Taste with me on Monday of Vinitaly 2-4 p.m.
at the Franciacorta consortium stand.
It’s an informal tasting where everyone is welcome.
Click here for details.

Narry a week goes by that I don’t receive an email from a winemaker or importer asking me advice about how to find representation in Texas.

The state’s economy is robust despite the drop in the price of oil and the wine culture here vibrant and growing.

But aggressive and restrictive regulation of wine sales here (o how those Republican lawmakers love interventionist government!) and steep wholesale taxes (o how those Republican lawmakers love taxing small businesses!) remain unchanged. Unless you are with one of the big distributors, you face seemingly insurmountable obstacles to creating a foothold in the Lone Star State.

And now that Southern Wine & Spirits (the Microsoft of wine) has acquired distributor and direct importer Glazer’s (one of the Texas biggies) in what has euphemistically been deemed a “merger,” the odds are stacked even higher in favor of big wine and big money.

(“‘What’s also very important is that this is a combination,’ [Glazer’s CEO Sheldon] Stein added. ‘No one is being bought out, there is no acquisition, it’s a combination of the two.'” I guess it depends on what your definition of is is.)

Over the last five years or so, a new wave of smaller and more open-minded distributors has cropped up here. Many have gone by the wayside. But a few have flourished.

I was thrilled when Mark Middlebrook (above, left), national sales manager for Italian wine importer PortoVino, contacted me a few weeks ago about tasting with him and his Texas distributor Ian McCaffery (right) here in Houston.

Last week, I met with them and was geeked to see that one of my favorite expressions of Valpolicella, Corte Sant’Alda, is now available in Texas. The wine showed gorgeously, btw, fresh and lithe in the mouth despite the fact that it had been open and in their wine bag all day.

Ian has courageously stuck to his guns as he has brought a number of alternative and natural-leaning portfolios or “books” as they are known in the trade to the state (he also has Jenny & François, for example).

And gauging from the fact that he is currently expanding his sales force, it would seem that he is thriving.

As much as I love our wine scene here, it’s still challenging for me to obtain a lot of the wines I like to drink on a regular basis. As a consumer, I am forced to buy much of the wine we serve at home from out-of-state retailers and then have them shipped here through a third-party shipper (which is 100 percent legal, btw; it’s a pain in the ass and it’s expensive but it’s legal).

It’s all the more reason that I applaud Mark and Ian for their work here. Little by little, our state is catching up to New York and California in terms of the availability of the wines that the new generation of fine wine lovers wants to drink.

The night of our meeting, someone at our table challenged me to explain why I identify as a Marxist.

Forced to answer as succinctly as possible (also for the sake of the wines, which were the real focus of our meeting), I told her: materialism drives capitalism; capitalism drives consumerism; and consumerism diminishes our humanity.

However they see it, Mark and Ian are both doing their part to put a little bit of humanity back into the Texas wine scene. And I’m all for that…

Thanks for reading.

It’s one of the most talked about events of the Italian wine trade fair season of 2016.

The debut of “Vitae”: a documentary featuring 50 natural winemakers by director Davide Vanni (above).

Davide will be presenting and screening the film for the first time at the ViniVeri fair on Saturday, April 9.

An educator specializing in children with special needs, a mountain shepherd, a blogger, cinéaste and filmmaker, Davide enjoys a cult following among Italy’s wine intelligentsia.

In February 2015, he set out on a journey to visit each of Italy’s 20 regions with his camera in hand.

But there was a hitch: Davide doesn’t own a car and so public transportation was his means of conveyance — trains, busses, and ferries.

In the trailer below, he describes the film as a “reverse wine fair.”

“And then it hit me,” he says in the voiceover, “it would be great to create a reverse wine fair by going the estates instead of going to the fair.”

I’ve been giving the ViniVeri consortium a hand in promoting awareness of the fair among anglophones this season. Click here to read my posts on their blog. I’ll be at the fair in Cerea (Verona province) on Saturday, April 9. Please join me that day or visit the fair April 8-10. Click here for registration details.

Image via TerraUomoCielo.

Neither Georgia P nor I could sleep this early morning.

And so while Lila Jane and mommy were still sleeping, we sat on the couch in the living room and ate Ella’s Kitchen banana-apricot-baby rice purées (our guilty pleasure) and watched YouTubes of the Beatles.

When Paul McCartney started singing “All My Loving” (Beatles live at the Hollywood Bowl), I thought I was going to start crying:

Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you
Tomorrow I’ll miss you
Remember I’ll always be true…

I just don’t know how I’m going to say goodbye to them next week when it’s time for me to board a plane for my third trip to Italy this year.

But a lot of fun and some compelling tastings await me on the other side. And of course, I’ll get to reconnect with so many friends from Italy, the U.S., and Great Britain at the trade fairs, including my bromance, Giovanni, whom I haven’t seen since the end of January.

