Category Archives: de vino

First kiss: Tracie P. First sip: Brovia 04 Barolo.

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I dream of your first kiss… And then I feel upon my lips again…

The first kiss of 2011 tasted just as sweet as that very first kiss of 2008. A taste of honey, tasting much sweeter than wine…

Tracie P and I had wonderful New Year’s eve at Tony’s with cousins Joanne and Marty, Dana and Neil, Mary Kelly (Neil’s mother), and prof Jonathan, who took the photos above. Don’t I look like I just won the jackpot? ;-)

That first kiss was followed by a first sip of 2011: Brovia 2004 Barolo.

I have long been a fan of traditionalist Brovia and I finally got to taste at the winery in March 2010 when I was visiting Piedmont with a group of wine bloggers. That’s Brovia son-in-law Alex in front of the winery’s cement vats. (Check out Saignée’s excellent post on Brovia here.)

No pharmaceutical yeast here: Brovia’s wines always captivate with their balance of freshness, purity of fruit, and their power, and this wine drank surprisingly well as young as it was, with not overly generous fruit tempered by mushroom and earth. It was a fantastic way to start our 2011.

I posted some of the food shots from that night over at Tony’s blog, btw: Chef de Cuisine Grant’s risotto is always stellar IMHO, and his rich beef stock carnaroli topped with fried sweet breads were served perfectly al dente that night.

All in all it was an unforgettable night, our first New Year’s as a married couple and a celebration of all the wonderful things that happened for us in 2010. We have lots of adventures (and challenges) ahead of us in 2011 and we’re looking forward to our upcoming trip to Italy (more on that shortly).

But in the meantime, I’m gonna keep on dreaming about that first kiss, tasting much sweeter than wine… Happy new year, everyone!

Our night on the town with Lettie

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One of the more remarkable things that happened between Christmas and New Year’s was our night on the town in Austin with Lettie Teague. Lettie was in Dallas celebrating the holiday with family when Nature, by means of the east coast blizzard, decided not to let her fly back to New York. So, she decided to hit the road and come visit us in Austin, where we took her to some of our favorite spots, like Fonda San Miguel, where we had some huitlacoche tamales (de rigueur). Oddly enough, they were out of our fav Tondonia Rosado by López de Heridia and so Lettie proposed that we drink Gimmonet Champagne instead. The pairing was BRILLIANT!

Later, we took her to another one of our favorite nightspots, Vino Vino, where Jeff disgorged some Puro for her.

And, of course, no night on the town with Tracie P and me is complete without some late-night honkytonking at Ginny’s Little Longhorn Saloon.

Lettie wrote about our evening here. And I don’t care how much ya’ll holler: I ain’t givin’ you the number to the speakeasy we visited! Ya’ll will just have to come down and pay us a proper visit if you want to check it out!

06 Barolo Ravera by Cogno INSANE! (06: so far so good)

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For our Christmas day meal in Orange, Texas (at sister and brother Misty and Ricky’s house), we opened this bottle of 2006 Barolo Ravera by Cogno (sent to us by winemaker Valter Fissore).

While I’ve tasted a lot of 2006 Barbaresco at this point, this was one of the first expressions of 06 Barolo that I got to spend some time with. The more and more 06 I taste, the more I’m convinced that this is going to be a fantastic vintage for Langa wines, despite the controversy stirred in 2008 when B. Giacosa decided not to bottle his 2006).

06 may not be as great as 01 and 04, but it’s an indisputably balanced, classic vintage, where people who make and made honest wine are going to be rewarded for their faith and integrity.

I was stunned by how good Valter’s 05 Ravera was: beautiful nose, bright acidity, and a great balance of earth and fruit. Chapeau bas, Valter!

