Category Archives: de vino

Bruno Giacosa, unrivaled “Nebbiolo whisperer,” dies at 88

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The following excerpt comes from a 2012 lecture (lectio magistralis) delivered by Bruno Giacosa on the occasion of his honoris causa from the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, Piedmont (translation mine).

    I was born in 1929 and one of my earliest memories is smelling the wine made by grandfather Carlo. That was also the year that my grandfather died and my father Mario took over his business. My grandfather Carlo had begun making and bottling wine at the end of the 1800s…
    He made classic Piedmontese wines, the same ones we know today: Mostly Dolcetto, then Barolo, Barbaresco, Nebbiolo, Barbera, Freisa, and Brachetto. Asti Spumante was the only white.
    Obviously, 1929 was also the year of the [stock market] crash. My father decided to stop bottling wine that year. Instead, he would buy grapes, which he would re-sell or vinify and sell as bulk wine. Back then, only a few wineries bottled wine under their own label. Most of them didn’t own there own vineyards. They would buy grapes from the so-called mediatori, brokers who served as intermediaries between grape growers and the businesses that made wine.
    I started working with my father when I was 16 years old, not long after World War II had come to an end. I would travel around the Langhe Hills with him, watching how he would buy and re-sell grapes; how he would distinguish the good fruit from the less favorable fruit; how he would remember which vineyards delivered the best results.
    At the time, there was also a grape market in Alba. My memory of the market isn’t a pretty one — a memory I share with the many farmers who would sell their grapes there. The brokers would wait until the very last moment to buy, forcing the grape growers to sell at whatever price the brokers wanted and sending them home with empty crates. It was a bit of a sad affair, especially when there wasn’t a great demand for grapes from the bottlers.
    We preferred instead to go directly to the farms, in part because we could choose which grapes to buy directly at the source. After we would buy our grapes, I would also help the growers make a little bit of wine. They would either sell it as bulk wine or they would sell to the very same bottlers who bought their fruit. You could make a little extra money by making your own wine. But it had to be really good. Otherwise, you might not be able to sell it…
    I was just a boy then. And so I didn’t drink wine. But I quickly developed a good nose. I figured out that you had to pay attention to the aromas that would emerge from the grapes when you bit into them during the harvest. Then you would taste the must during fermentation. And then you would taste the wine. This was all you needed to know. I learned to use my nose as a means for gauging whether the wine was clean or dirty. And you could also tell whether or not the wine would age well; whether or not it was nuanced enough; whether or not it would ever open up; or whether it was better to blend it with other parcels; whether or not I should keep it for another couple of years in my cellar before bottling it; or whether it was better to sell it right away to someone else.
    Obviously, I have tasted thousands of wines. But I can guarantee you that my nose has rarely been wrong. And this is the thing that I keep repeating to young people: Learn to use your olfactory. Many people today think that your sense of smell isn’t useful. But it’s with your nose that you understand the most important things about a wine.

Read the entire lecture (in Italian) here.

Today, the Slow Wine blog called Giacosa “Nebbiolo whisperer.” And that he was.

There’s not an Italian wine professional among our contemporaries who wouldn’t point to his wines as some of the most compelling she or he has ever tasted.

My wife Tracie and I had the great fortune to taste with Bruno at the winery in 2010 not long after we were married. He was a gentle, soft-spoken man whose work and career shaped a generation of winemakers and grape growers. And with his extraordinary wines, he also shaped a generation of wine lovers. He will surely be remembered as one of the last great champions of traditional-style Nebbiolo and one of the indisputable architects of Langa’s viticultural revolution and prosperity.

Brune sit tibi terra levis.

Thank you for all the incredible wines that you shared with us over the course of your lifetime.

Image via the Slow Wine Guide blog.

The best Zinfandel I tasted in 2017…

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From the department of “my other son, the wine writer”…

It’s not the first time that my fingers glide across my computer keyboard and deliver the following mea culpa to the screen: “California wine, I was wrong about you. And I’m sorry.”

