo)

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    paparazzo (1961), the name of the character Paparazzo, a society photographer in F. Fellini’s film La Dolce Vita (1960).

    The selection of the name Paparazzo (which occurs as a surname in Italy) for the character in Fellini’s film has been variously explained. According to Fellini himself, the name was taken from an opera libretto; the comment is also attributed to him that the word “suggests a buzzing insect, hovering, darting, stinging”. It is also used as the name of a character by G. Gissing in By the Ionian Sea (1909), which appeared in Italian translation in 1957 and has been cited as an inspiration by E. Flaiano, who contributed to the film’s scenario. (For further possible expressive connotations of the name, it has also been noted that in the Italian dialect of Abruzzi, where Flaiano came from, paparazzo occurs as a word for a clam, which could be taken as suggesting a metaphor for the opening and closing of a camera lens; the Italian suffix -azzo).

    — Oxford English Dictionary, online edition

    Sommelier Carlos “Charlie” Arturaola and celeb Chef José Andrés at the “must be seen at” Wines of Spain party.

    Chef Andrés made a pork sausage paella for the overflowing crowd at the party, held this year in a private home (chef Andrés was assisted by chef Terri Cutrino).

    Culinary legend Jacques Pepin looked fabulous as always at the Food & Wine Classic welcome party. How do the French do it?

    Celeb Chef Tom Colicchio kept a lid on it as he did an interview.

    Importer Bartholomew Broadbent and tele producer Josie Peltz (the better half of celeb sommelier and wine writer David Lynch).

    American Express head honcho Ed Kelly and my buddy Ray Isle, Deputy Wine Editor at Food & Wine, on the other side of the velvet rope.

    Restaurateur and wine world star Brian Duncan and winemaker Danilo Drocco lunched in town yesterday.

    Life isn’t treating this paparazzo so bad: I drank a 1990 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande at a private dinner last night.

    Slovenia Day 2: forbidden mussels, winemaker not required

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    The name and location of the tavern where Nous Non Plus ate dinner on April 9, 2008 cannot be revealed: suffice it to say that the band’s metallic-gray van somehow found its way to a small village in the hills of Brda.

    On the menu that night: a tide of scampi (Nephrops norvegicus, Norwegian lobster, adored by Céline Dijon aka Verena Wiesendanger, left) and forbidden date mussels (Lithophaga lithophaga, a long and narrow rock-boring mussel that uses an acidic secretion to chisel its way into the reefs of the northern Adriatic). The fishing of date mussels, I’m sorry to say, has been prohibited in Europe since 1992 because the reef has to be broken in order to extract the mollusk (in Italy, the sale of date mussels was outlawed in 1998). But in Slovenia (an EU country, btw), it seems delicacy trumps delinquency (I’ve heard that they’re easy to find in Apulia and other parts of Adriatic Italy as well).

    Above: the delicious date mussels were cooked in white wine and garlic. They didn’t serve Aleš’ wine but the house Ribolla (Rebula) made for an excellent pairing.

    Above: The scampi seemed to dance on this mixed seafood platter. Céline goes crazy for scampi. I’ve never seen her eat so much!

    Earlier in the day (and frankly, the day didn’t start so early since we had stayed up all night long playing Beatles songs camp-fire style after NNP played two sets at the winery), Aleš had fulfilled his promise to explain the secret behind Movia’s Lunar, a wine he makes — as I discovered — from the free-run juice of unpressed, whole bunches of Ribolla using a unique system for carbonic maceration. He calls it Lunar because he follows the cycle of the moon for its production.

    “Before man made a job for himself as a winemaker,” said Aleš, “the grape made the wine itself.” The grape berry “has a natural valve at its top,” he explained. When a grape drops to the ground, the naturally occurring yeasts on its skin migrate into the pulp and begin to ferment its juice. The valve at the top of the berry, “lets the carbon dioxide out without letting any oxygen in.”

    So, when Aleš decided he wanted to make a wine with no intervention whatsoever, he used the grape as a model: he designed a barrel with a hole proportionate to the size of the aperture at the top of a grape berry. To plug the hole, he created a spring-loaded cap that releases the CO2 when pressure builds within the vessel without allowing any oxygen to enter. In essence, he built a large grape berry. He fills the “berry” with whole bunches of grapes and then seals it and lets nature do her work.

    Above: Aleš always decants Lunar because it is unfiltered and contains a great deal of sediment.

