Above: Praesidium, a Vini Veri producer, is a winery that seamlessly aligns natural winemaking and elegance with a genuine expression of its appellation.

Italian wine needs “more marketing and fewer leftist hipsters,” said Angelo Gaja in a post published today by Luciano Ferraro, wine editor for Corriere della Sera.

While I don’t agree with the part about “leftists” (being a card-carrying member myself), I do believe that the Italians — as Gaja points out in the post — could learn a thing or two from the French, who are brilliant wine marketers (just think of the 1855 classification and how it reshaped and continues to dominate wine sales around the world).

Gaja had just returned, together with roughly 400 Italian producers, from Vinexpo in France, where his transalpine counterparts impressed him with their proactive attitude toward a market in crisis.

Francophilia aside, Luciano’s post and Gaja’s notes made me think of a wine I tasted this spring, a stunning Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo by Praesidium that impressed me with its delicate equilibrium between brilliant originality and faith in tradition.

I loved the wine and immediately Googled it to find out more (it had been sent to me by Katell Pleven of Vine Collective; check out a podcast interview with Katell, posted earlier this month by Levi Dalton on I’ll Drink to That).

Even though the estate produces some of the most expensive wine available from Abruzzo, it doesn’t even have a website (Gaja doesn’t have a website either but I’ve heard that one is in the works).

At least from this side of the Atlantic, it would appear that Praesidium engages in little or no marketing at all beyond its participation in Vini Veri and efforts by its U.S. importer (this post was the most informative I could find).

As someone who makes his living primarily in wine marketing, I’m all for an Italian embrace of more aggressive and ambitious marketing. I love Italian wine and beyond my professional life, I feel personally invested in its success because I enjoy drinking it.

But Gaja — a genius marketer, supreme in Italy and rivaled by few beyond Italy’s borders — and his observations made me remember that part of what makes Italian wine so great is its own self-imposed challenges and obstacles.

It’s an element of Italian culture that dates back to the centuries of foreign occupation between the Renaissance and the modern era. During that period, Italians developed a sense of provincialism that, to this day, often leads them to see little beyond the mura of their villages.

But in my experience, their chasmophilia and topophilia can impart a uniqueness — a delicious peculiarity — to their wines that defies the homologation demanded by consumerism and its marketers.

So as much as I admire Angelo Gaja for his role as an architect in the renaissance of Italian wine, I also cherish the backward-looking producer like Praesidium who sees little purpose in marketing their high-end wines.

Sometimes, as in the case of the Praesidium Cerasuolo, that backwardness allows us to pass through the portone of a tiny village in the province of Aquila by way of the bottle and glass…

One of my best and oldest friends was in Austin over the weekend… John “Yele” Yelenosky, whom I’ve known since high school.

Of course, I wanted to open a very special bottle of wine and with temperatures here in the triple digits, Nebbiolo just wasn’t going to be right.

So I reached for this brilliant, youthful bottle of 1998 Vouvray Sec Clos du Bourg by Huet that I had bought a few years ago from the Garagiste.

This wine was razor sharp in its focus, with that unmistakable, nervy acidity that is unique to great Vouvray in my experience. Minerality, acidity, stone fruit, and alcohol (12.5%): each element was distinct and perfectly articulated, but ensemble, each sang in stunning counterpoint with the other. A breath-taking wine…

I’m sure I could have let it age for another ten years but it was a thrill to taste it with John and his wife Megan, both top wine professionals from Southern California (she’s a beverage manager for a major San Diego hotel, wine writer, and Master Sommelier candidate; he’s been the top European sales rep for Southern Wine & Spirits So. Cal. for six years running).

I had already stood the wine upright last week in anticipation of their visit to Austin and then, lo and behold, on Thursday, Brooklyn Guy posted another one of his gems, an overview of recent changes at this landmark winery and tasting notes for some bottles he’s opened recently. Check it out…

Megan and John, so great to see you in the River City! Yall come back now! :)

As we head into the final weeks of this pregnancy and settle into the triple-digit temperatures of the Texas summer, the wines I’ve been drinking at dinner are mostly inexpensive, light-bodied (and light alcohol content), under-$20 wines that I buy at our local wine shop, The Austin Wine Merchant (one of the few independent retailers left in the Texas capital).

I’d read about this wine on Brooklyn Guy’s blog (he proclaimed it his favorite rosé for the summer of 2010), but had never had a chance to taste it until I spied it in our local market.

