So much to tell but not enough time…
That’s the view from breakfast at the Bauer Hotel, Venice.
Crazy, right?
Heading to Montalcino now… stay tuned…
Category Archives: de vino
Nonino does it better (incredible dinner last night in new tasting room)
An incredible evening at the new Nonino tasting room, which just opened. Matriarch Giannola was so proud of the centerpiece she had prepared. The red grapes are Fragolino. So much style and character in everything they do…
Prosciutto Bagatto with fig and fig preserves. I know, right? You had me at the Bagatto…
Risotto agli scampi… This was ridiculously good.
Veal braised in Fragolino reduction with potatoes, olives, and diced eggplant.
I have to be careful about my pancia on these trips. But I decided to make this my “splurge” meal: it’s easy to throw caution to the wind (sorry for the bad pun) when the materia prima is so wholesome and delicious…
Pecorino and honey paired with their amazing chestnut honey distillate.
But the slivovitz was my favorite (if only for the nostalgia, as my co-religionists will surely agree).
At dinner we drank a jaw-dropping bottle of Specogna Sauvignon Blanc (one of my favorite Friulian grower/producers) and Zamò Refosco, which was also delicious.
Posting in a hurry this early fall morning in Friuli. Heading to Venice later today. Stay tuned…
Innsbruck on a clear day from the sky
can’t smile without them (heading to Italy)
Friuli, Venice, Montalcino… and then down to Salento.
That’s the itinerary for the week or so ahead of me.
If you would have asked me to go on a trip like this five years ago, I would have jumped at the chance.
These days, the thought of an ocean and continent between me and my girls is pretty tough to palate.
I broke down and wept and wept last night when I gave Georgia P her bath. When she gave me a big kiss goodnight, she had no idea that she wouldn’t see me again for another ten days.
This morning, when the cab arrived to take me to the airport at 4:30 a.m., the house was dark and silent and I was lucky to be able to give Tracie P a kiss without waking Lila Jane, who was sleeping in her arms.
There are worse jobs in the world and I know I’m a lucky dude to have a small business that takes me across the world to one of the places I love most.
But I just can’t smile without them…
See you on the other side…
@OsteriaMozza in LA a lesson in wine service (& respect)
Above: The mozzarella sampler with scamorza, burrata, and classic mozzarella di bufala.
Last week, while I was visiting Los Angeles and tasting wines for the new list we’ll debut at Sotto in a few weeks, the owners of the restaurant (where my bromance Rory and I have been writing the list for nearly three years) offered to buy dinner for Rory and me as a thank you for the success of our program.
There are so many great places to eat in LA these days as the restaurant and wine scenes continue to expand and explode.
But Rory and I both wanted to go Osteria Mozza. In part because the Bastianich-Batali-Silverton collaboration is a great restaurant (and a celebrity sighting is nearly guaranteed). But mostly because it’s one of the favorite hangs of the Italian wine scene there (the night we were there importer Vinity was hosting a vertical tasting of one of my favorite expressions of Nerello by Palari and the estate’s winemaker Salvatore Geraci was speaking in the private dining room).
Above: Sperino’s rosé from Nebbiolo, another example of how Nebbiolo is one of the world’s greatest grape varieties.
The food was awesome, of course.
But the thing that really blew Rory and me away was the truly superb wine service. From the waiter who pointed us to some sparkling wine as soon as we were seated to the floor sommelier whose wine service was nearly impeccable, we were thrilled with caliber of the restaurant’s execution and the stunning breadth of the wine list.
When I noted the many new vertical flights that now appear on the all-Italian list, general manager David Rosoff — my good friend and one of the most talented people in the LA restaurant scene — told me that “instead of broadening the list” to incorporate more wines from more regions of Italy, wine director David Vaughn’s approach has been to achieve “more depth.”
There were so many wines that I would have loved to have drunk that night.
Above: I’ve followed the wines of Roagna for nearly fifteen years now and I’ve watched the style evolve from the classic, intensely tannic style of the father to the more elegant — but equally genuine — hand of the son, who’s transformed the winery into one of Langa’s most significant expressions of chemical-free farming.
