Category Archives: de vino

Yeaster me, yeaster you, yeaster day

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Above: In some parts of the world, the “yeasting” of wines is common practice and is considered a genuinely positive aspect of human intervention, as evidenced in this post by Vinogirl. I don’t know much about Vinogirl but I love reading her blog and her posts about harvest in Napa are wonderful.

Ever the Solomon of wine bloggers, Eric posted Friday on the sometimes “strident” tones tossed about in the debate over natural wine and its definition.

I greatly appreciated Eric’s observation:

    I think that too much effort is spent coming up with a precise definition. Making wines “naturally,’’ after all, does not mean the wines are any good. All things considered, I prefer wine that would fit a rough definition of natural. But I don’t think the dividing line between natural and — what, unnatural? — is always that clear. Certainly, it is not if you are trying to characterize a winemaker.

Above: I tasted with Produttori del Barbaresco winemaker Aldo Vacca this year at Vinitaly. He is one of the most earnest and forthright winemakers I’ve ever met and I love his wines.

It does seem that the one thing that all natural wine lovers — from enthusiast to dogmatist — agree on is that “ambient” or “native” yeasts (i.e., naturally occurring yeasts) are a key if not the key element necessary to be allowed into the natural wine pantheon.

The delicate issue of yeast was illustrated Eric’s account of winemaker Roumier who “tries to make wine as naturally as he can, but he told a story once of having a batch of wine that had gotten stuck in mid-fermentation. The only way he could get it going again was to add yeast, a cardinal sin among many natural wine devotees.”

It made me think of what Produttori del Barbaresco winemaker Aldo Vacca recently told me when I called him to transact some other business but couldn’t resist asking him about the practice of “yeasting” at the winery.

“In a great vintage, we do not add yeast,” he said, “because the fermentation does not need any help. But in many vintages, we use a yeast called ‘Barolo strain’ that was developed based on yeasts that occur naturally in our terroir.”

According to the results of a quick Google search, the Barolo strain was “selected from 4 year study by University of Torino from over 600 isolates taken from 31 wineries of the Barolo region. The selection goal was to find a dominant natural yeast from Nebbiolo that is able to retain and enhance color.”

I never have and never would call Produttori del Barbaresco a “natural wine,” even though I believe the style of the wine jives with the wines of producers who subscribe to the natural wine movement. And I wonder if any of those winemakers have ever used a cultured yeast in a challenging vintage (like Roumier).

Throughout the debate, many have asked rhetorically, would the coinage of an expression other than natural wine offer an umbrella for those wines that aspire to the ideals of natural winemaking but don’t quite achieve its sanctity?

Founder Teobaldo Cappellano dubbed the Italian natural wine movement Vini Veri or Real Wines and added the epigram, wines as natural intended them.

Perhaps we should call these wines “humanist” wines. After all, all wine is made by humankind for consumption by humankind. In the end, I find that the wines I like the best are the ones that take into account not nature but rather “human scale,” as Guilhaume Gerard put it (in his remarks at the Symposium).

We can discuss natural wines and their definition until we’re blue in the face, but in the end, we are human — all too human.

Forget natural wine: the Texas weather will put the fear of G-d in you. I snapped this photo yesterday as Tracie B and I were strolling across the Colorado River. Click the photo for the full-sized image.

Super Texans: tasting Texas with the Austin Dream Team

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Above: The Austin Dream Team. From left, Craig Collins (Central Texas Sales Manager for Prestige Cellars), Devon Broglie (Southwest Regional Wine Buyer for Whole Foods Markets, which was founded in Austin), and June Rodil (recently crowned “best sommelier in Texas,” sommelier at Uchi in Austin, a world-class and cutting-edge Japanese restaurant in land-locked central Texas).

This was no run-of-the-mill focus group. It was an Austin Texas USA dream-team of young sommeliers gathered by the PR firm that reps the Texas Department of Agriculture to taste some Texan wines blind.

