One of the questions I get asked more than any other is where should I/we eat and drink in Rome?

Of course, I have my favorite haunts (from my year studying at the Vatican library as a Fulbright scholar) and my many visits in the years since.

But as the Romans used to say, ubi maior, minor cessat: there’s a new resource for dining, drinking, and touring in Rome and it’s called The Rome Digest.

For some years now, I’ve been pointing romei to the inimitable Katie Parla and her ParlaFood. And when I go to Rome, she’s the person I try to have dinner with!

She’s now teamed up with some of the top Anglophone food and wine professionals in the Eternal City to bring us the digest, which I highly recommend.

Btw, a romeo (pl. romei) is a pilgrim heading to the city on the Tiber. (And this peregrinatory word is pronounced roh-MEH-oh.)

Check out their new site. They rock.

In other news…

When I cozied up to Tracie P on the coach last night after we put Georgia P to bed, she asked: “What wine are you drinking? It smells like Chianti!”

I had popped a bottle of 2010 Chianti Rufina by all-time fav Selvapiana. So right on, with great acidity and fresh red fruit and gentle earthiness, and just the right amount of tannin to tame a piquant aged pecorino. I love LOVE this wine.

Did I say that I love this wine?

Thanks for reading… may you drink well this weekend! Buon weekend, yall…

Above: One of the casks of Soldera’s wine that was destroyed by a vandal in December 2012.

The news that the Soldera vandal has been sentenced to four years in prison arrives via Franco Ziliani’s blog, Vino al Vino, today.

(The sentence was originally reported by MontalcinoNews.com.)

According to the report, judge Monica Gaggelli gave the vandal, Andrea Di Gisi, two years less than requested by the prosecutor.

Above: Tracey Brandt of Donkey and Goat (Berkeley, California) was in Austin last night for a dinner at Vino Vino.

You might say that, second only to Produttori del Barbaresco, Donkey and Goat is the “official Parzen family wine.”

We drink it regularly at home (Stone Crusher in fridge? Check!), my parents-in-law Rev. and Mrs. B drink it regularly (hey, Rev. B, did you drink that Helluva Pinot Noir without me?), and it’s been a by-the-glass favorite on our list at Sotto in Los Angeles (where I co-curate the carta dei vini with @CaptainWine) since the restaurant’s inception more than two years ago.

Tracie P and I are thrilled that the wines are finally (legally) available here in Texas and these days we buy them regularly at the Austin Wine Merchant and the Houston Wine Merchant (two of the dwindling number of independent retail operations in our state).

I was geeked to sit down, taste, and chat last night with Donkey and Goat’s better half, Tracey Brandt (above) at the best little wine bar in Austin, Vino Vino, where owner (my client and friend) Jeff Courington had organized a dinner in her honor.

Last year, when I sat down with her husband Jared at Sotto, he told me: “I don’t like labels and I don’t consider myself a Natural winemaker… I think of it more as ‘unmanipulative’ winemaking. But that’s not as fun to say.”

Above: Vino Vino chef Jesse Marco’s rib roast with polenta and kale was as delicious as it looked.

In our conversation over dinner last night, Tracey noted that “we were already making wine in this style before we had even heard the term Natural wine.”

Does she call her wine “Natural”? I asked.

“Here’s what I say to people,” she told me, “our wines are often referred to as ‘Natural’ wines.”

She said that she first hear the term when she and Jared presented at VinNatur in Italy in 2008. By that time, they were already into their fourth vintage.

There are three basic tenets of their winemaking philosophy, she said:

“First, the wine should be food-friendly. Second, the wine should be ‘honest’; it should taste like the place where it was grown. And [lastly] the wine should taste like the varietal. In other words, if it says Pinot [Noir] on the label, it should taste like Pinot.”

There’s been such a fuss about the use and misuse of the term Natural over the course of the last eighteen or so months.

Does it really matter what the winemakers, wine pundits, or wine lovers call it?

My thought is… don’t ask, don’t tell… just drink it (if you like it)…

I’ll be at Jaynes Gastropub in San Diego tonight, pouring wine from 5:30 p.m. and playing a telecaster from 10 p.m. If you happen to be in America’s Finest City, please come on down and we’ll taste together.

@CaptainWine and I debuted our new spring wine list at Sotto in Los Angeles last night, including roughly 20 new labels.

