On Friday afternoon, Tracie and I checked into our favorite Houston hotel for a staycation-10th-wedding-anniversary celebration (her parents had come into Houston to pick up the girls at school and spend the evening with them).

Around 5 p.m., we turned on CNN (a treat for us since we cut our cable nearly a year ago), opened a bag of our favorite potato chips, and lounged on our hotel room’s dark brown leather-bound armchairs as we sipped cellar-temperature Dario Prinčič 2015 Venezia Giulia IGT Pinot Grigio, unfiltered, 13 percent alcohol.

As Senate Republicans ceremoniously reveled in their sycophancy for our imperious president, tabling one by one their Democrat colleagues’ Maginot Lines in the sand, Tracie and I were lost in our own world. We remembered fondly how we drank Joly Coulée de Serrant and ate chips at that same hotel in 2009, less than a year before we were married, when the world seemed a different place brimming with hope and promise.

The wine — five-year-old Pinot Grigio from one of our favorite growers — was bright and lithe in the glass, like that first year of our courtship. If you didn’t know any better, you’d have thought the wine was from a more recent vintage. Its fruit was so vibrant and pure and its nose so fresh, you could hardly believe it was harvested before the current era of uncertainty and perturbation.

Yet it was, just like our love affair.

We drank it with gusto, one of our perennial favorites.

Later that evening we sat for dinner at one of our city’s most in-demand tables, the oddly named Rosie Canonball, where the texture of Chef Felipe Riccio’s superb cavatelli reminded us of a trip to Puglia when our oldest was just a babe.

By noon the next day, we were sitting with Tracie’s parents and our daughters at Wasfi’s Grill and Hookah, a new favorite recommended by my friend Ahmad. The falafel was moreish, the grilled lamb excellent.

It was a beautiful day in Houston, with clear blue skies and a gentle breeze.

There are many challenges that lay ahead but our hearts are renewed and refilled, teeming once again with hope and promise.

I love you, Tracie P… You are my life, my love, my lover and muse.

When we sat down to taste his family’s 2015 Barbaresco last night in Houston, Riccardo Sobrino of Cascina delle Rose reminded me that the first time we met — exactly 10 years ago, almost to the day — he was just a kid, the son of one of the appellation’s most beloved (however under the radar) producers.

Today, he and his brother Davide are running the family winery while parents Giovanna and Italo are enjoying retirement at their new “tiny but really nice” condo on the French riviera where Giovanna moors her sailboat.

“She’s always been a skipper,” he said in his slightly accented but masterful English.

The fact that he speaks my native language so well wasn’t lost on me: he’s part of the new Langa generation for whom English is a rite of passage, a skill set that not everyone possessed 20 years ago in the land of Barbaresco and Barolo.

We were joined by another new Langa generation winemaker, Matteo Rocca, the grandson of Luigi Giordano and another new face on America’s Nebbiolo circuit.

Matteo family’s wines are super old school, vinified with extended maceration time. They tend more toward earth and tar. We tasted his Cavanna, Montestefano, and Asili. And they all showed great, although the Montestefano and Asili are still very tight (to be expected). I thought the Asili was outstanding even though all the wines will be great in time.

Riccardo’s family’s Nebbiolo is always more expressive in its youth and the floral and fruit notes were already beginning to emerge on the Rio Sordo (their flagship cru) and Tre Stelle. The 2015 vegetative cycle in Langa was a warm, arguably more “modern” vintage as most winemakers agree (see this wonderful round-up of technical notes from Barolo producers here). Not an easy vintage, both Riccardo and Matteo conceded, but one that will deliver approachable wines earlier on.

Both Riccardo and Matteo (and Matteo’s SO, Gloria, who is visiting the U.S. for the first time!) are on their way to New York where they will be presenting their wines at the first-ever Barolo Barbaresco World Opening next Tuesday (click link for registration details; I’m not sure what “World Opening” means but it’s got to be good).

I haven’t seen the entire line-up of producers but there is no doubt in my mind: the new Langa generation has arrived!

Thanks Riccardo and Matteo for coming to Texas. I’ll look forward to see you guys this June when I’m back in Piedmont for UniSG.