    He then concocted an elaborate system of tubes that allow him to draw off the wine without letting it come into contact with oxygen. But he also had to calculate “where” the wine would be in the barrel, since some of the solids fall to the bottom during fermentation while the skins float to the top. In a diagram he showed me, the “layer” of wine lies somewhere in the middle of the vessel. The wine is siphoned off into a larger stainless steel vessel from which he can then bottle the unfiltered wine.

    Lunar isn’t cheap but it is one of those life-changing wines. When you taste it for the first time, you immediately experience its purity and integrity (and by integrity, I mean the etymological sense of the word, its wholeness, its untouchedness, from the Latin in- + tangere, to touch). Later in the trip, Aleš dubbed NNP the first “bio-dynamic” band: it was great to see my bandmates get turned on and tuned in to natural wine.

    Required reading…

    There’s a great article about Slovenian wine and Movia in the current issue of Fine Wine by
    Bruce Schoenfeld    . (Scroll down to the bottom of the page where you can download a PDF’d version.)

    I’ve become a fan of Bruce’ writing. I recently came across this passage in a piece he wrote in praise of a Patagonian Pinot Noir (which, he pointed out, doesn’t try to imitate Burgundy):

    “I’m not sure why, but I hold Pinot Noir to a higher standard than I do other grapes. I come across far too many Pinots made in slavish imitation of Burgundy. These wines aren’t bad, just uninteresting. I mean, I love the Beatles’ ‘Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds,’ but I don’t ever need to hear Elton John sing his version again.”

    I couldn’t agree more: I love Elton John but his version of LSD just doesn’t do it for me nearly the same way the Beatles’ does.

    Holy Mole: fish tacos and Barolo?

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    Above: Holé Molé in Hermosa Beach doesn’t serve mole (traditional Mexican chili pepper and chocolate sauce) but the fish tacos are a dollar a piece on Tuesdays. Note the ubiquitous and obligatory Prius in the parking lot.

    Fish tacos and Barolo? Where’s Dr. Vino when you need him? Hey, Dr. Tyler, give us some love and help us out with this impossible food pairing (I’m a huge fan of Dr. T’s sometimes hilarious and often unlikely food and wine pairings).

    Seriously, I didn’t pair fish tacos and Barolo but I did discover a great little fish taco joint in Hermosa Beach on Tuesday after I helped out my friend Robin Stark with a cellar management job she was doing in Long Beach, CA.

    The tacos at Holé Molé are prepared using the traditional small-sized corn tortillas like the ones you find at a taquería in Mexico.

    After an afternoon of cataloging some rich dude’s cellar, we grabbed a taco at Holé Molé, a gimmicky but delicious taquería in Hermosa. I am a sucker for reduplicatives* and so we just had to stop there.

    Fish tacos are said to have originated in Ensenada (Baja California, Mexico) and were popularized by the San Diego-based franchise Rubios. They generally consist of battered and fried pollock rolled in a corn tortilla and topped with a light lime- or lemon-infused mayonnaise sauce and lettuce and/or cabbage (north of the border, cole slaw is often used instead of lettuce). Many restaurants also serve fish tacos made with grilled mahi mahi and tuna these days and in fact, when I traveled in Baja California as a teenager, fish tacos were always served with grilled (as opposed to battered and fried) fish.

    Above: A classic fish taco at El Indio, an old-school San Diego Mexican eatery. There are many great places to find excellent fish tacos throughout southern California but my heart always leads me to my beloved Bahia Don Bravo in Bird Rock (La Jolla) where I generally order the grilled Mahi Mahi fish tacos.

    After we got our taco on, Robin and I headed to Brix (above), a new and rather soul-less high-end winebar and enocentric restaurant and wine store also in Hermosa Beach. Brix is located in a mall together with the obligatory health club and candle shop. I did enjoy an excellent glass of 2005 Ribolla Gialla from Teresa Raiz but was disheartened to hear the bartender tell me, “yeah, Ribolla Gialla… it’s kinda like Pinot Grigio.” The star of the evening was a 1997 Barolo by Anselma that we bought at the wine store and opened and decanted for $20 corkage. Anselma is a traditional producer who makes powerful but nuanced, elegant wines. Hey, as the great Lee Evans used to say, life is too short to drink bad wine…

    In other news…

    In the wake my post of the other day on Bad Food, but Good Music and Wine in the Studio, my friend and engineer Bryan Cook hooked me up with a tasty grilled mahi mahi tuna melt from Blairs while we were recording guitar overdubs yesterday back at Kingsize Sound Labs in Eagle Rock, CA. I stand corrected: there is much good take-out to be had in Eagle Rock! Rock on…

    * Other examples of linguistic reduplication: hanky-panky, helter-skelter, and, one of my favs, pell-mell.

