Above: vineyards in Maremma along the Tuscan coast where “Super Tuscans” are produced (image via the Wilson Daniels website).

The more closely you look at a word, wrote the early 20th-century aphorist and poet Karl Kraus, the more distantly it looks back at you.

This couldn’t be more true when it comes to the meaning and origin of the expression “Super Tuscan.”

Historically, the named was used unofficially to denote high-quality Tuscan wines that were classified as vino da tavola (table wine) because they didn’t qualify to be included among the “designations of controlled origin” (DOC). Ostensibly, the reason they didn’t qualify was because they used Bordeaux grape varieties that weren’t recognized by the Italian DOC (appellation) system at the time.

The earliest mention of a Super Tuscan (wine) I’ve been able to find in Google Books is in a 1987 tasting note in America Wine Society News. It references a Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon blend “that cannot be considered a true Chianti.” You can’t read the entire passage on Google but it’s likely that the writer was referring to Tignanello, the famous blend of Sangiovese and Cabernet Sauvignon that Antinori first produced as a “table wine” with the 1975 vintage.

There are, however, antecedents beyond the wine world.

In his 1972 monograph, The Fascist Experience Italian Society and Culture, 1922-1945, Edward R. Tannenbaum calls Italian writer Curzio Malaparte a “super Tuscan publicist.”

And in 1915, in Howard’s Blue Book: The Only Index-catalogue of the Paint, Oil, and Varnish Industry, there is mention of a “Super Tuscan Red” paint, possibly a reference to the distinctive light red color we call “Sienna Red” today.

Most Italian wine trade observers agree that Tignanello (produced in Chiantigiana) and Sassicaia (produced in Bolgheri on the Tuscan coast) are the earliest examples of wines that were commonly referred to as Super Tuscans. Sassicaia was available in the U.S. in the early 1970s. According to the winery that produces it, San Guido, the 1968 vintage of Sassicaia was the first to ship to the U.S. (thus predating the arrival and advent of Tignanello).

But no one knows for sure who first used or coined the term in the context of wine.

By the late 2000s, it had become fashionable in the alternative U.S. wine media to denigrate the Super Tuscans — the “aia wines,” as some of us called them — as bottlings created specially for the American market. The wines were excessively “oaked,” writers moaned, overly concentrated (“extracted”), and jammy like the “fruit bombs” that Napa-loving Americans preferred.

But cum granus salis, the claim wasn’t entirely true. In 1989 when I visited Montalcino for the first time, sommeliers there were eager to pour Sassicaia and Ornellaia side-by-side with Brunello (another wine that had yet to make its name on this side of the Atlantic). Looking back on it now, there’s no doubt in my mind that these wine professionals were extremely proud of the wines and considered them some of the best expressions of Italian viticulture at the time. And many of the wines, especially from the top tier, were and are still today elegant, restrained, and impeccably balanced. They may be “oaked” but they are not necessarily “oaky.”

Other Tuscan winemakers would try to reproduce the historic Super Tuscans model — some successfully and some not so much. But the legacy of the aforementioned wines was firmly and undeniably established by the late 1990s when Italian wine would begin trending upward in the U.S.

On Thursday night here in Houston, I’ll be co-hosting a guided wine tasting and dinner with a genuine Super Tuscan, Federica Mascheroni Stianti (below, left, with her mother Giovannella Stianti Mascheroni, another Super Tuscan woman) at Roma restaurant (my client). We’ll be tasting her family’s Castello di Volpaia Chianti Classico together with one of their more recent entries, the Prelius Cabernet Sauvignon raised in Grosseto province in Maremma along the Tuscan coast.

Their Cabernet Sauvignon is aged in large cask — not the small French barriques commonly used for the historic Super Tuscan wines. Restrained and lithe on the palate, with classic varietal expression, it’s not “oaky” or “jammy” or “overly extracted.” Is it a Super Tuscan?

As another Super Tuscan, Dante, once wrote, nomina sunt consequentia rerum.

I hope you can join us this week to taste it and join in the conversation!

Here’s the menu and reservation details.

Grape grower, winemaker, and author Stefano Cinelli Colombini.

In 1550, another Tuscan writer made (art) history when he wrote The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects.

