Georgia P wore her new flower-power headband for her first Valentine’s Day at Jaynes Gastropub last night in San Diego.
Seven-and-a-half-month-old Romy, Jayne and Jon’s daughter, showed her the ropes of her new favorite restaurant.
How adorable is that?
Mommies and daddies enjoyed a SUPERB bottle of 2008 Volnay 1er Cru Caillerets by Pousse d’Or (Landanger), still very tight, but rich with savory and fruit flavor and bright, bright acidity, delicious with the bacon-wrapped filet mignon.
Above: Remember this image? Scanned from a 1982 edition of Wine Spectator (via Alfonso). I posted about it here.
On Monday, Ezio Rivella — Brunello’s deus ex machina and futurist of Italian wine, creator of the Brunello brand and propagator of the California dream — spoke before a group of Langa’s top winemakers in Piedmont. He had been invited their by the government-funded body Strada del Barolo (Barolo Wine Roads) to speak about the current crisis in Italian wine (the five-part series is entitled — and I’m not kidding here — “Feel Sorry for Yourself or React to the Crisis?”).
According to wine blogger Alessandro Morichetti, who attended the seminar, nearly the entire arc of Barolo was there: Maria Teresa Mascarello, Giuseppe Rinaldi, Angelo Gaja, Enzo and Oreste Brezza, Cristina Oddero, Federico Scarzello, Lorenzo Tablino, Eleonora Barale, Davide Rosso, Enrico Scavino, and Michele Chiarlo, among others.
I’ve translated the following quotes from Alessandro’s report on the talk…
“Tradition is a ball and chain. At best, it serves as historical anchor.”
“The market fluctuations following Brunellogate? Rants by masturbating journalists.”
“Quality is what people like. Those who sell [their products] are right. There is nothing to learn from people who[se products] don’t sell.”
“Blogs are [a form of] self-flattery. The people behind them are incompetent.”
And all this time, I thought that Rivella didn’t read blogs! Go figure!
Reacting to Alessandro’s account of the event, Italy’s top wine blogger Franco Ziliani wrote: “Rivella chooses the path of insults…”
If you don’t know the backstory, here’s the thread of my posts devoted to Rivella and his self-appointed mission to refashion authentic Italian wines as expressions of Californian winemaking for the U.S. market.
As a manager and winemaker at Banfi from the 1960s through the 1990s, he credited Robert Mondavi as one of the inspirations for the behemoth Brunello brand that he created with the backing of the Mariani family, the Long Island-based importers who decided nearly 50 years ago that they would make Montalcino a household name in the U.S. (initially by producing sparkling white wine, btw).
Since returning to Montalcino to gerrymander his second coming as Brunello growers association president in 2010, he has patently conceded that “80% of Brunello was not pure Sangiovese” (an egregious transgression of appellation regulations and Italian law). And in doing so, he tacitly expressed his support for using “improvement” grapes like Merlot in traditional Italian wines made historically with indigenous varieties. He has repeatedly attempted, unsuccessfully, to lobby for the passage new appellation regulations that would allow for the blending of international grape varieties in Brunello and Rosso di Montalcino. Twice he has called votes and both times the body governed by him has remained unswayed by his industrial Brunello complex.
My friends who live and work in Montalcino tell me that he doesn’t even reside there. He lives full time in Rome, governing from afar, uninterested in the workaday lives of the homegrown montalcinesi.
He is also the author of Brunello, Montalcino and I: The Prince of Wines’ True Story (2010).
What will come of the legacy of the self-proclaimed Prince of Brunello?
Perhaps he should take the advice of a Tuscan, Niccolò Machiavelli, who wrote (chapter 3, “On Mixed Principalities”): “It is quite natural and ordinary for a Prince to want to expand his rule, and when [Princes] do, if they can, they are praised and not blamed. But when they are unsuccessful, but still want to do it, here lies the error and the fault.”
Beyond the olive oil-cured red hot chili peppers (peperoncini), there’s not much Calabrian about Caffè Calabria in San Diego.
Back in Seattle, he said, where he first became a coffee connoisseur, owner Arne Holt had seen the rise of so many pseudo-Italian venues with meaningless name that “I just randomly pointed my finger on a map of Italy and landed on Calabria.”