The other star of the Christmas day meal was this 2004 Vinsanto by Boutari, also sent to me as a sample (for the Boutari Social Media Project, which continues in 2011). At a youthful 6 years out, this wine showed the depth and complexity that the appellation in known for, with a gorgeous balance of candied white stone fruit and saltiness. The Assyrtiko grape and its unique expressions, whether vinified as a dry or dried-grape wine, continue to fascinate me and the Boutari Vinsanto is one of my favorites (for the record, it’s actually a blend of Assyrtiko and Aidani, which imparts a wonderful aromatic character to this wine). Tracie P and I have been blown away by how well new oak and small cask aging works with Assyrtiko and in this case, the wood gives a nutty counterpart to the fruit and salt (the label reports that the wine was bottled in 2008, leading me to believe that it spent nearly 4 years in wood). I also love how this wine clocks in with a judicious 12% alcohol, remarkable for the dried-grape category but in line with overarching attitudes among Greek winemakers. Great stuff…

Beatles (forever) and Natural wine

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Many wonderful and thoughtful gifts came my way this holiday season (including a fantastic new camera from Tracie P) but the one that took it over the top and the one that none of us can stop talking about was Mrs. and Rev. B’s gift of the complete Beatles on ITunes. (!!!)

Listening to the more than 250 tracks on our way back from Orange, Texas on the Sunday after the holiday, I remembered a cartoon I wrote when I was ten years old, “Jeremy vs. the Plastic People.” In it, I imagined myself protecting the world against the “Plastic People,” who had come to earth to cover the world in plastic. My plan of action? I drove the would-be invaders away by singing Beatles songs, poison to their ears.

Over the holiday break I took time out to fix a hole where the rain gets in: I reread “Jeremy vs. the Plastic People” and spent some time thinking about the ethos of the 1960s (I was born in 1967 during the “Summer of Love”) and how many of the values championed by the Beatles and the 60s generation resonate in our passion for “real wine,” “Natural wine” (whatever that term means to you), wines not made with a plastic spirit…

You can download the entire cartoon here (about 9 MB).

Thanks again, Rev. and Mrs. B! I LOVE MY BEATLES on ITunes… Beatles forever!

Xmas eve gumbo and Prosecco

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Took a week-long break from work and blogging over the Xmas-NYE holiday but now I’m back! Where do I begin… to tell the story of how great a love can be? Buon 2011 ya’ll!

Uncle Tim’s Christmas eve gumbo, made with his housemade deer sausage. Note how the potato salad is served in the gumbo. That gumbo alone was worth the 4.5 hour drive through the heavy rains that fell that night on Hwy 290 and I-10. A delicious reward at the end of a white-knuckle road!

Tracie P and I had been saving a flight of Adami Prosecco (sent to us as samples) just for the occasion. Great pairing and a super fun Christmas eve in Orange in East Texas, on the Louisiana border.

04 Barbaresco Montestefano by Produttori del Barbaresco, a wine Gramsci would approve of

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Above: I love it when you drop in on someone and they just happen to be opening single-vineyard designated Produttori del Barbaresco!

Yesterday, while meeting with Tony in Houston, one of his clients asked me, “if you could only choose one Italian red wine to recommend for value and quality, what would it be?”

Anyone who follows our enological adventures knows that I didn’t skip a beat in answering Produttori del Barbaresco.

It’s a winery that truly speaks to me and Tracie P: its traditional-style bottlings of Nebbiolo — Langhe Nebbiolo, classic Barbaresco, and single-vineyard designated Barbaresco — are wonderful expressions of earth, fruit, and acidity. And thanks to the agricultural cooperative social experiment launched by a Barbaresco priest in the 19th century and carried forward into the 21st by winemaker Aldo Vacca and his team, the wines remain extraordinarily affordable. In our modest library of wines that we’re cellaring (appropriate for a couple with middle-class means), Produttori del Barbaresco is our flagship. A luxury wine even Gramsci would approve of!

Above: Winemaker Aldo Vacca vinified his crus separately in 2009, as he regularly does in vintages he deems good enough. Whether or not he will release it as a cru-designated wine is another question. I snapped this photo in March 2010 when I last visited the winery.