Folks in Texas are serious about their wine (Texans love to drink locally) and when it comes to marketing of local products, they don’t kid around: these top young somms had been asked to give their honest no-holds-barred opinions of the wines (each flight included a ringer, not from Texas) to help gauge which wines to present to food and wine writers and pundits etc.

Frankly, I haven’t taken Texan wines very seriously since I moved here nearly 10 months ago but — as Franco rightly reminds me — rules are rules: when you taste blind and you taste something you like, you have to admit it (even when you weren’t expecting to like it) and frankly, I tasted more than one wine I liked in yesterday’s degustation.

And there was another surprise as well.

I had never heard the term Super Texan before and when I wondered out loud why so many Texan wineries are Italophilic as opposed to Francophilic (like their Californian counterparts), one of the more interesting theories was proposed by June, who noted that Texas is a predominantly Republican state and has a historic distaste for Francomania.

Above: Also in attendance was wine writer David Furer who came to town especially for the tasting and who was lucky enough to taste Tracie B’s farro salad the other day at our impromptu Labor Day picnic.

In the first flight of red, we tasted a number of wines made with Sangiovese (monovarietal or blended) and varietal expression was clearly evident. The wine that impressed me the most was the Llano Estate Newsome Vineyards High Plains Viviano, a “Super Texan” blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese. The wine was real, it was elegant, it had natural acidity, honest fruit, and genuine freshness (although I’m not sure I would reach for it at $40 a bottle).

In the same flight, however, was a wine that the panel didn’t seem to like because of a green, herbaceous quality. When asked my opinion (and frankly, I was out-classed by these top somms in their superior ability to taste and describe blind, ubi major minor cessat), I asked the other participants “to cut it some slack,” as it was also one of my favorites in the flight. Anyone who knows me wouldn’t be surprised at the laughter in the room (Devon and Craig and I have tasted a bunch of times together) when it was revealed that my ugly duckling was Italian.

But to my great surprise, it was a wine that I never would have thought I’d like, 2006 Chianti Classico by Badia a Coltibuono, a high-volume winery that has enjoyed wide success in the U.S. thanks to aggressive, intelligent marketing. According to the website, 170,000 bottles of this wine are produced every year, but, frankly, I could really taste place in this wine: it had that characteristic Sangiovese plum note and I liked its food-friendly herbaceousness. For $25, I like it. There you go: rules are rules and there’s a lot to be said for tasting locally.

In other news, another taste of Texas…

Tracie B snapped this slice of Texan life last night outside the Broken Spoke where I played a gig. I gotta say that I love living in Austin… not that the lovely Tracie B has anything to do with it… ;-)

Italy: Birth of a Wine Nation

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From the “a Ph.D. has got to be good for something, doesn’t it?” department…

Jeremy Parzen

I am thrilled to announce that I’ll be teaching a six-part seminar on Italian wine starting a month from today, every Tuesday at 7 p.m., at The Austin Wine Merchant. The title of series, “Italy: Birth of a Wine Nation,” was inspired by the vision of Italy’s first two prime ministers, Camillo Cavour and Bettino Ricasoli, both winemakers in their own right. As Italian independence and the Italian monarchy began to take shape in the second half of the nineteenth century, Cavour (in Piedmont) and Ricasoli (in Tuscany) envisioned the production of fine wine as a loadstone of the nascent Italian economy, identity, and nation. If only they were alive today to experience the renaissance of Italian wine!

Please join me in October and November for one or more of my classes and tastings (6 wines will be tasted during each session in one-ounce pours). Participants may reserve for individual or multiple sessions.

ITALY: BIRTH OF A WINE NATION

A 6-class series on Italian wine, past, present, and future with Jeremy Parzen, Ph.D.

Tuesdays in October and early November, staring at 7 p.m.

The Austin Wine Merchant
512 W 6th St.
Austin, TX 78701-2806

To reserve, please call: (512) 499-0512.

Italian Wine 101 — October 6 — $25

Introduction to Italian wines, an overview of Italy’s most important grapes and major wine production zones, and the secret to unlocking the mysteries of Italian wine labels. Taste 6 wines from 6 different regions.