A lot of my U.S. friends have expressed a desire to taste together at Vinitaly. And so I asked the Franciacorta Consortium to let me hold an informal tasting:

Franciacorta Real Story Tasting

with yours truly
Monday, April 11
2 p.m. – 4 p.m.
Franciacorta Consortium Stand
Palaexpo B/C16
Vinitaly (Verona)

Everyone is welcome and I will be pouring some of my favorite expressions of Franciacorta at this casual get-together (and btw, the food at the Franciacorta Consortium stand is always out of sight). Please feel free to stop by and bring whomever you like.

I’m also pleased to announce that Silvano Brescianini and I will be co-presenting two really great tastings in New York on Monday, April 18.

The morning guided tasting has limited seating and is already filling up fast. The afternoon tasting is open to all.

If you’ve never met Silvano, the consortium’s new VP, he is the sweetest and smartest guy and I can’t think of any better way to wrap your mind around Franciacorta than to taste and interact with him. He’s one of the pioneers of organic farming in the appellation and while we won’t be pouring his wines at the seminar and walk-around (because of conflict of interest), he is as franciacortino as they come. And he’s a great friend.

If you want to attend the morning tasting, please email me asap. And if you want to joint the afternoon tasting, please ping me so that we can get a rough headcount.

Seminar: “Franciacorta, an exclusive guided tasting
with Silvano Brescianini, Franciacorta Consortium VP”

featuring 12 wines
Monday, April 18
10 a.m. – 12 p.m.
L’Apicio
NYC

Tasting: “Franciacorta, a walk-around tasting
with Silvano Brescianini, Franciacorta Consortium VP”

featuring more than 20 wines
Monday, April 18
4 p.m. – 6 p.m.
L’Apicio
NYC

Wish me speed, friends and countrypeople. Wish me speed to get back to those girls of mine…

Image via FranciacortinaInCucina.

Above: Puglia senator Dario Stefàno (image via Dario Stefano’s official website).

Last week, Italian politician Dario Stefàno, senator from Puglia and member of Italy’s Left Ecology Freedom party, formally introduced a bill in the Italian parliament that would make “Wine History and Civilization” a mandatory subject in Italian public schools.

Together with a panel that included the Italian ampelographer and wine historian Attilio Scienza and enologist Riccardo Cotarella, Stefàno held a press conference in Rome on Thursday where he put forth his proposal and outlined a draft of legislation that would require students in Italian public schools to receive instruction in wine culture for at least one hour per week.

“There is no chapter of our country’s history,” said Stefàno in his prepared remarks (translation mine), “that does not include episodes linked to grape growing and wine. We need to begin to tell Italy’s story through the landmark events that have defined every important passage of history. The moment has arrived for Italy to include ‘Wine History and Civilization’ as a full-fledged and mandatory subject in our children’s basic educational curriculum. After surpassing France in a historic milestone, Italy is today the leading producer of wine in the world. The time has come to fill this cultural gap by teaching the country’s children about one of its defining characteristics. This is not a matter of expanding technical instruction in our trade schools, something that also needs to be promptly addressed. Instead, instruction devoted to the role of wine and grape growing in our country’s history will help to shape our cultural heritage and the education of future generations. There is no doubt that wine and grape growing are already ambassadors of our culture throughout the world. My hope is that we can launch a pilot program as early as next year in two or three regions of Italy and perhaps Puglia could be one of those.”

In his own remarks, Scienza addressed the evolving role of wine in Italian society today:

Italians “have lost the habit of serving wine at home,” he said (translation mine). “Young people around 15 years in age consume alcohol at least once a week but they do so outside the home. And their logic is that of having a good time. We need to bring wine back into our homes, into our schools, and into the core of Mediterranean culture because wine is not for getting drunk: It is the origin of our identity and our belonging. We need to bring wine back to being a beverage of the people. And beyond telling the story of wine as a significant element of our history, we need to convey the idea that wine is fundamental element of the peoples of the Mediterranean. Drinking should not be the source of physical gratification. It should be the source of cultural gratification. In the light of this, we need to reveal the history behind wine. We have stopped sharing this with our youth. Bringing this into our schools is a first step in a process that we need to continue to develop.”

Complete notes (in Italian) from the press conference and transcriptions of statements by Stefàno’s co-panelists can be found on Stefàno’s website.

Above: my now bi-weekly Sykpe sessions with Giampiero Bea — the president of the ViniVeri Consortium of natural winemakers — include a little family time. Our girls are really curious about him and they are starting to get interested in Italian and the fact that their mommy and daddy often speak in Italian.

Just when some had written off “natural wine” as passé, the category seems to have sprung up once again in the wine dialectic and discourse.

