What an incredible year 2011 has been for us!
Our first anniversary, our pregnancy (any day now, folks!), and some of the most memorable meals of our lives. Here’s one of the “bests” in what I can say has truly been the best year of my life…
*****
With our good friend Riccardo Zanotto, posted January 31.
in the land of Prosecco… just up the hill from Rolle…
Osteria al Cacciatore… “dove fanno da mangiare come la zia…”
There are times when my ability as a photographer fails me. My October visit to the Brunelli farmhouse was one of those times.
I simply cannot express how beautiful the family’s farm is.
The Brunelli estate is situated in the center of the appellation, along the road that leads to Barbi: heading north from Sant’Angelo in Colle, you turn right and head east about halfway between Sant’Angelo and Montalcino.
And when they arrive at Laura Brunelli’s home, her visitors are rewarded with what I think is one of the most spectacular views in one of the most photogenic landscapes of Italy.
As your eye scans the horizon, looking south-southeast toward Mt. Amiata, there are few signs of modernity. It is Tuscany as it probably looked 50 years ago.
As Tracie P once wrote on her blog, if I were a grape, I would want to grow here.
The Vigna Olmo is Brunelli’s top growing site: its gentle slope faces south and is ideal for the cultivation of thin-skinned Sangiovese Grosso. Standing atop the vineyard, you can feel a gentle breeze from the valley below. It’s simply magical.
The entire estate is biodynamically farmed and even the Brunelli house was constructed using organic precepts — bioedilizia as it is called in Italian, Baubiologie in German or building biology.
The beloved, visionary Gianni Brunelli left our world just over three years ago (see this beautiful tribute by Avvinare). But he lives through the estate that he and Laura built together. I never met Gianni but I could feel his presence that day.
Laura and I tasted three wines together. Here are my notes.
2009 Rosso di Montalcino
Brunelli’s signature acidity and bright, bright red fruit. More savory in the mouth. Alcohol very well integrated. This wine is sourced from the estate’s Oliva and Chiuse vineyards, said Laura.
2006 Brunello di Montalcino (classic)
Elegantissimo nose! Meaty in the mouth but so bright and elegant! This wine is sourced from Chiuse, Olmo, and Rada.
2004 Brunello di Montalcino Riserva
YES! Acidity! Fruit! Savory and very tannic. Fantastic! One of the best wines I’ve tasted on this trip. Sourced mostly from Olmo with some fruit from Oliva.
Of all the great wine made in Montalcino, Brunelli’s wines are among my all-time favorites. They always have been. They’re pure, they’re focused, they’re clean but meaty and savory. They’re delicious. They’re like a favorite song: they make me feel high…
And the family’s farm is one of the most magical places on earth.
Thank you, Laura, for our visit. And thank you for these exquisite wines.
Above: the architects of Italian unification (1861). To the far left, Count Camillo Cavour, Italy’s first prime minister, a winemaker (Piedmont). To the far right, Baron Betting Ricasoli, Italy’s second prime minister, a winemaker (Tuscany). In the center, unified Italy’s first king, Vittorio Emanuele II, a winemaker (Piedmont). Ricasoli’s estate Brolio and Vittorio Emanuele’s Fontanafredda still produce wine today.
One the top wine professionals in Texas chided me yesterday on the Twitter. “Many other iconic Brunell(i?) are available” in Texas, he wrote. There’s “no great market demand” for Biondi Santi here, he Tweeted.
He was commenting on my post yesterday for the Houston Press (Absurdity of Texas Wine Shipping Law Reaches New Heights) and the heated dialog that followed on the Twitter. There was so much discussion that my editor at the paper asked me to write another, follow-up post today, which I playfully called Me and the TABC.
He had asked me to offer a few examples of iconic Italian wines that are not available in Texas (and I had been bemoaning the fact that I have to resort to unauthorized channels to obtain certain wines that I just cannot live without).
I responded with Biondi Santi and Castell’in Villa (the latter was also the subject of the post at the paper).
He responded nonchalantly, as if to say, well, if there’s no demand for those wines here in Texas, what does it matter?
Well, folks I’m here to tell you that in fact, it does matter.
It’s one thing to assume that if a wine isn’t available in Texas, it must not be “important.” And it’s another thing to take into account the fact that Italians consider Biondi Santi to be the greatest producer of Brunello di Montalcino, an icon, a benchmark, a historic domaine that reshaped the appellation. The same holds for Castell’in Villa in Chianti Classico. Or Bartolo Mascarello and Giuseppe Mascarello in Barolo. Or Emidio Pepe and Valentini in Abruzzo. Or Venica and Ronchi di Cialla in Friuli. I could go on and on: none of those wines are available in Texas.
