Since Thursday, when Eric Asimov mentioned my blog in his, I’ve received countless emails and some interesting comments, including the following from winemaker and wine educator Eric Lecours, who wrote me from Burgundy (where he is working with Étienne Grivot at Domaine Grivot):

The catastrophe is in two wines in Italy: Brunello di M[ontalcino in Tuscany] and Barbera in Piemonte. With Brunello the trend seems irreversible, huge, fat and sweet. The Barbera though is heart-breaking. Probably the most versatile grape on the planet, the quality versions are drowned in oak. It reminds me of California SB [Sauvignon Blanc], anything above $10 a bottle has to be rich and oaked. Good for Sancerre I guess.

To paraphrase Neal Rosenthal: it’s worse than maquillage; you can take that off. Once you put this stuff on, you can never take it off. It touches the very soul.

Clearly, the question of new oak and Italy plays on the heartstrings of many. As much as I pine for the wines I tasted in the late 1980s and early 90s, before the use of barrique became so widespread in Italy, I was thrilled to see that there is a growing movement of wine lovers, enthusiasts, and winemakers (like Eric) who share my view that new oak masks the varietal characteristics of Italian grapes. I hope that Italian winemakers will take note.

Reflecting on the modern vs. traditional and new oak vs. botti dialectic, I remembered the Italian proverb nelle botti piccole sta il vino buono, literally, “there’s good wine in small barrels,” or figuratively, “good things come in small packages.”

The saying refers not to small, new French oak barrels (barriques) but rather to the Italian caratello or carrato, a small and sometimes elongated barrel used to store wine (possibly from the Latin carrus or “cart”; others believe the term derived from the Greek keration, a diminutive of kèras, or “horn,” because of the barrel’s shape). As early as the sixteenth century, small barrels were used in Italy to make sweet wines like Vin Santo and Sagrantino (the latter was not made as a dry wine until the 1970s) and there is evidence that small barrels were also used during the 1500s in a winemaking technique now called the governo method, whereby a small amount of sweet, dried-grape wine is added to dry wine (and in some cases, a second fermentation takes place).

Above: caratelli used to make Vin Santo.

Perhaps a more appropriate translation of the proverb would read: “coveted, sweet wine comes in small barrels.”

A propos wine in small packages, last night found me at Park Blue in midtown, a wine bar that specializes in half bottles, with roughly 150 different labels in its cellar (Per Se is the only restaurant in NYC, the owner told me, that has more half bottles on its list). Even though half bottles are not good for aging wine, they can be fun: especially at a place like Park Blue, with so many to choose from, the lower price point allows you to enjoy different wines in one sitting.

Among other wines, I was eager to try the 2001 Barolo by Massolino. I had never seen a Massolino Barolo in 375ml format and had yet to taste that vintage. I have tasted the 1996 and 97 on numerous occasions and I’ve always felt that Massolino was an excellent wine at an excellent price, a classic expression of the appellation. The wine was much “hotter” (higher in alcohol content) than the wines I had tasted previously and it didn’t taste as earthy as I remember for previous vintages.* It would appear that Massolino has abandoned its traditional style. On the other hand, Antonio Galloni just gave its flagship wine, the Barolo Rionda, a glowing review in The Wine Advocate, a publication that favors “modern” style wines. Am I wrong to begrudge Massolino when the winery seems to have achieved a new level of success with its current winemaking style? To borrow a phrase from François Villon, I miss the wines of yesteryear (as per my note below, I intend to retaste the wine and post new tasting notes).

Click here to read about my tasting with Franco Massolino.

Above: half bottles at Park Blue.

The service at Park Blue was uneven but our server did know the wine list very well. The small plates were just okay but the cheese selection was great. The atmosphere there (music, lighting, and seating) is very relaxing and I’m glad to have discovered a wine bar, with an interesting list, that stays open late in midtown.

In other news, my good friend Charlie George and his family were evacuated from their home in Rancho Santa Fe, California (not far from where I grew up). They’re all safe but, at the moment, he doesn’t know if his house survived the fire. I’m keeping my fingers crossed for him.

I see your hair is burning.
Hills are filled with fire.
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar.

— Jim Morrison

*When I tasted the wine, I perceived notes of new oak but when I inquired, the importer assured me that winemaker Franco Massolino does not age this wine (from Serralunga) in new oak. I’m going to make a point of tasting again (this time in 750ml format) and will post new tasting notes. It’s possible that the wine was tainted by some bacteria in the botti in which it was aged. In any event, I will retaste the wine and post a new tasting note.

