Category Archives: de vino

Alice and I pay a visit to the “Wine Seer” (New York Stories III)

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“@Levi_opens_wine an amazing wine seer, don’t you think, @DoBianchi?” tweeted Alice at the end of the night after we visited with Levi and Brooklyn Guy uptown last Friday night.

In my view, Levi is arguably the coolest sommelier in the U.S. right now and beyond his razor-sharp expertise in Italian wine, he always seems to be just one step ahead of the curve, shaping the discourse and defining the dialectic — a wine “seer,” as Alice put.

It’s not that I didn’t want to see all of my other friends last week in the City. I only had about 48 hours on the ground and they were consumed mostly by meetings with my top client. And Alice, Brooklyn Guy, and Levi were the people I needed to see on this trip.

It was also great to catch up with celebrity sommelier Michael Madrigale, who was working the floor at Boulud Sud that night with Levi.

But it was Levi who had the goods and the dope that I wanted to smoke.

The first wine he opened was the 2005 Overnoy Arbois Pupillin (made from Savagnin), a wine that Levi knows is hard to find beyond the island of Manhattan. An oxidative, tannic, orange wine from the Jura… In many ways this wine represented a synagoga (a coming together) of fascinations that have exited some of us over the last decade. The wine was salty and dense, with its muscle dominating its grace; its delicacy and nuance emerging and revealing itself only as we patiently observed its evolution.

Brooklyn Guy offered that this was an ideal expression of this wine, noting that he had seen a lot of bottle variation in his purchases.

But the pièce de résistance was the Equipos Navaros Bota de Manzanilla Pasada (Sherry).

Brooklyn Guy (aka “the Brook,” as Eric the Red calls him) and Levi have both visited Jerez in the last few years and it was thrilling to hear them hold court on this wine, produced by a generic, commercial winery that holds back certain privileged casks.

“Sherry is a forgotten wine,” said Brooklyn Guy, as Levi expressed his view that the category delivers wines that should be served with food instead of as an aperitif, as do the English and Anglophilic Americans.

I highly recommend checking both of their blogs — Brooklyn Guy and So You Want to be a Sommelier, respectively — and their threads on Sherry and their discoveries.

Is Sherry going to be the next big thing in the U.S.?

@Levi_opens_wine an amazing wine seer, don’t you think, @DoBianchi?

Angelo Gaja’s State of the Union Address: “the winery next door isn’t an enemy”

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Above: The last time I tasted with Angelo Gaja was in March 2010 at his winery in Barbaresco.

Earlier this week Angelo Gaja sent out one of what I call his “papal bulls.” As an elder statesman of Italian wine, he often issues these statements via email — on the state of the Italian wine industry, on the Brunello controversy, on the distillation crisis in Piedmont etc. And a number of Italian bloggers repost them.

As I prepare to leave for Italy to attend the Italian wine trade fair Vinitaly (and to lead a group of bloggers to Friuli the following week), I decided to translate his most recent “state of the union” address.

Whether you agree with him or not, I think that you’ll find his insights and observations as interesting as I did.

For the record, I am the author of the translation below and while you can find the piece on many Italian-language sites, I read it on I Numeri del Vino (an Italian wine industry blog that I highly recommend).

I also highly recommend checking out this post by Alfonso on the DOC(G) to DOP migration (part of the same EEC Common Market Organization Reforms that Gaja references in his statement).

Europe’s Winds of Change

by Angelo Gaja

The Italian wine market is going through a phase of profound change that offers contrasting clues for interpretation.

Domestic consumption is dropping while exports are growing. There are producers who are finding it hard to sell their wines and their cellars are still full of wine. Others take advantage of market opportunities and they empty their cellars with ease.

The current trend of pessimism contrasts with the rhetoric of optimism. Where does the truth lie? The numbers don’t tell the whole story but they help us to understand the current situation.

Nearly twenty-five million hectoliters of Italian wine are exported annually and domestic consumption is just over twenty million hectoliters. Together, these numbers constitute a demand of forty-five million hectoliters, to which we need to add the demand for wine by vinegar producers and users of industrial alcohol. The annual average production of wine in Italy in recent years has strained to meet demand. Will Italian wine fail to rise to the occasion?