Just last week, the Amsterdam-based food and wine writer Simon Woolf published a post on Palate Press entitled “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly… of natural wine.”

“Things get troublesome,” he writes, “when acolytes start to defend wines and producers just because they are ‘natural,’ forgoing any kind of quality control in favor of idealism… Well-meaning and enthused they may be, but in truth [“naturalistas”] are quite poisonous to the natural ‘niche’ as a whole, because they give the flawed impression that no-one in the sector has any skill or selectivity.”

And earlier this month, Eater wine columnist and wine professional Rachel Signer asked “Does ‘Natural Wine’ Deserve Its Own Classification?”

“The natural wine movement is reaching new heights,” she notes, “both in terms of production and consumption. Young, upstart natural winemakers have made their careers in the last ten years throughout France, Italy, and the U.S., thanks in part to high-profile restaurants and bars focusing bottle lists on less manipulated juice. All of which begs the question: Is it time to define these wines so consumers know that what they’re drinking is — to some extent — natural?”

And as surreal as it may seem, even “big” wine is embracing the de facto category: the world’s leading advocate for natural wine Alice Feiring will be chairing a natural wine tasting panel and competition at this year’s Vinitaly, the Italian wine trade’s annual fair in Verona.

The award is “a way to bring the conversation about what wine is — not only natural — to a much larger audience,” wrote Feiring on her blog last month.

“The fact that [Vinitaly] embraced this category is ground-breaking. Frankly, it is a big deal and is bound to shake up the status quo.”

(Alice’s subscription newsletter, btw, is imho the best resource on natural wine today.)

Above: my chats with Giampiero have radically reshaped my thoughts on natural wine.

For the non-Italophones among us, I’d like to add a voice to that chorus by sharing my excerpted translation of a short post by Armando Castagno, one of the top wine educators and writers working in Italy today and one of the technical tasters and intellectuals I admire most.

“When uttered in the context of wine,” he wrote on Accademia degli Alterati last week, “‘natural’ is not the opposite of ‘artificial’ as those who can’t see the forest for the trees struggle to understand (or worse, don’t realize that they don’t understand).”

“‘Natural’ is the opposite of ‘ideal.’ It is something that doesn’t have a canonical form to which it can aspire or achieve by means of addition or subtraction.”

Make of it what you will, but the conversation on natural wine today is as vibrant as ever — on both sides of that great misunderstanding otherwise known as the Atlantic.

Throughout this dialectic and its metaphysical contradictions, my own thoughts on natural wine have been evolving rapidly thanks to my now bi-weekly conversations with Giampiero Bea, natural winemaker at Paolo Bea and president of the ViniVeri Consortium of natural winemakers.

A few weeks ago, he asked me to give him a hand in raising awareness of the upcoming ViniVeri fair and the consortium’s causes. (You can read my posts on the consortium’s site here.)

In our confabulations, Giampiero has never wanted to talk about whether or not natural or conventional wines are good or bad. He has no interest in discussing the epistemological nature of the dialectic (i.e., what is natural wine? and how do we define it?). In his mind, it seems, these questions have either been resolved long ago or are simply not relevant to his agenda.

The thing he wants to talk about is glyphosate, the compound used in the widely applied herbicide Roundup.

The European Union’s Standing Committee on Plant Health will soon be considering a ban on glyphosate. And Giampiero’s most urgent cause is spreading the word about this issue and drawing attention to a Change.org petition to ban the substance.

He’s also organizing presentations on the threats posed by the widespread use of glyphosate. He plans to take them to elementary, middle, and high schools where students can be affected by the spraying of glyphosate in adjacent fields.

“Yes, it’s important to teach children about spring and the beautiful poetry of flowers blossoming, pollination, and honey,” he said to me on Saturday. “But spring is also the time that winemakers begin to spray their vineyards with herbicides. And my hope is that we can raise awareness of the harm these practices can inflict.”

Giampiero has two sons, both under 10 years old. They both go to schools in a rural area where spraying could have a direct and ill effect on them.

It’s one thing to advocate for or critique natural wine when you live in a major urban center far from agriculture. It’s another when they are spraying glyphosate in your backyard.

And that’s what made a whole new mindset click for me. The discussions of what natural wine is or is not and whether it’s good or bad are perhaps not irrelevant but they don’t address the issue that matters most to me.

What matters most to me — and I believe to Giampiero — is the enogastronomic legacy that we will leave to our children when we are gone.

As Giampiero has said to me so rightly, natural wine is a human right, just like potable water is a human right. We should all have the right to have access to food products grown without the use of dangerous chemicals. Whether or not we choose to exercise that right is another question. But we should all enjoy that right, no matter where we live.

Someday, Tracie P and I will take Georgia P and Lila Jane to Umbria to meet Giampiero and his family so that our children can play together on their playgrounds and we can all share a wholesome meal.

