I just received news that the TTB has backed off from its demand for laboratory analyses from Montalcino. In April, the TTB or Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade bureau had requested a list of Brunello producers implicated in the current Brunello controversy. In May, after the Consortium of Brunello producers and the Italian government had failed to respond, the Americans informed them that unless they received the list by June 23 (the original date was set for June 9), they would block imports of Brunello unaccompanied by laboratory analysis certifying that the wine was made from 100% Sangiovese. Evidently, following meetings last week between the Italian Minister of Agriculture, Luca Zaia, and his American counterpart, U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Ed Schafer, the Americans have agreed to lift the requirement.
Frankly, I feel that the whole issue had been blown out of proportion by a series of misunderstandings and mishaps.
I’m writing from the road today (stayed in Vegas last night) but will post more tomorrow on what this will mean for Brunello and for us Brunello lovers (an association of which I am a card-carrying member!).
Il Sole 24 Ore reported yesterday that it was the discovery of ghost vineyards that led to the current controversy in Brunello. According to the story, winemakers were releasing more wine than their vineyards could produce. The current investigation began not because the Italian treasury department suspected winemakers of adulteration but rather because wineries allegedly over-reported surface area “under vine” or “planted to grape,” as they say in the wine world. It’s possible that the wineries were reporting false information because they were applying for bank loans using their vineyards as collateral.
Il Sole 24 Ore (literally, “The Sun 24 Hours [a Day]” or “Sun Around the Clock”) is Italy’s most highly regarded business newspaper. It’s Italy’s counterpart to The Wall Street Journal.
An article on the front page of Wednesday’s New York Times reported that “New Hints Seen That Red Wine May Slow Aging.” According to the article, pharmaceutical companies are investing unspeakable amounts of money to try to recreate the health-enhancing properties of red wine in the hopes of discovering a would-be fountain of youth.
Europeans have long believed that red wine is part of a healthy diet and life and that red wine can help people to live longer (I remember a 90+ year-old lady I knew in Pieve di Cadore in the Dolomites who poured a glass of red wine in her soup every day; she claimed that it was the secret to her longevity and the quality of her life and lucidity at such an advanced age).
But which red wine are we talking about? Certainly not high-alcohol, concentrated wines, out-of-balance, with fruit created by technology, so viscous you could use them to oil up your Harley Davidson.
No, those aren’t the red wines that the old folk drink. It’s unfortunate when headlines like that appear because they don’t contextualize the health-enhancing properties of wine (red or white): wine is healthy when it is drunk in moderation as part of a healthy diet and a healthy lifestyle.
Blow-by-blow, day-by-day, minute-by-minute, mano-a-mano, tête-à-tête, vis-à-vis coverage of my Aspen trip begins on Monday. So stay tuned…
In other other news…
Here are some cool Italian-related things going on in Manhattan in June.
My friend Keith de Lellis, collector extraordinaire of vintage Italian photography, is exhibiting a show entitled “La Strada,” featuring 1950s original black and white prints of street life in Italy. Years ago, I helped Keith research his buying trips to Italy and I was fascinated by the people we met, the stories they told, and the out-of-the-way places Keith travels to find this amazing photography (the prints aren’t cheap, btw). Between the second world war and Italy’s economic miracle in the 1960s, photography became an inexpensive and popular hobby there and even amateur photographers seemed capable of creating neorealist works of art. All of Keith’s prints date back to the 1950s and when you seem them in person, the quality of the paper and the printing techniques give the photos an ineffable aura (think Walter Benjamin’saura, à la “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”).
Another friend of mine, Caterina Bertolotto, has just mounted a show of her couture, “Dresses of Transportation,” at the Italian American Museum. Born in Piedmont, Caterina is one of the most colorful New Yorkers I’ve ever met, a true original, an artist, whose entire life — and it’s not an exaggeration to say this — is a work of art. She’s also the author of an Italian language instruction manual and a great Italian instructor. She has taught at the New School and also teaches privately.
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.
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.
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…
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…
Above: Da Felicin in Monforte d’Alba is one of Langa’s classic old-school trattorie and it boasts one of the best cellars in the area. The current proprietor and chef, Nino Rocca (pictured below), grandson of Felice (hence the name), makes traditional Piedmontese fare. His colorful wit and spirited one-liners reminded me of the classic tavern-keepers you read about in nineteenth-century Italian novels.
After my meeting with Maria Teresa Mascarello in Barolo, I made a pilgrimage of sorts as I headed to Serralunga d’Alba to visit Fontanafredda, the oldest producer of Barolo: before her grandfather Giulio bought the now historic rows in the vineyards Cannubi, Rocche, San Lorenzo, and Ruè and began to make and bottle his own wine, he worked as a mediatore, a mediator or négociant of grapes for what was and remains the largest producer of Barolo, Fontanafredda.
