It almost felt surreal.

As I drove past tasting rooms for some of the most famous California wineries, posh hotels, and randy restaurants I can’t afford, I made my way to an oasis of Italian wine that has just opened in one of the luxury epicenters of American wine country.

Ciao Bruto!, just recently opened by the Idlewild winery’s Thomas DeBiase, is Healdsburg first bona fide wine shop. Yes, it’s first!

As Thomas pointed out when I visited with him the other day, even though there are countless marquee tasting rooms in the town, there had never been genuine retail outfit there.

But what seemed even more surreal was that the newly stocked shelves are lined with Italian (and French) wines.

I don’t know about you but I had never seen anything like that in Sonoma or Napa Counties. Plenty of wine, yes. But almost exclusively Californian.

What’s even more exciting about Thomas’ new shop is that he is also importing all kinds of great food products from Europe as well.

I was traveling light but man, I had my eye on his selection of olive oil-cured tunas.

This blogger is not the only one exited by the prospect of being able to source European foods and wines in wine country.

Esther Mobley, who rarely writes about EU wine, has already penned a feature story about this literally ground-breaking operation for the Chronicle.

There are so many amazing new places opening right now in wine country. Ciao Bruto! (I love the name, btw) is just one of them.

I can’t wait to get back there with Tracie in August.

Next week I’ll be leading my “What’s So Sexy about Moscato d’Asti” seminar and tasting in Dallas at the legendary ZaZa hotel.

I’ll be joined by some of the top names in the appellation, including my friends Luigi Coppo and Stefano Chiarlo — two of the coolest guys in the biz.

They’ll also be joining us for lunch and pouring some of their families’ reds, including the Nizza La Court, a single-vineyard Barbera farmed on their famous La Court vineyard. That’s a shot from my visit to the estate in 2018 with Tracie and the girls. The site is also an open-air sculpture garden. It’s wonderful and we all loved our time up there.

Click here to register for the 11 a.m. event next Wednesday in Dallas. Have a great weekend and see you next week!

Please consider giving to Unicef’s Ukraine child refugee fund. This link takes you straight to the donation page.

Today’s post is the fourth in a series on my favorite places to eat in (my) Bra (Cuneo province, Piedmont) where I teach at the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences. The toponym Bra comes from the late Latin braida, meaning a suburban field for farming.

Italians’ obsession with American comfort foods has been one of the things that has puzzled me the most in the last ten years I’ve been traveling through Italy.

But I thought I’d seen it all when I stumbled upon a baked potato fast food shop in my Bra last month.

It’s called the Patateria (the Potato Shop) and it serves only patate in giachetta, literally potatoes in a jacket, the Italian rendering of loaded baked potato.

They even serve baked potatoes topped with my Bra’s famous raw veal sausage (more on that later in this series). I love baked potatoes and we make them every week at our house. But man, this was a bridge too far — even for this gastronaut.

My Bra seems to be a laboratory for new fast food and casual food concepts. Last year when I visited, a new hamburger place had opened. It’s called OX Burgers.

During my first academic year in Italy in 1987, the only fast food burger we could get was at the Burghy in the Florence trains station. Since that, and really in the last 10 years or so, amburgherie (hamburger restaurants) have popped up all over the country and it’s rare that beer gardens and pubs don’t offer a wide range of American comfort foods. I’ve even had jalapeño poppers in Italy (they weren’t very good.

That’s “bacon and eggs” at a writerly café in Milan a few years ago. Not an American in sight but plenty of people eating American breakfast food — for lunch.

As nonplussed as I am by their often misguided fascination with and delight over American comfort food, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed some of the dishes, in part because they are often made with highest-quality ingredients, especially when it comes to the ground beef (and ground pork and ground bacon are almost always blended into the mix in some combination). The same goes for the cured meats, like the ham, turkey, and bacon in the club.

