In the fall of 1975, during his third trip across Italy tasting and researching material for his celebrated television series, “Vino al Vino,” pioneering food and wine writer Mario Soldati happened upon a relatively unknown “producer and ager of wines” in the village of Neive.

The winemaker in this case was Bruno Giacosa, today considered to be one of the greatest producers of Barolo and Barbaresco of all time.

But many will be surprised to learn that the wine that Soldati was most excited about wasn’t a Barbaresco Santo Stefano or Asili, nor a Barolo Falletto Vigna Le Rocche. Instead, it was Giacosa’s Arneis.

When a bottle of 2018 Giacosa Roero Arneis found its way to our dinner table the other night (thanks to my generous friends at Folio Fine Wine Partners), I was reminded of Soldati’s notes from his notes from the trip (originally published in Italy by Mondadori in 1977).

The following is an excerpted translation. I hope you enjoy it as much as Tracie and I enjoyed the wine.

*****

I don’t remember how it happened one early morning. But as soon as we arrived at the Albergo Reale, I discovered that in Neive, a village that lies between Asti and Alba, winemaker Bruno Giacosa, “producer and ager of wines,” had recently begun to make Arnèis [sic]…

In this moment, as I write, I have a bottle of Arnèis before me, many months now after my visit. It somehow reminds me of the magical surprise that I felt when I first walked up the stairs to the first floor of the small country house where Bruno Giacosa lives, vinifies, and ages his wines. I saw that bottle, all by itself, on a long marble table…

[It was] the 1974 Arnèis, 12 percent alcohol.

Intensely aromatic, but with extreme garb. Not fruity but a floral, pleasantly bitter note, reminiscent of geranium. It reappears on the palate and immediately impresses me. The floral bouquet naturally reminds me of Gradnik’s Pinot Girigio from Collio or Ghersi’s Vermentino. But this wine has a big advantage: lower alcohol. It’s a big advantage because you can drink more of it and you can drink it more often, and not just with appetizers.

It’s a wine you never tire of. If I could, of the 7,500 bottles he makes, I would order 365 bottles each year. My wife and my son agree with me.

Mario Soldati

Excerpted from the chapter “Nelle Provincie di Cuneo, Asti, e Alessandria” (“Terzo Viaggio. Autunno 1975), Vino al Vino, Mondadori, 1977. Translation mine.

Had the trade fairs not been cancelled, had international flights not been suspended, had there not been a nationwide lockdown in Italy and then in the U.S., had there not been a global pandemic that has brought the entire world to its knees… an already weary American wine professional would have been in Franciacorta this last weekend, missing his family and home in Texas but comforted by a rich friendship that stretches back more than a decade.

Vinitaly, the annual Italian wine trade fair, was supposed to start yesterday, April 19. Like their counterparts from across the world and Italy, a legion of American wine trade members would have made their way to Verona late last week — me included.

Italians’ legendary warmth and hospitality are hard to understand until you’ve been their fortunate guest. And this lonesome Italonaut has been blessed by the generosity of gracious hosts across the peninsula. But there is none that rivals the reception a solitary American journey has experienced when visiting his comrades in Franciacorta.

Last week, knowing that he would have been otherwise enjoying the company and support of his fellows, the urge to drink their wine — a surrogate for their magnanimity — overcame this American enoscrivener.

Unable to embrace them in the flesh, denied the sound of their laughter, forbidden the fruits of their toil, and prohibited the bounty that graces their tables, he tracked down the next best thing: their 2015 Franciacorta Dosaggio Zero, made from Chardonnay and a small amount of Pinot Blanc, with a second fermentation provoked by the must of berries from those very same vineyards that lie in the shadow of Lake Iseo, and vinified without the addition of any crystallized cane from the lands beyond their Longobard frontier.

The vibrant tropical fruit flavors of this wine rolled off his tongue as he and his family sat down for their Saturday night repast, its minerality leaving a sensation of purity and elegance as he drank it down with his wife’s homemade buns and hamburger patties. Even better yet did it taste to him when he picked up his guitar and strummed a few chords as he drank the last drops, not a libation left for the gods.

Giovanni Arcari and Nico Danesi, I can never repay you for the camaraderie, the friendship, the succor, and the solidarity in all things that you have shared with me. We would have all been together on Saturday night, seated around a table, a guitar within arm’s reach and a wedge of Bagòss, a heel of bread, and a bottle of wine always nearby.

On Saturday night we were a world apart yet you were with me on the bayou’s edge — in heart, in spirit, and in wine.

I love you, I miss you, and for a moment my heart was genuinely lifted by your vinous magic this weekend. I can’t wait until I can embrace you again.

Flowering has begun in the vineyards in Italy.

The photo above was taken this week by my friend Giovanni Arcari in Franciacorta (Brescia province) in the north of Italy and the one below is from my friend Paolo Cantele in Salento (Lecce province) in the south.

Ever since another friend, Raffaella Federzoni, sent me the first in what would become a series of “letters from Italy” during the health crisis, I’ve thought a lot about how the vines just keep growing, unaware of what is happening to the people who tend them.

These photos, taken during the Christian Holy Week, are reminders of nature’s resilience.

The news from Italy is promising today.

“The curve is clearly decreasing,” said a top Italian health official according to today’s papers. “But let’s not let our guard down,” he added.

Unfortunately, the news from our own country has been getting worse and worse this week. And the terrifying numbers and reports from city’s like New York, New Orleans, and Miami parallel those that began appearing a month ago in Italy.