Not only did Giorgio Vasari single-handedly invent “art history” with his book, but he also opened a window on to a previously cloistered world: the lives of the people who were changing the meaning of art and the way we, even today, perceive works of art and the role they play in culture and human experience.

It’s important to remember that artists and artisans were considered second-class citizens at the time. They served their aristocratic patrons. But with Vasari’s work, they came to vivid three-dimensional life on the page for the first time.

In many ways, Vasari also created (or at least opened the path for) the “celebrity artist” by giving us gossipy, juicy details about their personal histories and intrigues. The parallels with modern-day food and wine writing and the rise of celebrity chefs, celebrity sommeliers, and celebrity winemakers are myriad.

I’ve teased legacy Montalcino winemaker Stefano Cinelli Colombini that the title of his wonderful book Brunello, ritratti a memoria (Brunello, Portraits from Memory, Fattoria dei Barbi Edizioni, Montalcino, February, 2020) should have been The Lives of the Most Excellent Brunello Growers and Winemakers. Currently available in Italian (see link), it’s a roman d’aventure that brings to life the people who made Brunello di Montalcino what it is today.

I know that when Anglophone wine insiders pick up the translation I’m working on, they’ll skip directly to the handful of household and tableside names we know here in the U.S. But those who want something deeper than workaday hagiography will find that Brunello’s arc is a synecdoche for post-war Italy and the heroic women and men who built it and who came before it. I believe that even the most savvy among the Brunellisti will be surprised and thrilled by Stefano’s Melvillian pastiche of characters, their sacrifice, ingenuity, and achievement.

With acute clarity, Stefano’s work shows that the history of Montalcino is an epoch story of tragedy, resilience, and ultimate triumph.

My translation will be published by Fattoria dei Barbi Edizioni this fall. Stay tuned for previews.

Image via the Inama Facebook.

One of the cool things about doing wine dinners in Houston, the world’s petroleum capital, is that there will always be an abundance of geologists among the guests. And these women and men LOVE to talk about rocks and soil!

This Thursday, I’ll be leading a virtual wine dinner with a bunch of rock-friendly folks and the current generation of one our favorite wineries, Inama. And so it’s only natural that geology will be part of the conversation. The event is hosted by my client Roma, a local go-to Italian.

Among the wines we’ll be pouring is the Inama “Bradisismo.” The word is akin to the English bradyseism, menaing a “slow vertical movements of the earth’s crust, caused by volcanic action” (Geological Nomenclature, ed. A.A.G. Schieferdecker, 1959). It comes from the Greek βραδύς meaning slow and σεισμός, movement.

The phenomenon causes volcanic material (like the mixture of basalt with limestone in the image above) to rise to the surface. And it’s part of what gives the wines of the Soave appellation their unique mineral character.

I feel a deep connection to Soave and its wines because of the many years I spent living, studying, and working in Italy’s Veneto region in the northeast (where the Soave, Gambellara, and Valpolicella appellations are located).

Tracie and I are particularly fond of the Inama white wines. But when we drink the reds (like the Bardisismo we’ll be pouring on Thursday), I am reminded of how Veneto is one of the greatest places on earth to grow grapes like Carménère, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon. These are not wines that were created “especially” for the U.S. market, although many enjoy them here. They are expressions of Bordeaux grapes that been part of Veneto’s enogastronomic culture since the years following the Second World War when this war-ravaged part of the country was rebuilt and replanted.

I’m super stoked to “sit down” virtually with Alessio Inama (below) who will be joining us via Zoom. I hope you can join us, too, for what is sure to be a great evening of eating and drinking (and not having to drive home!).

Chef Angelo is even making a bacalà mantecà (baccalà mantecato, creamed salt cod), one of my all-time favorites to pair with the Soave and gnocchi di Malga, the classic Alpine dumplings, to pair with the Carménère. What could be better than that?

I can’t wait! Check out the restaurant’s site for menu (not up yet as of this post but it will be there soon).

The Angolo Divino wine shop in Ruvo di Puglia. “I am Vinarius,” the Association of Italian Wine Shops, reads the sign they are holding.

Retail sales of wine in Italy grew by 20 percent in June 2020 with respect to the same month in 2019. In July, they grew by 40 percent compared with the same month in the previous year.