Thanks for reading and for supporting natural wine — for what it’s worth.

Americans really shouldn’t sign the Change.org petition to raise awareness of the glyphosate debate in Europe but please check it out here. And please read this excellent National Geographic article on the current debate over glyphosate in this country (in English).

Above: the Grand-Place in Brussels (photo by jesuscm via his Flickr).

When I woke up this morning at 5:15 a.m., I discovered that our oldest daughter, Georgia P age 4, had crawled into our bed in the middle of the night and was sleeping soundly between Tracie P and me.

I gingerly made my way to the kitchen where I set water to boil for my tea as I sipped my orange juice and opened my New York Times app on my phone.

For a few very silent moments in our kitchen, alone, I prayed.

How long will it be before I can no longer shield our precious children from the world’s evil and violence?

It’s just another Tuesday morning at our house and our girls are having breakfast as I write this and Tracie is going about getting their clothes, lunches, and show-and-tells ready for school.

And today their parents’ hearts, prayers, and solidarity go out to our sisters and brothers in Brussels.

Giampiero Bea, president of the ViniVeri Consortium, asked me to give him a hand getting the word out this year. And I am glad to do it.

Hope to see you there (I’ll be there on Saturday, April 9).

Click the image below for full-size flier.

Thanks again Rich for the awesome pics you took of our Franciacorta tasting the other night in Boston at Wine Bottega!

It seems like only yesterday but it was really about nine years ago that I started to follow our friend Anthony on social media.

At the time, he was on the road playing guitar with a major recording artist. Traveling across the world and performing in major European and American cities, he would post a note on his social media as he would roll into each new town: “where can I find some natural wine?” he would query. Invariably, like-minded wine lovers would answer with detailed lists of venues where he could find wines that he liked to drink (as the rest of us took notes for future travels).

I was reminded of Anthony’s crowd-sourcing on Wednesday night when I poured Franciacorta for a fantastic group of wine folks at the Wine Bottega in Boston’s North End.

I’ve spent next to no time in Boston over the arc of my wine blogging life yet it was like being welcome by a group of old friends, even though I was meeting most of them for the first time in person.

Please have a look at Richard Auffrey’s excellent post on his impressions of our tasting and his insights into what makes Franciacorta such a unique expression of sparkling wine today (including some of his stand-out wines from the flight).

Thank you, Rich, for your kind words and superb post (and the awesome photos).

Thank you, wine blogger Karin O’Brien and wine educator Roz Angoff, for joining and tasting with us.

Thank you to the owners and staff at the Wine Bottega for hosting and creating such a fantastic space and environment for tastings like this (and thanks for the kind words in your eblast). Great shop, great selection, and great vibe!

And thanks, most of all, to my good friend Adam Japko — wine blogger, cultural entrepreneur, and all-around mensch — for creating the magic that happened on Wednesday.

I’m so lucky to have found a friend in you. And it’s all thanks to wine blogging.

In other news…

Before our tasting, we tried unsuccessfully to get into Boston’s sexiest seafood destination these days, Neptune Oyster.

But I did manage to snag a spot at its sister venue in the Back Bay, Select Oyster Bar, on Thursday for lunch.

Man, you just can’t get oysters like that beyond the northeastern and northwestern coasts.

Really superb stuff.

And I also really dug the Branger Muscadet Les Fils de Gras Mouton for just $9 a glass. Great value and great wine (below).

Boston, you throw an awesome wine party! Buon weekend, everyone!

Above: David Keck (left), owner and author of the wine list at Camerata with Elaine Brown, author of Hawk Wakawaka Wine Reviews in Houston last month.

Food & Wine magazine’s “best sommeliers 2016” title couldn’t have gone to a nicer and more talented guy than David Keck, whose progressive, innovative, and delicious list at Camerata in Houston has become an benchmark for groovy wine in Texas since it opened in 2013.

Mazel tov, David!

I should know: it’s my go-to destination for business and pleasure when I’m in my adoptive hometown (I was there last night sucking down a bottle of Cirelli Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo).

David is a member of that tribe of sommeliers whose chops are rivaled only by their sense and embrace of hospitality and humanity. I’m so glad to see him recognized with this impressive title.

In other news…

Really interesting to taste a vertical of Trinoro last night here in Houston, including the 2001 out of magnum.

Not really my style of wine but the 2001 showed beautifully in the glass, with gorgeous freshness, ripe fruit, earnest vitality.

I was told that this was the last vintage Franchetti raised in large cask and it was a true pleasure to drink.

That’s all that I have time for this morning as I board a plane for Boston where I’ll be pouring Franciacorta tonight at the Wine Bottega. Please come out and see me if you happen to be in town. Wish me speed…