But what’s worse is the fact that I cannot legally obtain them from an out-of-state retailer while in Texas (even though they’re readily available in the U.S.).
Of course, I travel to Italy 3 to 4 times a year, New York City 2 a year, and Los Angeles once a month: I can find and taste these wines whenever I want.
But young wine professionals in our state do not have access to these historic, not to mention delicious, wines.
My Texan colleagues and fellow wine educators can continue to base their course curricula on the Wine Spectator Top 100 list and the wines that score high with its editors and create “market demand”: Casanova di Neri is available here in Texas as is La Spinetta.
But a generation of young wine professionals in Texas will grow up without knowing the wines that the Italians consider to be the greatest expressions of their land, their history, and their (viti)culture.
It’s time for me to get off of my soap box. Thanks for reading… and thanks for loving Italian wine as much as I do…
Here’s a link to a post I wrote a few years ago: Why Italians are offended by our ratings and rankings. You might be surprised by some of the wine professionals who weighed in in the comment section.
I’m just trying to keep Texas (and the world) safe for Italian wine…
Above: My good friend Francesco treated me to a bottle of 1995 Chianti Classico by Castell’in Villa at the Enoteca I Terzi in Siena when I visited in October.
Castell’in Villa is one of my favorite producers of Chianti Classico. It’s actually one of my all-time favorite Italian producers: traditional-style, pure Sangiovese, grown in galestro-rich stony soils at excellent elevation and with superb exposure, and raised in large cask. The wines are remarkably affordable (I recently bought some of their entry-tier 2007 for under $25) and the winery continues to draw from what must be an astonishing cellar, offering importers library releases that stretch back to the 1970s (I’ve tasted back to 1979).
The only problem is that you can’t get the wines in Texas.
Above: We paired the 95 with housemade tagliatelle tossed with funghi porcini that night in Siena.
Well, actually, there’s another problem: the wine is readily available in the U.S. but Texas won’t allow out-of-state retailers to ship the wine here. It’s against the law. Unless, of course, you set up shop as a winery in Texas — even if you don’t make wine. Yes, a winery that doesn’t make wine…
I’ve already pissed off a lot of folks today with my post over at the Houston Press, “Absurdity of Texas Wine Shipping Law Reaches New Heights”, about Friday’s news that the Texas alcohol authority has granted a winery license to Wine.Com, eve though — in the TABC’s own words — Wine.com doesn’t produce wine. With the license, Wine.com will now be able to ship wine to retail customers within Texas.
I knew this issue would press some of Tom Wark’s buttons: he’s spent the last few years campaigning against the anachronistic, obsolete, gerrymandering laws that regulate retail shipping of wine in our country. I sent the link to Tom this afternoon and he responded immediately:
What’s really interesting is that Wine.com set up a physical presence in Texas and got the wine producers license in stead of a retailers license. You know why? Because a few years ago, when SWRA was suing texas for discriminating against out of state retailers, the TX legislature passed a law that limited Texas retailers to only shipping wine into the county where the physical retail outlet was located. However, a Texas “WINERY” can ship ship throughout Texas.
Above: A San Francisco-based retailer shipped me the wine regardless of the TABC restriction. It’s a great value and one of my favorite wines.
For the record, I side with many of my colleagues in the trade when it comes to the three-tier system in the U.S. I believe, like them, that the three-tier system helps to keep costs down and it protects the consumer by making it difficult for importers and distributor to monopolize brands.
But what the hell, yo????!!!! Ain’t America a free country? As a U.S. citizen, shouldn’t I have the right to purchase a bottle of wine from a retailer in San Francisco or New York and have them ship it to me?
Most retailers ignore the TABC restrictions anyway. And I have a secret for you: the rich folks in Texas? They spend so much money at the high-end retailers in New York and Northern California that the sellers will always find a way to get them their high-cost wine.
Me? I just want my under $25 bottle of Chianti Classico by Castell’in Villa! And by golly, it went great with a bottle of ranch dressing from Walmart! So there!