    Back in the studio: good music, bad food, and some kick-ass wine

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    Just added: Nous Non Plus will be performing at Bordello in downtown Los Angeles on Friday, June 20 with fellow French rockers Tour de France. June 21, daytime show at the the Alliance Française in San Francisco (details to follow).

    Nous Non Plus recently headed back into the studio to finish work on our upcoming release (working title, “Nous Non Plus: Deux,” fall 2008). Engineer and wine lover Bryan Cook manned the dials at Kingsize Studio Sound Labs in Eagle Rock, CA (check out the studio’s site… it’s kinda cool).

    When you’re in the studio, you’re working hard (usually 10-12 hour days) and you don’t really have a lot of great food options (the section of Eagle Rock where we recorded looked like a scene out of the Lethal Weapon franchise). We did make some groovy music and we managed to drink well.

    Tradition dictates that food writing should be positive… that we should write only about good food. But in the world of rock ‘n’ roll, even when the music is great, the food usually sucks.

    Here’s a little photo essay of our session…

    Bad: reheated Mexican food.

    Bad: flavorless Thai food… hey, you know, sometimes you have to eat cause you’re hungry!

    Good… actually, very good: 32-channel Neve 8068. Man, that desk sounds warm and rich…

    Good: early 1980s Fender Super Reverb and Fender Champ (I believe they were post-1982 since that was the year that Fender started making them again). I also played through the Supro behind the Champ. When you turn those little amps up to 10 they sound fantastic.

    Fun: the guitar selection at Kingsize is colorful… among other axes employed on this record, the Gretsch G1626 Synchromatic Silver Sparkle Jet with f-hole (second from right) sounded awesome on some of the more rocking numbers. It was made for only a few years and now is almost impossible to find. The main guitar I played was my custom John Carruthers “Johnny Rivers” model telecaster. Also played a beautiful vintage Fender Jazzmaster with tremolo.

    Excellent: 1982 Salomon library selection Riesling was off-the-charts delicious.

    Nice performance: Jean-Luc Retard (aka Dan, bass, vox) opens a bottle of one of NNP’s officially favorite wines, Movia Puro Rosé. In the photo, Dan is disgorging the sediment from the bottle in a sink full of water (the plates and cups on the bottom served as a stopper for the drain; Kingsize is a great studio but the plumbing is, let’s say, creative).

    Hits the spot: after the wine is disgorged, it’s totally clear.

    Good company, bad food: from left, our friend Joachim Cooder, Céline, Bryan, and Jean-Luc and I “grind out” on some mediocre Mediterranean.

    Magazine sitings and writings

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    My friend Lawrence Osborne gave me a shout out in the current issue of Men’s Vogue (June/July 2008), in an article about a wine that means a lot to me: Lini Lambrusco. I can’t say that I mind being called “a wine connoisseur and Italian scholar extraordinaire” by the Accidental Connoisseur himself.

    Alicia Lini and I first met in February of 2007 when I traveled to Italy in search of metodo classico or méthode champenoise Lambrusco (i.e., double-fermented in bottle). She and I became good friends and it’s great to see her (with her cover girl looks) and her wines get the attention they deserve.

    I also made an appearance in the Spring issue of Gastronomica with a piece on the history of pasta, Risorgimento Italy, and pasta’s role in the Italian national identity.

    Ed-in-chief Darra Goldstein had asked me to write a review of a CD devoted to pasta-inspired music and she generously let me turn the piece into short essay.

    In case you can’t find a copy of the mag at your local newsstand, I made a PDF (downloadable here).

    The mystery of the White Lady resolved

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    When Céline, the band, and I returned to La Dama Bianca on our way back to Venice to lunch with our friend Marco Fantinel, we were served these delicious paccheri (homemade ring-shaped pasta) with shrimp and squid.

    My post the other day on La Dama Bianca in Duino (Italy Day 7) generated a tide of comments, including a number of messages from fellow fans/lovers of the the restaurant/hotel: it’s one of those truly magical places and once you’ve been, you count the days until you can return (Céline Dijon liked it so much that we decided to stop there for lunch on our way back from Slovenia).

