From the department of “somehow, some way, I just keep drinkin’ funky ass wines like every single day (we gonna drink a Balthazar to this)”…

“Arriving or departing?” wrote my friend Ken Vastola, author of the excellent Fine Wine Geek, yesterday on my Facebook. He was commenting on a photo of Manhattan island that I had snapped as my plane touched down at LaGuardia.

In the PM that followed, he generously and graciously suggested that I stop by his table where he and a group of like-minded Nebbiolo collectors were opening some of their favorite bottles.

Not wanting to push my good luck, I only tasted five of the roughly 12 wines they were pouring before I headed off to dinner with an old and cherished friend. But, man o man, what wines!

Of those, the 1989 Gaja (classic) Barbaresco and the Bruno Giacosa 2000 Barbaresco Asili Riserva (above) were highlights.

The 2000 vintage is remembered for its warm summer and the ripe wines it delivered. Many Nebbiolophiles lament that it was overrated by the American wine media with inflated scores.

But this wine was a great example of how top growers and winemakers made extraordinary wines that year. I was blown away by how expressive this wine was, with rich fruit and remarkable freshness on the nose and in the mouth.

Thank you again, Ken and crew, for including me. That was such a treat!

Posting on the fly from the city this week… stay tuned. And if you happen to be in town, please come and taste my favorite Franciacorta, Arcari + Danesi, with me at Chamber Street Wines from 5-7 p.m. on Friday.

My friend Cristian Specogna (below), one of the Italian winemakers I admire most, turned 30 yesterday.

To mark the occasion, his fiancée Violetta asked friends from around the world to share video wishes. And so I made him this musication, as we call it in the Parzen family (above).

Happy birthday, Cristian! Now more than ever, the world needs honest, earnest, and genuine growers like you. In your three decades on earth, you’ve accomplished so much, often in the face of adversity. I’m looking forward to the next chapters and the many delicious wines I know you will share with us.

And I wish you and Violetta a lifetime of joy and prosperity.

Happy Easter, everyone… Have a great holiday and see you next week.

Wishing everyone a happy Easter and Passover! I’ll see you next week. Thanks for being here and have a great holiday…

G-d bless America, home of the brave, with its high-alcohol, oaky fruit-bombs bursting in air.

For more than a generation, we Americans have embraced a “big” and “bold” wine style and tasting profile that lean toward intense and concentrated fruit flavors, oakiness, high alcohol levels, and low acidity. That’s because we Americans are bigger and bolder and better than anyone else on the planet. And it only makes sense that we build our walls bigger and bolder than any other country’s and we make our wines with higher alcohol than any other country’s.

But when it comes to Easter and Easter Sunday brunch, we can make America (drink) great again by serving wines that make more sense: wines with lower alcohol, higher acidity, and more balanced fruit flavors that are calibrated by savory tones and a more judicious use of oak aging.

Click here to continue reading my Easter brunch wine recommendations for the Houston Press…

When it comes to the Passover’s “Four Questions,” I’d like to propose a new and fifth one:

On all nights we drink organically farmed, spontaneously fermented, additive- and enzyme-free wines made from grapes harvested under a full moon in a vineyard along the Slovenian-Italian border, and on this night Manischewitz?

After all, and with all due respect, Manischewitz is really a wine cooler, a wine to which sugar — a lot of sugar — has been added.

And btw, that sugar has the potential to make the wine more palatable to children. Sadly, I speak from personal experience when I write this: someone whom I know and love dearly told me that his path toward severe alcoholism started with those thimble-sized cups of wine that he used to throw back when we were kids at shul.

Click here for my post today for the Houston Press on “What Makes Wines Kosher for Passover and Where to Find Them.”

One of the highlights of the Corriere della Sera food and wine festival in Milan over the weekend was the presentation of the newly released Corriere guide to “Italy’s top 100 wines and grape growers.”

Those are the guide’s editors (above, from left), Luciano Ferraro, the paper’s managing editor and its wine columnist, and celebrity sommelier Luca Gardini.

A who’s who of the Italian wine trade was there, including Arturo Ziliani, Leonardo Raspini, Angelo Gaja, and Elda Felluga, who was named the new guide’s “woman of the year.”

Luciano spoke at length about what sets the Corriere guide apart from the other mainstream almanacs of Italian wine. The editors don’t score or review the wines, he said. Instead, they “tell the stories” of 100 wineries and winemakers whose work shapes the Italian wine world today.

Where other editors, including some of their higher profile American counterparts, inform the reader “about what’s inside the bottle,” he explained, he and Luca strive to tell you about what goes into making that bottle.

I was really impressed by Luca’s short but well-honed message.

“We can’t just let other people tell the stories of our wines,” said the popular critic and editor (who scores wines in his own books). “We [Italians] need to tell the stories of our wines ourselves.”

I couldn’t help but think to myself: our bottles, ourselves. It’s a facile analogy based more in assonance than in symmetry. But there’s a wonderful nugget of wisdom in what Luca shared yesterday at the event.

Over the years, as the Italian wine renaissance has taken off in the U.S., the voice of American critics has sometimes driven perceptions of Italian wines in unexpected — although not always unwelcome — ways. I’m with Luca in believing that we all need to listen to each other, on both sides of the Atlantic.

Writing on the fly this afternoon from a very windy, somewhat cloudy, but stunningly beautiful spring day in Montalcino. Stay tuned…

Fun times last night at the Corriere della Sera Cucina Blog Awards in Milan where Talia Kleinplatz, author of the awesome Two for the Bar, took home the award for Best Wine and Spirits blog.

My good friend Talia Baiocchi, editor and founder of PUNCH, was as disappointed as me not to win but it was great to connect in Milan and to get to know the other Talia. We had a blast sitting with her and another lovely friend, Elizabeth Minchilli, who was also in attendance.