Causes that Contribute to a Balancing of the Market

Global warming has contributed to this stress, as has the advanced state of obsolescence of 50 percent of the vineyards in Italy today. But it has also been accelerated by the effects of the European market reforms that were called for, imposed, and implemented by Brussels on August 1, 2009.

These reforms were inspired by common sense — a rare commodity these days. And they were intended to put an end to the waste perpetuated by more than thirty years of public subsidies devoted to the elimination of surplus. And they were implemented by the introduction of measures aimed at re-balancing the wine market.

Once squandered, [European Economic] Community contributions are now devoted to the co-financing of promotion of European wineries beyond Europe’s borders and they have helped exports take off despite the current crisis.

In a short period of time, the number of wineries exporting their products has grown more than 30 percent. A significant number of artisanal producers has begun to ship wines abroad and their success has encouraged to them to combine their resources and to travel beyond Italy’s borders to tell their stories and share their passion, traditions, and innovations. And in doing so, they have helped to contribute to the greater respect that Italian wine now commands throughout the world. As a result, there are many who now believe that the Italian wine market is undergoing a profound and unprecedented structural change that requires them to adopt a new and different cultural approach.

Think Differently

More must be done to monitor and prevent the production of counterfeit wine.

We must stop thinking that we need to compete with one another and that the winery next door is an enemy.

It’s inconceivable that the windfall of European Economic Community contributions for the co-financing of exports beyond Europe’s borders continue uninterrupted: why should European citizens be taxes to achieve this goal?

We must learn how to build business networks using only our own funds.

The domestic market continues to be the most challenging. But its value is undiminished because it’s what shapes and builds business: it’s a mistake to dismiss and neglect it.

The producers whose wines enjoy a healthy presence in the Italian market are often the same producers who reap the rewards of foreign markets.

The balance between supply and demand puts the greatest responsibility on all of our shoulders. And it should impel producers to grow and to become more capable businessmen who are better prepared to rise up to meet the challenges of the market.

Angelo Gaja, March 19, 2012

The many “inos” of New York, a visit to Maialino (New York Stories II)

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Above: I loved the fried artichokes at Danny Meyer’s Maialino.

It’s amazing to think that restaurant maven Jason Denton opened his Italian sandwich shop ‘Ino back in 1998 — the same year that Batali-Bastianich launched Babbo. Strolling around the West Village last week, I spotted two new (at least to me) “inos”: Gottino and Corsino.

It occurred to me that the Molto Mario paradigm is like al-Qaeda: it’s not just a working method or brand anymore; it’s a concept. And the rash of “inos” that have appeared across the City in the last fourteen years are akin to the self-appointed “cells” of the Jihad (perhaps modeled more after Lupa and Otto than his earlier successes).

I’m embarrassed to say that I still hadn’t been to Maialino (which opened in 2010), Danny Meyer’s Rome-inspired “ino”. And when Alice and I arrived there at 8 p.m. on Friday, the place was slamming packed.

I was geeked to reconnect with my good friend Nicolas, who works there. And we ended up having a nosh at the bar (including the awesome fried artichokes, above).

Nicolas treated us to a delicious bottle of Perella, one of Bruno De Conciliis’s expressions of Fiano. And I was psyched to see 2006 Produttori di Carema by the glass (!) and a truly courageous selection for the Pinot Grigio by the glass: Vie di Romans Pinot Grigio Dessimis — a vineyard designated, skin-contact, tannic expression of lees-aged Pinot Grigio. That’s a pretty gutsy choice for someone expecting Santa Margherita…

I tasted a 1997 Dessimis a few years ago in Friuli and was blown away by the elegance and power of the wine. And although I thought the 2009 offered at Maialino isn’t fully developed (the wood still resided atop the wine), I loved the fact that the wine director Liz Nicholson (whom I haven’t met) is prompting her guests to question the Pinot Grigio status quo in our nation.

