Here’s what daybreak looks like from the apartment where I’ve been staying in Castelnuovo dell’Abate (Montalcino), in the southeastern subzone of the appellation. That’s Mt. Amiata.
Click the image for full effect.
Category Archives: de photographia
Soldera 03 Riserva and dinner at Il Silene
Had the opportunity to chat and to taste some amazing wines with Gianfranco Soldera yesterday (but more on that later) and then was treated to dinner at what many consider the best restaurant in this neck of the Tuscan woods, Il Silene. Utterly delicious all around and a truly remarkable pairing (especially considering the balance in the wine from the otherwise-difficult-to-tame 2003 vintage).
That’s chef Roberto Rossi’s snail and vegetable soup paired with 2003 Soldera Brunello di Montalcino Riserva.
That’s Chef Rossi’s tagliatelle al ragù (evidently Soldera had eaten there at lunch as well yesterday, making the 1-hour drive 4 times in one day just to dine there!). Fantastic wines, stupendous dinner…
Posting in a hurry as sunlight, landscape, vines, and my camera have a date this morning… then to lunch with friends…
Bellissima: an Italian cinema great has left us
Comrade H brought the news to my attention over the weekend.
Italian screenwriter Suso Cecchi d’Amico left this world last Saturday. Here’s the obituary in The New York Times. And see this post by ANSA.
She contributed to some of the greatest movies of all times and she did so in at a time when few women worked as writers in the Italian film industry.
The number of classic films on which she collaborated are too many to list here but you know her work the way you remember your Sunday prayers: Bicycle Thieves, Miracle in Milan, Rome Open City, Big Deal on Madonna Street, The Leopard, and the list goes on and on, nearly every one of them a sine qua non of the twentieth century.
One film that you may not remember, but one of my all-time favorites, was her first film with Visconti, Bellissima, the story of an over zealous stage mother in Rome (played by Anna Magnani) who is driven out of desperate poverty to make her daughter a star. It’s a comic-tragedy that simultaneously makes us laugh and cry as we sit on the edge of our chairs rooting for the girl, knowing all the while that poverty has driven the mother to forget that true riches lie not in wealth but humanity. Watch this scene where Maddalena (Magnani) quarrels with her husband Spartaco (played by Walter Chiari). I’m not sure but I imagine that Cecchi wrote this sequence. One thing I know for certain: even if you don’t speak Italian, it will move you to tears…
Man, they don’t write ’em like that anymore, do they, Comrade H?
I Am Love (I Am Cinema) and good things we eat and drink
Above: Over the weekend, Tracie P made cabbage leaves stuffed with shredded pork and rice and then braised in puréed tomato. Delicious…
The same way some of my favorite wine bloggers share my passion for music, like McDuff and Eric the Red, many of my blogging colleagues share my passion for cinema, like Lyle and Tom. (They tell me I know a little about cinema and Italian cinema in particular.)
Over the weekend, Tracie P and I finally went to see I am Love, the (relatively) new (to American audiences) movie by director Luca Guadagnino. We both loved it and I highly recommend it (and I thank Comrades A and H for nudging us to see it!).
Above: Summertime means PANZANELLA chez Parzenella… so yummy…
There are plenty of insightful reviews of the movie but I wanted to make one (I feel) important point about it. So many reviewers have made reference to Guadagnino’s homage to Visconti in this work (and there is a Viscontian influence here, no doubt). But there are many other cinéaste and cinephilic references here.
I’m not the first to note that Pasolini’s Teorema is a patent model for this work, where chef Antonio is a parallel to Terrence Stamp’s character in the former.
But I may be the first to point out that Antonioni’s influence is also immensely felt here: the shots of Milan and in particular industrial Milan are clear references to Antonioni’s tetraology, L’Avventura, La Notte, L’Eclisse, and The Red Desert. And even more significantly, the characters’s sense of alienation and the “substitution” of one relationship for another in the search for elusive happiness owe much to Antonioni’s thoughtfully two-dimensional world.
Above: Some southern girls knew how to make fried green tomatoes even before they went Hollywood! Gelatinous on the inside, crispy on the outside.
Most significantly, I Am Love is a film that is aware of being a film and being part of a great cinematic tradition: I am Cinema. The shots of industrial Milan and the textile factories, for example, evoked a genre of Italian nationalist documentary filmmaking that first emerged during fascism and reached its peak during the “economic miracle” of the 1960s. The use of Giacomo Giulio da Milano’s font Neon in the credits and captions was a sort of epicinematic allusion that paid homage to the grand tradition of Italian design at its peak in the 1930s (Neon was forged in 1935 at the Fonderia Nebiolo in Turin). Those same “happy years” of fascism saw the Recchi family expand their influence, power, and wealth (remember the conversation between Edoardo and his colleague?).