When I rolled into Houston town Tuesday night, early for a holiday cheer appointment with friend and blogger colleague, Food Princess, who now writes for the new Houston Chronicle aggregate lifestyle blog 29-95), I stopped by Backstreet Cafè to see if my friend, sommelier Sean Beck was around.

As it so happened, he just happened to be opening a bottle of Produttori del Barbaresco 2004 Barbaresco Montestefano to enjoy with friends. (I love it when that happens!)

After the classic Barbaresco (a cuvée sourced primarily from Ovello with fruit from crus as well), Montestefano and Rabajà are my favorite bottlings by Produttori del Barbaresco. They are among the most powerful and the richest in terms of their earthiness and savory flavors.

At 6 years out, the Montestefano is very, very young and has many, many years ahead of it. But its balance is already beginning to emerge, with the fruit still relatively muted. Back in April 2009, I asked Aldo if he would compare his 04 to the now legendary 1989 vintage. He said that yes, in fact, even though he had initially thought it more similar to 90 (in his early reports on the vintage), he agreed: 04 has that classic harmony that these wines can achieve in great vintages — earth, fruit, and bright acidity.

However young, with still attenuated fruit, the 04 Montestefano was brilliant on Tuesday night, very much in line with what I imagined it would be and brighter, in fact, that expected. Sean, next time you open a bottle, you know my number! Thanks again dude! You rock…

95 B. Mascarello and Alba truffles, a marriage made in heaven

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Within the gentle heart Love shelters him,
As birds within the green shade of the grove.
Before the gentle heart, in Nature’s scheme,
Love was not, nor the gentle heart ere Love.

(the incipit of “The Gentle Heart,” by Guido Guinizelli, 1230-76)

You can keep your DRC, your Bond, your Pétrus… No, those wines are not good enough and do not deserve to touch the lips of the one I love. No, their aromas and flavors are not worthy of her noble nostrils and chaste tastebuds.

No, when I dine with my wife, my signora, my lady, my dame, my donna, my domina… such wines will not suffice.

When I share a special repast with Tracie P, bring me Barolo by Bartolo Mascarello.

Many great wines have been opened, tasted, and drunk in 2010, but perhaps none thrilled us more than the Bartolo Mascarello 1995 Barolo that we shared on Saturday night at Tony’s in Houston. Over these last two years (my first two in Texas), Tony has become a friend and now a client (I write his blog). Over the weekend, he generously treated Tracie P and me to dinner in celebration of our first year as a married couple.

Sometimes a wine is only as good as the person you share it with… Tracie P had never tasted Bartolo Mascarello and it was high time that this travesty in the annals of enological history was rectififed!

Bartolo Mascarello is one of the great icons of Nebbiolo, a steadfast defender of traditional winemaking, producer of one of the greatest wines in the world, and more recently, a founder and promoter of the “real wine” movement in Italy. Like many of the great houses of Langa, the Mascarello legacy began with a grape broker, Bartolo’s father Giulio, who intimately knew the best growing sites for Nebbiolo, as his granddaughter Maria Teresa explained to me the first time I tasted with her at the winery in 2008. Today, their Barolo is still made from grapes grown in four vineyards purchased by Giulio: Cannubi, San Lorenzo, Rué, and Rocche. Extended submerged cap maceration and large-cask aging are still employed at the winery today, a tradition that now spans three generations.

The pairing of great Nebbiolo and shaved Alba white truffles is no cheap date but it’s one of those gastronomic experiences that will literally change your life (and when done correctly, is worth every single penny).

Tony had captain Vinny shave us truffles over a perfectly cooked white risotto by chef de cuisine Grant.

95 was a classic although not great vintage for this wine and at 15 years out, it was drinking stupendously. Bartolo Mascarello has all the hallmarks of great Barolo: the savory tar and earth flavors. But to my palate, its sottobosco flavors, notes of woodsy underbrush, are its signature. Gorgeous acidity and IMHO perfectly evolved tannin for this vintage, although this wine could certainly age for another decade or more.