Just had to share this photo I snapped of Tracie P last week. Isn’t she lovely? :)
The day after Thanksgiving, we recycled her scalloped potatoes as a spuntino for out-of-town guests who came over for a visit…
Did I mention that the girl can cook? ;)
A little bubbly helped to wash it down…
I always love the focus and precision of Jacquesson… one of our favorite houses (among those that we can afford!)…
An allusion to Boccaccio in my post today for the Houston Press (on water and wine) was irresistible: citing the third novella, eighth day of the Decameron, I used a mention of wine in his description of Bengodi (the land of plenty) as an illustration of how water was commonly blended into wine in the middle ages. In the text, he describes a Vernaccia so good that no water was added to it.
Here’s the text in English (and here it is in Italian):
The fact that he points out that never a drop of water was found in the wine is an indication that wine to which water wasn’t added was considered superior in quality.
There are so many wonderful mentions of wine in the Decamaron: ahimè, if I didn’t have to make a living, I could collate them into a neat little book with a critical apparatus (a little philological speak there for you).
In the meantime, any excuse to revisit Boccaccio is a good one!
The tale is one of my favorites and is a great (and funny) read: English and Italian.
Buona lettura e buon weekend yall!
Above: Fernet Branca shakerato, the way I drink it.
My colleague at Sotto in Los Angeles, mixologist Julian Cox, got a nice shout out from wine writer Ray Isle in an article on amaro in this month’s issue of Food & Wine. Julian’s amaro list at the restaurant features around 20 labels on any given day.
There’s no two ways about it: amarophilia (amaro fever? amaro mania?) is one of the new waves in mixology these days.
When I traveled to Friuli in October with a troika of über-hip mixologists, the barpeople wanted to duck into every wine shop they could in the hope of discovering a label unknown to Americans.
Above: That’s super cool Sam Ross of Milk & Honey (NYC) fame with the fabu Nonino sisters, an image I snapped on our trip to Friuli. He uses Nonino’s amaro in his cocktail, “the Paper Plane.”
When Ray — a friend and colleague from my NYC days — called to interview me for the article, we talked about the differences in the way that amaro is perceived and applied in the U.S. and Italy, historically and currently.
I recalled a Neapolitan-American friend of mine, Giovanni, now in his 50s, whose mother used to give him an espresso spiked with a shot of Fernet Branca and an egg yolk every morning before school.
There was a time when Italians used amaro as a tonic. And today, even though it’s no longer applied as a household remedy, Italians still serve it as a digestive. At any given bar or restaurant, you might find 3 or 4 different labels but no one would ever think of offering guests an amaro list (with 20 labels!) or using amaro as an ingredient in a cocktail.
Another expression of that great misunderstanding otherwise known as the Atlantic Ocean…
Maybe it’s because she knew I was depressed by the flurry of bad news from Europe.
But it’s definitely because I’m the luckiest guy in the world: when Tracie P came home from work yesterday, she brought me a bottle of 2007 Barbaresco by Produttori del Barbaresco, which — believe it or not — I still hadn’t tasted.
However bizarre the 2007 vintage in Langa, everything I’ve tasted so far from Barbaresco and Barolo has been simply sensational. Here’s what one of my favorite wine writers, Antonio Galloni, had to say about this strange but glorious (imho) vintage:
At first kiss, the 2007 classic (as opposed to vineyard-designated) Barbaresco by Produttori del Barbaresco was very generous with its fruit. Arguably the most elegant bottling I’ve ever tasted from the winery that forms the centerpiece of our wine collection, the wine showed stunning balance before quickly closing up, with the muscular tannin dominating the wine in my glass for the rest of the evening (I’ve saved the great part of the wine in the bottle and will revisit it tonight and tomorrow night). If ever there were an expression of Barbaresco “Barolo-esque” in its power, this would be it: there was a delicate menthol note in the mouth that reminded us of some of our favorite “east-side,” “Helvetian” growers.
It’s too early for final judgment on this wine, but wow, my impression is that we have a lot to look forward to…
In other news…
I also opened a bottle of Gianni Brunelli olive oil that Laura Brunelli gave me when I visited the family’s amazing farm in Montalcino in October.
A drizzle over some still warm toasted bread was unbelievably good, one of the mineral olive oils I’ve ever tasted. (When tasting olive oil, please be sure the olive oil is room temperature and always taste with warm bread; the gentle heat of the bread will prompt the oil to release its full flavor.)
I used the oil to dress some fresh red leaf lettuce and some cannellini beans. Utterly and absolutely delicious.