My role as the coordinating editor of the 2018 Slow Wine Guide to the Wines of California has been an eye-opening and humbling experience for me (you can read our winery profiles for the 2018 guide, soon to be published in print, as they come online — free access — on the Slow Wine guide blog).

When Slow Wine editor-in-chief Giancarlo Gariglio first contacted me about joining the project, I asked him, “are you sure you have the right man?”

When he pressed on, I wondered out loud, “will we even find enough wineries to fill the pages of the guide?”

But I finally succumbed to his insistence, despite my skepticism and reluctance.

Man, was I wrong!

In early June I began visiting wineries in southern and northern California, tasting and talking with grape growers and wine makers. In late June, I joined my fellow editors — Giancarlo, senior editors Elaine Brown and David Lynch, and field editor
Elisabeth Fiorello-Sievers — for a tasting of more than 200 wines we had requested.

Over the summer, we traded notes, I wrote and I edited our contributors’ profiles, and we decided on the top wines and wineries that would be awarded the guide prizes.

I was simply blown away by how much great wine we tasted. And I was also impressed by how many wineries in California employ sustainable farming practices. In many cases, I learned, the sustainable legacy stretched back at least one or even two generations.

Although it didn’t win awards in this year’s guide, one of my favorite wines was the 2013 Moon Mountain Zinfandel by Winery Sixteen 600, made with fruit grown by biodynamic pioneer Phil Coturri. Named after the family’s address “on the mountain” (one of Sonoma’s most famous and storied houses, with ties — and tie dyes — to the Grateful Dead), the winery and tasting room is managed by one of Phil’s sons, Sam (whom you might recognize from yesterday’s post).

Not only was this lithe and fresh yet meaty wine utterly delicious, with buoyant red fruit and tasty minerality, but it reminded me of the Louis Martini Zinfandel from the 1970s that Darrell Corti (the renowned Sacramento retailer) once poured for me in his home.

When I shared that red thread with Sam, he smiled broadly and revealed that the cuttings for this wine actually came from the same vineyard where Louis Martini farmed its wines back in the day — before the overwrought, highly alcoholic and concentrated style of Zinfandel emerged as the new hegemony in the 1980s.

For years, the Coturri family has advocated for the Moon Mountain District and I believe Phil had a hand in lobbying for and creating the Moon Mountain AVA (in 2013). Not a lot of California wine lovers are aware of this newish appellation. But I believe it’s one of California’s most exciting wine growing regions, where more and more marquee-name wineries are looking to source higher-altitude, volcanic-soil fruit.

The Winery Sixteen 600 2013 Moon Mountain Zinfandel isn’t cheap. But it’s one of the purest and most elegant expressions of California’s antonomastic grapes. I loved it and highly recommend it.

Check out the 2018 Slow Wine Guide to the Wines of California here. Thanks for reading and buon weekend a tutti… have a great weekend, everyone!

Killer trees and a long road to recovery in California wine country (Slow Wine California Guide now online)

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Beyond the myriad hand-painted posters thanking first responders for their efforts during the October wildfires, there weren’t a lot of signs that Sonoma wine country had been devastated by a natural disaster when I visited last month.

But when winemaker Sam Coturri invited me to jump into one of his company’s off-road trucks and we headed “up the mountain,” it didn’t take long for us to come upon blackened areas and “killer trees,” like the one above.

State recovery crews, he told me, remove some of the most dangerous burned-out trees. But many property owners are left to clear out the precarious “snags” as they are known in wildfire terminology. The government team marks them for you. But you have to remove them yourself.

Burned out trees and acre upon acre marred by damaged fences and cattle guards were just some of the issues that Sam was dealing with the day we visited in early December.

“Fuel… all I see is fuel, all around us,” he kept saying as we toured his family’s property and the farm where he grew up. He pointed to the dry brush that could instantaneously turn into kindling. The Coturris nearly lost their estate and beloved home in the October fires.

Word of the southern California wildfires had just begun to hit social media as he and I met up that morning. And it was abundantly clear that he, his colleagues, and his family were freaked out by the news they were receiving via text and private messages.