OBut no matter how hard courageous and well informed wine directors like Liz try, you still can’t take the “ino” out of Pinot Grigio…

Up next: New York Stories III, Alice and I pay a visit to the “Wine Seer” uptown and “everything is beautiful at the ballet”…

Call for emergency irrigation in Brunello by Fabrizio Bindocci @BrunelloMaker

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“Let us debunk the common misconception that irrigation serves solely to increase production,” wrote my friend and Brunello producer Fabrizio Bindocci (above) on his son Alessandro’s blog Montalcino Report this morning. “Today, the appellation rules establish low yields and monitoring is implemented in the vineyard to see if these yields are real. For this reason, we would be opening a practice that can only help to raise the quality when there is need because of climatic capriciousness. But until today, not having this possibility, the growers of Montalcino will use the agronomic techniques that they possess to manage their vineyard the best that they can.”

If you’ve been following their blog (as I have), you know that the weather in Montalcino has been very strange this year and there are already forecasts and fears of drought in the 2012 vintage.

Drought isn’t as great of a threat for Fabrizio, his son, and the estate they manage as it may be for other growers: thanks to the age of their vines, their roots reach deeper and have greater success in finding the water table, even in lean years.

But as one of the members of the technical advisory board of the Brunello growers association, Fabrizio is speaking to and for the more than 250 bottlers in the appellation.

Fabrizio has taken a lot of flak for serving on the advisory board under Ezio Rivella, the maligned septuagenarian who continues to lobby for the inclusion of international grape varieties in Brunello.

The way I see it, Fabrizio — a friend of mine and a winemaker I greatly admire — is serving Montalcino’s best interests by working within the current political framework and climate. I can’t think of a more noble and more Tuscan attitude…

And should Montalcino be stricken with another 2003, emergency irrigation would make the blending of Merlot in Brunello much less appealing…

Click here to read his “open letter” calling for emergency irrigation in Montalcino.

Barolo Villero by Brovia (New York Stories I; @saignee wish you were here)

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“My mother was disappointed that I didn’t become an architect,” said Victor Pinkston as he opened and poured me and my good friend Jeff a bottle of 1999 Barolo Villero by Brovia on Thursday night in Manhattan at Otto. “But then I showed her the watch that she gave me [above] when I was a kid and told her that ‘it was meant to be.'”

Victor’s done pretty well for himself: after five years as a company man in the Bastianich-Batali dynasty, he’s landed the job as wine buyer and head sommelier at the empire’s pizza joint.

And while he and I may disagree on the finer points of the modern vs. traditional dialectic, the dude definitely knows his shit.

When I lived in the City, Otto was one of my best-kept secrets: although not a fan of the university and tourist crowd that hangs there (Otto is, after all, “Molto Mario Light,” if such a thing can exist in the rational and sensual world), I knew I could always find some older Nebbiolo there at reasonable prices. Back in the day, I practically depleted an allocation of 1993 Barbaresco Nervo by Pertinace at $75 a pop (there are still some bottles left although at a higher price). And when I asked Victor what trick he had up his sleeve, he suggested no fewer than five labels from the 90s under $150, including an Oddero Barolo (classic) 1996 (wow!).

But it was the 1999 Barolo Villero by Brovia at $140 that spoke to me. (Remember this post by Saignée on our visit to Brovia a few years ago?)

I am no fetishizer of old wine and you’ll never hear me cry infanticide when a great one is opened before its time. But I must admit that this bottling was going through an extremely tight phase.

It was dense and deliciously chewy, with mushroom and earth dominating the fruit. But as Jeff and I slowly nursed this spectacular bottle, the berry fruit began to emerge, as did a delicate eucalyptus note, with the zinging acidity — the nervy backbone, as the Italians say — plucking on the strings of fruit and earth like Jimi Hendrix playing the first notes of “Little Wing.”

That’s me and Cory aka Saignée (left) with Giacinto Brovia back in March 2009 (photo by Brunellos Have More Fun). And here’s what Saignée had to say about our visit there.

Let’s just hope that Victor saves a bottle of this truly thrilling wine for us to taste next year.

Stay tuned for New York Stories II: Alice and I visit Maialino… or “two Jews walk into a Jew-owned bar named ‘suckling pig'”…

We’re going to miss Lou on Vine

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From the department of “Where do I begin? To tell the story of how great a love can be?”…

Above: Tracie P with Lou Amdur at a Kermit Lynch tasting back in May 2009 in San Francisco. Tracie and I had just been engaged.

