Category Archives: de oenographia

Pouring Wine for a Good Cause and Reflections on Brunello

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Saturday night I poured a couple of my favorite wines at the ElderHelp gala fund raiser at the Hard Rock Hotel in downtown San Diego. ElderHelp is “a social services agency dedicated to helping low-income seniors live independently in their homes.”

My brother Micah serves as the executive board’s president.

The wines — Chapoutier 2006 white Côtes du Rhône “Belleruche” and Il Poggione 2005 Rosso di Montalcino — were generously donated by the Terlato Wine Group.

The event was a smashing success and I got to talk to a lot of great folks (more than 600 persons attended) about my favorite subject: wine.

In other news…

My friend and collaborator Franco Ziliani, author of Vino al Vino and co-editor of VinoWire.com, interviewed me about the fallout of the Brunello controversy for the Associazione Italiana Sommeliers (Italian Sommeliers Association or AIS) website.

Click here to read the interview in Italian.

For those of you who haven’t followed the Brunello controversy (you can read about it in detail at VinoWire.com), the Brunello appellation is in crisis: last month, the Siena prosecutor’s office revealed it was investigating at least five wineries for adulterating their wines by adding grapes other than Sangiovese, the only variety allowed by appellation regulation. According to some reports, at least one winery is being investigated for excessively high yields (yield is based on the amount of grapes produced per vineyard surface area; for high-end wines, yields are generally kept low).

I have made a point of not writing about the controversy here at Do Bianchi but rather pointing readers to VinoWire.com, where Franco and I have taken a “just-the-facts” approach to news from the world of Italian wine.

My love for wine was born nearly twenty years ago when I first traveled to Montalcino (I was then a student at the Università di Padova). Thanks to the generosity of my friends, the Marcucci brothers and their families (who live in a magical village just south of Montalcino named Bagno Vignoni, or bath amidst the vines), I had the opportunity to taste a lot of fantastic wine and Brunello remains one of my favorite wines to this day.

The appellation has changed greatly since that time. In 1989, Riccardo Marcucci took me to taste the wines of a friend — let’s just call him G — with whom he had performed his obligatory military service. G had just begun to make high-end wine on his father’s estate. Today, G regularly wins top scores from the Wine Spectator and the Wine Advocate. The last time I was in Montalcino, he had just snagged the coveted Wine Spectator wine-of-the-year award for his 2001 single-vineyard Brunello.

Here’s what the Spectator‘s James Suckling had to say about the wine:

    Dark in color with intense blackberry, chocolate, and lightly toasted oak. Full-bodied and ultravelvety, with tannins that caress your palate. Vanilla, chocolate and berry. Goes on for minutes. Mind-blowing. Best after 2010.– J.S.

When I tasted G’s wines in 1989, they tasted more like fruit than ice cream. Let’s just say a lot has changed in Montalcino since that time.

There are 256 members in the Brunello producers association. While more than 1 million bottles have been impounded by Italian authorities, they represent a small group of big producers. Because the Italian judicial system works on a civil rather than criminal model (i.e., you are guilty until proven innocent), the investigation has essentially placed a stranglehold on the entire appellation. The Brunello producers association (Consorzio del Vino Brunello di Montalcino) has made things worse by shirking the transparency its office ought to foster. The good news is that producers are beginning independently to submit their wine for voluntary testing.

The confusion resulting from the controversy has created a sea of misinformation. Here are some facts to keep in mind:

  • to date, only 5 producers (of 265 total) have been implicated (not convicted) in the investigation;
  • the American government has officially requested information on the situation from the Italian embassy in Washington and has threatened to block imports if information is not provided by June 9 (we’ll see what happens over the next few weeks, but no action has been taken to block U.S. imports);
  • the issue is whether or not a handful of producers added grapes other than Sangiovese to the wine;
  • there are absolutely no health concerns and in the overwhelming majority of cases, the wine was made in strict accordance with appellation regulations;
  • bureaucratic hand-wringing and lack of transparency by the producers association are more to blame than the few bad apples who cut corners in a very hot vintage (preceded by a washed-out, rainy vintage).

    • I encourage everyone to continue to believe in Brunello, especially at a time when many honest, hard-working people — producers and their employees — are suffering because of a relatively small group of bad apples, so to speak (it only takes one, indeed, to spoil the whole barrel… pardon the pun).