Jeremy Parzen

Tuscany — October 13 — $37.50

Learn what makes Super Tuscans so super (you might be surprised at the answer), experience Italy’s quintessential red grape Sangiovese in its greatest expressions (modern and traditional). Taste six wines including Brunello di Montalcino and Chianti Classico.

The “Other” Piedmont — October 20 — $25

This is the Piedmont your mother didn’t tell you about: Moscato d’Asti, Gavi, Freisa, Dolcetto, Barbera, and “outer borough” Nebbiolo. Taste 6 wines that the Piedmontese produce and drink regularly.

Jeremy Parzen

Piedmont’s De Facto Cru System — October 27 — $37.50
(recommended for wine professionals and collectors)

Learn the difference between the east and west sides of the Barolo to Alba road and explore the nuanced distinctions between Tortonian and Helvetian subsoils. Debunk the feminine vs. masculine myth in the Barbaresco and Barolo debate. Taste 6 noble expressions of Nebbiolo.

Jeremy Parzen

The Enigmatic Wines of the Veneto — November 3 — $37.50

Unlock the mysteries of Valpolicella, Amarone, and Recioto della Valpolicella, taste one of Italy’s most ancient noble wines, Soave, and learn why Venetians love their Prosecco so much. When in Venice: taste 6 ombre as the Venetians say!

Jeremy Parzen

Italian Wine and Civilization — November 10 — $25

Read 6 passages from Italian literature and history and taste 6 related wine selections. Readings include Dante, Machiavelli, Vice Admiral Horatio Lord Nelson, Camillo Cavour (above, far left, 19th-century Piedmontese winemaker and Italy’s first prime minister), and Bettino “Iron Baron” Ricasoli (above, far right, 19th-century Tuscan winemaker and Italy’s second prime minister).

To reserve, please call: (512) 499-0512

Celebratory 2001 Pora and Walter Benjamin: reunited with my library

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“Unpacking My Library” is the title of one of Walter Benjamin’s most famous essays. On the surface, it is an entertaining essay about a harmless self-indulgence of one of Europe’s leading literary minds between the two world wars. But the underlying text is a study of the nature of book collecting and how our understanding of literature and culture is shaped through the very medium by which they are transmitted to us. Ecce textual bibliography and the study of how the medium (the signifier) affects the meaning (the signified).

Walter Benjamin famously “fished for pearls” in his legendary library. The depression that he suffered when he fled from the Nazis and was separated from his precious books is as tragic as his senseless death by suicide on the Spanish-French border in 1940 — a day away from freedom.

I’m no Walter Benjamin (by no means) and I am blessed to live in a time and place of relative prosperity and stability and freedom of thought and speech.

Yesterday, after two years of separation, Tracie B and I began unpacking my library after it arrived from my storage space in Manhattan here in my new home, Austin, Texas.

I cannot tell you my joy at being reunited with my Petrarchs, my Pasolinis, my Benjamins, my dictionaries (my Goldoni dictionary edited by Gianfranco Folena! my Cortelazzo etymologic dictionary!), and my countless tomes on food and wine.

There is so much information available today on the internet and the Google Library project is a promising if controversial initiative. But… books, books! Nothing can take the place of these glorious little information-delivery machines!

And the dulcis in fundo was a little sedicesimo of poems and songs on wine written in Neapolitan dialect. My lovely Tracie B curled up on the couch as I continued to unpack and read me sweet rhymes on wine with her soothing Neapolitan cadence. Today, she shared some of our Sunday afternoon with a translation of one of the poems on her blog.

To celebrate last night, we ordered pizza (please don’t tell Franco, but we were beat after a day of unpacking!) and drank a bottle of 2001 Barbaresco Pora by Produttori del Barbaresco (I picked it up for a song in a closeout sale here in Austin). The wine was rich and almost Barolo-like in its power, unusual for Pora which is generally softer and rounder among the Produttori del Barbaresco crus. The 2001 — a great vintage for this wine — is closing up right now and I’m putting my two remaining bottles away, to be revisited in a few years and maybe more.