It’s hard to explain the intrinsic role that Lou Amdur has played in our lives.

Lou and his Lou on Vine have been the backdrop for some of the most special moments of the last three years. It was the first place I took Tracie P (then B) when she visited me in California for the first time. It’s where I met Comrade Howard for the first time. It’s where Anthony and I would go nearly every week when I was living in Los Angeles. The first time I went there it was for a book reading by Alice.

Across the nation, from the New York Times to the Los Angeles Times, the wine world is reeling from the news that Lou is closing his amazing wine bar.

So many great wines tasted there. So many thrilling wine tales recounted. So many wine personages encountered.

But none greater than Lou, who could always — always! — surprise you with what he was pouring, a rare grape variety he was excited about, a biodynamic Pecorino that really turned him on…

I really liked this elegiac post by Cory (and recommend it). It reminded me of how Lou brought so many of us together — despite the vitriol that so often surfaces on the Natural wine scene.

He was our rabbi and Lou was his synagogue — a συναγωγή, a bringing together, etymologically speaking.

Where do I begin?
To tell the story of how great a love can be
The sweet love story that is older than the sea
The simple truth about the love he brings to me…

Gaglioppo, so many great wines making it to the U.S.

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As thrilling as Etna is right now on the U.S. wine scene, the Southern Italian wine and grape that I am the most excited about are Cirò and Gaglioppo.

When I was in Los Angeles week before last to spend some time at Sotto, a New York-based importer tasted me on (as we say in the biz) the wines of Scala in Cirò (Calabria) — a winery I’d never heard of.

Both the Cirò Classico (above) and the Cirò Riserva (below) wowed me with their freshness, focus, and balance of earth, fruit, and acidity. Gorgeous, thrilling wines, imho…

Currently, Gaglioppo is relatively unknown in the U.S., despite the ever growing interest in indigenous grape varieties (I tasted a Piave Raboso the other night in San Antonio, btw!).

But tasting these wines, I begin to understand the high praise that writers of another era like Mario Soldati and Norman Douglas reserved for the caliber of winemaking there.

“The wine of Cirò,” wrote Douglas, “is purest nectar.”

I’m with Alfonso when he sings Mama, don’t let your (Gaglioppo) babies grow up to be Cabernets…

“Do you have a corkage fee if we can’t live without our California wine?”

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On the “wine” page over at Sotto in Los Angeles, where I curate the wine list, there’s a link that allows guests to email me their questions. They mostly write to ask if we allow corkage…

From: A.
Date: Mar 9, 2012 8:17 PM
To: Jeremy Parzen
Subject: Do you have beer?

Hi Jeremy,

We’re looking forward to our dinner at Sotto tomorrow evening, but I had two questions.

First, do you have any beers available?

Second, do you have a corkage fee if we can’t live without our California wine?

Thank you,

A.

From: Jeremy Parzen
Date: March 10, 2012 8:20 AM
To: A.
Subject: Re: Do you have beer?

Hi A., thanks so much for your interest in Sotto.

We do have beer available, yes.

And corkage is $25 per bottle with a 2 bottle max.

We also include Californian wine on our last — all by Natural winemakers (i.e., chemical-free farming, spontaneous fermentation via native yeast, and low sulfuring).

Here are a few great articles on the etiquette of corkage, one by Lettie Teague and another by a northern Californian connoisseur.

http://www.foodandwine.com/articles/corkage-for-dummies

http://forkandbottle.com/wine/corkage.htm

We have roughly 15-20 wines by the glass on any given day: your server will be happy to offer you a taste of any of them (and they are all available by the bottle).

I kindly ask you to consider that there is a reason why we have chosen the wines for our list: they pair exceedingly well with our chefs’ food. And they express our gastronomic aesthetic.

Please ask for the wine captain tonight. His name is Rory and he will be more than happy to find you a bottle that suits your taste and expectations.

And if truly you can find no wine from my selection of Southern Italian and Natural Californian, please feel free to take advantage of the corkage policy (although we hope that corkage will be reserved for unique, rare, and/or older vintages of special wines).

Thanks again and best wishes, Jeremy

—
Jeremy Parzen, Ph.D.
http://DoBianchi.com
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