In late 2019, at the outset of the short window of when you can ship wine to Texas without worrying about heat damage, a very generous soul sent me a bottle of 2016 Kistler Laguna Ridge Pinot Noir.

Said friend was inspired, I believe, by something I’ve written repeatedly about my relationship to California viticulture in recent years: my beloved California, I was wrong about you and your wines, please forgive me.

When the new wave of European wine began to hit American shores in the late 1990s (20+ years ago now), I was one of countless wine lovers who wrongly turned their backs to my native state of California. Our pivot was prompted by the erroneous belief — a prejudice, really — that all California wines were “too hot” (in alcohol), “overly extracted,” “too fruit forward” (the notorious “fruit bomb” trend), “lacking in acidity,” and adverse to food pairing (not “food friendly” in the newly established parlance of the time).

But over the last three years and numerous tasting trips to California wine country north and south, I’ve discovered just how wrong I was. Looking back now on those years prior — those decades, really — when I snubbed California wine, I see clearly how my nose and palate had been blinded (how’s that for a true synaesthesia?) by the entirely misguided bias that sheer peer pressure can produce.

The Kistler Pinot Noir was lithe and nimble in our glasses, with elegant balance between its acidity and alcohol, brilliant red and black fruit flavors with a touch of earth, and an ethereal texture that almost made it feel like its fruit was dissolving in your mouth.

Thank you, friend, and thank you, Kistler, for showing me the light and turning me on to what I should have known all along.

“If people want to just arbitrarily put taxes on our digital companies,” said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin earlier this week in Davos, Switzerland, “we will consider arbitrarily putting taxes on car companies.”

The quote comes via a Washington Post opinion piece published today, “Trump’s Treasury secretary just admitted the tariff rationale is hogwash.”

Even though there seems to have been a deescalation in the European Union-U.S. trade war (at least temporarily according to tweet, below, by French president Macro; see this Bloomberg report “Macron, Trump May Have Tariff Truce in 2020 Digital Tax Spat”), the threat of 100 percent “arbitrary” tariffs on EU wines and food products still looms broadly over the U.S. wine industry. Despite the semblance of a rapprochement between the two countries, there is no guarantee that the frequently unpredictable Trump administration won’t impose such severe and debilitating duties.

Excellente discussion avec @realDonaldTrump sur la fiscalité du numérique. Nous allons travailler ensemble sur un bon accord pour éviter toute escalade des tarifs.

— Emmanuel Macron (@EmmanuelMacron) January 20, 2020

The acute pungency of Mnuchin’s words sting this morning as I recall my conversation with a wine bar owner in Tulsa, Oklahoma yesterday via telephone. As for so many of my colleagues and peers in the wine trade, the uncertainty caused by the “arbitrary” nature of the trade dispute continues to send ripples of disruption through our industry.

Working in an emerging market like theirs, where progressive wine tastes and trends are just beginning to take shape, they depend on small-scale importers and distributors for the by-the-glass allocations that keep their business model humming. And suppliers like those are on hold: fearful that excessive duties could still be imposed, they are not placing their normal January orders and they are less inclined to share their highly allocated wines in markets like Tulsa, opting instead to focus on top markets where the wines will be more lucrative both in terms of volume and wholesale prices.

His troubles were echoed in an email from a New York-based freelance marketing consultant (whose business parallels mine).

“This tariff things is a real [expletive] pain in the ass,” they wrote. “I can barely get anyone to respond relative to my consulting projects. ugh.”

There may be light at the end of the tunnel in the tariff wars. But the Trump administration’s “arbitrary” strategy continues to sow confusion. And the lack of certainty continues to impact a large swath of the U.S. wine trade at a delicate time of the year when deals are made and wines are allocated. The long-term implications could be disastrous, especially for trade members like my colleagues above — and people like me.

Above: Chef Alessandro Neri of Il Grecale in Novello (Barolo) called this dish of fried Panko-dusted shrimp, served with salsa rosa (mayonnaise, ketchup, Worcestershire, mustard, and brandy), a throw back to the 1980s.