“Up here they call the Santa Ana winds the Diablo Winds,” he explained, referring to the notoriously hot dry air that arrives from the east this time of year.

The weather conditions that day were eerily similar to the day the Tubbs Fire first broke out.

At a certain point, Sam’s wife called him while we were in the car together. You could hear the fear in her trembling voice as Sam helped to soothe her nerves with loving words.

It’s going to be a long road to recovery for the California wine trade — financially and emotionally. As Sam pointed out that day, winemakers won’t know whether or not their 2017 vintage will be affected by smoke taint for many months to come. They have to let the wine age before they can properly test it.

There are also many other challenges they are facing, including a drop in tourist dollars and a housing shortage, just to name a few.

I’ll be catching up with Sam for updates to post here in coming weeks.

In the meantime, please check out the Slow Wine Guide blog where we have begun to post producer profiles nearly every day (many of the profiles online have been written by Elaine Brown, David Lynch, or myself). Some of the featured wineries will be joining us for the Slow Wine U.S. Tour in late February and early March.

There’s no better way to help in their recovery than by buying and drinking California wine.

Bruno De Conciliis: “Wine and may the dance begin,” a poem (translation mine)

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Wine is a game, a serious game, a joyful game,
a heroic game, an erotic game, wine is skittish, it’s
joyful, it’s sad, it’s solitary, it’s a sea, it’s a road,
it’s a destination, it’s silence, it’s entropy.

Breathe.

White wine is green, yellow, gold, sometimes orange,
red is ruby, purple, violet, sometimes black.

Wine is instinct, science, pure creativity, painting, music,
Johann Sebastian Bach and Mozart, John
Coltrane and Jimi Hendrix; how is it possible
to drink a baroque wine listening to Purple Haze?

Wine, an intense pleasure, a happy thought, sometimes
requires, sometimes suggests, an undisputed star
or distant tapestry that takes a backseat to conversation
or food, the little pleasures to share with a
friend or a lustful torrent that enchants the viewer,
wine is a friend to humankind and it can be its
worst enemy, wine is happiness, simple sharing or opulence,
comfort in solitude, glue of friendship, wine’s solitary
pleasure creates deep friendships or becomes the
energy of a clique born from happenstance.

Wine is study, knowledge, an immovable journey,
curiosity and sloth, overwhelming passion,
a cruel struggle, a sincere friend who knows the way
you need to go or invents one where there is none.

Memories that lead us to tenderness or move us to laugh,
to smile, to enjoy, enemy of regret and blame, maternal bosom
where you can nurse until becoming aware.

Wine is born from deep within the land, from people
who are bound to it by an umbilical cord
that hasn’t been voluntarily severed, from the uniqueness
of that land, from the specific variety,
from the culture and knowledge of those people, that people.

Wine is the experience of that land, that culture,
the history of a village.

Wine and may the dance begin.

Bruno De Conciliis
(translated from the Italian by Jeremy Parzen)

Bruno (below) and I will be leading a tasting of his wines at Sotto in Los Angeles on Thursday, January 25. Please join us. He’s one of the most fascinating grape growers and winemakers I’ve ever had the chance to taste with. And his wines are among the most compelling I’ve ever drawn to my lips. Stay tuned for details.

Jean-Luc Le Du Memorial: Thursday, January 4 @ City Winery (NYC)

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The following info comes via the sommelier brain collective email list. The image comes via Yannick Benjamin’s Facebook.

I only had the opportunity to interact with wine industry legend Jean-Luc Le Du on a couple of occasions. He was the nicest guy and always seemed to have time to talk wine with anyone around him. I’ll never forget tasting Château Mouton Rothschild 1945 with him. It was one of the highlights of my decade in New York — the wine and the notes he shared.

Please check out this Wine Spectator profile and remembrance “Standing Up Next to a Mountain” by Bruce Sanderson to get a sense of Jean-Luc’s role in the New York and U.S. wine scene.

Iohannes Luca sit tibi terra levis.

