There are few things that I do well in life. But one of them is my ability to speak Italian with near native-speaker fluency.

Whenever I travel to Italy (I’ve already been twice this year), I interact with Italians seamlessly. And while my foreign accent is often discernible, many Italians compliment me on my language skills.

“You must be Italian,” they say.

“No, I’m not. I’m from America,” I tell them, “I grew up in California.”

“Well, you must have Italian origins,” they counter.

“No, io sono ebreo,” I explain, “I am a Jew. Nearly all of my great-grandparents fled Eastern Europe — Russia and Poland — before the Russian Revolution and came to the U.S.”

This information is often met with surprise. My semitic features are easily confused with Mediterranean physiognomy.

“When asked why he spoke so many languages so well,” I tell them, “the famous Russian-born linguist Roman Jakobson would answer, ‘je suis juif’ (I am a Jew).”

Don’t get me wrong: I am NO Roman Jakobson. He was one of the most brilliant minds of twentieth-century linguistic theory and his work reshaped the field and informed a generation of linguists and critical theorists who followed him. One of his greatest achievements was his theory of the “six functions of language.”

But it is true: Russian Jews are known to possess a gift in second-language acquisition.

Except for those who have traveled in the U.S., most Italians I meet in Italy have never met a Jew (btw, I prefer Jew over Jewish person, although I recognize and appreciate that many use the euphemism Jewish person to avoid saying Jew, which, in another era, could be interpreted as having a pejorative meaning).

There is a long tradition of admiration for Jews in Italian literature. It stretches back to Dante and Boccaccio, both of whom wrote about Jews in medieval culture in a positive light. Dante, for example, was a great admirer of the Roman-Jewish poet Immanuel Romano, who wrote in Hebrew, Latin, and Italian.

Many of Italy’s greatest twentieth-century writers were Jews: Carlo Levi, Primo Levi, Giorgio Bassani, and many others.

But today, more often than not, Italians have little contact with Jews aside from the American Jews they meet in Italy.

When I visited Asolo for the Asolo and Montello Consortium wine festival last month, I was reminded of another era in Jewish history when Jews played an important role in Italian mercantile and intellectual life.

In Asolo, there was a vibrant Jewish community and center of learning during the Venetian Renaissance. Like the Jewish communities in Venice and Padua, it was part of a movement in the historic “renewal of learning” in Europe until it was wiped out in the “massacre at Asolo” in 1547. The famous Cantarini family was among those who perished in the tragedy.

The Hebrew inscription in the photo above is a sixteenth-century tombstone that has been embedded in one of the walls of the Loggia del Capitano in the historic center of Asolo. I believe — although I’m not certain — that it was moved there from Asolo’s Jewish cemetery in the late nineteenth century, when there was a renewed interest among Italian scholars in Jewish communities in the Venetian Renaissance (at least, this is what I gauge from my research).

I recently asked Rabbi Yerachmiel Garfield of the Yeshiva Torat Emet (here in Houston, not far from where we live) to translate it for me. Here’s what he wrote:

This monument serves as a sign for the burial of the lawgiver [is poetic language taken from the Torah’s description of Moses burial place — it literally means “lawgiver” — but it has been used since to refer to the burial of an important personage or man of importance], Gershom son of the chaver [an honorific used primarily in Germany to denote a certain standing in the community]. R[ebbe] Gershom son of Moshe Chafetz of blessed and holy memory. 1528 [C.E.]

I had seen the inscription many times before but I had never sat down to figure out what it meant or why it was there.

Thanks for letting me share it with you here.

It’s truly remarkable to see how many high-profile Italian winemakers and power brokers are coming to Texas these days.

When I sat down with Bolgheri consortium president Federico Zileri Dal Verme (above) yesterday evening at the überhip restaurant Underbelly to chat and taste his Castello di Bolgheri wines, he told me that it was his first time in Texas.

“In New York they have so much wine,” he said, “and the market is difficult.”

“But in Texas they want more wine!”

Although there still are many challenges in finding a distribution channel here, the state continues to hold allure for Italian wineries thanks to an ongoing energy boom and exponential growth that many compare to California’s in the 1970s.