Thankfully, Houston’s mayor relented and finally decided to close our parks this weekend. The entire city is now on lockdown. Tracie, the girls, and I are hunkered down at home, with plenty to eat and everything we need to keep ourselves occupied. We’ll attend Tracie’s father’s Easter services on Facebook this Sunday and we’ll visit with her family later in the day on Zoom and Facetime.

I’ll be thinking about those flowers this weekend. And I’ll dream of tasting the wines that they will bear this fall.

Happy Easter, everyone. Please be safe.

Last night as we were tucking the girls into bed, Georgia, age 8, prefaced her question as always with her habitual daddy, can I ask you something?

Next came the actual question, one that I don’t have the answer to: daddy, when is this whole thing going to be over?

Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, I’ve thought a lot about how this is the first time in our daughters’ lives that Tracie and I, like them, are navigating a situation for which none of us, not even the smartest people in the world, have a ready solution. Given the enormous and entirely uncharted challenges that we are all facing, I realize that like Georgia and Lila Jane (age 6), we are all children who have only their faith, their family, and their love to guide them.

I was about to board a flight back to Houston from Miami on March 9 when Italy announced that it was locking down the whole country. Tracie and I knew then that it was only a matter of time before Houston would get its Stay Home-Work Safe order. Sure enough, by Thursday of that week, schools had been closed and we were already isolating (even though Houston’s complete lockdown wouldn’t come for some time). As long as I live and breathe, I’ll never forget when two weeks had passed since my last flight and and I was confident that I had avoided getting infected. Today, Miami, where I attended a large walk-around tasting and took part in a wine conference, is a hot spot.

Tracie, the girls, and I are all healthy. And we’ve been taking every precaution we can to make sure that we stay safe. My mother, my brothers, and their families are all healthy. And so is Tracie’s family. But her grandmother — her mewaw, Violet, 99 years old — had a stroke a few weeks ago and we are all really sad that we can’t visit with her. Not even her children, Randy, Tracie’s dad, and his sister Holly, can visit her in the rehabilitation home where she is recovering. Another sibling, Jim, lives with his wife in Utah and it’s impossible for them to get to Texas now, for obvious reasons. It’s weighing on all of us terribly. Tracie’s family always rallies when one of its members falls ill. But today that’s just not possible.

Georgia and Lila Jane are both doing well. But they have lots of questions (to which we don’t have answers) and Lila Jane has been acting up a little more than usual. We recognize that she is having trouble expressing her anxiety. Every day it gets a little better, a little easier. Luckily, Tracie and I both work from home and so the isolation has been easier for us to deal with than for some of our friends who used to go to an office every day. Homeschooling has had its challenges. But we — the kids, the parents, and the teachers — are all beginning to settle into the rhythms of the new normal.

All in all, we have been extremely blessed. We all miss the way life was before but we know that we are immensely fortunate to have our health and each other.

Tonight, we’ll celebrate the Passover with our Seder meal. We weren’t able to find everything for our Seder plate at our local supermarket but we’ll make do. We’re sharing the one box of matzah that we found with another family in our neighborhood. Just one sheet of matzah would suffice and we are thankful for that. We’ll pour the cup of wine for Elijah and we’ll open the door. But for the first time in our lives, we won’t be able to invite a stranger in (one of my favorite traditions about the Passover, although no one has ever showed up). It will be a Pesach like none before.

I’m hoping that Georgia and Lila Jane will read the Four Questions tonight. I have answers for those. I can’t answer Georgia’s question, when this whole thing will be over? The only thing I know is that we, just like Georgia and Lila Jane, are G-d’s children. And I put my faith in Them and them. Only They and they can deliver us from this crisis.

I hope your Passover is a good one. G-d bless you, G-d bless us all. Chag sameach.

Tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. CST (9 a.m. EST) I’ll be speaking to my colleague Natalie Wang in Hong Kong about how the Chinese wine trade is recovering (image via Natalie’s Facebook).

Yesterday, my client Ethica Wines published a shortlist of COVID-19 resources for wine professionals that I put together. Check it out here.

Another post worth checking out is this video by attorney Frank Cerza, a board member of the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce South Central (also my client). In the clip, he discusses different options for negotiating rent relief. Check it out here.

Tomorrow morning at 8 a.m. CST (9 a.m. EST/6 a.m. PST) I’ll be chatting live on the Ethica Wines Instagram (@EthicaWines) with my colleague Natalie Wang who lives and works in Hong Kong. We’ll be discussing the current situation in the Chinese wine trade as the country begins to reopen. I’m very eager to hear what she has to report because I hope it will be a model (and a glimmer of hope) for how we can get our wine industry rolling again.

Lastly, I want to give a shout-out to one of the coolest people I know in the American wine trade, Thibault Idenn, who runs the superb wine program at Travelle in the Langham Hotel in Chicago. That’s him (below, right), the “best sommelier in Chicago 2019” according to the Reader, with Scarpa director Riikka Sukula in November when we all tasted together at the hotel. His is the latest entry in the Scarpa Cellar Dive virtual tasting video series. Check it out here.

We’ve got some fun people lined up for the Scarpa series and I plan to do more videos here on my blog as well.

Thanks for being here and thanks for everything you do for Italian wine — even if it’s just by drinking it!

Remember: every click counts, every like matters. Please stay safe and isolate. Ce la faremo, as the Italians say, we will get through this… together.