According to a post published today by leading Italian wine blogger and publisher Filippo Larganà, Italian wine pioneer Michele Chiarlo has died at age 88.

Owner of the Michele Chiarlo estate in Asti province, he was one of the early Piedmont growers to ship Moscato d’Asti and Barbera d’Asti to the U.S. A generation of American wine professionals and wine lovers tasted these categories for the first time thanks to his family. He was also an acclaimed producer of Barolo.

See Filippo’s obituary here on his Sapori del Piemonte blog (one of Asti’s “papers of record”).

I had the opportunity to taste with Michele on a number of occasions. Most of those were formal settings. He was always affable, approachable, and always eager to engage with anyone who wanted to talk about the family’s wines.

My favorite anecdote about him comes via his son Stefano Chiarlo, who’s become a friend over the years.

We were presenting a flight of Moscato d’Asti in Dallas one day, just last year, when he remembered how his father sent a pallet of their Moscato d’Asti to one of the top Italian importers at the time. It was back before Italian wine had become a hot commodity in our country.

Said importer told him that he didn’t like Moscato d’Asti. He didn’t know what to do with it, he protested. Michele told the importer that he could have the wine as his gift. If he sold it, great. If not, he could do whatever he wanted with it.

The importer quickly sold the entire lot and was soon asking for more. It was the type of gamble only someone like Michele Chiarlo could have pulled off. And the rest is history. Today, Moscato d’Asti is one of Italy’s best-selling wines.

Our family’s condolences go out to his sons Stefano and Alberto Chiarlo and to the entire Chiarlo family.

Sit tibi terra levis Michael.

Above: 90+-year-old Barbera vines in a vineyard owned by my client Amistà in the Nizza DOCG; photographed yesterday.

It’s a question and a topos that comes up often in winespeak: what are old vines and why are they important in winemaking?

While there doesn’t seem to be a broadly-embraced consensus on what constitutes “old vines,” most industry observers seem to agree that vines that are 50 years in age or older can definitely be referred to as “old vines.”

Nearly all winemakers and wine trade members concur that old vines make for higher quality wines. Old vines, the conventional wisdom goes, have less “vigor” than younger plants. As a result, they tend to focus their energy on a fewer number of clusters. Those bunches will have richer flavors and aromas, even though their yield — the volume of fruit they produce — will generally be smaller than for younger plants.

Many top producers reserve fruit from their oldest plants for their best wines.

Extremely old vines, like the ones in the image above, are also prized by winemakers because they can often be “ungrafted,” what Europeans sometimes call piè franco, meaning literally free standing.

Toward the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th, many European vineyards were affected by phylloxera, a nearly microscopic insect that feeds on the roots and leaves of the plants. The only known cure for phylloxera is to graft the plants with rootstock from phylloxera-resistant plants. The know-how and phylloxera-resistant rootstock that was used to save the European wine industry came from the U.S.

In the case of the vines in the image, they were planted in the third decade of the last century and for reasons unknown were naturally resistant to phylloxera. They never needed to be grafted with American rootstock.

Ungrafted, piè franco vines are highly prized because they represent a continuity with the pre-phylloxera era.

In my experience, wines made from old vines like the Nizza produced by Amistà, can be highly more compelling than their younger-vine siblings.

Can you really taste the difference in wines that come from piè franco plants? I don’t believe that you can. But the romance of drinking a wine from a vine that was planted before my grandparents were born does have a certain appeal.

Above: the Nicodemi farm in Colline Teramane. Last year when I visited Abruzzo right before harvest, growers were dealing with a prolonged, nearly nine-month drought. This year when I visited following harvest, growers had lost an average of 70 percent and up to 90 percent of their crop because of excessive rainfall and the resulting peronospora issues. See link to learn more.

Bay Area and Atlanta wine professionals: Abruzzo needs you! And I need you, too!

On Monday, December 4, 2023, I will be leading a guided tasting of Abruzzo wines and dinner at Antica Posta in Atlanta; and then on Monday, December 11 at Mama Oakland. Both events are being hosted by the Consorzio Vini d’Abruzzo, the association of Abruzzo grape growers and winemakers.

The dinner is open to anyone who works in the wine or restaurant trade. And it’s free (thank you, Abruzzo consortium!).

If you’d like to attend, simply send me an email at jparzen [at] gmail [dot] com or by clicking here.

The idea is for us to get together, taste a flight of Abruzzo wines paired with great food (menus forthcoming), and spread awareness of the compelling viticulture that’s happening there.