From left in the photo above, that’s Luciano Ferraro, wine critic for Corriere della Sera (a writer I admire greatly); Angela Frenda, food editor for the paper; Talia, who won the award; and Francesco Zonin, scion of the Zonin winery group and underwriter of the awards (man, that Francesco is one tall glass of water!).

Thanks to everyone for all the support and kind words in the days leading up to the award ceremony. It was a bummer not to win but it was so much fun to come to Milan and see so many friends, including folks from Texas, from my NYC days, my school days in Italy, and so many more. I even got to have lunch with the celebrated Milanese writer, editor, and provocateur Pietro Cheli, who was as hilarious as he was thought-provoking.

Thanks especially to my great friend Giovanni Contrada, who dressed me for the occasion, and my bromance Giovanni Arcari, who always stands by me like a brother, in all things.

It’s a rainy, cloudy Sunday today in Milan but I’m looking forward to a date with the city and dinner with some old friends tonight.

Buona domenica a tutti! Happy Sunday, yall! 

From the department of “in case you were concerned I’m not drinking well in Texas”…

It just goes to show the seemingly endless and encyclopedic breadth of Italian wine: until last week, I had never tasted a dry expression of the Fortana grape from Emilia. I had tasted a lot of sweet Fortana in Parma province: when vinified as amabile (sweet), the category is a classic pairing for Culatello di Zibello (and I believe the wine is also used to rinse the ham before it is aged). But last week I learned that dry Fortana is regularly produced in Ferrara province, where the sandy soils near the Adriatic allow growers to cultivate ungrafted (i.e., pre-phylloxera) vines.

Winemaker Mirco Mariotti was in town with his importer Ernest Ifkovitz of Portovino and his classic-method Fortana was nothing short of utterly delicious. I believe it lands in the U.S. with by-the-glass pricing. And Mirco’s website, I’m happy to report, is meticulously translated into English. Bravo, Mirco!

I can’t find any web presence for the winery or wines of Marco Merli, who told me that he is a resolute natural winemaker when I met him last week with Ernest and their Texas distributor Rootstock (also absent from the internets).

When I asked him about why he chose the path of natural winemaking over the shmate business (an Umbrian mainstay industry), he told me that he was inspired by the enologist he initially hired to help him make wines from family-owned vineyards.

“I disagreed with basically everything he did to the wines,” he said, “and so I decided to make them myself.”

Marco’s wines have sparked the attention of natural wine observers in Italy in recent years and rightly so: this monovarietal wine was lip-smackingly good, with that juicy red stone fruit character and zinging acidity that define great Sangiovese. I really loved it.

I was so glad to meet Marco and Mirco and taste these wonderful and soulful wines. For both winemakers, it was a first-time visit to Texas and they both seemed a little bit overwhelmed by the experience. But it’s so great to see courageous importers like Ernest bringing small-scale, thoughtful, and genuine winemakers to our state, where the two big distributors continue to expand their role as the Slugworths of wine.

I’m overjoyed that venerated Italian wine authority Alfonso Cevola, the Dallas-based Import Wine Director at Southern Glazer’s (America’s largest distributor), was wrong when he predicted in January of last year “the demise of the mid-size distributor… They have the lifespan of a tse-tse fly,” he wrote.

Gauging from its track record and the growing number of their wines I’m seeing in the Austin and Houston markets, it would seem that my friends at Rootstock are doing just dandy.

In other news, I was delighted to find this moderately priced bottle of 2015 Tyrrell’s last night at one of Houston’s best wine bars, Camerata.

We were all curious to see if the new wine director there, Chris Poldoian, could maintain the verve and continuity of his predecessor’s program. And I am happy to report that this artisanal-focused list continues to keep us drinking well.

For those who aren’t familiar with Tyrrell’s Hunter Valley Sémillon, it’s one of those classic examples of what Jancis Robinson famously called “Australia’s gift to the wine world.” It was salty and rich on the palate with reserved layers of nuttiness and dry fruit that I believe will only continue to emerge as this long-lived wine ages. Great wine! And great to see it in the Houston market.

I’ll be taking a short break from the blog this week as I head to Italy for the Corriere della Sera’s Cucina Blog Awards ceremony in Milan on Saturday. I’m happy to report that my blog has been nominated in the “best wine and spirits” category and I’m psyched to see all my friends in the world’s fashion capital (and one of my favorite cities). Wish me luck and wish me speed! I’ll see you on the other side…

Randall Grahm first poured me Clos Cibonne Côtes de Provence Tibouren when we visited over lunch six years ago in LA. He had picked it up at a southland wine shop while he was working the market. And he seemed to take as much delight in drinking the wine as he did turning me on to it.

Since that time, it’s become (when available in our market) one of the standbys and favorites at our dinner table. It usually lands in Texas when the hype around rosé wines begins to rev up each year.

We enjoy every vintage but this year, with the current release 2015, this wine has what the Italians call the marcia in più, that extra gear in the gearbox.

The fruit in this bottle last night was so vibrant, so transparent and pure, that it just seemed to sing in the glass. What a wine and what a great vintage!

Over the years, we’ve come to know and love the classic, elegant oxidative style of this cask-aged rosé. But in this year’s release, the fruit really jumps out — especially on the palate.

My recommendation: run don’t walk to your favorite wine shop and buy all you can.

So much to tell today and so little time. Thanks for being here this week and buon weekend, ya’ll!

I was trading emails with the London-based editor of a book I translated yesterday when the news of the attack broke and she went dark. I don’t believe she was anywhere near Westminster and I trust that she’s okay. But I still haven’t heard back from her.

Our thoughts and prayers go out today for our sisters and brothers in London…

Image via Hernán Piñera’s Flickr (Creative Commons).