“The following rules should be observed for the proper accordance of wines with meats; with fish white wines; with meat the fuller red wines; at the end of the repast the oldest red wines; and the end of dessert the liqueurs and sparkling white wines.” The Inner Man: Good Things to Eat and Drink and where to Get Them by Daniel O’Connell, 1891.

“The Red Dinner [meat based]… is best served without fish, since the Red Wines seldom accord with fish to most palates… [For] the White Dinner [fish based]… all Red Wines should be excluded.” The Gentleman’s Table Guide: Being Practical Recipes for Wine Cups, American Drinks, Punches, Cordials, Summer & Winter Beverages, by E. Ricket, C. Thomas, 1871.

Above: breaded and fried uncured anchovy “tacos” filled with Jerusalem artichoke paste.

Last week in Barolo, my host and dinner companion Alberto Cordero broke the “cardinal rule” of wine pairing when he treated me and another colleague to dinner at the wonderful Il Grecale in Novello, a hamlet of Barolo village in Piedmont.

The seemingly age-old white wine with fish, red wine with meat chestnut can pose a challenge in places like Piedmont (and Tuscany, for that matter) where the old folks still pair red wine with everything they eat.

But Alberto, whose winery I’m profiling for his U.S. importer, proved the otherwise timeless truism dead wrong by pairing his family’s wonderful Nebbiolos with Chef Alessandro Neri’s superb seafood-focused cooking.

Above: pinch, peel, and suck shrimp served over Ligurian-style corzetti pasta medallions tossed with the crustaceans’ stock and wilted spinach. This dish was extraordinary.

Of course, Alberto’s elegant wines are lithe and nimble in the glass, even in their youth (something that he ascribes in part to the extra bottle aging they undergo before release).

Just a few weeks into 2020, the evening will surely be remembered as one of the best meals of the year.

I loved Chef Neri’s cooking. And in a region where beef is the pièce de résistance around which nearly all meals are centered and composed, it’s great to know that there are piscivore options.

Chef Neri (who, btw, lists all of his suppliers on his website) has white wine on his list as well. But it was wonderful to explore the gastronomic possibilities of rich red wine with lighter-style, playful dishes like his.

Above: too few Americans know the gorgeous, classic-styled wines of Cordero, one of Langa’s oldest winemaking families and owners of one of Barolo’s top growing sites. I love the wines and was thrilled to get to connect with Alberto professionally. Even in its youth, this 2016 made for an excellent dance partner with the food. It was such a great “accordance,” as wine pairing used to be called.

I can’t recommend the restaurant and the pairing highly enough.

The term Grecale denotes the northeastern “spoke” of the wind rose, what we call the Bora in English (Bora can also be used in Italian). In antiquity, sailors believed it originated in Greece (Grecia in Italian), hence the name.

Thank you again, Alberto, for an unforgettable dinner and for sharing your family’s wonderful wines!

Today and for the next four weeks, our MLK billboard looks down on the newly erected Confederate memorial in Orange, Texas where Tracie grew up. It was designed by another Orange native, Ashley Evans. We were able to raise the billboard thanks to the support of concerned citizens who donated to our GoFundMe campaign. Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible. Happy Martin Luther King Day!

“The girls [our daughters, ages 6 and 8] and I had a long talk at dinner about what it meant when MLK Jr said that ‘silence is betrayal,'” wrote my wife Tracie on her Facebook last week.

“I hope they understand and I’ll do my best to show them how not to be silent. I know I will fail but they will see us trying. We can always do better, let’s do better. We HAVE to do better!”

And she shared the following the passages (below) from an op-ed published by The Root entitled “How to Be a Better White Person in 2020.”

Please join us today, MLK Day, for our protest of the newly erected Confederate memorial in Orange, Texas where Tracie grew up. Details follow.

Protest of the Confederate Memorial of the Wind
Orange, Texas
Martin Luther King Day
Monday, January 20, 2020
location: Confederate Memorial of the Wind (Google map)
time: 2-4 p.m.

Think about the men who owned no slaves but built slave ships to bring black people to America. Channel the ethics of the people who lived next door to people who enslaved human beings. Conjure up the thoughts of the people standing in the town square who silently watched lynchings. Pretend you were one of the people who stood quietly while segregationist mobs spit on little black children who were integrating schools. Imagine you were mute on that Montgomery bus when Rosa Parks refused to move.