*****

Dear friends,

Jean-Luc Le Du was a rockstar in our lives. He lived with kindness, humility, and generosity, and it infected everyone he met. In commemoration of his death, there will be a memorial this Thursday, January 4th, from 4-6:30pm, at City Winery to celebrate his life . There will be much reminiscing, a live band, and of course, toasts in his honor.

We encourage you all to bring a bottle of wine to share with your friends. Below is a flyer with additional information regarding the event and please feel free to share with your friends and social media. We hope to see you there.

Date: Thursday, January 4th
Time: 4:00pm-6:30pm
Where: City Winery, 155 Varick St.
BYOB

Yannick Benjamin
Co-Founder
Wheeling Forward | www.wheelingforward.org
Empowering people with disabilities to achieve NOW!

10 biggest stories to watch in Italian wine in 2018 (#1 might surprise you)

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When I first moved to Texas nine years ago, it was common to see Italy grouped with “other” in wine shops (the Foucauldian implications were evident, at least to me). Today, it’s rare that Italy doesn’t have its own, distinct space on the retail floor.

10. The expanding Balkanization of importing and distributing.

Over the last two years, more and more blue chip and marquee-name Italian wineries have abandoned national distribution opting instead for a state-by-state strategy. None of the biggest players in Italian wine imports wield the power they did 10 years ago when the field of wines and importers was much smaller. California, with its extremely liberal importing and distributing regulation, sets the bar for this trend. It simply doesn’t make sense anymore to rely on the three-tier system with its inherent markups and bureaucratic obstacles.

9. The growth of self-importing.

More and more Italian wineries are investing in their own importing and distribution channels. In Texas, for example, a major northern Italian estate (with little history or market presence in the state) set-up its own importing and distributing company this year and from what the owner has told me, the company is looking to expand its reach to California and other states as well. High-profile Italian estates have also invested in existing companies in recent years. This trend will only continue to flourish.

8. Robust tribalization among big distributors.

As the big distributors have watched their empire dwindle as more and more small importer-distributors pop up across the U.S., they have doubled down on their efforts to muscle their smaller competitors through aggressive marketing and sometimes unfair market practices. Increasingly, I’ve seen wine buyers wooed with gifts and liberal expense accounts. It’s reminiscent of the “good old days” (as some would call them) when reps entered accounts with wads of cash to distribute. And it’s as scary as hell.

7. The importer vanity label.

Among their efforts to curb small-business mid-sized importers and distributors, the fat cats have increasingly turned to vanity labels — created out of nothing but ink, paper, glue, glass, and wine. They obtain large quantities of wine from commercial producers, concoct a back story and marketing campaign, and then sell the wines at a high markup. It’s a brilliant business model, no doubt. But it negates the very thing that makes Italian wine so cool: its small-scale familial approach to viticulture. Slap some Tuscan sun on to a bottle of Montepulciano farmed in Molise and pass out the cigars.

6. Multi-national corporations’ land grab.

One of the biggest stories of 2016 was the sale of Piedmont heritage producer Vietti to the American owners of the Kum and Go convenience store chain. One of the biggest Italian wine stories of 2017 was the release of what may be the highest-priced Italian wine ever. A growing number of Italians fear that it’s only a matter of time before many of the best Italian estates are bought-up by multi-national corporations. Sadly, the unstoppable march of capitalist progress is, well, unstoppable.

5. Sicily is the coolest kid on the block.

As a wine buyer and an Italian wine trade observer, I’ve been seeing more and more value-driven, high-quality wines coming from the island. Investment in Sicilian wine, from Etna to Vittoria, is only growing and Sicilians have become increasingly savvy about marketing their wines in the U.S. It seems like every day, I taste something great from a new Sicilian winery. And it’s not just limited to cool-kid estates. Last year, I was thrilled to see Monica Larner (who’s doing wondrous things for Italian wine, btw) devote so much ink to heritage winery Feudo Montoni and its show-stopping wines. This year, Ian D’Agata wrote the following for Vinous: “Feudo Montoni is one of Italy’s best but still relatively little known estates.” Yes! Keep the great wine (and great wine writing) coming…

4. Sparkling wine.

The unbridled success of Prosecco in the 1990s has spawned a wave of sparkling wine production in Italy. From Sicily to Gambellara, it seems that everyone wants to get in on the sparkling wine gravy train — with mixed results. There’s no doubt that sparkling wine is the fastest growing category in wine across the world and we are only going to see more bubbles and more investment in Italian bubbles marketing here in the U.S.

