Category Archives: de vino

What we paired with Frito pie at Cullen’s Upscale American Grille

Posted on by

From the “just for the sheer fun of it” department…

I won’t conceal that cousin Marty and I were a little bit skeptical when we rolled up to Cullen’s Upscale American Grille the other night, not far from NASA Space Center, south of Houston. It’s a huge, sprawling events space, high-end restaurant, and music venue located smack dab in the center of one of those golden triangles of obscene wealth that orbit Houston proper. Honestly, it’s not the type of place that we would seek out. But after hanging with GM and wine director Ryan Roberts a few weeks ago at a very cool dinner where he and Cullen’s chef Paul Lewis cooked for 200 persons on a farm in the Texas plains, I knew that something interesting lay beneath the surface of this shiny, sparkling castle of indulgence in the wasteland of America’s greatest opulence.

You’d think that there would be only California Chardonnay and Napa Valley Cab to drink in a joint like this, but Ryan greeted us with raw gulf oysters and a white blend by one of my favorite Provence producers, Le Grand Blanc by Henri Milan. So salty and with such bright acidity, perfect for the oysters. Not bad, eh?

Next came the now famous Frito pie (check the thread of suggested wine pairings here). Ryan’s pairing was simply brilliant: Étienne Sauzet 2007 Puligny-Montrachet Les Combettes 1er Cru. The gentle wood and subtle malolactic fermentation sang beautifully in the key of minerality with this rich and intensely flavored dish. Here’s the menu gloss btw: “Pork & Chairman’s reserve beef chili, Fritos, Texas goat cheese, Oregon cheddar, crème fraîche” (forget sour cream: crème fraîche on Frito Pie?) Chef Lewis’s meats are sourced rigorously from the Jolie Vue in Brenham where the owners employ strict pasture-based farming (Ryan told me that his restaurant was the first restaurant in Texas to be certified “Green,” btw, another surprise in what appears from the outside to be a purely commercial venture.)

The southern-style oysters Rockefeller were pretty awesome, too.

Paired beautifully with a palate cleanser in the form of Ferran Adrià’s new beer, Inedit (the beer is salty and delicious, the website is annoying but I thought I’d include it).

My main event was chicken fried steak paired with Boillot 2006 Pommard-Rugiens 1er Cru, another brilliant pairing, where the power and spiciness of this famous cru was just right against the richness of this dish.

The night couldn’t not end on a sweet note… Ruppertsberger Reiterpfad 2004 Scheurebe Auslese.

I knew Ryan would have a lot of great stuff in store for us: we’ve met professionally and socially a number of times and he’s an awesome guy, with a great palate (and a ton of experience in this business). He has all the usual suspects on his lists (think big Napa Cab and oaky California Chardonnay) but he also has a ton of wines that really thrill me, like the Henri Milan above, and even a 2002 Gravner white, which he sells for a great price. He’s the perfect balance of someone who is trying to do well by his family and get ahead in life but never forgetting what’s great about real wine, all the while turning his staff and anyone else willing to listen on to this groovy stuff…

My only regret? I wish we would have made it down earlier to do the tour of the Space Center! Next time…

Buon weekend, ya’ll…

Power of the press blog: Chianti producers vote not to allow Super Tuscans at tasting

Posted on by

Above: the architects of Italian unification (1861). To the far left, Count Camillo Cavour, Italy’s first prime minister, a winemaker (Piedmont). In the center, unified Italy’s first king, Vittorio Emanuele II, a winemaker (Piedmont). To the far right, Baron Betting Ricasoli, Italy’s second prime minister, a land owner and winemaker in Chianti Classico, and the father of modern winemaking in Tuscany. Ricasoli’s estate Brolio and Vittorio Emanuele’s Fontanafredda still produce commercial wine today.

Would the founding fathers of Italy believed it if you were to tell them that a blog helped save Chianti Classico?

Today, Italy’s top wine blogger, Mr. Franco Ziliani, and I posted the following news story on VinoWire, our English-language blog devoted to the world of Italian wine: “Chianti Classico producers decide not to allow Super Tuscans at debut tasting.”

What we didn’t write was that Mr. Ziliani’s previously posted editorial, in which he harshly criticized the body for its inclusion of Super Tuscans in its annual new vintage preview, was cited by numerous members in the debate that preceded the decision (whereby the body’s president announced he was retracted the option).

It’s not the first time that Mr. Ziliani — a true flagellum principum — has helped to protect and promote traditional winemaking in Italy through his blog. Chapeau bas, Franco!

The pen is… scratch that… The pen blog is mightier than the sword!

Some of my best friends are Merlot (the Cocacolonization of Chianti Classico)

Posted on by

Above: Ornellaia’s Masseto vineyard in Bolgheri, Tuscany is arguably Italy’s most famous expression of Merlot.

