Above: Nebbiolo grapes in Cannubi, one of Barolo’s most famous crus.

“Here in the hills, people can’t stop talking about it,” wrote high-profile Italian wine blogger and Nebbiolo observer Alessandro Morichetti in a Facebook post today.

He was referring to Monday’s news that legacy Barolo estate Vietti had been sold to American entrepreneur Kyle Krause, owner of the “Kum and Go” convenience store chain.

It’s rumored that the cost was $60 million, an astounding figure for an appellation where many still remember the dire economic challenge faced by growers in the decades that followed the Second World War. As late as the 1960s, even as Italy’s post-war “economic miracle” began to take shape, many villages in Barolo and Barbaresco still didn’t have running water, for example.

In an excellent post today for the popular Italian wine blog Intravino, contributor and Langa native Francesco Oddenino remembers a remark by “last of the Mohicans” Barolo grower and winemaker Bartolo Mascarello.

Commenting the sale of a parcel in the famed Cannubi vineyard for an astronomical and at that time unimaginable sum, Mascarello reportedly said: “From this day forward, no young person in Barolo will have the means to acquire a piece of land in Barolo and begin to make wine. This is a dark day for Barolo.”

Yes, over the last decade or so, vineyard rows and even entire vineyard sites have changed hands for what some consider obscene amounts of money in Barolo and Barbaresco. But “until now,” writes Oddenino, “no other leading historic estate has ever been sold: The prices of land have reached levels never before seen but the best vineyards have always been purchased by historic wineries owned by Piedmontese producers.”

“This is perhaps another dark day for Barolo and the Langhe [hills],” he opines.

Krause has been trying to buy a historic estate in Langhe for some time now.

More than a year ago, I wrote this piece for WineSearcher about Roberto Conterno’s move to snatch up a historic Barolo farm that Krause desperately wanted to acquire.

He used “pre-emption rights,” otherwise known as “first right of refusal,” to block the American.

Tracie P and I will be heading to Barolo tomorrow for the Collisioni music and wine festival. I’m sure that there will be much talk of the sale and what it means for the future of the appellation.

I’ll report back all the news that’s fit to blog about.

And in meantime, I’ll try to figure out how to explain to Italians what “Kum and Go” means and its cultural (and pop-cultural) implications.

It felt like I was back in my university days in Italy except that the food and wine were a lot better.

From discussions of Noam Chomsky and Pier Paolo Pasolini to Balkan rock songs strummed late into the night on a nylon-string guitar, I had the most amazing time last night in Udine with my friend of many years Marco Fantinel, his SO Sonia, and their friends.

After I rolled into the Spilimbergo area late yesterday afternoon, Marco and I tasted at the winery (Ribolla Gialla and Refosco were highlights among many other great wines).

We then headed out to meet the gang at the newish restaurant Zago by Grado chef Luigi Zago in Laipacco hamlet (Tricesimo township, Udine province). Fantastic seafood destination and wine bar. I highly recommend it. We did fritto misto, crudo (above), and whole fish (turbot).

Marco, what a great night! Thank you, dude. It was awesome to connect like that. Sonia has the most amazing voice!

Posting in a hurry this morning from a very muggy Udine as I head out to my next appointment. Thanks for being here. More to come…

I photographed these wild blackberries as I hiked through Franciacorta’s peatlands this afternoon after lunch.

What an amazing, gorgeous visit! Super hot today but the marshland trails were wonderful.

With highs in the 90s, today probably wasn’t the best day for hiking in a swamp. A beautiful swamp. But a swamp nonetheless.

But on a cooler day, I can’t recommend it enough. Here’s a post on my visit and hike that I wrote for the Franciacorta Real Story blog when I got back to my hotel in Brescia. (Yes, the Franciacorta consortium actually pays me to do this stuff; sweet gig!)

It’s really worth checking out… and really interesting to learn that peat was once a major source of fuel here (in the 1700s).

Of course, no visit to Franciacorta was going to happen without a stop at Vittorio Fusari’s Dispensa Pani e Vini, one of my favorite restaurants in the world.

An Italian artisanal beer and Vittorio’s cotoletta alla milanese sandwich, served with a schmear of puréed potatoes… my goodness, that was awesome.

Some say that the restaurant just isn’t the same since Vittorio went off to cook in Milan. But I say hogwash.

A perfect Sunday afternoon in Franciacorta, if you ask me.

Check out the peatlands here. Really cool stuff.

Buona domenica a tutti!

Happy Fourth and G-d bless, yall! Remember: we can never go wrong by loving one another… Be safe and have fun.

Yes, people, it’s true: that’s $100 worth of Texas bbq right there in that photo.

3/4 lbs. brisket
1 beef rib
1 sausage
1 pulled pork sandwich
1 handful of pulled pork on the side
1/2 pint of coleslaw
1/2 pint of potato salad
6 bottles of water
1 Coke
3 people

My bromance Giovanni has been staying with us this week and on Tuesday I took him to Austin for some honky-tonking and a visit to one of my clients there.

Yesterday, we arrived early at La Barbecue — currently, Austin’s hippest destination for ‘cue — where we waited in line for an hour to get our food.

It was delicious. Definitely up there with some of the best bbq I’ve ever had. The smoke ring on the brisket was impeccable. The tenderness and flavor of the pork peerless and beyond reproach. The potato salad divinely classic and classically divine.

But $100 for three people? In my view, that’s an Oedipal reversal of what bbq is supposed to be about.

But then again, when you hear people talk about how they used to pay $6.99 for first-growth Bordeaux in the 1970s, you can’t help but see the parallels in the ways that the market (and marketing) can drive our perceptions of value.

To put it into perspective, uncle Marty treated Giovanni and me to lunch at Brisket House in Houston on Monday. It’s one of the best smokers imho in our city. Our bill for a similar amount of food was around $50 and our wait was 15 minutes.

As we drove back to Houston, I remembered how Snow’s in Lexington, Texas was all the rage back when I first moved to the state in 2008. It’s the first bbq destination (at least that I remember) where people bragged about lining up early in the morning to get their food before it ran out. Today, there are a handful (if not more) of similarly popular smokers spread out across Austin and Houston.

What’s the world coming to? I’m not sure but I know it’s delicious (and expensive).

Between a seminar I led at Vinitaly in April, a recent visit to Friuli and all the great wine that’s finding its way to Texas from Friuli (thanks to a new wave of independent distributors and forward-thinking wine professionals), some amazing Friulian wines have filled my glass over the last couple of months.

But the one I can’t stop thinking about is the Morus Alba by Vignai da Duline, a splurge wine that costs around $60 in our market.

Honestly, I can’t recall ever tasting a Malvasia Istriana and Sauvignon Blanc blend like this extraordinary wine. In my experience, Malvasia Istriana (not related to the many different clones of Malvasia found throughout Italy and Europe) is generally bottled as a monovarietal wine (like Venica’s excellent Pètris).

In this cuvée, the Malvasia has an opulent unctuousness that plays against the more angular Sauvignon Blanc with spectacular results. And even with a slightly higher alcohol content than I would generally reach for, this wine was impeccably balanced. What a wine!

I’ve never visited the winery or tasted with the winemaker but I imagine the proprietary name is a homage to Friuli’s historic silk trade.

Morus alba is Latin for the white mulberry, a tree commonly found in Friuli and a favorite food of silkworms.

The Morus Alba that Tracie P and I shared the other night was a splurge wine, for sure. A “special occasion” bottle that we enjoyed thanks to a project I’ve been working on. But, man, it was worth every penny…