I was eager to ask Federico about his tenure as the consortium’s new president.

In 2013, legacy producer Nicolò Incisa della Rocchetta (owner of the Tenuta San Guido, where Sassicaia is produced) stepped down from the association’s presidency after eighteen years.

Federico’s presidency represents a new chapter in the appellation’s history. At 50 something, he is a relative young blood.

Even before he became president, Federico led a groundbreaking campaign within the consortium to allow for monovarietal wines in Bolgheri.

Ornellaia’s famous Masseto, a wine made from 100 percent Merlot grapes, he pointed out, has historically been labeled as an IGT because the Bolgheri DOC did not include single-grape wines.

Cinzia Merli’s Le Macchiole Paleo, another historic label that was first made as a blend and then ultimately became a wine made from 100 percent Cabernet Franc, was also excluded from the Bolgheri DOC.

But in 2011, thanks to a proposal by Federico, the consortium members agreed unanimously to change their appellation regulations.

(It’s worth noting here that Cinzia’s Paleo — pronounced pah-LEH-oh — is now Bolgheri Superiore DOC while Masseto is still IGT.)

As he recounted the appellation’s evolution, I couldn’t help but express my disbelief that every member of the consortium had agreed willingly to the changes.

“Are you telling me,” I asked, “that there exists a consortium where all the winemakers agree in Italy” where internecine feuds are legendary?

Federico laughed and told me that yes, it’s true.

“It’s not an envious consortium,” he said.

Currently, the Bolgheri DOC covers 1,250 hectares including: Bolgheri Bianco (mostly Vermentino); Bolgheri Sauvignon (85 percent min. Sauvignon Blanc); Bolgheri Rosso, Bolgheri Rosso Superiore, and Bolgheri Rosato (international grape varieties, mostly Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Cabernet Franc with smaller amounts of Syrah and Sangiovese allowed); Bolgheri Rosso Superiore (min. aging of 24 months and min. of 12 months in cask); and Bolgheri Sassicaia (which is still a DOC).

The Castello di Bolgheri has been part of Federico’s family’s holdings for countless generations. He’s part of the Della Gherardesca family, a nobile Florentine line that traces its roots to the middle ages and beyond (they’re mentioned, among others, in Dante’s Commedia).

He was the winemaker at Tenuta Argentiera, another Bolgheri consortium member, until he began producing wines at his family’s Bolgheri estate in 2001.

The wines (blends of international varieties) were balanced, with good acidity and wood that didn’t overwhelm their fruit. I liked them a lot.

But more than anything else, I loved hearing about this utopian appellation on the Tuscan coast where everyone gets along. Sounds like a dream, no?

I also have to give a shout out to Underbelly GM and wine director Matthew Pridgen for his excellent new wine list. He’s always had a great list there (I’m a fan) but he continues to expand the wine list genre with his magazine-style format. It’s a super cool, world-class list. Check it out the next time you’re in the area…

From the department of “we have yet to discover how good bread and butter go together”…

Above: a view of Lake Iseo from the Ronco Calino winery, one of my favorites, in the south of the Franciacorta appellation looking north.

Four days ago, the acclaimed Italian wine critic Victor Rallo, Jr. (never heard of him?) and his cohort “former professor” and wine critic Anthony Verdoni published their astonishing findings on the behemoth wine blog Snooth.

“Franciacorta is the next Champagne,” they declared in the title of their well researched blog post for the PacMan of wine blogs.

“Northwestern Italy is the world leader in the production of sparkling wines of low pressure; fizzy, crackling, frizzante wines,” they observe authoritatively. “Such wines undergo their secondary fermentation in pressurized tanks called autoclaves. Examples include Moscato d’Asti and Lambrusco.”

Northwestern Italy? Well, it’s true that Moscato d’Asti is made there.

“The tradition for Italian sparkling wines made in what Franco Ziliano [SIC] called the ‘French method,’ they note, “dates back to the 1850’s. None can match what was to come in Franciacorta.”

Their remarkable revelation is sure to be ranked up there with Newton’s universal law of gravity, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and — as the Italians would say — the discovery of hot water.

Sadly, the comparison of Franciacorta to Champagne continues to molest consumers’ and trade’s perception of the Italian appellation like lice.