The quality of the bread is also generally much better than in the U.S. Again, thanks to higher quality ingredients in my experience. That’s a club sandwich on Lake Iseo last year. It was fantastic. The Italians generally use homemade mayonnaise, as in this rendering of the American classic diner dish. It’s wonderful.

A glass of Franciacorta, anyone?

But Italian barbecue sauce made with genuine Italian tomatoes? No, this Texifornian couldn’t do it!

Please consider giving to Unicef’s Ukraine child refugee fund. This link takes you straight to the donation page.

Today’s post is the third in a series on my favorite places to eat in Bra (Cuneo province, Piedmont) during my seminars at the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences in (my) Bra. The toponym Bra comes from the late Latin braida, meaning a suburban field for farming.

It’s one of those things that Italian translators (like me) get peeved about: false cognate English translations of Italian diminutive suffixes.

Here’s a good example that illustrates how the confusion can happen.

The Italian word chierico means cleric and it’s used for priests, deacons, and bishops in the Catholic Church.

The word chierichetto is a diminutive of chierico by means of the diminutive suffix -etto. But it doesn’t mean little cleric. In Italian, it denotes an altar boy. The altar boys may be smaller than the clerics or they may be bigger. The point is that the diminutive suffix doesn’t necessarily make something little or bigger (as the case may be for the augmentative suffix). No, what’s important to note here is that yes, the diminutive suffix sometimes but not always refers to size. But more significantly (excuse the pun), it alters the meaning of the root word, sometimes with unexpected results for the learner of Italian language.

Brunello doesn’t mean little dark one. It means literally somewhat dark. Similarly, Dolcetto doesn’t mean little sweet one. It literally means somewhat sweet. (Btw, Franco Biondi-Santi once told me that while he couldn’t say for certain, he believed that Brunello got its name from a favorite family-owned horse.)

And something even more important is in play here. Dolcetto may mean literally somewhat sweet. But its meaning in this context is shaped by the value of the suffix in a way that has no parallel in English. In Italian it’s called the vezzeggiativo, a term of endearment.

In other words, Dolcetto really means a sweet grape that we are fond of. It’s a sweet little grape. Even for English speakers, it’s evident that sweet doesn’t refer to the sweetness of the grape but to our fondness of it.

The verb vezzeggiare (whence vezzeggiativo) means to fondle.

So it’s only natural that translators like me get upset when people say that the word risotto means little rice.

The suffix -otto generally has a disparaging, negative meaning. A casa is a house. A casotto is a shed (or figuratively, a big mess).

But in many cases, it’s also an expression of fondness. An orso is a bear. An orsacchiotto is a teddy bear.

A risotto isn’t a small, lesser rice. No, it’s a rice that’s been enriched with stock, seasonings, and cheese.

I had a fantastic risotto on my second day of teaching in Bra last month. The newly harvested spring asparagus was delicious and the rice (carnaroli, if I’m not mistaken) was cooked perfectly.

The restaurant on this day was the trattoria in my hotel, Badellino, where I always stay (in part because it’s the only place where the wifi is reliable). It’s more an old-school pensione than a hotel (not much services offered). But the owner Giacomo is friendly and the restaurant is solid.

I know people are freaking out right now that I paired a Barolo with asparagus. But in Italy, people are a lot more chill about shit like that.

I drank the wine throughout my meal and it was fine with the rice as well thanks to its acidity and rich flavor.

And holy shit, 2015 Barolo Paiagallo by Mirafiore? The wine was insanely good and only cost €40. Yes, I’ll say that again, FOR-TY EU-RO! That’s one of the things I love the most about my Bra: the approachable wine prices. That wine was a real treat. I drank about four glasses that night and saved the other two for the nights that followed. Brilliant. (Disclosure: I write and consult for the Mirafiore’s U.S. importer.)

Of course, the wine was the PERFECT pairing for the last dish, a slice of gorgonzola with a dollop of cognà on the side. Check out my notes on cognà here.