For propriety’s sake, this post must begin with an errata corrige: my recent post on my dinner with Leslie Sbrocco included an erroneous literary attribution (to Eugenio Montale). In fact, it was twentieth-century Italian novelist Carlo Emilio Gadda who wrote: “Pronouns! They’re the lice of thought. When a thought has lice, it scratches, like everyone who has lice…. and they get in the fingernails, then… you find pronouns, the personal pronouns.”

“Ah! the world of ideas! What a fine world! Ah! this, I, I…,” says Gadda’s autobiographical character Gonzalo in Acquainted with Grief, “among the almond blossoms… then among the pears […] I, I… the foulest of all pronouns!”*

Above: Carlo Emilio Gadda, the great twentienth-century Italian novelist. We’ve all been “Acquainted with Grief,” haven’t we?

Over the weekend, in speaking with journalist and wine writer Peter Hellman about all of the upcoming tastings and wine events in NYC, we shared our dismay at the state of wine writing today and what I like to call the “lice of wine writing”: tastings notes so impossibly subjective, so beleaguered by the presence of the “I,” that they are bereft of meaning.

An avid reader of wine writing, Peter pointed out the absurdity in a recent promotional email where two very famous wine publications were quoted about the same wine:

Parker: “The 2003 Cornas La Louvee is a blockbuster. Glorious aromas of flowers, blackberries, roasted meats, espresso roast, and white chocolate flow from this full-bodied, concentrated, modern-styled, impressively-endowed, full-throttle Cornas. Drink it now and over the next 15+ years. 93pts”

Wine Spectator: “Tight and structured, with lots of iron and mineral notes framing the black cherry, plum, briar, tar and olive paste flavors. Long finish sports mouthwatering acidity. Very impressive for Cornas in 2003. Best from 2007 through 2015. 800 cases made. 92pts”

As Peter pointed out rightly, the tasting notes in the two passages are “mutually exclusive.” As I’ve asked many times before, how can a wine really taste like so many different things? And, come on, “mouthwatering acidity”? What the hell does that mean?

He also directed me to the website of Château Palmer where a similar discongruous hypertext emerges. Of all the I-can-taste-and-write-more-descriptors-than-you descriptions that I found there, the only one that showed some sanity was the wise Jancis Robinson, who, it seems to me, always takes a much more objective approach to wine writing and tasting notes, a style much more real and accessible to both the expert and the lay person:

Very, very deep crimson. Very intense and nervy – impressive on the nose – but more obviously big and fruity than the more delicate Ch Margaux… Slightly charred and smoky. Round and fresh and very beguiling. Real lift and only the slightest hint of inkiness on the finish. Bravo! Very fine tannins – very suave and polished with good density while still being Margaux. Very sweet. Hints of modern idiom but very gentle. Super silky texture. Sinewy – but polished sinews!

Hers is a more poetical approach and she avoids the subjective virtuosismo of the Parkers, Wine Spectators, and Tanzers, who just can’t resist the “I taste this, I taste that” one-upmanship** (as Peter pointed out, Tanzer is probably the only person in the world who knows what “Vermont granite” tastes like… Next time I go to Vermont, I’ll be sure to eat some).

When will wine writers come to their senses (pun intended) and realize that these overblown descriptors are the lice of wine writing???!!!

When I read “blackberries, roasted meats, espresso roast, and white chocolate” and “black cherry, plum, briar, tar and olive paste,” I scratch my head and like Gadda’s Gonzalo, I find lice in my fingernails — the lice of wine writing.

—

*Gadda, Carlo Emilio, Acquainted with Grief (original title: La cognizione del dolore), translated from the Italian by William Weaver, Braziller, New York, 1969, p. 86.

For the original Italian, see: ibid., La cognizione del dolore, Einaudi, Torino, 1970 (1963), p. 123.

In the passage, Gonzalo (Gadda) tells his doctor that he doesn’t need anyone but himself for a diagnosis of his ills, anyone but his “I.” Then, all of a sudden, a thought bursts from his mouth:

“Ah! the world of ideas! What a fine world! Ah! this, I, I… among the almond blossoms… then among the pears […] I, I… the foulest of all pronouns!”

“Pronouns! [Gonzalo answers] They’re the lice of thought. When a thought has lice, it scratches, like everyone who has lice…. and they get in the fingernails, then… you find pronouns, the personal pronouns.”

**I write anti-chauvanistically “one-upmanship” and not “one-up-personship” because I believe that women have finer noses and palates in wine tasting and that they dispense with the ever-present male bravado that accompanies wine enthusiasm and connoisseurship.