I just got back in late October from leading a group of wine pros to the region and I know that all of my colleagues will agree: the work that Abruzzo growers are doing right now is immensely inspiring and the wines can be astounding.

Cocciopesto-aged Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, anyone?

I’d love to meet and get to taste with you. Please feel free to share this with any trade member you think would enjoy and appreciate it. Any and all are welcome!

Thank you for your support.

It may just be one of those dumb internet factoids. But according to one internet search, the only major city farther away from Houston than Hong Kong is Perth, Australia.

It’s another way of saying that on my trip last week delivered me literally to the antipodes.

For many of my fellow Houstonians, traveling to Hong Kong for work, pleasure, or family is a workaday journey.

But for me, there was nothing quotidian about it. It wasn’t just my first trip to China but my first trip to Asia as well.

Here are some of the highlights from my unforgettable experience.

That’s a selfie, above, that I took at Victoria Peak, highly recommended.

Late night street food.
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Above: the view of the Maiella massif from the Frentana cooperative in Chieti province on Thursday of last week.

On Friday of last week, the Consorzio dei Vini d’Abruzzo (Abruzzo wine growers association) published this video of its president Alessandro Nicodemi talking about the current peronospora (downy mildew) crisis in Abruzzo.

The average drop in production in the 2023 vintage in Abruzzo, he says, is 70 percent, with estimates exceeding 90 percent in some cases. The cause, as has been widely reported, was peronospora, downy mildew, a fungal disease that affects the vines after excessive rainfall.

Last week, I led a group of top U.S. sommeliers through the region. Nearly every where we traveled, we saw entire vineyards that had been left unharvested. We also saw many sites where the plants had lost all their vegetation.

Numerous growers told us that the problem was the continuous rainfall in the late spring and early summer. It rained for so many days in a row, they explained, that the muddy soil made it impossible to enter the vineyards with tractors to treat the plants. As a result, the fungal disease spread unchecked. Despite the dry and hot summer that followed, it was too late to stop the scourge.

Many wine trade observers don’t realize that organic farming (certified or simply practiced) is the norm in Abruzzo. That trend is owed to the fact that the region’s arid climate and excellent ventilation — nestled between Italy’s highest mountains and the Adriatic coast — keep the vineyards dry throughout the growing season. That’s what makes it so easy to farm organically there.

Organic growers were dismayed by their drop in production but they seemed, anecdotally, to have fared better than their conventional counterparts.

I have much to report about our tour and will be heading back with another group of wine professionals at the end of November.

But right now I wanted to bring attention to what is becoming an existential crisis for certain growers there. There couldn’t ever be a better time to buy and support Abruzzo wines than right now. Thanks for the solidarity.

Tracie and I will be leaving tomorrow for the Boulder Burgundy Festival where I’ll be doing my yearly gig as the event’s official blogger. This year, festival founder and owner of the Boulder Wine Merchant, Brett Zimmerman, has also asked me to moderate a panel of super sommeliers on “Rethinking the Négociant.” I’m super geeked about that and just feeling blessed to have such great work these days.

On Sunday morning, I’ll kiss Tracie goodbye as she heads back to Houston and I’ll travel to Aquila in Abruzzo where I’ll be leading a seminar on the region’s wines for a group of top wine pros. This trip came about at the last minute when a trip to NYC next week got postponed. I’ve been developing the seminar for a few years now and I’m excited to spend a few days with colleagues tasting and talking about the compelling wines that are made there. We’ll be in Chieti as well. Seafood and Cerasuolo, anyone?

Then it’s back to Houston where I’ll be conducting a seminar on Piedmont Collectibles with a local partner on Monday, October 30. See the link to register. The last event was so much fun and such a great group of folks. As fried as I’m going to be, I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve always found Nebbiolo to be an excellent remedy for jet lag!

I’ll only be at home with the girls for a few days when I leave for Hong Kong on Halloween. I’ll be pouring and speaking at James Suckling’s Great Wines of Italy event on Friday, November 2. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, please stop by!

After that, it’s on to Dallas for a seminar at the Taste of Italy festival there and then back to Italy to teach…

My schedule is so intense these days that it reminds me of being on the road with the band back in the day.

Wish me luck and wish me speed and thank you to everyone for their support and solidarity. I feel truly blessed to do what I do for a living. Thanks for being here.