For a brief second, assume you were one of the billions of idle, ambivalent or apathetic white people who objected to slavery, Jim Crow, inequality and injustice but didn’t do a goddamn thing. In your moment of deliberation, think long and hard about what those white people would do.

Then, just do the opposite.

Click here to read the piece in its entirety. And please join us today. We have plenty of signs for everyone.

HAPPY MARTIN LUTHER KING DAY!

I’ve been on the road for the last week in Italy traveling for a new client. I’ve barely had time to catch my breath on this first whirlwind trip of the year. But I’ve already tasted some extraordinary wines.

Time is tight but I couldn’t resist sharing the above photo of the epic Slovenian producer Aleš Kristančič owner and winemaker at Movia in Ceglio (Brda).

Some of my friends may remember that my French band, Nous Non Plus, once played a gig at his family’s farm. We had a hit song in Slovenia at the time (no shit). And Aleš flew us over to do a show at a club in Ljubljana and play at a couple of sets at the winery.

It was an amazing experience that we all remembered fondly when we reconnected — 12 years later! — early this week.

He was geeked to show me his new recording studio and his new guitar (above). And we had a blast catching up and tasting his extraordinary wines.

It sucks to be away from home and I’m bummed that I’m going to have to be spending so much time away this year.

But I’m not complaining: work is good and I’m lucky to get to spend time with lovely people like Aleš and his family. It was so awesome to see them and reconnect.

More stories to come. In the meantime, thanks for being here and wish me luck and speed…

One of the earliest reports from yesterday’s U.S. Trade Representative wine tariff hearing (the first of two), including notes on the “two dozen wine wholesalers and retailers” who spoke.

Couple of big takeaways:

French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire told reporters in Paris that he and U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin had agreed to double their “efforts in the coming days to try and reach a compromise on digital taxation at the OECD.”

“We gave ourselves 15 days, until our next meeting in Davos in end-January. We want to try all options to reach an agreement at the OECD in the next 15 days,” Le Maire said.

Could we have a decision on this by the end of the month?

Amazon, Google and Facebook endorsed the administration’s plan to slap tariffs on $2.4 billion worth of French cheese, Champagne, handbags and other goods if a negotiated solution can’t be reached over the tax, which applies to such things as targeted advertising and providing platforms to connect buyers and sellers.

We are up against the mighty three. Do we stand a chance?

Click here to read the Politico article in its entirety. A must-read.

Above: progressive, independent, and “niche” wine bars like Ordinaire, which specializes in natural wines in Oakland, California, would be forced to shutter if the Trump administration’s 100 percent tariffs on wine are put into effect.

“Consider liquidating and closing that chapter of your life,” writes Dallas Morning News wine columnist Alfonso Cevola on his blog this week.

That’s his advice to “small distributors” who specialize “in wines of France, or bio dynamic wines [sic] of Europe or any number of niches that will potentially be affected” by the Trump administration’s 100 percent tariffs on European Union wines if implemented.

“It isn’t dishonorable to fail,” he opines like a Mafia Don, “but it is disheartening.”

He should know: as a lifer sales rep for the “big wine” industry and a staunch advocate for America’s competition-stifling “three-tier system,” he spent the better part of his career trying to parry the expansion of small importers and distributors that took shape over the last two decades in the U.S. He’s well aware that big wine will be the only winner in the trade war because it alone has the capital needed to survive a 100 percent increase in product cost. The big distributors will simply shed off their sales reps to cut operating expenses as they wait out the crisis. The small distributors will be decimated.

Yesterday, I traded messages with one of the brave small distributors whose voice will be heard today in Washington, D.C.: he’s just one of wine trade “witnesses” who will be speaking at the U.S. Trade Representative’s Public Hearing on Proposed Action to France’s Digital Services Tax (the hearing will take place from 9 a.m. – 5 p.m. EST and although it will not be broadcast live, a full transcript will be made available according to the USTR site).

As he and I chatted online, I remembered fondly how we started our businesses around the same time when we were both living in New York. It was back in 2007-2008 when the new wave of independent importers and distributors was rising and progressive attitudes about wine in the U.S. were beginning to take form.