These data come via Vinarius, the Association of Italian Wine Shops.

This growth in sales, wrote in an email Francesco Bonfio, president of the Association of Italian Wine Shop Professionals (AEPI), comes on the heels of a 50 percent drop in March (following Italy’s national shelter-in-place order) and a 30 percent drop in April.

La Capannina Più, Capri.

Francesco (a close friend of mine) ascribed the growth to the fact that Italian wine shop owners have embraced new sales models, including online sales and delivery services. He also noted that wines sales in supermarkets and big box outlets saw an initial boom in the period immediately following the lock down. But this trend was followed by a drop in wine retail revenue as independent and chain wine shops adapted to the new needs of the market.

The numbers from June and July are also a reflection of new consumption trends, as Francesco noted in his email. People in Italy, he wrote, have a “sort of subliminal apprehension” about dining in restaurants. He didn’t have any hard data on the number of people dining out. But he has observed anecdotally that Italians who frequently went out to eat before the pandemic now have rediscovered the joy of eating at home with friends and family.

Enoteca l’Etichetta, Bastia Umbra (Umbria).

These figures and observations came to mind yesterday when I spoke to a top sales manager for a top U.S. importer specialized in Italian wine. She told me that her company is working closely with their Italian partners to re-package their wines in order to make them more retail friendly.

With so many restaurants closing or doing significantly less business in the U.S., she said, her company is being forced to pivot toward retail.

Enoteca de Candia, Bari.

I’ve spoken to a number of retailers here in Texas and across the U.S. who tell me that their sales are booming right now, especially those who have shifted to online sales. My observations are anecdotal, of course, but I’m convinced that retail is where the potential for future growth lies right now. And in order to be part of this new wave, importers, distributors, retailers and the Italian wineries they work with need to focus on streamlining, repositioning, repackaging, and even rebranding products to work within this new paradigm.

As I wrote last month, wine shop workers are essential workers. They and the winemakers whose wines they sell need to work together to create new win-win opportunities as the wine trade continues to navigate the uncharted waters — the nec plus ultra — of wines sales in the time of the pandemic.

Enoteca Collovà, Capo d’Orlando (Sicily).

Thanks for reading. And thank you to Vinarius, AEPI, and my dear friend Francesco Bonfio for providing the data and images.

Above: a wine shop in California, a state where wineries have the option to work within the three-tier system or without. As a result, Californians can drink whatever their hearts desire. Here in Texas, it’s a lot better than it used to be, but the three-tier system still controls what wines we have access to.

About a year or so after I moved to Texas and had made friends in the wine business here, I ran into a couple of top wine professionals at the Austin airport (Tracie and I were living in in the state’s capital at the time).

“Where you guys heading?” I asked them.

“San Francisco,” they answered.

“Oh, cool! What’s going on in SF?” I inquired.

“We’re going there to study for our exam,” they said.

Why on earth, I wondered, would they have to fly to California to taste wine when they could simply have the wines shipped here? It turns out they couldn’t.

Both were candidates for the Court of Sommeliers pin and the reason they were traveling to the west coast, they explained, was because some of the wines they needed to taste (Burgundian, if I remember correctly) simply weren’t available in their home state. Not only could they not find them in the Texas three-tier system, they couldn’t have them shipped here because of the state’s highly restrictive and exclusionary shipping laws — a sine qua non element of the three-tier system in the state.

Nonplussed by the fact that the Texas government was practically forbidding them from accessing wines they needed to taste in order to further their careers (and as result, forcing them to travel out of state), I began reading up on and writing about the history of the three-tier system in Texas, the wholesale lobby that essentially wrote the laws making it illegal to enjoy certain wines here, and the people who have aggressively supported the status quo.

Last week I sat down to talk about the relevance of the three-tier system with one of the most brilliant people I know in the wine trade, Ron Prashker, MBA and attorney, startup guru, and owner of the Salcheto winery in Tuscany. On a previous webinar that I moderated (on a new startup that will help small wineries work in the U.S. outside of the three-tier system), Ron had shared some compelling insights regarding the current system for wine shipping and sales in our country. I was eager to dig deeper and he graciously accepted my invitation to chat. We even tasted one of his delicious wines together.

I hope you’ll find our conversation as interesting as I did. Thanks for watching.