Regrettably, B. Mascarello is tough to find in this country and Tony is the only restaurateur I know in Texas who features the wines on his list (in a mini-vertical no less!). Thanks to my line of work, I’ve been fortunate to taste a lot of B. Mascarello and I was thrilled to share this bottle with the love of my life.

What else did we eat?

We were disappointed that we missed Tony’s bollito misto (with bollito cart!), but he had reserved a poached capon studded with black truffles just for us. Utterly delicious…

And a night like that just couldn’t end without chef Grant’s soufflé, expertly sliced and served by captain Vinny.

What a night!

Some guys have all the luck and Nebbiolo and truffles are some girls’s best friends. I am one lucky dude to be married to one such lady.

Thanks again, Tony! That was one of the most memorable meals of our life together! We had a blast…

Vogliatevi bene… Love one another…

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My friend Marisa from Friuli, who recently celebrated her 70th birthday, wrote me the sweetest holiday message the other day.

“Auguro a te e alla tua Signora,” she wrote, “tanta felicità per ogni giorno della vostra vita! Vogliatevi bene!!!! Buone Feste!!!”

I wish you and your wife every happiness for every day of your lives! Love one another! Happy holidays!

I asked Marisa if I could borrow the above photos from her Facebook: on the left, her parents on their honeymoon at the Colosseum in 1937; on the right, her mother, with their family’s vineyards behind her.

Her parents returned to Rome for their 25th wedding anniversary, she wrote me. Just think of all that happened in Europe between 1937 and 1962!

Marisa’s words reminded me of our great fortune to live in a time of relative peace and prosperity. Even with the financial struggles so many of us are facing, we still have a lot to be thankful for.

During the holiday season, I can’t think of better way to honor the generations that have come before us than by loving one another… vogliatevi bene… love one another… That’s what the holidays are for, aren’t they?

97 G. Mascarello Barolo Monprivato Ca’ d’ Morissio and great food at Tasting Kitchen LA

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The Schachter factor was in high gear on Tuesday night at The Tasting Kitchen in Los Angeles. Good friend David Schachter reached deep in his cellar for a bottle he knew would thrill me (as it would anyone who knows the great wines of the world): Giuseppe Mascarello 1997 Barolo Monprivato Ca’ d’ Morissio, Mauro Mascarello’s top bottling, from one of the great if somewhat maligned vintages of the twentieth century.

The 1997 harvest was and remains a classic example of semiotician Harold Bloom’s “misunderstanding,” what he would have called the anxiety of influence (@Comrade Howard, I know it’s a stretch but I think you would agree!). Similar to what happened for 2000, many American wine writers (and you all know whom I’m talking about) praised the warm 1997 vintage for the fruit-forward, hot (read highly alcoholic) wines it delivered. In the view of most Piedmont producers, 97 was a good vintage… not a great one. Wines from this harvest, in their view, were not “classic” expressions of their territorio. They were good and sometimes great but not worthy of the hype that they attained in their trans-Atlantic crossing.

Winemaker Mauro Mascarello’s bottling of his Ca’ d’ Morissio vineyard (above, visited by me and Tracie P and top Italian wine blogger Mr. Franco Ziliani in February 2010) was an exception to this paradigm: thanks to the unique microclimate of this deservedly famous growing site (owing to exposure and elevation), Mauro is able to obtain Barolo benchmarks even in hotter vintages. In fact, to my knowledge, he was the only Barolo producer in the five core townships to produce his flagship single-vineyard wine Ca’ d’ Morissio for the extremely hot 2003 vintage (that’s the Ca’ d’ Morissio, “Maurizio’s house,” at the top of the hill, btw).

Mauro Mascarello is a remarkable man, a 19th-century man, a man whose spiritual integrity and wholesome warmth are expressed in his warm, sturdy handshake and personal manner. I’ve had the opportunity to meet and taste with him three times now (each thanks to Mr. Ziliani) and I am always as impressed by the man himself as I am by the incredible wines he produces. Many Barolo insiders point to his winery as the most recently canonized member in the pantheon of the truly great producers in the appellation.