Pondering my copy of Benjamin’s Reflections which now lives happily again on my desk, I couldn’t help but think of Pora and Barbaresco as a terroir and a text, a text delivered to our palates via the medium of Nebbiolo.

Tonight, I won’t bore Tracie B with my collection of essays on the history of punctuation or my introduction to old Occitan. She’s promised to make me something out of the cookbook by nineteenth-century Neapolitan noble Ippolito Cavalcanti! :-) Something having to do with escarole, eggs, and Parmigiano Reggiano… mmmmmmmm…

Happy Labor Day, y’all!

Vintage anti-Berlusconi propaganda and other relics

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Above, from left clockwise: “I have to stay outside,” “You’re poor? It’s YOUR damn problem,” “We are voting for Berlusconi” (they’re dressed as Freemasons), and “this car has been de-Berlusconi-ized” (a play on denuclearized). These stickers were printed by Cuore (a magazine supplement to the leftist daily L’Unità) in the early 1990s during Berlusconi’s first campaign to become Prime Minister.

When I first traveled to Italy in 1987 for my junior year abroad as part of the University of California and Università di Padova exchange program, Italy and the outlook of Italians seemed much different than it does today. When I attended my first academic year there (and there would many years to follow, later at the Scuola Normal Superiore in Pisa, study at the Vatican Library, three summers in the Dolomite Alps where I earned my keep playing cover tunes, and summers in Montalcino where I first began to appreciate wine), the Italian Socialist Party still dominated Italian politics. In spite of the inconveniences posed by the legendarily lethargic Italian bureaucracy, health care was free for all (that first year, I badly sprained my ankle playing basketball and was amazed when I wasn’t even presented a bill at the emergency room) and a year’s tuition at the university cost roughly 300,000 lire, about $250 at the time (in 1989 I returned to Italy and re-enrolled at the Università di Padova).

Above: My junior year dorm room at Monte Cengio where I roomed with Steve Muench. We’re still close friends today (scroll to the bottom of this post).

That was before the Mani pulite investigation and the subsequent Tangentopoli scandal that brought the Socialists to their knees. And it was before the rise of Italy’s richest man Silvio Berlusconi as the most powerful politician to emerge in post-war Italy. Berlusconi famously told journalist and historian Enzo Biagi (think of him as our Walter Cronkite) that he entered politics because existing laws did not allow him to make even more money. If the law doesn’t allow me to grow richer, he decided one day, I’ll just rewrite the law.

Today in Italy, vigilante posses comb the streets at night harassing immigrants; doctors have been asked to report illegal immigrants (extra-communitarians, as they are called) to authorities when they request medical care; there have been cases where emergency health workers have allowed immigrants to die at the scene of accidents by delaying medical attention; Berlusconi’s agricultural minister has asked Italians to boycott Chinese restaurants; and Lucca has outlawed “ethnic” food in its center… The list goes on and on.

It’s a different Italy than the one first encountered by a bright-eyed U.C.L.A. junior who had a knack for languages in 1987.

Above: The last summer I played at the Birreria di Pedavena, my band and I stayed in the mountain pass village of Croce d’Aune.

I recently found the stickers and the photos in a shoebox that arrived last week in Austin from a storage space in Manhattan. They brought back memories of a time when the outlook of most Italians I knew didn’t seem rosy but was certainly instilled with a resilient humanitarian and humanist spirit. That attitude endures among most of the Italians I know but a dark cultural hegemony has taken hold there in the Berlusconi age.

Yesterday, an article in The New York Times reported how Berlusconi forced the resignation of the editor of the Italian Bishops’s Conference daily newspaper. He did so by publishing front page features in his own newspaper detailing the editor’s rumored sexual preferences. He did so because the editor had written an editorial about Berlusconi’s widely publicized (and in many instance self-propagandized) lasciviousness.

What’s this world coming to?

In other news, Agnelli heir and playboy Lapo Elkann has publicly announced that he is converting to Judaism.

What IS this world coming to?

