That’s us yesterday in Castelnuovo. Photo by our good friend Federico. This area is one of the less-talked-about terroirs of Brunello. But more on tha t later.
Category Archives: de vino
01 and 03 Poggione
The 01 was stunning in its elegance. The 03 a unique expression of terroir, lip-smacking and powerful. I had never tasted the 03 riserva which is the first to be labeled “Paganelli.”
Tasting notes to come.
Images from Tuscany
Still can’t get online and so posting from the phone but here are some images. Our trip has been amazing so far and to share this (for the first time) with her is to fall in love with Tracie P all over again. :-)
Chestnut flour polenta last night in the home of the Bindocci family. What an amazing dinner and stimulating conversation!
Pici with tomato, sausage, and mushrooms
@ trattoria il pozzo in sant’angelo in colle (montalcino) last night. The star of an amazing menu. Pici or pinci are hand-rolled long noodles made using only flour and water. The magic lies in how they absorb the savory components of the sauce.
Gianni Brunelli 04 Brunello stunning acidity
Some might be turned off by the “unpolished” tannin of this wine but the gorgeous acidity, earth, and fruit blew me and tracie p away. So good. The pairing with pici with tomato, sausage, and mushrooms (acidity, fat, and earth) was unbelievably good.
The best airplane wine we’ve ever had…
G-d bless British Air… All Tracie P had to do was say that magic word, honeymoon, and the bottle miraculously appeared… :-)
One more leg…
Want an upgrade? Just say H-O-N-E-Y-M-O-O-N!
Photos from the wedding are beginning to trickle pour in. We haven’t been able to get online… too busy with other “pressing” matters… ;-) And so we’re having a blast finally viewing them, as we wait for our flight to Europe at JFK (please don’t forget to tag us on Facebook!). Thanks, Ben for the photo above!
Want an upgrade? Just say H-O-N-E-Y-M-O-O-N! Tracie P and me woke up to this view of Central Park this morning at Essex House. New York is winter gray but the whole world seems to appear in Technicolor right now. :-)
Nougatine at Jean Georges was just a hop, skip, and a jump away from our hotel and NYC Restaurant Week made the deal even sweeter (the fixed price lunch menu at Jean Georges is ALWAYS the best lunch deal in town, as my friend Scott Luetgenau well knows).
I couldn’t resist the Jean Georges cheese burger (!) topped with Russian dressing (the French fries sopped in Heinz!). Paired beautifully with Les Avaux 1er cru 2005 by Jadot (dig that wine!) by the glass.
Tracie P knows that one of my few dessert weaknesses is crème caramel… Soooooo goood… it’s got to have that consistency matched with delicacy to make it from A to A+…
We’re finally catching up online at Terminal 7 heading to Terminal 5 and then Fiumicino! OUR FIRST TRIP TO ITALY! WE ARE SO GEEKED.
Did someone say “upgrade”?
Words could never capture…
Time in a bottle of wine (congedo)
Thank you to everyone for all the kind wishes and thoughts, comments and messages. They mean so much to both of us. That’s us, above, right before we got our marriage license yesterday. I wish I could capture the way I feel right now in a bottle… like wine… the greatest vintage of my lifetime… It’s an amazing, wonderful feeling… Thank you to everyone who’s been following our adventure through the blog and beyond…
The weather in La Jolla has been great. Tracie B took this photo of the sunset with her Blackberry (standing in front of the building where mama Judy lives) as I went to pick up pizza for the 24 Texans who arrived yesterday for the festivities (and more are on their way)! We paired with Lini Lambrusco Rosé (Sorbara), btw, for the record.
In Italian prosody, the last stanza of canzone is called the congedo, the envoy, the goodbye…
I’ll be taking a break from blogging for a while. So, we’ll see you in a week or so. But I just wanted to thank everyone, one more time, for sharing in this adventure and all the kind thoughts and wishes. They mean so much to both of us.
*****
If I could save time in a bottle
The first thing that I’d like to do
Is to save every day
Till Eternity passes away
Just to spend them with you
If I could make days last forever
If words could make wishes come true
I’d save every day like a treasure and then
Again, I would spend them with you
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with
If I had a box just for wishes
And dreams that had never come true
The box would be empty
Except for the memory
Of how they were answered by you
But there never seems to be enough time
To do the things you want to do
Once you find them
I’ve looked around enough to know
That you’re the one I want to go
Through time with
Si parla l’italiano a San Diego
This morning, Tracie B and I arrived early for our appointment to get our marriage license in downtown San Diego and so we popped over to the newly revitalized Little Italy neighborhood of America’s Finest City for some breakfast. There was a group of men sitting — kibbitzing, you would say in Yiddish — outside Pete’s Quality Meats (above) and so we stopped and chatted with them in Italian. Their Sicilian faces were tan and furrowed from their years working on the San Diego tuna boats.
“Auguroni! figli maschi!” they called out as we said goodbye (“Best of wishes! May you have many male children!”).
It was wonderful to hear the sun-baked rhythms of their Sicilian cadence, a relic and a trace of the era in which they immigrated to the U.S. bringing theirs skills in tuna fishery (probably in the 1960s, gauging from their language).
Si parla l’italiano a San Diego…
In other news…
I think the Rueben has officially usurped the special place in my heart once reserved solely for the Jaynes Burger at Jaynes Gastropub, where a bunch of folks gathered last night to celebrate our upcoming wedding. It paired exceedingly well with the 2007 Dolcetto d’Alba by Cavallotto by the glass (one of me and Tracie B’s favorites).
My high-school friend and bff John Yelenosky and his wife Megan (both wine professionals) treated us to a bottle of 2000 Gaston Chiquet Champagne. Wow, I love that wine.
“I know how much you like Gaston Chiquet,” Megan teased me. “‘Cause I read your blog!” ;-) Sooooo gooood… and so sweet to drink in celebration! Thanks, Megan and John!
John is going to “stand up with me” at the wedding this weekend.
O, and, btw, the marriage license? CHECK! :-)