One of the hallmarks of traditional Barolo is large-cask aging: Tracie P snapped the above photo of me when we visited with Mr. Ziliani to show how large “large” is at Giuseppe Mascarello! Mauro’s father was in the lumber business and he built the cask in the photo as an experiment in dimension, said Mauro. (For a fantastic English-language profile of G. Mascarello, I highly recommend this excellent post by my blogging colleague Gregory dal Piaz who knows this winery and its wines perhaps better than anyone else in the U.S.)

I am very fortunate to have tasted a lot of fantastic wine this year (and many of the highlights have been in the last few weeks) but 97 G. Mascarello Barolo Monprivato Ca’ d’ Morissio? An astounding wine. Layers and layers of nuanced fruit and earth on the nose, with this fantastic black licorice, almost menthol note that is always a signature in wines from this vineyard. Rich tar and mushroom in the mouth, with harmonious red berry and red stone fruit. But it was the acidity, tongue-splitting acidity, as Tracie P would have said — even in the warm 1997 vintage! — that took this wine over the top. In Italian wine parlance, you often say that the acidity is a “backbone” that “supports” the flavors of the wine: this wine was the embodiment of this notion.

O, and the food at the Tasting Kitchen (yesterday named 4th best new restaurant in the U.S. by Alan Richman in GQ)?

Buckwheat bigoli with lamb and anchovy ragù was my favorite.

I also loved Chef Casey Lane’s unabashed use of heat in dishes like this tagliolini with baby squid (the fact that my WordPress spellcheck knows tagliolini is remarkable, no?). We spoke to Casey before our meal: he is a super cool, mellow guy (unusual for chefs of his caliber) and he’s from Texas! Awesome dude…

Housemade chorizo and roast pork loin were FANTASTIC with the Ca’ d’ Morissio.

Thanks again, David! And congrats, Casey! An amazing meal and an UNFORGETTABLE wine…

Sérgio Mendes favorite wine last night (with Sérgio!)

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From the “I shit you not” department…

It was while Brother Anthony (as he has been duly dubbed by Comrade Howard) and I were doing a little wine bar hopping last night in LA that we bumped into bossa nova, jazz, and funk giants Sérgio Mendes and Gracinha Leporace. We literally saw Sérgio from the street through the window of Osteria Mozza (where we had just left the bar) and he insisted that we come back in and taste his wines (brother Anthony recently recorded with Sérgio, who was having dinner with Gracinha and their agent).

What’s it like to drink Chapoutier 2004 Ermitage [sic] De L’Orée with Sérgio? Unbelievably crunchy and salty and utterly delicious. Sérgio and his entourage were super cool and friendly and fun to hang out with (and he was geeked to see brother Anthony and had high praise for him). I love the white wines of Chapoutier and rarely get to drink them. It was such a thrill to taste such an amazing bottling with Sérgio! Thanks again, Sérgio!

But the wine I can’t stop thinking about this foggy morning in LA (there’s a fog upon LA…) is the 2009 Langhe Bianco by Cavallotto, made from Pinot Nero. Not much of this wine is produced, said my fav LA sommelier and GM at Mozza David Rosoff.

I’ve had some great Langhe Bianco this year, notably from Vajra, Cogno, and Ettore Germano, but this wine simply floored me with its structure and nuance.

In keeping with our tradition of Holocaust humor (one of my all-time favorite posts here at Do Bianchi), I greeted David with a heil myself! I love David and one my new year’s resolutions for 2011 is to spend more time tasting with him. This guy deserves a medal for what he’s doing with Italian wine: his list is the top all-Italian carta dei vini, hands down, in the City of Angels.

Next we headed over to see more Jews at my favorite wine bar in the world, Lou on Vine. Lou is a true rebbe of natural wine and is another one of those folks I just wish Tracie P and I got to see more often.

The squid (above) at the Monday night supper was brilliant.

The rabbit was divine.

I just love everything about Lou on Vine.

How do you like my LA stories? It’s been a long time since I’ve posted in the “de urbe angelorum” category!