Paired with a spaghetti aglio e olio (spaghetti with garlic and chili flakes), its gentle tannin tamed the garlic’s aroma and balanced the heat of the chili flakes.

I loved the wine and it tasted even better the next day (paired with cast-iron pan-fired burgers, wilted spinach, and whole wheat-flour quesadillas).

That’s all the news that fits… just standing by, trying to make beautiful Tracie P and sweet Georgia P as comfortable as we head into these last weeks before Baby P 2013 gets here… :)

How this shitty wine made it into my glass was the subject of my post for the Houston Press today.

Abbott and Costello couldn’t have written it better.

I just received a press release issued by the Brunello di Montalcino bottlers association announcing that my friend Fabrizio Bindocci (above) has been re-elected as the body’s president.

I’ve had the great fortune to interview (and dine with) Fabrizio on many occasions and I have great admiration for him and his devotion to traditional-style Brunello di Montalcino.

According to the statement, he was elected unanimously by the body’s technical advisory board.

In my view, his stewardship of the appellation has delivered renewed confidence, cohesion, and stability to the growers and bottlers he represents.

And while other events on the ground in Montalcino may have drawn more attention in the last six months, his work in asking the Italian agriculture ministry to clarify its position on emergency irrigation has been invaluable — in my view — for the appellation.

It’s just one of the many things he’s done, without fanfare or pomposity, to ensure a better and brighter future for Brunello di Montalcino and the people who make it. And that’s a good thing for the rest of us Brunello lovers as well.

Congratulations, Fabrizio!

Above: Just look at the beautiful copper color of that wine! Wine’s visual beauty is one of the great pleasures of oenophilia.

These days, my days are INSANE. With only three or four weeks left in our pregnancy, Tracie P needs as much down time as possible and I’m picking up as much slack as possible.

I’m up every morning by 4:30 a.m. and in bed every night by 10 p.m.

And with more clients than ever and two Texas clients who are opening new restaurants in the fall, every moment not devoted to shopping, cooking, cleaning, changing a diaper, or playing with our sweet Georgia P is devoted to writing, writing, writing — creating media for our clients.

So last night, after I closed up shop at 6 p.m. (the conclusion of a workday that began at 5 a.m.), fed Georgia P the dinner I’d already prepared in the late afternoon (whole wheat quesadillas stuffed with refried beans and sautéed zucchine deglazed in white wine), cleaned her up and gave her her bath and got her ready for bed, tidied up her toys and made dinner (spaghetti with zucchine cooked with garlic, chili flakes, and white wine), a glass of friend Giampolo Venica’s Pinot Grigio tasted mighty good.

Above: Giampaolo visited with us here in Austin earlier this year when he came to town to pour his wines. I’m so thrilled that Venica is available again in Texas.

His wines are so beautiful, so focused and so fresh, so true to their appellation but so uniquely his… And his gorgeous ramato (copper-colored) Pinot Grigio has a gently note of salinity that reminds me of the Eocene seabed subsoils of his family’s estate, where apple orchards lie adjacent to vineyards, kissed by the Adriatic breeze and sheltered by the magnificent Alps.

But what makes this wine even more special to me is how much I admire Giampaolo, his convictions and his ethos, his love of literature and his social conscience. Even though we only see each other a few times a year (mostly at wine-related events), we share each other’s lives through social media and email. And for a brief moment yesterday evening, Giampaolo came into our home and shared his support through a refreshing glass of his delicious Pinot Grigio.

Thanks, Giampaolo, for the wine and for the friendship…

Solo nella tradizione è il mio amore.

Above: One of the most beautiful wines at our lunch was the 1970 Barbaresco Pora by Produttori del Barbaresco.

Tom Petty once asked Roy Orbinson if he ever wrote down his music as he was songwriting.

The answer was no.

“If I don’t remember it,” he responded, “no one else will.”

Sometimes, I feel the same way about wine tasting: note-taking can be cumbersome when you’re tasting and enjoying fine wine. And after all, when the wines are truly great, you won’t forget them.

Above: I was expecting the 70 Pora to be light in body but it was fresh and vibrant. What a wine! I’ll never forget it.

But the science and art of tasting notes are vital to the wine world we inhabit. And few can rival the ability, insight, experience, and acumen of Ken Vastola.

Please check out his superb notes from our recent (mostly) Nebbiolo tasting and luncheon at Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria in NYC.

His site is one of my number-one resources for vintage and label notes and he is a rabbi in my wine world.