I don’t have anything against Merlot. In fact, some of my best friends are Merlot.

As a matter of fact, on my recent trip to Friuli, I had a bona fide Merlot revelation after tasting some truly fantastic bottlings of Merlot from Radikon, Edi Keber, and Ronco del Gnemiz. (BTW, I have a backlog of Friuli posts but am hoping to get to them soon.)

But when I read that the Chianti Classico producers association is going to allow member wineries to present IGT (read “Super Tuscan”) bottlings at their annual vintage debut show in February next year, I thought I was going to heave… The nausea only grew when I learned that it would only cost the producers an extra Euro 50 per bottle of Merlot or Cabernet they present.

Italy’s top wine blogger Mr. Franco Ziliani first reported the news on his blog and we posted about it today in English at VinoWire.

At the end of a decade of Italian wine marked by the high-profile Montalcino controversy and the less-talked-about but equally significant Tuscan blending scandal, the Cocacolonization of the Italian wine industry seemed to have shifted gears, leaning more toward Bethlehem than Babylon. Unfortunately, the organizers of this landmark event have once again decided to defile the Temple.

The Chianti Classico producers association represents Italy’s most recognizable wine brand and one of its greatest historic appellations. This aberration and contamination of the sanctity of Chianti Classico’s most important yearly event is — in my mind and on my palate — a hegemonical tragedy of Gramscian proportions.

Get this woman some unyeasted, unmaloed Falanghina STAT!

Posted on by

The other day, when I was having lunch with BrooklynGuy in Brooklyn (of all places), we chatted about my life Texana and the wonderful “humanity” I’ve found here, even in places coastal dwellers wouldn’t expect in this mostly red state. At a certain point, he stopped me, looked me in the eye, and asked with a smile: “you’ve really fallen for Texas, haven’t you?”

Anyone who follows my blog knows that I love my wife dearly, I love my life Texana, I love my Texan family (from cousins Joanne and Marty to Mrs. and Rev. B) and I love Texas. But Texas has a problem.

Texas does not allow out-of-state retailers to ship to Texas. Technically, it has to allow them to ship here. But the big wine distributors’s shime-waza on the Texas legislature has allowed them to create a logistical obstacle, making it virtually impossible for out-of-state retailers to ship here (I’ve written about it, with documentation, here).

As a result I cannot get my beautiful wife (above) the unyeasted, unmaloed Falanghina that her heart calls out for. Please read her most recent post where she plaintively writes:

    So here we are back in Texas, and my heart calls out for the real thing. My DoBianchi brought home a shiny white ball of Mozzarella di Bufala and a bottle of Cantine del Taburno Falanghina, but, alas, I am still searching for an unoaked/unmalo-ed/non-acidified yet certified stateside version. I won’t give up. I can survive on the fumes of my memories just a little longer.

Get this woman some unyeasted, unmaloed Falanghina STAT!

In other news…

Yesterday, we officially launched a new project I’ve been working on, also close to my heart, a blog I’m writing for Houston restaurateur Tony Vallone.

We’ve been working on it for a month and I’ve really come to look forward and cherish our weekly hour-long chats where we talk about a day in the life of an Italian restaurateur in America. Check it out. I think you’ll enjoy it as much as I do.

Buona lettura, ya’ll!

Frito pie, impossible wine pairing?!?

Posted on by

chili frito pie

Above: The other night an excellent Frito Pie prompted me and my dining companions to contemplate the moisture retention quotient of the humble Frito, which, I learn via the Wiki, originated in San Antonio, Texas (where else?).

I think I might have Dr. V stumped. Chips and salsa may be tough, but Frito Pie?

If you’ve never had Frito Pie, it’s essentially a heap of Fritos drowning in Texas chili and then topped with cheese and sour cream.

I had never had Frito Pie before moving to the south. Since my life Texana began nearly 3 years ago, I eat Frito Pie — a true Texan delicacy — whenever afforded the opportunity.

The other day outside of Houston, Cousin Marty and I had what we both agreed was the BEST FRITO PIE EVER.

What did our sommelier pair with it?

As BrooklynGuy occasionally asks of his readers, you be the sommelier!

Please add your recommendations in the comment thread and I’ll provide the answer (it was brilliant, btw) on Friday along with a story about the amazing place where we were served the pie above…

Raise a glass for Luigi Veronelli

Posted on by

Above: I furtively managed to make a scan of Veronelli’s autograph when I visited the Terlato Wines International Tangley Oaks mansion earlier this year.

Luigi Veronelli, “intellectual, writer, liberatarian, literally the inventor of wine journalism in Italy,” wrote Italy’s top wine blogger Mr. Franco Ziliani this morning on his new blog Le Millle Bolle, raising a glass of traditional method sparkling wine to remember the architect of the Italian food and wine renaissance on the sixth anniversary of his passing.