Whereas Ligurian olive oil tends toward the fruity and Sicilian toward the spicy, great Tuscan olive oil leans toward salty: I added just a dash of kosher salt to both the salad and the beans and Laura’s oil imparted all the savoriness I needed to both dishes. Fantastic stuff… Enough to cheer a wine blogger up after a day of gloomy news from his adoptive country…
Stay tuned for a post on my visit with Laura, a tour of her amazing “biodynamic” house, and a tasting of some current and older vintages of her family’s incredible wines… one of the best tastings from my last trip to Italy… Thanks for reading!
Above: Ricciarelli from Nannini in Siena. I took these photos in October while visiting a good friend there.
From Frank Bruni’s editorial today on Berlusconi’s “post-script” to the report in the Wall Street Journal that the Monte dei Paschi Foundation might lose control of the historic bank — the “world’s oldest bank” — the news from Italy is depressing these days.
Panforte.
It’s hard for me to write about Italian wine these days when people I know and care about are being affected directly by the economic crisis in Europe.
A good friend from Siena writes:
Cantucci.
“Maybe it is finally the time to consider tourism the first industry of Siena,” writes my friend, “and start again from this point.”
If you’ve ever been to Siena, you know that it is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. It’s also a cultural hub of Western Civilization, a city whose contribution to Italy’s national history is rivaled only by its intellectual and aesthetic treasure.
The Monte dei Paschi di Siena bank is just up the street from the Nannini pastry shop.
I’m no fan of bankers but it’s sad to think of what Siena would be like without Monte dei Paschi, an institution that has helped to protect and cultivate the city’s works of art for more than 500 years.
Some of Italy’s greatest wines are raised within a forty-minute radius of Siena — Chianti, Montalcino, Montepulciano…
Our Italian friends are in our thoughts these days…
I couldn’t resist translating this post by Italy’s top wine blogger Mr. Franco Ziliani for VinoWire today. And the mimetic desire was so overwhelming that I was compelled to post my translation here as well. I haven’t yet tasted the 2008 Rosato by Biondi Santi but the 2006 was fantastic. Until I get back to Italy, I’ll just to live vicariously through Franco’s post… Buona lettura!
When my fifty-fifth birthday arrived this year, I didn’t reach for a powerful red, nor an elegant Champagne, nor a juicy Franciacorta. No, I drank a stunning rosé on my birthday, perhaps the most important and most celebrated of all the Italian rosés (and probably the most expensive, since more than one online wine store offer it at Euro 33). I’m talking about the Rosato di Toscano, 100% Sangiovese, created by the Gentleman of Brunello, Franco Biondi Santi on his Tenuta del Greppo estate in Montalcino.
On another occasion, I wrote the following about this wine: It is the youngest child of the Greppo estate, a wine obtain by vinifying estate-grown Sangiovese at 16-18° C. without skin contact, aged for 18 months in stainless steel. We could call it a youthful Sangiovese, a quasi Brunello… in pink, obtained from young vines roughly 5 to 10 years in age. The vineyards are located in zones rich with stony subsoil and galestro [schist], with exposition to the North-East, South, and North, and elevation ranging from 250-500 meters.
I drank the 2008 Rosato di Toscana by the great Franco Biondi Santi with a simple however delicious, everyday dish: exquisite beef meatballs braised in tomato sauce and paired with green beans that had been sautéed with bread crumbs. We’re talking about enthusiasm cubed here: a truly extraordinary rosé in every sense.
Light cherry in color, jus of squab with an orange hue. Dry and direct on the nose, very salty and focusedd, dominated by red cherry followed by a gradual evolution of citrus ranging from pink grapefruit to mandarin oranges and citron. Then came notes of multi-colored Mediterranean maquis, tomato leaf, flint, and hints of rose. Together, they created a weave of color and mosaic of aroma.
Ample in the mouth, juicy, overflowing with personality and refined, ample layers of texture. Well structured on the palate, with vertical depth, endowed with focus, an absolute release of magnificent vitality and complexity.
A stony, salty wine, with perfect balance of fruit, acidity, and tannin (the magnificent tannin of Sangiovese from Montalcino). Great harmony, extreme polish, aristocratic elegance, and absolute drinkability despite the 13.5% alcohol and richness of this highly enjoyable Rosato di Toscana.
It would be suited to a wide variety of dishes, from Caciucco alla Livornese to fish soup, to baby octopus cooked in red wine to braised calamari with peas. But it also could be paired with a roast beef, braised beef, or even veal… and even a well-stocked pizza. Why not?
The greatest of Italian rosés and one of the greatest rosés in the world, including France. Chapeau bas!
Do Bianchi