Thanks for reading and letting me share this meal with you!

Please consider giving to Unicef’s Ukraine child refugee fund. This link takes you straight to the donation page.

Today’s post is the second in a series on my favorite places to eat in Bra (Cuneo province, Piedmont) during my seminars at the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences in (my) Bra. The toponym Bra comes from the late Latin braida, meaning a suburban field for farming.

Early in my career in wine, trips to Piedmont revolved around press junkets and visits to high-profile wineries that my clients, generally importers, hired me to write about for their websites and promotional materials. Those visits and tastings were often followed by meals at marquee restaurants.

But my gig teaching at Slow Food U has given me the opportunity to break out on my own and with my friends to discover some of Piedmont’s lower profile but equally delicious dining destinations.

One of those restaurants is the SUPER old school Trattoria Gallinaccia in Bra.

I ate there alone on my first full day and night in town in May when I was there to for my food communications grad seminars.

In Piedmont, restaurants like these generally have the same traditional menu, from appetizer to dessert. You won’t find any creative cuisine or colorful interpretations of classic dishes. Gallinaccia is so traditional that they don’t even recommend adding grated Parmigiano Reggiano to their tajarin al ragù (below).

Although not my favorite, Gallinaccia is solid. The staff is friendly. And the interior evokes a between-the-wars ambiance.

I liked it a lot.

One of the coolest things is that the wine prices at places like this are ridiculously low for Americans. I ordered a bottle of Dolcetto because I always start my Piedmont stay with the region’s de rigueur gastronomic wine (a personal tradition of mine).

It wasn’t a night to go “big.” But had it been, I would have gone with the Giacomo Fenocchio 2015 Barolo Bussia for €52. Yes, just €52! Can you imagine what that bottle costs at a restaurant, let alone retail, in California or New York? You can’t even find Fenocchio, one of my all-time favorite Nebbiolo growers, in Texas.

The next night I went to a similarly old school place and did go big… and it was worth every penny. Stay tuned.

Please consider giving to Unicef’s Ukraine child refugee fund. This link takes you straight to the donation page.

Image via the Marenco winery Facebook. Marenco will be pouring its single-vineyard Moscato d’Asti for the guided tasting I’ll be leading on June 16 in Dallas. Their Albarossa will be served at the lunch following the seminar.

A few years ago, the Moscato d’Asti Consortium asked me to lead a seminar and tasting of top wines from the appellation here in Houston.

The resulting talk — “What’s so sexy about Moscato d’Asti?” — was so well received that they asked me to give the same presentation earlier this year for another group of Houston wine professionals.

On Thursday, June 16, I’ll be giving the same talk at the legendary Hotel ZaZa in Dallas.

Click here to register for the 11 a.m. event.

Did you know that Moscato d’Asti is one of the world’s few wines made to sparkle using only the grape’s natural sugar?

Did you know that Moscato d’Asti, despite how many perceive the wines, is grown entirely on small, family-owned and run farms?

Did you know that Moscato d’Asti, despite its undeserved reputation, is one of Italy’s most terroir-driven wines?

Every time we put on this seminar, it’s amazing to watch even seasoned tasters be blown away by the diversity and personality of these wines.

The other thing that I love about this seminar is that we talk about how Moscato d’Asti is the one and only Italian wine that has become part of the extra-Italian culinary canon in the southeastern U.S. There is a whole swath of people who drink Moscato d’Asti regularly but remain ignored by the wine trade. We’re going to talk about that, too.

Our tasting will be followed by a lunch where Coppo will be pouring its Nizza Barbera, Marenco will be pouring its Albarossa (attention wine geeks!), and there will even be a Barbaresco among many other top Piedmont wines.

I hope you can join us. And word has it that the Bubbleista might join us. Tracie and the girls will be with me that day as well.