Regrettably, very little of Veronelli’s writing has been translated into English (aside from what I’ve translated on my blog, where he appears often).

It’s difficult for the solely Anglophone lovers of Italian food and wine to gauge the reach and scope of Veronelli’s legacy (would Eataly have been possible — even conceivable — without him?).

Check out this amazing video, from 1975, when Veronelli was 49 years old and had yet to publish his landmark catalog of the wines of Italy (1983). It was posted in the comment thread of Mr. Ziliani’s post by the brilliant Giovanni Arcari, one of my favorite Italian winemakers and a good friend (look for Giovanni in the Franciacorta pavilion at Vinitaly this year and he will BLOW YOUR minds with the wines he makes and pours).

In it, he demonstrates how to make spaghetti alla chitarra. Italian is not required for viewing but the Pasolinian implications of the subtle dialectal inflections will not be lost on the Italophones among us.

Please join Tracie P and me in raising a glass tonight to this truly epic hero and sine qua non of contemporary Italian food and wine.

Lady kisser Pelaverga aphrodisiacal wine for an East Texas Thanksgiving

Posted on by

We had a great Thanksgiving yesterday in Orange, Texas with Branch and Johnson and now Parzen families. Mrs. B’s roast turkey; smoked turkey; spiral sliced ham with pineapple, brown sugar, and Coke; Uncle Tim’s cornbread dressing; Memaw’s deviled eggs; sweet potato pie, mashed potatoes; eight-layer salad; Tracie P’s shaved Brussels sprouts salad; pecan torte; and lots more. I wanted to share this story about my favorite wine pairing for this year, Pelaverga by Castello di Verduno, and the somewhat saucy story behind the name. For those with PG13+ status, read on…

The year was 2006 and I was working in New York as the media director for a high-profile Italian restaurant group that also happened to be a direct importer of Italian wines. Earlier that year, I had made the annual trek with my colleagues to the Italian wine fairs, where we met and tasted with a young winemaker at the natural wine fair, Vini Veri: Mario Andrion of Castello di Verduno, producer of awesome Barolo and Barbaresco and a then relatively obscure grape called Pelaverga. I’ve always loved Mario’s traditional-style wines (like his excellent Barbaresco) but all of my colleagues and I agreed that his Pelaverga Basadone was one of the most original wines we’d tasted that year: light in body, bright with acidity, and rich with fresh red fruit flavors, complemented by a gentle “white pepper” note. Later that year, a prominent colleague asked me what my Thanksgiving pick was and I whispered, Pelaverga, the perfect wine to go with wide variety of foods we eat for the holiday, from roast turkey to cranberry sauce.

Don’t ask me how but this vital piece of information was somehow whispered into the ear of the then New York Times restaurant editor Frank Bruni (remember him?). The rest is history: when he picked this wine as his top choice for Thanksgiving 2006, it made Mario’s Pelaverga a household word (at least in Manhattan).

And it’s a highly interesting word at that! No one knows the true origin of the grape name but on face value it means branch scraper, from the Italian pelare (to peel) and verga (branch). Most believe the name has to do with vine training techniques that were used to cultivate this rustic grape.

Of course, verga (and those of you who speak Spanish will immediately see the linguistic kinship) can also denote the… ahem… the male sex. Back in Verduno (Piedmont), the locals say this spicy grape has aphrodisiacal properties and that’s why Castello di Verduno calls it Basadone, the baciadonne or lady kisser.

Tracie P and I hope you had a great holiday! Thanks for reading!

The one I love loves mozzarella

Posted on by

Some women want diamonds and jewelry, others covet big cars and houses, others yet seek power and fame…

And then, there is the woman I love… and she loves mozzarella…

And not just any old mozzarella. I’m taking about buffalo’s milk mozzarella shipped in from Campania… the real deal…

Last night, I surprised Tracie P with some good Campanian mozzarella from one of our local cheese mongers.

To watch her enjoy it with a glass of Falanghina was to fall in love all over again. She ate the whole thing!

Looking in her eyes, I remembered what Petrarch said to Laura: tu sola mi piaci… You alone please me…

She’s been blogging again, delivering a wonderful series of posts about the wines of Campania, btw.

Tracie P and I have had an amazing year, personally and professionally, and we have so much to be thankful for… so much, so much more than I could ever imagine or hope for, to be thankful for…

We’re heading out shortly for our family Thanksgiving but I just wanted to thank everyone for keeping up with the blog and to wish ya’ll a happy, happy Thanksgiving.