Above: The 2008 Sauvignon Blanc by Clos Roche Blanche is probably going to be my white wine of the summer. At under $20 (available at The Austin Wine Merchant, where we got it), this delicious wine paired stunningly (and affordably) well with the pork medallions that Tracie P served with shredded cabbage and homemade pear chutney. Really and truly one of those sublime pairings.
The overarching theme of Gaudagnino’s film and story is one that belongs steadfastly to Italian cinema, especially when viewed in its inherently Marxisant paradigm: the alienation of a sense of humanity through the reification of the body.
And, here, I am confident that Gaudagnino would agree with me: Antonio the proletarian chef, whose craft brings him into contact with an otherwise elitist and esoteric group (after he “beats” Edoardo in the race), becomes a conduit that allows the characters to “return to nature” using a Leopardian and ultimately Rousseauan lexicon.
The food porn sequence (where Emma eats a shrimp, how phallic is that?) and the farm-to-table sex sequence (a symphony of cross pollination) represent the triumph of nature over materialism.
After all, when the chef at some chichi lower Manhattan restaurant regales her/his patrons with tales of the farmhouse where she/he has sourced her/his heirloom cultivars of elderflowers used to infuse her/his coulis, is it not an extravagant (in the etymological sense of the word) attempt to cheat materialism for the sake of a false Mother nature?
I hope that Emma will find what she’s looking for in Antonio, but somehow I don’t think she will…
I am love, I am cinema, and I am a fried green tomato. Thanks for reading…
And buona visione, as they say…
Debut of my new band THE GRAPES (and New England giant bluefin tuna)
From the “man cannot live by wine alone” department…
Above: The Grapes, me on guitar and vox, Andrew Harvey drums, John Yelenosky guitar and vox, and Jon Erickson bass and vox. We’ll be playing our first gig in La Jolla on Thursday July 8.
We named our new country-rock band “The Grapes” after the legendary Liverpool pub where the Beatles used to hang out (Vinogirl can verify this).
We’ll be performing for the first time at one of my favorite sushi restaurants in the world, Zenbu in La Jolla on Thursday July 8.
Above: When I visited Zenbu the other night, owners Matt and Jackie Rimel (high school friends of mine) shared some lightly seared New England giant blue fin tuna belly with me. All of the fishes are fished individually by harpoon, Matt told me, so as not to harm dolphins. Matt is one of the most interesting dudes I know in the restaurant business and has hunted and fished and surfed all over the world. Zenbu is a unique sushi experience. Tracie P and me love it.
We’ll be bringing a little country music to the Pacific Coast with some tunes by Willie Nelson, Doug Sahm and the Tex Mex Trip, Gram Parsons (de rigueur), and some rockers like Tony Joe White’s Polk Salad Annie.
I hope you can join us. There might even be some interesting bottles of wine being opened that night!
In other news…
Did I mention that I’ve wanted to be a cowboy all my life? Found this photo while visiting mama Judy in La Jolla over the weekend (taken at Hebrew school in Chicago).
$1 oysters and zero sulfur Garganega? Hell YEAH!
According to its website, La Biancara’s 100% Garganega “Pico” is 100% sulfur free. And I’m here to tell you that it’s 100% friggin’ delicious. Pair that with $1 oysters during happy hour at The Ten Bells on the Lower East Side and you get the following tasting note: HELL YEAH!
I am so unbelievably slammed this morning that I don’t have time to post my thoughts on why The Ten Bells is the hippest wine bar in the U.S. (and definitely in the top 5 for me).
Hey, wait a minute! Is that Muddy Boots horsing around with Dolcetto producer Anna Bracco at The Ten Bells?
In other news…
I also regret not having time to post about the off-the-charts meal I shared with BrooklynGuy and BrooklynLady at Aliseo in Brooklyn (where else?) last night.
But lest Alfonso think he corners the market on great food photography, here’s a taste of what’s to come…
Pair this! Dinner with the best sommelier (2008) in the world Aldo Sohm
You may remember him from my post some years back now: Austrian-born Aldo Sohm, one of the nicest guys in the biz, one of its brightest stars, and the apotheosis of hospitality and wine and food knowledge. Last night, I was treated to dinner by my friend, photographer Lyn Hughes, who recently “shot” the new website for Le Beranardin, one of New York’s top 5 dining destinations (IMHO), where Aldo holds court. Here are a few images from dinner… Enjoy!