Here’s a Texas Tribune post on how to give to victims’ families in Uvalde. Please consider also giving to Unicef’s Ukraine child refugee fund. This link takes you straight to the donation page.

The Parzen family wishes to offer its heartfelt condolences to all the families of Uvalde who have been affected by yesterday’s unfathomable act of violence.

This morning when I walked our girls to their school, the parents who were dropping off — me included — waited until every one of their kids crossed the building’s threshold. There was a lot of extra hugging and I-love-yous as we all wished our children a good day.

It’s unimaginable to think that there are nineteen families who won’t be picking their kids up today at school… in a community not that far nor not too different from our own.

G-d bless them. We are praying for them and we share their pain, however unimaginable for us.

In future, there will be time to address the insanity of our state’s gun laws.

But today, we pray and we hold our children as tight as we can.

*****

There are moments that the words don’t reach
There is suffering too terrible to name
You hold your child as tight as you can
Then push away the unimaginable

From the song “It’s Quiet Uptown” from the musical “Hamilton.”

Please consider giving to Unicef’s Ukraine child refugee fund. This link takes you straight to the donation page.

My recent trip to Italy to teach at Slow Food U was a whirlwind. My itinerary and schedule had me on the ground for literally four days. Because the timing was so tight (including a day with two back-to-back three-hour seminars), wine country visits and trips to Piedmont’s many great dining destinations were not possible.

So it was that the small city of Bra, where the Slow Food Movement was founded in 1986, was radius of my culinary exploration.

Because of its association with Slow Food, Bra has some really interesting restaurants (including many chain pilot programs; more on that later). My next series of posts will be devoted to my favorite spots to eat and drink (including destinations from previous visits).

The first question that comes up when you mention the name Bra to an English speaker is does Bra, the toponym, have a relation to bra, the intimate apparel?

No, it does not (obviously).

Bra comes from the late Latin braida meaning a field in a suburban area. It’s relatively common across northern Italy. Some will remember the famous Piazza del Bra in Verona.

Bra in Cuneo province (Piedmont) got its name because it was an agricultural hub in Roman times (as was Verona, for that matter).

Over the seven years of my teaching gig there, one of my favorite first stops has always been Local, the university’s food shop and casual restaurant. It’s expensive, as the students always complain. But the food products there are phenomenally good.

Even though it’s not a regional dish, their porchetta sandwiches are inanely delicious (not always available) and their vitello tonnato is as traditional as it comes. They also do modern and classic interpretations of Bra’s famous veal sausage (more on that later). Our girls loved the cooked salsiccia the year they came with me.

But on this occasion, the classic Piedmontese salt-cured anchovies with salsa verde spoke to me.

Dissertations could be scribed on this mainstay of Piedmontese gastronomy. In many ways, it represents the basic building blocks of the Roero-Langhe-Monferrato culinary cannon. Vitello tonnato couldn’t exist without those anchovies. Nor could bagna cauda.

It was a thrill for this wine blogger to discover that they were serving a new wine from a favorite Dogliani farm, a Riesling from Cascina Corte, an ante litteram naturalist producer.

The bright acidity and intense fruit of the wine was such a fantastic match for the richly salty fishes and the garlic-heavy flat leaf parsley dressing.

And it all really hit the spot for lunch after a long day of travel from Houston.

Stay tuned for more notes on where to eat and drink in Bra…

G-d bless our sisters and brothers in Buffalo.

When are we going to stop teaching our children to hate?

When are we going to realize that racism is so deeply engrained in our society that it leads a young person to shoot people who look different than them?

When are we going to come to terms with the fact that barely veiled racism is all around us, no matter where we live?

Only when we do are we going to break the expanding cycle of racist terror in our country.

G-d bless our sisters and brothers in Buffalo. G-d bless our sisters and brothers in El Paso. G-d bless our sisters and brothers in Pittsburgh.

*****

No one is born hating another person because of the colour of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

Nelson Mandela
Long Walk to Freedom (1994)