We’ll see you in a few days…

New York Stories 7: Beaujolais with Eric the Red

Posted on by

The final installment from my “dates with the City”…

Another highlight of my New York sojourn was my obligatory pilgrimage to The Ten Bells, my favorite wine bar in the U.S., where even the grouchiest among the grouchy wine bloggers would approve of owner Fifi’s selection of Natural Wines by the glass.

The weather had turned cold(er) and as Eric the Red noted on the Twitter, “at The Ten Bells. No place better on a chilly night, or any other.”

(You may remember how Eric got his name “the red” back in August 2008.)

Partly mocking the Beaujolais Nouveau marketing scam here in the U.S. and mostly celebrating how fantastic Beaujolais can be, for the last two years, Fifi has run a cru Beaujolais by-the-glass program concurrently with the advent of the consumerist collusion concocted by Georges Duboeuf in the 1970s. (Tracie P and I actually made the tail end of the festival last year.)

This year he offered 19 cru Beaujolais.

Eric and I tasted the Fleurie 09 Dubost Sans Souffre and the Morgon Descombes 07. Brilliantly savory and delicious…

Topics of conversations were wide and varied but I was thrilled to get a preview of Eric’s new book, “a manifesto and memoir,” in which he will dispel the notion that intellectualism is required to understand and enjoy wine. I’ll drink to that!

Talking about Eataly and the arc of the Italian food and wine renaissance, we remembered his 1993 review of Mario Batali’s Po on Cornelia St.

It took a little digging but I found it in the paper of record’s archive here.

“It turns out that the name Po refers neither to the Italian river nor to the Italian word for ‘little bit,’ but derives from a Polaroid photo taken of the site by a friend of the co-owners, Mario Batali and Steve Crane. The name, with its happy Italian resonances, stuck. The restaurant will, too.”

Mario’s father, said Eric, credits him with discovering the clogged one.

I had visited Eataly earlier in the day: how amazing to reflect on Batali’s legacy (like it or not) since 1993!

And I’d have to say that Eric the Red has done pretty well himself since then… Check out his article in today’s paper on tasting 2005 Barbaresco with Levi…

New York Stories 6: lunch with Antonio Galloni at Marea

Posted on by

Above: The cuttlefish crudo at Marea.

There are many in our field who claim to be the world’s greatest experts on Italian wine. You certainly don’t need me to tell you who they are: they have publicists for that!

To my mind, Antonio Galloni is the greatest English-language authority on Italian wine in the U.S. today.

That’s not to say that there aren’t plenty of others important writers to whom we need to listen. But the clarity and purpose of Antonio’s voice and the aequitas of his approach make him stand out among the field of the merely so-called as well as the bona fide Italian wine experts.

Above: Sommelier Francesco Grosso’s list features a lot of the usual suspects (and you don’t need to tell you who they are) but it also includes many gems for the Italian wine geeks among us, like this Blanc de Morgex et La Salle by Pavese.

Antonio was leaving the next day for Italy and the list of producers he is visiting… well, it would make you drool, too.

I cannot conceal that I was thrilled to get to meet him and to talk shop. We discussed Bartolo Mascarello, Beppe Rinaldi, Gianfranco Soldera, Angelo Gaja, and many others, and his insights are always fascinating to me (whether delivered via the Wine Advocate these days or a voce, in this case).

I followed his excellent newsletter Piedmont Report since its early days in 2004 (the original Italian wine blogger ante litteram?) and I think his knowledge and experience in Piedmont in particular are remarkable. His vintage notes are especially vital to our field.

“Every element of traditional winemaking in Barolo is present in Beppe Rinaldi,” he said making reference to the winemaker he goes back to every year and one of his favorites. This was just one of the gems that I took away with me that day. Man, I’d love to taste those wines with him.

Above: The spaghetti were excellent, although the crab and sea urchin sauce was a little too spicy.

I learned that his parents owned a wine store in Florida when he was growing up. I discovered that he’s a jazzer (studied at Berkeley) and a opera tenor (studied in Milan).

But the coolest thing was to learn that this dude, however revered and feared he is by nearly every Italian winemaker and wine publicist in the world today, is a really mellow guy who just digs Italy, Italian wine, and Italian food.

It can’t be easy to work with and for “Bob Parker” and to manage all the pressure and scrutiny that come along with the gig. But somehow Antonio seems to never have lost site of his original mission. He just loves Italian wine. (He speaks Italian with native speaker proficiency, btw.)

The power of the wine press may be excessive at times. But thank goodness that there are folks like him who somehow (miraculously, really) manage to balance the yin and the yang of it all.

Whether tasting with Gaja (yin?) or Rinaldi (yang?), Antonio put it best: “I’ll just never get tired of traveling to Italy,” he said, “and tasting wine and eating great food.”

Ubi major, minor cessat.