But we ended up doing the 500ml 2002 Oslavje by Radikon (drinking so well right now, one of the best bottles I’ve ever had from this vintage), a glass of the rosé from Nebbiolo by Lessona producer Sperino (chosen by David Rosoff, a favorite of his and mine), and the 2005 Barolo La Pira by Roagna (which showed stunning elegance and nuance and was a lot more approachable than I imagined it would be, considering its youth).
Great wine service adds so much to the experience of fine dining.
But our evening at Mozza also made me reflect on how wine professionalism is swiftly evolving in our country, with Mozza as one of its beacons for Italian wine.
The staff’s attitude and performance spoke to me, as if saying, we express our respect for the wonderful mosaic of Italian wines through our smart dress, informed and intelligent service, and keen interest in them. That respect — that reverence — added a brilliance to our experience.
We’ve come a long way from the ice-cold Garganega and the straw-flasked Sangiovese, haven’t we?
Chapeau bas, David R. and team! I enjoyed every moment of my dinner in your (literally) super restaurant.
Tornado (supercell) in Friuli! And Collio harvest update
Our very close friend Giampaolo Venica sent me these amazing photos today from Friuli (his ears must have been ringing because his Pinot Grigio was the wine everyone was talking about last night at Jaynes Gastropub in San Diego where I led a guided tasting and dinner paired with Italian wines).
Here’s what he had to say…
I am sending a few pictures of a [weather] phenomenon called supercell (similar to a twister). It’s very rare in Friuli but it allows you to witness how weather becomes unpredictable and capricious.
The 2013 vintage was difficult. Low temperature during flowering and a rainy spring lowered the crop in some vineyards. Later, heat during summer was manageable but overall the weather becomes more and more strange every year.
The good news is that concentration is good this year and chilly nights during September — which we have not seen in ages— will provide a leaner style to the wines like years ago. Or at least this is my prediction and wish.
I’m so lucky to do what I do for a living, writing about wine and food and traveling between the U.S. and Italy.
But one of the greatest gifts my career has given me is our friendship with Giampaolo and his family.
In him, I’ve found a true friend and intellectual comrade. Tracie P and I are thinking of Giampaolo today…
Move over Napa Cab: an extraordinary Italian wine dinner in Austin, Texas
Above, from left: Alberto Chiarlo of Michele Chiarlo and Piero Incisa della Rocchetta of Tenuta San Guido.
Something remarkable happened in Austin, Texas last night.
Not just one but two of Italy’s marquee-name wineries presented their wines at a dinner held in their honor.
It may not seem so extraordinary to some.
But when I first came to Austin more than five years ago, the thought of jet-set winemakers like Piero Incisa della Rocchetta and Chiarlo scion Alberto working the market here and presenting a high-end wine dinner was not even on the horizon.
I’ve written recently about the new Texas wine scene and how more and more groovy European wines are becoming available here.
The sight of Piero and Alberto under the same roof, speaking to a glitzy crowd of roughly sixty guests, struck me as a new milestone for Italian wine in city once considered a faraway outpost in “flyover” territory.
Piero and Alberto were here with the Kobrand (importer) tour, an EU-subsidized marketing campaign.
My friend Suzie, who works for Kobrand in their marketing department and who attended last night’s dinner, sent me the following list of producers who were in the city last night (and they all spoke at dinners in Austin).
Alberto Chiarlo – Michele Chiarlo
Piero Incisa della Rocchetta – Tenuta San Guido
Roberto Pighin – Pighin
Giovanni Folonari – Ambrogio e Giovanni Folonari (Nozzole)
Emilia Nardi – Tenute Silvio Nardi
Giovanna Moretti – Tenuta Sette Ponti
Sandro Boscaini – Masi Agricola
That’s no b-list of Italian wine!
It was really great to watch Piero, whom I’ve met before, talk to the “Napa Cab” crowd about low alcohol content and elegance (as opposed to power) in his family’s historic wines.
And I was thrilled to hear Alberto, whom I’d never met before, speak about large-cask aging and traditional style Nebbiolo driven by acidity and earthiness.
Privately, he and I talked about how importers in the 1980s and 1990s exerted considerable pressure on producers to make their wines more “American friendly.” Restaurateurs also played a role in this trend, he said.