    I wish I could take you all back in time to Montalcino when I first tasted Brunello. The appellation wasn’t as score-driven then and the leading Italian wines in the U.S. market were the prototypical Super Tuscans — Sassicaia and Tignanello first and foremost among them.

    Please continue to swirl, smell, and taste: there are a lot of great wines from the 2003 vintage and the upshot of the otherwise regrettable controversy will be bargain prices for a generally high-cost wine.

    2003 will ultimately be remembered as a great year to buy Brunello.

    I have a lot more to say on the subject of Brunello and the continuing modern vs. traditional debate but will wait until the controversy has subsided.

    Recently overheard in the agora

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    Last week’s posts generated some interesting comments, including the following note on Charbono from Wine & Spirits senior editor and wine blogger Wolfgang Weber:

      Ah, charbono. There’s a picture somewhere around my computer (and even online I think, gulp) of me and an empty 3-litre bottle of 1981 Inglenook Charbono in a rather compromising position. Anyway, the wine was delicious, subtle and complex, with a savoriness that perfectly matched the braised lamb shanks we ate that night. It had aged beautifully despite spending many years on a closet floor in suburban Napa. A true testament to the old (dry-farmed?) charbono vines that were planted at Inglenook for much of the 20th century. I’m sure it’s all grafted, or replanted, to cabernet now–that terroir instead going towards the lofty Rubicon rather than an earthy old schooler like charbono. Although I’ll admit to quite liking Rubicon, it’s fun to imagine what prime Rutherford charbono would be like these days.

    North Carolina wine maven Scott Luetgenau added:

      Coturri makes a good Charbono. I remember reading that it may have originated in the Savoie region of France and had previously been called Douce Noir.

    I’d like to get my hands on a bottle of the Coturri Charbono.

    Messere Alfonso Cevola also weighed in on the “to irrigate or not to irrigate” question. I think that he’s 100% on the money when he asks rhetorically, “Maybe they shouldn’t plant vines where vines are not meant to be?”

      Not sure I agree with allowing irrigating in the Brunello DOC. We’ve seen producers in other low lying land (Napa Valley floor, for instance) who have access to irrigation, with resulting vines producing a shallow root system that isn’t drought resistant. So in light of the current situation, I don’t think that would help to steer Brunello back in the right direction. Maybe they shouldn’t plant vines where vines are not meant to be?

    Lastly, Mark Fornatale, whom I met for the first time this year at Vinitaly, sent me a correction for the record. For those of you who followed the thread generated by my Squires Paradox post, Mark pointed out that it was not he but rather another Squires chat room regular who posted erroneous information about Dante Rivetti and Borgogno:

      Allow me to set the record straight. I never posted that Rivetti would have a hand in the winemaking operations at Borgogno. Ralph Michels, a small client of Borgogno in the Paesi Bassi [Low Countries] had suggested as much on the board, and I immediately saw to it that he correct himself, which he did.

    As a result, Franco and I posted an errata corrige for the record on VinoWire.

    In other news…

    Speaking of the Agora, can anyone help me to attribute the following ingenious wordplay?

    Saillo?

    Sì, sollo.

    Sassi per tutta Atene.

    Invincible Charbono (NY Wine Media Guild tasting)

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    Above: winemaker and ex-football coach Dick Vermeil and Sports Illustrated writer and wine expert Paul Zimmerman (seated, right) reminisced about pigskins and old Charbono at the Wine Media Guild’s Charbono tasting this week.

    Larger-than-life celebrity visited this week’s Wine Media Guild of NY tasting in Manhattan: legendary NFL coach and owner of OnTHEdge (Calistoga), Dick Vermeil (above) — one of the most down-to-earth megawatt personalities I’ve ever met — presided over a tasting of 28 bottlings of Charbono — including a rosé, a “Charbera” (Charbono/Barbera blend), and a fortified wine. Winner of the 1999 Super Bowl, Vermeil was portrayed in the 2006 film Invincible, the story of his ground-breaking 1976 “open” tryouts for the Philadelphia Eagles.