Plenty of other folks have chronicled Arne’s inspirations for Italian-style, in-house roasting of his coffee beans. And Arne was noted for the excellent coffee at the caffè long before he fired up his Neapolitan pizza oven (which evidently sat dormant for a number of years before he began making pizza here).
Tracie P and I were thoroughly impressed with the quality of the products and execution of the pizza when we visited with our San Diego crew on Sunday night: the pies were undercooked in the middle, as per Neapolitan tradition, and the toppings were fresh and rigorously canonical.
The pizza was great but the thing that really took it over the top was the way Arne’s staff slices the prosciutto. His Berkel slicer is out of commission, he told me, and so he’s using a conventional deli slicer. But he slices the prosciutto just thick enough so that the heat of the blade doesn’t melt or cook the cured pig thigh.
We liked the prosciutto so much (served above with a domestic burrata) that we ordered a second serving of just prosciutto.
My only lament would be that I wish Arne had a more adventurous wine list that reached beyond the usual suspects (mostly modern-style commercial wines).
The bright, fresh Bianco Classico by Terlano at $38 was ideal in any case with the salty prosciutto and the heat and richness of pizza.
Arne does allow corkage and BFF Yelenosky had brought a bottle of Produttori del Barbaresco 2004 Barbaresco Asili (!) to celebrate Georgia P’s first visit to San Diego.
The wine was extremely tight and very tannic, more so than the last time I tasted this vintage from Asili about a year ago. Earth dominated the fruit as the aromas and flavors began to express themselves and the wine’s savory notes almost had an au jus tone to them. They were held in check nonetheless by the dark berry notes and brilliant acidity of a wine that I believe will be one of the greatest vintages delivered by the Produttori (similar, in my view, to 1989). A stunning wine even in this closed moment…
The icing on the cake was watching one of my oldest and closest friends, a brother really, Irwin, holding little baby Georgia.
He and I have known each other since our early teens and we’ve remained super close since those tender years. What a thrill for me to share the joy of our little baby girl with someone who’s known me nearly all my life.
Buon San Valentino a tutti! Happy Valentine’s Day, yall!
After all these years and shows in SF, I’d still never been to Zuni Café. Brilliant… Terrebrune Bandol Rosé by the glass… perfect…
A thrilling, brilliant day and evening yesterday at Sotto in Los Angeles — my first day back on the job after paternity leave — with all the wine [sales] reps coming in to taste us on new wines for our spring 2012 list.
Wine captain Rory Harrington (below) and I tasted an exhilarating flight of wines (and the occasional clunker from an old fart who always manages to weasel his way in). So many great wines come from southern Italy right now, especially from Campania and Sicily.
But the wine that sticks out in my mind this morning is the 2008 Nanni Copè created by revered “taster” Giovanni Ascione from Caserta (Campania).
The wine — as I learned reading this excellent post by colleague Monica Piscitelli — is named after Giovanni’s preferred appellation as a youngster: Nanni (diminutive of his Christian name) and Copè (an infantile corruption of his mother’s maiden name, Cioppa).
It’s made primarily from Pallagrello Nero, with smaller amounts of Aglianico and Casavecchia, raised on 2.5 hectares of semi-pergola-trained (yes!), meticulously curated vines in Caserta.
Tongue-splitting acidity, fresh bright red fruit, and earth, earth, earth… Gorgeous black earth…
We tasted a lot of great wines yesterday but this one — its first vintage on the market — stands out in my memory this morning as an original wine, a wine that surprised me and taught me something new about the grape variety.
I’ve got a very busy dance card today with my regular blogging duties and a show tonight in San Diego with my band Nous Non Plus.
But I wanted to give a big shout out to my friend and colleague Rory Harrington (above, left, with my high school friend Mike Andrews, photo by my bandmate Dan Crane).