I spent Sunday morning watching “Pourquoi Israël,” Claude Lanzmann’s 1972 achingly beautiful documentary about migration to the country during the hope-filled years that followed the Six-Day War in 1967.

It reminded me of what Israel meant to Jews before the Hamas attacks that began last week: a locus amoenus that offered safety and security despite the horrors of the past and the terrors of the future.

Those idealisms were shattered with the advent of “Israel’s 9/11,” as many Israelis have called it.

To my comrades who have chastised me for my support for Israel, please give me and people like me a moment to feel our grief for those who have died and continue to suffer — Israeli and Palestinian.

Please try to wrap your mind and heart around the fact that many of the Jews that have died in recent days looked like me. They talked and prayed like me. They lived and loved like me. Many of them grew up as my neighbors in urban Chicago where I was born and suburban California where I grew up.

Please know that I am fully aware of the plight of the Palestinian people and their oppression at the hands of my fellow Jews.

Please remember that the “original sin” of the post-1948-Arab-Israeli-War era doesn’t paint all Jews of the same stripe. Most of us weren’t even born when Palestinians were expelled from their homeland. Many of us have continued and will continue to speak out against subjugation and advocate for peace and dignity.

Please keep in mind that we are well aware of what is about to transpire in Gaza and the inhumanities that will be revealed.

But please, please, please also just let us be human beings who mourn the loss of life and hope.

May G-d bless all those who are suffering and continue to suffer in Israel and Gaza. Let us all pray for peace.

A friend offered to give me a gun last night.

I’ve never owned a gun. Never wanted to own a gun. Have always tried to avoid guns.

Once, back when I was a teenager and my father was living in Arizona, one of his friends shamed me into using a rifle to kill a rattlesnake we discovered while on a hiking trip. It was one of the worst experiences of my adolescence.

It was the last time I handled a gun.

Tracie and I share a personal aversion to guns. We are avid supporters of anti-gun groups.

Yet, last night, a friend wrote me to share his family’s solidarity with ours and in case I felt the need, he’d be happy to give me a weapon.

He’s not just any friend. He’s one of the best people I know in Houston, someone who literally puts his life on the line for his community every day. He knows a lot about firearms. It’s part of what he does for a living.

It felt good to know that someone like him is looking out for us. He shared his wishes that our friends and family be safe.

But then the thought hit me: do I need to get a gun? Is my family in danger?

Is it in more danger than it was when Hamas attacked Israel?

The world is a different place than it was a week ago. Today, schools in capitals across the world are closing for fear of violence against families like ours.

The Hamas Charter quotes the Prophet:

The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.

Chilling words to any Jew, anywhere in the world — including Houston.

Our family’s heartfelt thanks go out to all our friends who have called to share their solidarity. Their words mean more to us than they can know.

Let’s all pray for peace.

For years, San Diego and Long Beach wine friends have been raving to me about Michael’s on Naples, the top destination — by all accounts — for fine wine lovers there.

Last night, I finally made it there and wow, what an awesome restaurant and wine program!

That’s wine director and general manager Massimo Aronne, above.

His list includes a solid offering of California (folks here, as elsewhere in the state, like to drink domestic, after all). The prices were so reasonable that I was tempted to do a bottle of Kistler, one of my guilty pleasures.

But I was with Italians and we were going all Italian last night. And Massimo’s Italian program is one of the best in the country in my experience.

There’s plenty of top Tuscany and Piedmont for you to dive into. But the thing that blew me away was the breadth of “Italian wine people” wine.

A bottle of aged Lugana by Montonale, anyone? It’s one of my favorite Italian wines of all time and Massimo had it on his list at an obscenely low price.

We ended up drinking a bottle of Derthona by Borgogno, also extremely reasonably priced (not far off from retail actually).

The food was Italo-California. The salumi were expertly sliced. The texture and flavor of the lasagne sheets reminded me of my Emilia days, although the creative fillings brought me back to the state of my upbringing (I grew up in San Diego).

The pork chop and ribeye were so flavorful that they had all of us swooning.

I really loved this place and can’t recommend it enough.

And of course, I’m super proud of the fact that Massimo is working with Amistà, the Nizza winery that I rep in the U.S. I love the wines and the people who make them and it’s so awesome to see people like Massimo who have the depth of knowledge in Italian wine to appreciate it.

What a great night! And thank you to Massimo and everyone who took such great care of us. Special thanks to Paolo Cressi of Ethica Wines who set it all up.