    Charbono, you say? Erroneously thought by many to be a relative of Dolcetto (or even Barbera), Charbono is a rustic-tasting, tannic, but fruity and food-friendly grape that Italian immigrants favored in late-nineteenth-century California. Today almost entirely forgotten (there are only “84 tons of Charbono grown in the state” of California, according to enologist and man behind the Opus One project, Paul Smith of OnTHEdge), Charbono is a distinct cultivar grown by a small but devoted group of California wineries (the tasting included wines by Pacific Star, Oakstone and Obscurity Cellars, Shypoke, Robert Foley, Jospeh Laurence, Duxoup, On the Edge, August Briggs, Chameleon, Summers, Turley, Tofanelli, Schrader, Fortino, and Boeger).

    A wide variety of styles — from the luscious and modern to the more lean and traditional — were represented at the tasting. My personal favorites were old bottlings of Charbono by Pacific Star, including a 1990 and a 1994 (above).

    Because many of the vines are 70-80 years old, Charbono can be a late-ripening grape and “only 60% ripens fully,” noted winemaker Sally Ottoson, of Pacific Star, who first made Charbono in 1989. “That’s why it needs extended aging” in cask (she prefers neutral, large-format barrels) and in bottle, she said.

    In his colorful address to the group, Wine Media Guild senior member Paul Zimmerman fondly remembered tasting Inglenook’s Charbono in the 1960s and observed that the tannic wines “tested your manhood.”

    In other news…

    The Brunello saga continues. Check out today’s post on VinoWire.

    The Bartolo Mascarello-Che Guevara mystery resolved.

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    Above: me and my friend, top Italian wine blogger Alfonso Cevola at Terroir in the East Village.

    When in New York, do as New Yorkers do: go to a wine bah.

    Making the most of my New York sojourn, I met up with top Italian wine blogger Alfonso Cevola the other night at Terroir — New York’s first self-proclaimed “punk rock” wine bar.

    Owner Paul Grieco and I had finally exchanged emails about the Bartolo-Che mystery and he generously offered to give me a few tees to send to Maria Teresa Mascarello.

    Here’s what Paul had to say (in email) about the Bartolo-Che photomontage:

      The image of Bartolo came off of the web and we did a little correction to make it pop from the shirt. The beret is actually Che’s from his famous/infamous t-shirt. If I had a picture of Bartolo in a beret I would have used it. The original idea for the shirts (and there are 4 more Terroir-ists to be featured) came from my son’s Che shirt. I began to wonder why there were not any cool wine shirts and paraphernalia.

    I didn’t get a chance to chat with Paul that night (he was “in the weeds,” as they say in the biz) but one of the wait staff told me that Terroir will soon offer its customers an entire line of enopunk-inspired stickers. (Dare say, have I coined a neologism? Enopunk?)

    Given the chance, I’d like to ask Paul why Terroir doesn’t offer Bartolo Mascarello on its growing list of terroir-driven wines. But I fear I know the reason: from what I hear, the importer doesn’t share Terroir’s anarchic spirit.

    Food for thought: are enopunk stickers the future of wine writing?

    Italy Day 4: finalmente, Vini Veri!

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    Above: tasters nap in the springtime sun outside Villa Boschi where the Vini Veri tasting was held again this year. I don’t know why but my day at Vini Veri made me think of the northern Italian folk song “L’uva fogarina”: “Quant’è bella l’uva fogarina, quant’è bello saperla vendemmiar!” (The Fogarina grape is so good! So good for the pickin’!). See below…

    Let’s face it: we all go to Vinitaly every year because we have to: by the second day of the massive trade and consumer fair, the pavilions are a slosh of deal-making, true and otherwise would-be wine professionals, the occasional parasitic wine writer, and a sea of reveling imbibers who show up to get their drink on. Every year, the same parties, the same dinners, the same 45-minute back-and-forth drive from Verona because who can afford a $700-a-night room downtown? Well, I can’t.

    But a breath of fresh air awaits those true lovers of real wine who attend the increasing number of satellite, alternative fairs. My favorite is the Vini Veri tasting, held at the Villa Boschi in the heart of the Veronese heartland (Isola della Scala township).

    Above: I was captivated by Dario Princic’s whites, all of them macerated with skin contact, like this Pinot Grigio (in the photo). Few realize that Pinot Grigio is a red grape — a light red, but red nonetheless. It was the Santa Margherita white Pinot Grigio craze (which began more than 25 years ago) that made Pinot Grigio a white grape. Princic’s wines are fantastic.