Even outgoing Franciacorta consortium president Maurizio Zanella, one of the appellation’s pioneers, conceded in a recent interview (for a top Italian wine blog) that the analogy was a “venial sin” of the past.

Franciacorta has two things in common with Champagne: the grape varieties (Chardonnay and Pinot Noir) and the method (the “classic method” or “traditional method”).

The climate is different. Franciacorta has an Alpine climate. In Champagne, maritime and continental climate.

Franciacorta growers like cool summers because it helps them achieve greater ripeness. Champagne growers like warm summers because it helps them achieve greater ripeness.

The soil types are also radically different. Franciacorta is predominantly morainic although there is also a substantial presence of limestone.

“The soil in Champagne is, for the most part, comprised of massive chalk deposits” (see this awesome post on Champagne soil types by Mise en abyme).

In Franciacorta there are roughly 100+ growers. In Champagne, a tenth of the vineyards are owned by merchants and the balance is comprised of 20,000 growers, according to the Oxford Companion to Wine.

When it comes down to it, the two appellations really don’t have much in common. Even the fizziness in Franciacorta is radically different than in Champagne, as is the amount of sugar used to provoke first and second fermentations. In Franciacorta, for example, nearly no one adds sugar to provoke the first fermentation while in Champagne it’s an accepted and common practice (although, more and more, Champagne producers are moving away from this).

So when are high-profile mastheads going to wake up and smell the wines and realize that FRANCIACORTA IS NOT CHAMPAGNE? If one of these writers would simply try a couple of wines side by side, she/he would realize how incongruous the analogy truly is.

I’ll be pouring a healthy flight of Franciacorta next month in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and San Diego for my Franciacorta-consortium sponsored blog, “Franciacorta, the real story.” Please come taste with me!

During each of my visits to Italy, winemakers generously offer to give me wine to bring home to Texas.

It’s always a bit of a Sophie’s choice: with so many great wines up for grabs, which wine to pack in my bag, which is otherwise filled with books?

During each stay, I always chose just one bottle and it’s always a bottle that I know that Tracie P will truly enjoy.

On my last trip to the bel paese, I finally made a pilgrimage to the land of Saint Francis to visit the Paolo Bea winery in Montefalco, a quasi-spiritual experience for me.

I’ve known Giampiero Bea for many years now and have tasted with him on a number of occasions and we once had dinner in Houston on one his rare visits to the U.S.

He’s a larger-than-life personage in my world and I have to admit that I’ve always been a little intimidated (in a positive way) by his powerful presence. To see and taste with him at the Vini Veri festival in Italy, where he presides over a group of winemakers that includes some of my favorite estates (Rinaldi, Cappellano, Zidarich, and so many more), is to interact with a true cult figure in the world of Italian wine.

A charismatic and handsome man, he is as outspoken as he is histrionic and he is as true and faithful to his natural wine cause as he is passionate about the wines he makes.

But when I met with him tête-à-tête at his winery, I found him to be one of the sweetest and down-to-earth grape growers I’ve ever encountered in the often holier-than-thou world of Natural wine (with a capital n).

He told me a most moving story about his father Paolo (whom I had the great fortune to meet that day). Before the advent of the current winery and line of wines, his father was a modest farmer and rancher, he explained. Returning one day from Giampiero’s brother’s swearing in ceremony as a conscripted soldier (military service in Italy was mandatory until recently), the family came across another rancher that was having problems calving a cow.

“My father, who worked every day in his life, who never took a day off,” he recounted, “helped them deliver the calf even though this was the only day he had allowed himself a day of rest and celebration.”

That spirit, said Giampiero, was why he abandoned a prosperous career in architecture and took over the family’s winemaking.

“There is a spirit among people like my father,” he told me, “that we must give something back to the community.”

And that’s what’s always impressed me the most about Giampiero, his wines, and his fanatical devotion to the Natural wine mission. Whether you like them or not, whether you believe that the “Natural” label is a mere marketing campaign or a higher calling, there’s no denying that Giampiero and his followers believe wholeheartedly that these wines make the world a better place to live. I believe that, too.