    Céline (left), the band, and I met Marco (right) on our way back to Venice. The weather was beautiful and the food… ah… the food at La Dama Bianca always puts you in a good mood.

    Pierpaolo from Trieste wrote:

      The name “Dama bianca” came from a legend, inspired by a white rock that, seen from the sea, it seems a female figure wrapped in a long veil. The legend tells of the evil owner of the old castle of Duino (today only ruins) during the Middle Ages, who threw his wife from a precipice and God, moved to mercy by the shouts of the “pure” lady, transformed her into stone before touching the water.

    Thanks, Pieropaolo, for resolving the mystery.

    Simona author of Briciole also pointed me to this Wikipedia entry on Duino.

    I’m not quite sure the origin of paccheri (see photo at top), although I know that some believe the pasta shape was created to smuggle garlic cloves. Maybe Simona can help us to resolve the paccheri mystery…

    Italy Day 7: Words cannot describe the way I feel…

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    …about La Dama Bianca in Duino near Trieste.

    Scallops on the shell were divine. Note how they chef left the scallop’s tasty “foot” attached.

    On Monday, April 7, Céline (vox aka Verena Wiesendanger), Bonnie (vox, violin aka Emily Welsch), and Jean-Luc (vox, bass aka Dan Crane) arrived at the Venice airport and we headed north to Duino, a little lost-in-time village just south of Trieste along the Adriatic coast. We had a reservation for dinner and an over-night stay at what is simply one of the most delightful hotel/restaurants I have ever had the pleasure to experience.

    La Dama Bianca (The White Lady) is a family-owned seafood restaurant with just five single rooms on the second floor: the father does the fishing, the mother does the cooking, and the son serves as sommelier (and his list is a wonderful romp through Carso, Collio, and Colli Orientali).

    Lost in time: the Dama Bianca has remained seemingly unchanged since the 1960s, as has the village of Duino. The rooms, each with a sea-view terrace, were spartan but immaculately clean and after six days of traveling and wine fairs, the gentle rhythm of the tide against the breakwater lulled me to sleep like a baby.

    One of the chef’s signatures was the combination of two types of seafood in every dish, like these sautéed shrimp served with baby sea scallops.

    When I told Dario that we wanted to drink a Vodopivec Vitovska with our our main course — scorfano (scorpion fish) in cartoccio (en papillote or in parchment paper) — he produced no less than four vintages. On his recommendation, we drank the 2003, which was beautiful, oxidized, with fruit notes as golden as the color of the wine (below).

    2003 Vodopivec Vitovska.

    It was dusk when we arrived at the small breakwater and harbor. A gentleman was fishing and enjoying the “golden hour.”

    An auto-timer of Jean-Luc, Bonnie, Céline, and me (Calvino di Maggio, detto Cal d’Hommage).

    Albergo Dama Bianca
    Frazione Duino, 61/C
    34011 Duino Aurisina (TS)
    040 208137

    Stay tuned for Slovenia Day 1!

    Sail On or Chips and Salsa

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    Editor’s note: The events and characters depicted in this photoplay are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons living or dead, or to actual events, is purely coincidental.

    Above: 7:19 p.m. chips and salsa at Bahia Don Bravo taco shop in Bird Rock, La Jolla.

    Sail on down the line
    About half a mile or so
    And I don’t really wanna know ah
    Where you’re going

    Maybe once or twice you see
    Time after time I tried
    Hold on to what we got
    But now you’re going

    And I don’t mind
    About the things you’re gonna say
    Lord, I gave all my money and my time
    I know it’s a shame
    But I’m giving you back your name
    Guess I’ll be on my way
    I won’t be back to stay
    I guess I’ll move along
    I’m looking for a good time

    Sail on down the line
    Ain’t it funny how the time can go
    All my friends say they told me so
    But it doesn’t matter
    It was plain to see
    That a small town boy like me
    Just I wasn’t your cup of tea
    I was wishful thinking

    I gave you my heart
    And I tried to make you happy
    And you gave me nothing in return
    You know it ain’t so hard to say
    Would you please just go away

    I’ve thrown away the blues
    I’m tired of being used
    I want everyone to know
    I’m looking for a good time
    Good time
    Sail on honey
    Good times never felt so good
    Sail on honey
    Good times never felt so good
    Sail on sugar
    Good times never felt so good
    Sail on

    — Commodores