    Highlights:

    Dario Princic (Friuli, see above, his Tocai was among the best I’ve ever tasted), Vodopivec (Friuli, I tasted some aged Vodopivec Vitovska later on in the trip and will report in an upcoming post), Coste Piane (Veneto, Prosecco aged sur lies and fermented using metodo classico – double-fermented in bottle – in magnum, freakin’ killer), Monte dall’Ora (Veneto, great Valpolicella and his top Amarone is off-the-charts good, need to taste with Brooklynguy) and, of course, Paolo Bea (the inimitable producer of Sagrantino).

    But that’s not to exclude so many awesome producers who make natural, real wines: Cappellano, Trinchero, Rinaldi (Giuseppe), Cos, just to name a few (Maria Teresa Mascarello was not at Vini Veri this year).

    Above: Gianpiero Bea of Paolo Bea. Gianpiero is one of the founders of Vini Veri.

    Dario Princic told me that there is a movement within Vini Veri to reunite with the splinter group Vinatur and the Triple A tasting next year: the idea is that of organizing a fair at the Vicenza fair grounds with 200-250 producers, a fair that “could truly rival Vinitaly,” Dario said.

    When I asked Gianpiero Bea about this, he didn’t seem too pleased.

    Above: it was great to see my old friends Steve and Sita, high-school sweethearts (they met on an exchange program in Spain), married to this day, with two beautiful daughters. Sita’s friend Giovanni Baschieri got me my first gig in Padua way back in 1987!

    My college roommate (from my first year at the Università di Padova) Steve Muench (above left) and his wife Sita Saviolo (above center) drove down from Padua to taste with me. I saw them a few times on this trip and they even made it up to Ljubljana to see Nous Non Plus perform there.

    I can’t recommend Vini Veri enough: if you have the chance next year, be sure to make it down there. To me Vini Veri represents a mix of all the best things about Italy: real wine, real people… winemaking as ideology, winemaking that expresses place… heavily-left-leaning politics and homegrown, grassroots organizing… Vini Veri is a wine fair that even Pier Paolo Pasolini would be proud of (especially in the light of his Friulian origins, since so many great Friulian producers present their wines there). Does anyone remember Poesie a Casarsa?

    Even if you don’t understand Italian (or Friulian dialect), check out the images in this short on the collection of poetry that won Pasolini fame at an early age:

    There are many versions of L’uva fogarina on YouTube but I liked this one the best. Most believe the Fogarina grape to be a type of Lambrusco found near the town of Gualtieri in Emilia. Something about that beautiful spring day in the middle of the fields made me think of L’uva fogarina. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination…

    Italy Day 2: Bartolo’s Beret

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    Above: will Bartolo Mascarello’s real beret please stand up?

    Although she was happy to learn that her father has achieved cult status in the über-hipster wine culture of lower Manhattan and she liked the allusion to Che Guevara, Maria Teresa Mascarello (Bartolo’s daughter) told me that the beret pictured in the Terroir wine bar t-shirt below is a photomontage. Maria Teresa didn’t know about the tee until someone printed out a copy of my post Is Mascarello the New Che Guevara? and brought it to her (she doesn’t use the internet). When I got back to NYC, I put in a call to Paul Grieco, owner of Terroir, who sells the tee. But he never called me back. I guess I’ll just have to go buy a t-shirt and send it to Maria Teresa myself.

    Maria Teresa and her mother Franca (below, left) concluded that the Terroir t-shirt (below) is a photomontage.

    Italy Day 2…

    On April 2, I awoke in the guest room of the Castello di Zumelle, the fairy tale serenity of the Piave river valley broken only by the sound of a rooster’s cock-a-doodle-do in the distance. I bid the Dalpiva family farewell and headed south to the A4 autostrada and then west toward Piedmont and the Langhe hills where I had an appointment with Maria Teresa Mascarello of the famed Bartolo Mascarello winery, ardent defender of traditionally made, blended (as opposed to single-vineyard) Barolo.

    When I showed Bartolo’s wife Franca and Maria Teresa an image of the Bartolo Mascarello t-shirt, they couldn’t get over the fact that Bartolo’s physiognomy has taken on such an aura in the U.S. They loved it. (In the photo above, they are viewing an image of the t-shirt on my laptop.) They also greatly appreciated the text written on the verso of the tee, “Bartolo Mascarello, my wine revolution…”

    Before we went to tour the cellar and taste some wines together, Maria Teresa told me that her father only allowed her to install a phone in their home and adjoining winery in 1989, “after the Berlin wall fell.” He insisted that the phone be listed not under the winery’s name but rather in Maria Teresa’s name, as it remains today.