As I tasted with friends, wine pros, and media last night (thanks, everyone for coming out!), I couldn’t help but reflect and remark on how blessed are the wine lovers of California: thanks to the Golden State’s liberal distribution and importing regulations, wine directors have such a wide range of labels available to them (unlike my adoptive state of Texas where so many wonderful Italian wines, present in the California and New York markets, are off limits to buyers).

From the Cenatiempo Ischia Bianco to the Sibilla Piedirosso (Oliver McCrum, CA) to the Monte di Grazia Tintone (an extremely rare grape variety from Campania; Wine Emporium, NY), to an awesome Salvatore Tintilia del Molise (Giammario Villa, CA), there are so many fantastic wines flowing in the California market these days (all new labels on our list).

But the wine that I kept thinking about all night (and the wine that I called in the morning) was the Capolino Perlingieri Falanghina Preta (above, Terravino, CA).

There’s a lot of great Falanghina in the U.S. but this one just has that marcia in più, that extra something special. Its acidity and citrus flavors were zinging last night (paired with burrata). But it was its intense minerality that really made it stand apart in my mind. I LOVE this wine.

By far, the best Falanghina that I’ve ever tasted in this country (and I’ve tasted a lot) and a wine that I just can’t stop thinking about.

Thanks to everyone who came out last night to taste with me (especially Tricerapops)! That was a blast.

I’ll be taking a break from my California trips as the countdown to Parzen family expansion revs up (coming to theaters this July!). But I’ll see you again in September when we visit my home state again.

Buon weekend, yall!

When Prosecco DOCG Consortium director Giancarlo Vettorello’s February visit to Texas came to my attention, I immediately wrote to the consortium’s publicist to request an audience.

He and I had spoken before via telephone, in the wake of a post I wrote about the Prosecco DOCG. And I was eager to sit down and share do bianchi with him.

Giancarlo (above), his assistant (make that tre bianchi), and I ended up meeting at Tony’s in Houston last month when they were in town for the Gambero Rosso road show tasting of Prosecco and Vino Nobile producers (see image below).

Our meeting was friendly and fun, of course, but we did cover some thorny subjects like the creation of the Prosecco DOCG in 2010.

Many have contended — myself included — that the creation of the Prosecco DOCG was an unwarranted and politically motivated move by Italy’s then agriculture minister Luca Zaia, who later went on to become president (governor) of the Veneto (where Prosecco is most famously produced, although not exclusively).

After all, as many observers of the Italian wine industry noted at the time, it seemed a stretch to elevate the stature of Prosecco to that of Barolo, Taurasi, or Brunello — historic fine wines with immense aging potential.

The newly created DOCG also seemed to be tainted by the flood of new and politically charged DOCG applications that came in the final days of Rome’s sovereignty in granting rubber-stamping them (in 2009, EU reforms shifted that power to Brussels).

When I asked Giancarlo to elaborate on what he already told me via phone (that in his view and the view of his associates, the seemingly boundless commercial success of Prosecco warranted this elevated status), he said something so brilliant that it thrilled me just as much as it convinced me that he was in the right.

“Consider the Venetian playwright Goldoni,” he commanded gently, unaware that I was an avid reader and translator of the eighteenth-century Italian writer. “Some would say that he’s a mere comediographer, a writer of [trivial] comedies. Yet he is widely considered to be one of the greatest writers in Italian [literary] history.”

“Prosecco is like Goldoni. Even though his subject matter may have been light in nature, his legacy cannot be overestimated.”

The analogy is just so spot on. And, of course, given Prosecco’s sine qua non relationship with Venice and its conviviality (a favorite subject of Goldoni, who loved to parody the emerging bourgeois culture of his era), I couldn’t help but admire Giancarlo’s masterful oratory.

The other subject I wanted to cover with him was the inclusion of Asolo in the 2010 Prosecco DOCG.

“Asolo is fully entitled to be part of the DOCG,” he told me with utmost authority in his voice. “It is a legitimate member of our consortium because of the high quality of the wines produced there and its affinity in terms of the production zone and terroir.”

I’ve written about that today for the Bele Casel blog.

Tracie P and I plan to meet and taste with Giancarlo when we visit Proseccoland early next month.

Stay tuned!