“I’ll just move to [Europe] with my cats,” he wrote me, “and start over” if the tariffs take effect — 13 years down the drain, “liquidated.”

I’m in the same boat, I reminded him. And his congedo to me was positive in its outlook.

“We will win!” he wrote.

His sentiment echoed an op-ed published on Sunday in the New York Times by Jenny Lefcourt, a “small distributor” and importer based on the east coast.

“I have spent 20 years building a wine-import company,” she wrote in her piece (“The Insanity of Trump’s Wine Tariffs”). “On Jan. 14, the Trump administration could destroy it all by imposing a 100 percent tariff on European wine.”

She’s also one of the witnesses who will be speaking today in Washington.

If you haven’t already, I highly encourage you to share your concerns about said tariffs with the USTR and your representatives in congress (links at the end of this post).

And I also encourage you to sign this Change.org petition launched by Italian winemakers who will also be decimated by the tariffs. Without their products, the entire system will be disrupted — from small distributor to retailer, restaurateur, and consumer.

We must make our voices heard. Otherwise, people like me — with a stay-at-home wife and two small children — would have to pack it up and throw in the towel.

Liquidation is not an option!

****

Write to your senators (via the National Association of Wine Retailers):
https://account.votility.com/enterprise/NAWR/ec/697

To your congressperson (via the National Association of Wine Retailers):
https://account.votility.com/enterprise/NAWR/ec/698

To the United States Trade Representative (USTR):
https://www.regulations.gov/comment?D=USTR-2019-0003-2518

The deadline to register your concern with the USTR is Monday, January 13.

Join our next protest of the newly erected Confederate Memorial of the Wind on MLK Dr. and Interstate 10 in Orange, Texas on MLK Day 2020 (Monday, January 20). Click here for details.

Click here to donate to our billboard campaign. With $400 surplus from our previous campaign and $100 already donated, we need just $500 to make this happen. Please donate now!

Tracie and I are raising money to buy one (1) month of advertising on a billboard that stands across the road from the newly erected Confederate Memorial of the Wind (above), a monument built by the Sons of Confederate Veterans on Martin Luther King, Jr. Dr. in Orange, Texas along Interstate 10.

In observance of Martin Luther King Day (January 20, 2020) and African American History Month (February) , the billboard will look down on the memorial, which (as of this posting) includes the Robert E. Lee battle flag, otherwise known as “the Confederate Flag.”

Artwork for the billboard is being created pro bono by an anonymous designer.

It’s the second year of our billboard campaign. You can see last year’s billboard here.

The City of Orange, the local business community, and even a group of local pastors have asked the Sons member who organized the monument’s construction, Granvel Block, to consider repurposing the site. But he refuses to engage in dialog.

Given the demographics of Orange and the legacy of Jim Crow there, it’s clear that the conspicuous display of the Confederate Flag doesn’t reflect or align with community values. The monument’s prominent location (along a major road that leads into town, just a few freeway stops west of the Louisiana border), makes it highly visible to drivers as they arrive in the state heading west. See the photo below, taken this week by an Orange resident.

(Read a February 2018 Houstonia magazine article on the monument here.)

The content of the billboard will include an appeal to local residents and drivers to ask the Sons to repurpose the site. It will also include a link to a blog I’ve created to document our efforts, RepurposeMemorial.com .

My hope is to have the ad up by the end of next week. And I have already contacted the outdoor advertising company that owns the billboard to get the artwork and ad approved.

Tracie and I have been protesting the memorial since December 2017 and we have no intention of giving up on our cause: to remind the residents of Orange (where Tracie grew up and where her family lives) that it’s socially unacceptable to display images like the Confederate Flag in such a conspicuous location and fashion, with no regard for the values and feelings of the greater community.

We cannot thank you enough for your support. We’ve had so many residents thank us publicly and privately for our protests. We are wholly convinced that we need to speak out on this issue.

Between surplus funds from last year’s campaign and the $100 already donated, we just need $500 to make this happen. Thank you for your support. Please click here to donate.

Please visit and share RepurposeMemorial.com