Boccaccio’s tale of the conversion of Abraham comes to mind…

More grape porn triple x

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This just in… Chardonnay from Salento, Apulia. For a while, I repped my friend Paolo Cantele’s wines here in Texas. I’m a big fan of his Salice Salentino and his Rosato is one of my favorite rosés from Italy this year. I’ve always found that Negroamaro is one of the best grapes for rosé.

You can see Paolo’s entire photo stream here and man, are those some sexy Chardonnay grapes or what! I can almost hear my mother knocking on the bathroom door and saying, “what have you been doing in there so long?”

You may remember a post I did about Negro Amaro and a possibile answer to the riddle of its name. Paolo subscribes to the theory that amaro is not Italian but rather a corruption of the Greek mavros meaning black (see the post for the background on the debate).

It recently occurred to me, however, that the commonly accepted explanation for the name of the Greek red grape Xinomavro is that it means acid black or bitter black from the Greek oxy (sharp, keen, acute, pungent, acid) and mavros (black). Could this be a clue that the origin of Negro Amaro’s name is indeed black bitter?

I don’t have time to get to the bottom of this today but rest assured, I will!

Grape porn from around the world (harvest has begun)

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Come on, just admit it… We ALL like to look at a little grape porn now and then, don’t we? Even Alder likes him some grape porn.

It’s that time of year again and bloggers have been posting photos of the harvest as it progresses.

My favorite grape porn photo so far is the one above by Wayne over in Friuli.

In Montalcino they began harvesting Moscadello di Montalcino last week and this week they began to pick the Merlot. The Merlot comes in earlier than the Sangiovese. Alessandro posted the photo above: he and his father use the Merlot to make their Super Tuscan Mazzoni. (See, it’s okay to like Merlot, as long as you label it correctly.) So far, so good: it’s looking like a good harvest in Montalcino.

Over in Napa, Vinogirl author of Vinsanity posted this image of Pinot Gris — yes, the red grape that we’ve been taught to think of us a white grape. (Vinogirl has also been coming up with some sassy titles for her posts.)

From the Greek pornos (prostitute) + graph (writer), pornograph means literally someone who describes or writes about prostitutes.

I would hardly call those little berries prostitutes but they sure can be sexy and I’m not sure why, by they do inspire mimetic desire in me (mimesis means imitation in Greek).

For some vintage grape porn, like the image to the left, check out these beautiful plates from Giorgio Gallesio’s Pomona italiana (completed in 1839).

*****

Didn’t George Harrrison write a song called “I, Mimesis, Mine”? Here’s Elliot Smith’s version.

The (de)criminalization of alcohol in Italy

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Above: Italy’s agricultural minister Luca Zaia is widely recognized as having an ego the size of the world’s largest panettone. Note the signature green pocket square (a nod to his separatist, xenophobic Northern League party) and his black tie (I’ll leave the semiotic analysis to the reader but fascism is always in the eye of the beholder).

“Incredible but true: I am in agreement with Zaia!” This was the title of a Facebook note that Franco posted yesterday after the ever-patriotic (patriotic, that is, if you consider the Veneto a sovereign state) Italian agricultural minister was quoted in a magazine interview as saying that Italy’s new “zero-tolerance” drunk driving law is excessive. Currently, “0.2 grams per liter of blood” is the legal limit, making the consumption of even one glass of wine illegal if you get behind the wheel. In the interview, published in Italy’s leading consumer automotive magazine, Quattro Ruote, Zaia proposed that it should be raised to 0.5 grams so that drivers will be allowed to have 2 glasses of wine as long as the alcohol content of the wine does not exceed 11%, in other words, as minister Zaia put it, as long as drivers are not consuming “structured” wines. (In a subsequently posted FB note, Franco suggested that minister Zaia take a full-immersion sommelier course: “where,” asked Franco, throwing his hands in the virtual FB air, “does he find wines with 11% alcohol content?”)

Zaia should know something about drinking and driving: although you won’t find it in his ill-translated and prolix Wikipedia entry, the forty-something minister used to work as a nightclub bouncer, or so I have been told by someone who knows him well.