3. Natural wine.

The ongoing debate over what is and what is not natural wine remind me of the countless hours we used to spend in graduate seminars discussing the definition of post-post-modernism. Sometimes it took up so much time that we hardly devoted our attention to the works of literature we were supposed to be studying. There’s no doubt that natural wine has established itself firmly as a market and marketing category in the minds of U.S. consumers — especially among young ones. In bon appétite, wine writers Belle Cushing and Marissa A. Ross called natural wine “2017’s Drink of the Year.” One of their criteria for selecting a bottle of natural wine was “It’s Fine to Just Pick the Coolest Looking Label.” Yes, it’s come to that. But it can only be a good thing in my view: the newer wave of natural wine enthusiasts only continues their predecessors’ efforts to champion small-scale farming and wholesomeness. That’s a positive, at least where I come from.

2. Asti Secco.

The first wave tsunami of Asti Secco is beginning to hit American shores. It’s going to give Prosecco a run for the money. The category didn’t make landfall in time to insinuate itself fully into holiday sparkling wine sales in the U.S. market. But Prosecco growers are going to be carefully watching developments in 2018. There’s a lot of money and marketing savvy behind the brands that are pushing this newly created Italian wine. Hold on to your seats… it’s coming to a Target near you!

1. The delayed issuance of CMO marketing subsidies.

Although hardly noticed by the American wine trade, the biggest story in Italian wine in 2017 was Italy’s failure to renew its CMO subsidies. More widely known by its Italian acronym OCM, the EU’s Common Market Organisation includes programs to protect and promote heritage viticulture and sustainable farming practices. But it also provides funds for the marketing European wines abroad. In the fall 2017, France and Spain received their new round of foreign marketing subsidies without a hitch. Italy did not: the EU delayed the issuance of monies earmarked for the country until February of 2018. From what I’ve been able to find out, the delay is owed to the fact that Italy wasn’t able to spend all of the funds allocated for 2017.

Thanks for reading and thanks for drinking Italian wine in 2017, 2018, and beyond…

Best Champagne buys for the holidays (Houston-centric recommendations)

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When it comes to sparkling wine for the holidays, there’s really no good reason for Champagne to eclipse the myriad classic-method wines available today from other appellations.

But let’s face it: even for the hippest and most ardent lovers and defenders of pét[illant]-nat[urel], there’s nothing that beats a great Champagne house — large, small, storied, best-kept-secret, corporate-owned, or family-run — on New Year’s Eve.

At our house, we will be drinking my favorite Franciacorta over the holidays (yes, Arcari + Danesi is now legal in Texas!). But we will also be drinking Champagne with the family friends we will be hosting for New Year’s.

Yesterday, I made the rounds of some of my favorite wine shops in Houston and here’s what I found.

America’s behemoth wine and spirits retailer Spec’s has its flagship store in Midtown (on the “verge of downtown,” as my current favorite singer-songwriter-guitarist Robert Ellis would say). When it comes to Champagne, the outfit has cornered the market on the most aggressive pricing for the top domaines. And it also had the biggest selection of large-format Champagne — a great option for entertaining during the holidays.

I can’t ever recommend shopping at Spec’s without adding this caveat: when buying entry-tier wines there, you have to be sure to check the vintage to make sure that you’re getting the current release. Unfortunately, there are legions of stale wines that populate its shelves (especially when it comes to white wines). But when it comes to premium appellations like Champagne, Bordeaux, and Burgundy, Spec’s pricing is the most competitive.