“It’s not just the writers’ fault, after all!” I said. And we shared a laugh.
I thought the 2009 Barolo Cerequio showed beautifully. It had brilliant fruit and that “nervy” acidity that many Nebbiolphiles look to as a hallmark of great Langa wines.
And I have to note here that I fully enjoyed my glass of 2010 Sassicaia with Chef Harvey’s roast Angus beef ribs. The wine had zinging acidity and its signature minerality and goudron.
It’s a great time to be an Italian wine lover in Texas these days.
Move over, Napa Cab. This town ain’t may not be big enough for the both of us…
I’ll be speaking at an Italian wine dinner in San Diego tonight at Jaynes. There are a few spots left if you happen to find yourself in America’s Finest City.
traveling twice the speed of sound it’s easy to get burned
Taste with me @JaynesGastropub tomorrow in San Diego
Here are the details! Hope to connect with you tomorrow in “America’s Finest City” (and my hometown).
How a bag of weed launched the biodynamic movement in California
Wax on, wax off. Yes, Robert Kamen (above) is the dude who wrote the iconic line. He’s also written numerous screenplays that have been made into Hollywood blockbusters.
Yawn. That’s the least interesting part of the story.
In my view of the world, what’s really fascinating about Robert is that he inadvertently and unwittingly financed California’s biodyanmic movement.
Robert comes to Texas every year to speak a wine dinner at the swank restaurant Tony’s in Houston, owned by my friend and client Tony Vallone.
He’ll be there next week, doing his song and dance for the petroleum crowd, but I’ll be in Italy doing a job for a client of mine (the event is already sold-out btw).
So I called him the other day and asked him about how, why, and when he decided to hire Phil Coturri — the father of California’s biodynamic movement — and if he had intended to play the role of the movement’s financier.
The story’s been told many times. Back in 1980, Robert sold his first screenplay and went up to Sonoma to party in celebration. A few weeks later, using the money from the script, he purchased the property that would ultimately become his Kamen Estate, now famous for its “mountain Cabernet” and a line of wines that commands respect among wine professionals who might otherwise write off yet another Northern Californian wine produced by a “Hollywood guy.”
But don’t use the binomial “Hollywood guy” around Robert. It really gets under his skin.
“Look at the wineries owned by ‘Hollywood guys,'” he said to me, obviously ticked off. “They planted vineyards. I planted a farm.”
“We don’t just grow grapes here. Six months of the year, Phil grows grapes. The other six months of the year, he grows cover crops.”
“When I hired Phil [in 1980],” said Robert, he wasn’t “thinking in terms of the future. I just didn’t want to do things that were deleterious to the property.”
At the time “Phil’s rap was so compelling. And it was just fortuitous because the organic movement was just picking up then.”
I asked if he saw himself as pioneer in organic and biodyanmic farming in the Northern California wine community.
Yes, he said, “but I’m not a proselytizer. I’m not a crusader.”
Today, he told me, the Kamen estate in Sonoma (replanted in 1996 after a fire destroyed the vineyards) is the model that Phil uses to show other grape growers who are interested in converting to organic and biodynamic farming.
His farm “was the laboratory” for the biodynamic movement. Today “it is the showcase,” said Robert.
So why, I asked, did he hire Phil in the first place?
“After I sold my first script and came up here, we partied all night long on the property” that he would buy a few weeks later.
“I wanted to meet the guy who grew the pot we smoked… because I wanted to buy more. It was that good. And that guy was Phil.”
I asked Robert if it was okay for me to post this information on my blog. He said, sure, go ahead.
I can’t post the words that he reserved for our president and the federal government’s attitude regarding the states’ legalization of medicinal and recreational marijuana. But that’s another story.
And although it really has nothing to do with this story, I just have to share one last nugget.
When I asked Robert where Phil learned to grow grapes, here’s what he said.
“Phil’s a farmer — an Italian farmer. In 1974, he went to work his first harvest at Mayacamus. And the guy who taught him was named Joe Miami. I’m not making that up.”
When a Hollywood New York screenwriter tells you that he’s not making shit up, you KNOW it has to be true.