I’ve been known to indulge in some of my own Zaia bashing, but today I’ll leave it to the experts.

And not that it’s any of my business, but Zaia is right: the new legal limit, which went into effect earlier this year and has been rigorously enforced with myriad check points, has led to senseless arrests and steep fines for food and wine writers, like Andrea dal Cero who lost his license in May after attending a spumante presentation in Emilia-Romagna.

Above: Just days before the event was to be held, organizers of the Taurasi Wine Fair canceled the convention, citing recent legislation that makes it illegal to serve alcohol at public events in town squares.

Italy (like Europe in general) has been wrestling with its relationship with alcohol and in some cases, the results have been disastrous, like the recent cancellation of one of the most important wine festivals in southern Italy, the Taurasi Wine Fair. See this editorial posted at VinoWire by the author of Divino Scrivere, Luigi Metropoli.

I sure hope that Italian pols will look closely and carefully at current legislation and I’m glad that Zaia is taking this issue seriously. After all, can you imagine how many folks will lose their licenses as they roll out of Vinitaly next April? If you’ve ever been caught in the post-fair traffic of the trade show (where there are never any traffic police to guide traffic and avoid grid lock), you get the picture.

Folks in Sacramento know how to live well

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On my way back to ATX today following my annual pilgrimage to Sacramento, in the heart of California farmland and wine country. Folks out there sure know how to live well. Here are some quick highlights…

Darrell Corti graciously treated me to a quick lunch today at One Speed after our morning meeting and before I headed out to the airport. Seafood risotto and 14-year-old Australian Sémillion from his cellar. I had never had an Australian wine that I liked until Darrell first shared some of his gems with me. This wine had gorgeous fruit and a rich mouthfeel, 11% alcohol, and acidity that Darrell aptly described as “sprightly” (Tracie B would have called it “tongue-splitting”).

Produce in Sacramento is unbelievably good: marinated artichokes, braised fennel, and roast peppers at One Speed.

The night before, I was the dinner guest of Darrel’s delightful neighbors, Joe and Deb. Deb’s tomato bisque with panzanella salsa paired superbly with Darrel’s Bert Simon 2005 single-vineyard Riesling. Deb and Joe are both superb cooks. I guess you have to be if you live next to Darrell Corti! Joe and Deb were so gracious to have me over and they throw a fantastic dinner party… Joe, a lobbyist, told a great story about meeting Ted Kennedy and how he loved to talk baseball.

2007 Nebbiolo Martinenga by Marchesi di Gresy. 2007 is going to be such a killer vintage for traditional-style Nebbiolo. Like the 07 Produttori del Barbaresco, this wine shows some serious, brawny tannin. It went great with whole chickens that Joe stuffed with cheese (I believe goat’s milk) and then grilled whole. The breast was as moist as the thigh.

This morning I gave Darrell a hand organizing wines for a tasting at his legendary store Corti Brothers. Darrell is the reason why I come back to Sacramento every year… to peruse his wondrous cabinets…

It’s only been three days since I said goodbye to my lovely Tracie B. Feels like a lifetime but that ol’ Southwest Jetliner is carrying me back home where I belong tonight, not a minute too soon for this aching heart…

Scenes from California summer 09

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Posting hastily from LAX today…

Last night Jayne and Jon surprised me with this killer bottle of 1970 Château Grand Pontet last night at Jaynes to thank me for all the work I put into the San Diego Natural Wine Summit. I am no fan of tasting notes but I swear it tasted like Salt Lick bbq sauce! It was all tar and minerality, delicious.

Night before last David Schachter opened some fantastic 2000 Chablis Les Clos by René et Vincent Dauvvisat. It paired stunningly with mozzarella di bufala from Campania and tomatoes plucked from his tomato garden. Damn, I LOVE that wine.

On my way to San Diego yesterday, I stopped by the Squirrel Colony at the Las Flores View Point at Camp Pendleton and snapped this picture of another gorgeous day in squirrel paradise.

Heading to Sacramento today to catch up with Darrell Corti… Stay tuned…