Delamotte, Pol Roger, Bollinger, Pierre Péters, Billecart-Salmon, Henriot, Gaston Chiquet, André Clouet… Paying cash/debit and buying six bottles or more, all of the above wines landed at more-than reasonable prices (even when compared with more liberal markets like California, where wine sales are less heavily regulated by the Communist government there, a paradox and conundrum of contemporary American mores).

Spec’s also had a great price on La Montina Franciacorta, the vintage-dated rosé and the Satèn. If you’re looking to spend something closer to $30 as opposed to $50 (the average price for a decent bottle of Champagne), this is my number-one recommendation. I like the wines a lot from La Montina, an organic grower and solid winemaker.

Next on my itinerary was the Houston Wine Merchant where prices are higher but you the level of wine knowledge among the staff and attentive customer service are more than worth the admission price. I was impressed by some of the more coveted bottles they had there.

I wish I could afford the Pierre Gimonnet 2010 Spécial Club, for example, or the Vouette & Sorbée Saignée de Sorbée Rosé Brut Nature. I couldn’t find wines like that anywhere else in my adoptive city. Alas, they won’t be served at our house this year. Great wines…

One of the most overlooked venues for fine wines in Houston is the Kroger’s supermarket on North Shepherd, where a purchase of six bottles or more (mix-and-match) gets you a 10 percent discount.

You won’t find some of the more esoteric bottles of Champagne that some of us prefer for special occasions like New Year’s. But you will find extremely aggressive pricing. Entry-tier Taittinger and Perrier-Jouët — perfectly respectable, delicious wines — both clock in around $40 if you hit the six-bottle threshold (mix-and-match on any wine, including great prices on Qupé and Mattiasson, two of my favorite Californians, for example).

And if you want to land below $30, the Californian classic-method Domaine Carneros by Taittinger is a great option for a great domestic sparkler, available at Kroger’s.

Whatever you drink this year for the holidays, I hope you drink it with someone you love.

Happy holidays, everyone!

How to handle a faulty cage on a bottle of sparkling wine? Sommeliers please weigh in!

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Over the weekend, Tracie, our girls, and I hosted a holiday party for roughly 50 people in our home. In keeping with seasonal spirit, I wanted to greet every adult guest with a glass of sparkling wine. And so I had chilled a six-pack of one of my favorites.

In order to have the wine ready, I decided to open the bottles a few minutes before guests were to arrive.

And that’s when something DISASTROUS happened: the cage on every bottle was faulty. Something at the winery must have gone awry when the wine was disgorged and sealed. Either that or the cages themselves were defective.

As any wine pro should be able to tell you, it takes six turns to remove the cage from a bottle of sparkling wine. But occasionally (rarely though it does happen), the wire will break before the cage can be removed. (It wasn’t the wine in the photo above btw; it was a wine from another European appellation.)

How do you deal with this issue when it arises? I’d really appreciate any insights.

Here’s how I handled the situation.

First of all, I took all the wine outside. I knew that the pressure of cutting the wire from the cage would agitate the bottle, making the pressure inside the bottle even strong and increasing the risk that I would not be able to contain the cork. I wanted to make sure that no one (including me) would be hurt.

Armed with a wine key, kitchen shears, and a dish towel, I gingerly used the knife of the wine key to pull the wire a few millimeters away from the bottle.

Then with my thumb placed firmly over the cage, I used the shears to cut the wire.

As I suspected, the cork was ready to pop. Even though I had been extremely carefully not to disturb the bottle too much, the force exerted to pry away and then cut the wire was enough to increase the pressure in the wine to the point that the cork would pop off if left unchecked.

Holding the cork tightly with my thumb, I loosened the cage until the cork popped off. It was extremely difficult to keep the corks from being shot across the backyard. I managed to hold on to all of them. But I was glad that I had stepped outside: it was clear to me that I risked not being able to control the situation.

Sommeliers, what tool should you have on hand for this situation? I had kitchen shears but I could have also used needle-nose wire cutters (that I always have handy for when I work on my guitars).

What do you do when this happens on the floor of a restaurant during service?