Together with Ricasoli (Chianti Classico) and Cavour (Piedmont), Fontanafredda was one of the three Risorgimento-era winemakers who shaped the birth of a wine nation: Ricasoli established the primacy of Sangiovese in Tuscany, Cavour obtained nuanced bouquet and created world-class expressions of Nebbiolo in Grinzane, and King Vittorio Emanuele II produced Barolo on a large scale and converted his granaries into wine cellars, gathering together the first great Barolo “library” at his Fontanafredda estate.
The king essentially lost control of Fontanafredda during the Fascist era and the royal family was exiled from Italy after the second world war. But before the war began, Giulio Mascarello negotiated the purchase of fruit for Fontanafredda. According to Maria Teresa, this was one of the reasons he knew the growing sites so well and why he was able to chose so wisely when he decided to purchase select rows in some of Langa’s most coveted vineyards.
More on the “birth of a wine nation” in another post…
Felicin is a favorite gathering place for local and extra-communitarian Barolisti alike. Its cellar is replete with old bottlings of Nebbiolo (as well as a few unfortunate bottles of La Spinetta that Nino thankfully hides away in a corner of his cellar lest brazen thieves attempt to ferry them away in the middle of foggy night).
The asparagus with zabaglione were decadent, worthy of Louis XIV.
Tagliatelle generously dusted with grated black truffles and drizzled with extra-virgin olive oil.
In Langa, the cheese course is traditionally served with cognà (center), a jelly made from the must of Dolcetto grapes after pressing.
Saving my energy for the first day of Vinitaly (which began the next day in Verona), I treaded lightly with a bottle of 1996 Lazzarito by Fontanafredda to accompany the cheese course. The nearly twelve-year old wine showed nicely.
The wise-cracking and ever-gracious Nino reminded me of an “oste” that you might come across in a Manzoni novel. He speaks multiple languages. One cannot help but have a felicitous experience Da Felicin.
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.
Above: the Castello di Zumelle rises above the historic town of Mel nestled at the foot of the Dolomite Alps. Zumelle is the ancient name of Mel (in the province of Belluno, about an hour and a half south of Cortina d’Ampezzo). It means “two twins” in Bellunese dialect. According to legend, the castle was built in the 700s by twin brothers whose sarcophagus still resides within the castle walls.
So here goes: Italy Day 1…
I arrived in Venice on April fool’s day, picked up my Fiat Idea, and headed toward the hills. My first destination was the Castello di Zumelle, lunch, dinner, and sleep over with some of my oldest Italian friends, the Dalpiva family. I first met Renato and Lucia (left with their son, Nicola) in 1989 when I was in my second year at the Università di Padova and was making a living by playing blues and covers with my good friend Elvis (more on him later) in the many pubs and beer gardens that line the Piave river. At the time, they ran the Casa Rossa, one of the most successful venues, and in 1991, they were asked to manage the famous Birreria di Pedavena, a beautiful 1930s beer garden and botanic garden, where I spent three summers playing six nights a week with a cover band comprised of friends from California (including Charlie George, John Krylow, Ted, and Shawn Amos).
Today, they live atop a hill in a castle… yes, a castle, just like in fairy tales. A few years back, after they had retired (at a very young age, I might add), Renato won the local competition to open a restaurant in the town’s medieval castle. Not only did he build a beautiful restaurant there, but he also refurbished the living quarters and the family moved in. The ever-industrious Renato also created a medieval re-enactment walking tour for children: three or four times a week, he dons his medieval garb (as in the photo above) and teaches school children how to make chainmaille and medieval dumplings, he lectures, accompanied by music, on life in the Middle Ages.
For dinner, Renato threw some fiorentine on the grill (Tuscan porterhouse steaks, butchered from Chianina cows). Note how he chars the top of the steaks before grilling them — a sine qua non.
After our steaks, Lucia served a salad made with tarassaco (Taraxacum), a local variety of dandelion green known in Veneto dialect as pisacane or dog pisser. The name is not very appetizing but the bitterness of these tasty greens was offset by a drop or two of balsamic vinegar.
The castle armory is a highlight of Renato’s tour. He’s like a kid in a candy store…
A diorama of the castle as it appeared in the Middle Ages.
Sunset in the valley as seen from the castle tower.
Next post: a visit with Maria Teresa Mascarello, Bartolo’s beret, and the mystery of his Che Guevara star…
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…
My friend 
Another friend of mine, 
So here goes: Italy Day 1… 