I’m the curator of the wine list at Sotto but Rory is the guy who makes it hum and sing. We taste all the wines together and then decide what’s going to make the cut. I greatly admire his palate and cherish his friendship. If you ever visit Sotto, please check in with him and ask him what’s drinking well… he’ll never steer you wrong. His aim is true and his heart is pure…
Ok, gotta go make some rock ‘n’ roll! As we say, in French, wish me merde! (Yes, I just had to talk about poop…)
You can catch me as Dr. Jekyll tomorrow night (Weds. Feb. 8) at Sotto in Los Angeles where I’ll be working the floor pouring and talking about wine or you can catch me as Mr. Hyde (aka Cal d’Hommage) on guitar with Nous Non Plus on Thurs. in San Diego, Fri. in SF, or Sat. in LA.
Ever since I was a child (when I lived and grew in California), the song has had a profound meaning for me… Nostalgia and longing played out in falsetto and dulcimer… Will you take me as I am?
This time around the song has a whole new meaning as Tracie P bundle up our “little green” Georgia P for her first trip to meet her California family and see where her daddy grew up. Just the thought of her seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time fills my heart with a joy that I could never have imagined before she came into our lives…
California I’m coming home
I’m going to see the folks I dig
I’ll even kiss a sunset pig
California I’m coming home
…
Oh California I’m coming home
Oh make me feel good rock n roll band
I’m your biggest fan
California, I’m coming home
Will you take me as I am?
Photo by the amazing Nichols family.
A couple of my favorite rock stars were over on Friday night, to meet Georgia P and to share a special bottle of a wine.
The 1971 Gattinara Monsecco by Conte Ravizza was vinified the same year that David Garza was born: David (above, center) is one of the greatest musicians I’ve ever had the fortune to work with and he played on our last album “Freudian Slip.” And he’s also just a super cool dude to hang with.
Céline Dijon (right, holding Georgia) currently calls New York (not Paris anymore) her home and she was in town because we’re working on material for our new album. (BTW, our band Nous Non Plus playing in San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles this week, Thurs.-Sat.; click here for the show details.)
I had saved the 1971 Monsecco for David. It had been given to me by Brooklyn Guy’s good friend Dan when we visited in Brooklyn in January 2011 (when we tasted a bottle of it together; here are my complete notes together with the research I did on the bottling).
After a Texas summer in my home cellar (the hottest on record), I wasn’t sure how the wine was going to stand up but we were all impressed with how bright the wine was, with healthy acidity and gorgeous fruit — thoroughly delicious paired with Tracie P’s risotto al radicchio veronese served all’onda. It just goes to show that even in tough vintages, great producers can make great wine (I reported Wasserman’s notes on the harvest here).
David was so sweet: he taught me how to play a new lullaby he wrote and he sang it for Georgia… too cute for words…
If you’re in California this week, come see me and Céline at one of the shows!
Here’s another shot from Georgia P’s recent photo shoot (by the amazing Nichols family):
Honestly, I really didn’t know what to expect from a 2010 IGT Tarantino Susumaniello (100%) by the Poderi Angelini winery in Manduria (west coast of Puglia).
The craze for indigenous varieties has inspired a number of producers to deliver monovarietal bottlings of grapes that were used strictly for blending in the past.
In the entry for Susumaniello in the landmark Vitigni d’Italia (Grape Varieties of Italy), last revised in 2006, the editors underline the fact that “the grape is never vinified on its own” and is used strictly to produce vino da taglio, i.e., blending wine (employed historically to beef up otherwise “thin” wines).
Unfortunately, some of the well intentioned efforts to champion such indigenous grapes has been misguided (Uva di Troia in purezza, anyone?).
But Angelini’s 2010 Susumaniello was delicious last night: bright and surprisingly light on the palate, with the acidity that we crave, high but balanced alcohol, and juicy, chewy red berry fruit. I loved it, as did the group of wine professionals with whom we tasted it.
Inspired by our tasting, I went into the stustustudio and dug out some footage of my good friend Paolo Cantele pronouncing the grape’s name for us. Phil Collins ain’t got nothing on this baby!
In other news…
Georgia P went to one of her first photo shoots (I am such a stage father!) yesterday with our good friends and AWESOME photographers the Nichols here in Austin yesterday (remember when they shot our wedding?). Here’s a preview… WE LOVE HER SO MUCH! :)