Sea urchin… paired with…
Gaia Santorini Thalassitis. The “sea water” flavors of the Assyrtico were superb with the raw urchin.
Zucchine flowers stuffed with crab… paired with…
Trimbach Pinot Gris. The richness of this wine also went well with the bacalao.
Snapper (shot by Lyn!)… paired with two wines…
Neumeister Sauvignon Blanc. This wine was the quintessence, Aldo explained, of the Austrian interpretation of the grape variety, somewhere between the intensity of New Zealand’s take and the angularity of Sancerre. A simply stunning wine.
Château Simone 1986. One word tasting note: wow. (Check out Wine Doctor’s profile of this incredible estate.)
Here’s one to keep you guessing!
Thanks again, Aldo and Lyn! (Can you believe that? One of NYC’s top celebrity photographers shooting with my camera!)
Stay tuned… Tracie P arrived JFK last night after dinner and our first tasting today is scheduled for 11 a.m. Man, it’s tough job but someone’s got to do it!
What do you serve the Pope when he visits Piedmont? Gaja of course!
I couldn’t help but marvel when I came across this story this morning in the feeds (thanks to Italy’s preeminent wine blogger Mr. Franco Ziliani).
What do you serve Pope Benedict XVI when he visits Turin for the current showing of the Holy Shroud? Gaja, of course!
Actually, the Pope drank only some aranciata amara (bitter orangeade) and a glass of Moscato d’Asti. But the other 39 guests at lunch drank the Dean of the College Cardinals Cardinal Angelo Sodano’s “favorite” wines: 2007 Rossi Bass and 2005 Barbaresco by Gaja, “a limited edition of 130 bottles with a back label commemoration signed by the great Langa winemaker.”
The lunch was served at the restaurant Marco Polo, owned by the aptly named Carlo Nebiolo.
I have to confess that I am fascinated by the Papacy and I find the Holy Shroud of Turin to be one of the most intriguing “texts” of Western Civilization (more on that another time). The Shroud is on display until May 23 (check out the Shroud blog here).
In other news…
Check out these photos I snapped when I visited the beach in Del Mar, California yesterday with my buddies around sunset.
I’m just an amateur photographer but lady California is a natural beauty.
The beach at Del Mar (not far from where I grew up) is one of the most beautiful landscapes in the world IMHO.
Remembering our wedding day at Jaynes
After picking up Tracie P at the airport (on what was a no less than “Top Gun” gorgeous San Diego day), we headed to Jaynes for dinner: we hadn’t been at Jaynes together since our wedding day in January and so it was so fun to remember all the great moments! Tracie P had a Campari and soda to start (possibly her fav cocktail).
We opened some great bottles last night but one of the most fun was this bottle of 2006 Arnaud Ente Bourgogne Blanc, drinking so beautifully right now, a guilty-pleasure wine that Jayne and Jon carry on their menu and that we served, among others, at our wedding reception there. It’s one of those wines that prompts the question: why does new oak seem to work so perfectly in Burgundy when it fails so miserably in other wine-making regions we love? (With its wax seal, deep punt, and heavy glass, this wine has a very “naughty bottle” as Jancis Robinson might say.)
Thanks again, Jayne and Jon: you couldn’t have created a more perfect wedding reception for Tracie P and me.
And thank you Tracie P, for being such a beautiful bride, such a loving wife, and such a gorgeous and generous soul. What a wonderful memory and what an amazing day that was. You couldn’t make this adoptive Texas boy more happy. I love you…
Happy mother’s day, ya’ll!
A new Paolo Bea is born!
and I mean that quite literally…
At last night’s sold-out Paolo Bea dinner at Catalan in Houston (with more than 50 lucky souls in attendance), Giampiero Bea shared a photo of his six-month-old son Paolo using his mobile device. However natural the wines, when the winemaker is on the road, away from his newborn, technology sure is good for something, ain’t it? ;-)
Mazel tov to Giampiero and his family!
I’m also on the road today and so am posting in a hurry today but I had a fascinating conversation with Giampiero last night over dinner. You might be surprised by what he had to say about the role of technology in the production of natural wine. Stay tuned…
And this just in from the semiotics department…
A wine label is a text.
I was thrilled with the response to yesterday’s post on Italian winery designations. Thank you, everyone, for reading and sharing. I plan to expand the post, using the many queries and suggestions I received. Next week I’ll also try to do an initial post on vineyard designations and their meanings (bricco, surì, ronco, vigneto, vigna, et cetera), dialectal and otherwise.
And lastly, just had to share this…
Tracie P and I caught Jim Stringer’s set at Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon in Austin on Tuesday night. Man, that cat can sure play him some geetar.
Do Bianchi 