    As we were tasting the 2004 Barolo, the cellar master came up to the tasting room and brought us a taste of the 2005: they had just finished blending the wine in that instant and we were literally the very first to taste it. What a thrill… (I’ll be posting a tasting note together with a profile of the Bartolo Mascarello winery next week on VinoWire.com.)

    Above: a collection of old bottles in the Bartolo Mascarello cellar.

    In other news…

    Tonight is the first night of Passover and I’m very happy to report that I am spending the holiday with my family in La Jolla (something I haven’t done in too many years).

    Last night I had dinner at my favorite San Diego restaurant, Jaynes, where I met owner Jayne Battle’s father Frank Battle (above, left with daughter Jayne).

    Frank grew up in Liverpool and is the “same age as Paul McCartney.” He knew all the Beatles growing up and he also knew their long-time confidant, the true “fifth Beatle,” Neil Aspinall, who recently passed away. Frank told me that he also met Beatles’ impresario Brian Epstein when he went to buy records at his record shop. How cool is that?

    Above: the fresh halibut served over pea tendrils and fingerling potatoes at Jaynes, paired with 2006 Robert Sinskey Pinot Noir. Yes, there are some California wines that I like.

    Homeward Bound

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    Above: winemaker Aleš Kristančič draws off a barrel sample of his 2005 Pinot Noir.

    Sunday morning found me in Mira along the banks of the Brenta River, which leads from Venice to Padua. I was lucky enough to snag a room in what has now become my officially favorite hotel, the Villa Alberti, one of the many summer villas built by Venetian nobles built during the eighteenth century.

    I leave today for New York and will begin blogging again once stateside. The trip to Europe was amazing and I have many posts in store, including a post on how biodynamic winemaker Aleš Kristančič of Slovenia (above) gave me new insights into the use of barrique… yes, barrique…

    Stay tuned for more!

    The Virtual Conversation

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    Me and Franco down by the schoolyard (outside Vinitaly).

    Believe it or not: even though Franco Ziliani (above left) and I launched our collaborative project VinoWire more than a month ago, we had never met in person until the first day of Vinitaly last Thursday.

    We have corresponded by email since July of last year and the idea for the project was born late last year. The very same day we shook each other’s hand for the first time, Eric wrote this post about the emerging Brunello controversy and our coverage.

    I head out for Slovenia this afternoon and don’t know when I’ll be able to get online again. But I’m looking forward to posting about the many wines I’ve tasted, meals I’ve enjoyed, and interesting people I’ve met at the Italian trade fairs.

    Brunellopoli: say it ain’t so…

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    A week after Franco Ziliani posted the first reports of the impending Brunello scandal, three of Italy’s top winemakers have been named in the investigation. Click here to read.

    Brunello Scandal

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    Ne nuntium necare, don’t kill the messenger: I’m sorry to report that the the long-hinted-at Brunello scandal is now official. Today, the Italian daily La Repubblica published the first account based on interviews with local investigators. You can read my translation on VinoWire. Rumors regarding the scandal have been circulating for some time now and VinoWire has also covered the Brunello Consortium’s confirmation and subsequent denial of irregularities.

    People have been talking about the impending scandal in hushed tones since January. But it was my friend and collaborator Franco Ziliani’s post last Friday that prompted investigators to go public.

    Another Brunello controversy has also recently made news in English- and Italian-language blogs and websites: the Brunello Consortium recently asked a Californian winemaker to stop labeling his wine as Brunello.

    The U.S. government does not regulate the usage of European appellation names in the labeling of U.S. wine produced in the U.S. When my band Nous Non Plus played in Seattle back in 2006, I snapped the below pic of an old wine list (I can’t remember of the name of the wonderful Greek restaurant harbor where we ate that day; the list below wasn’t the restaurant’s current list but the owners never took it down — I would imagine for nostalgia’s sake).

    Gauging from the script and the wine names, I imagine this list dates back to the 1970s. I love “Gold, Pink, and Red Chablis” and “Pinot Gregio.” Who knows what was in those wines?