It was fascinating to tour Giampiero’s vineyards and get a better grasp on the altitude, exposure, and soil types of his growing sites for his top Sagrantino.

But even more thrilling was seeing the Etruscan-trained Trebbiano Spoletino that is used to make his Arboreus (which is pronounced ahr-BOH-reh-oos).

Many farmers still train these plants on trees, as the Etruscans did. It’s a form of vine training that you still find in Campania and central Italy in places still left untouched by the new age of Italian wine.

Basically, the Trebbiano grows with no human intervention, the way it has for generations. It’s important to remember that in another era, grape growing was not a priority for farmers in a time when the notion of fine wine hardly existed beyond the great appellations like Burgundy and Barolo etc.

A local clone of Italy’s ubiquitous white grape, Trebbiano Spoletino (Spoleto is about forty minutes by car from Montefalco) grows in enormous, dense clusters, some 40 centimeters in length. Because of their density and size, the bunches are more resistant to disease than other clones. And they require little care when trained high on the tree trunks.

When Giampiero offered me a bottle to take home, I knew this was the one that Tracie P would want. And so I accepted.

We opened the wine last night with dinner and as it warmed up a little in the glass, it revealed layers and layers of stone fruit and mineral flavors. But its aroma was what really captivated me: gentle white flowers offset by attenuated notes of eastern spice.

A special wine to share only with my wife…

Thank you, Giampiero, for a wonderful visit and a wonderful bottle!

Just a few photos snapped today, Saturday, just five days after the flooding. The whole area smells like rot.

This morning over on the Barone Pizzini-Pievalta blog (my clients), I translated excerpts from the official appellation regulations for olive ascolane, the moreish meat-stuffed and deep-fried green olives from Ascoli Piceno in the Marches (Le Marche).

Click here for the official stuffing recipe.

Thanks for being here, everyone. I finally have some downtime next week here in Houston and don’t have to get on another plane for another seven days… Stay tuned for more starting next Monday. Buon weekend a tutti!

I just wanted to write a quick note to thank everyone for the many notes and thoughts that have arrived from Italy and across the U.S.: the girls and our house are fine; there was a lot of flooding in our Houston neighborhood on Tuesday morning but miraculously our house and block were spared.

Below you’ll find a video shot by a neighbor of our using his drone (we don’t know him personally but Tracie P came across the short film via social media).

It shows the intersection of Braeswood and Chimney Rock, just 5 minutes from our home, a shopping hub that we visit nearly daily (supermarket, gym, bank, etc.).

I actually flew out of Houston on Monday night to LA. As I was going to bed around 11 p.m., Tracie P and I were texting and she was concerned about the strength and the duration of the storm. But neither of us knew what was really happening until the next day when we started seeing the images and videos on social and news media.

The good news is that our rental home, which was built in the 1950s, has never flooded according to our landlord. And of course, we always have flashlights and bottled water on hand in case of emergencies, a necessity when you live in a hurricane and tornado corridor. We were extremely fortunate. Not everyone was so lucky.

Thanks again to everyone for the notes and messages. They mean a lot to us.

All the way down to the pizza crust dipping sauces – ranch, Italian, and marinara (below) – it’s all about the nostalgia and kitsch at the newly opened Jon and Vinny’s, a homage to Italian-American and nuova italiana cookery on Fairfax in West Hollywood in the former Damiano’s (an old haunt from my grad school days).

But when I met a colleague there for a working dinner last night (thanks to an impossible-to-get reservation courtesy the management at Sotto where I co-author the wine list), it was more about my nostalgia for an old Nebbiolo friend, the Mimo rosato by Cantalupo, one of my favorite Novara producers.

Ops and beverage director Helen Johannesen’s list is mostly delicious natty and old school French but her Italian selection is also solid (if red heavy).

The Mimo was the only Italian rosé wine among healthy French options and it showed beautifully with the spicy red thread that ran through the dishes, from the “little gems” (now a pseudo-Italian standby) to the bucatini cacio e pepe (are italics even relevant anymore?).

Waiting for my colleague to arrive, I snapped this image of Canter’s Deli across the street where I spent countless late nights in my 20s when living, teaching Italian, and playing music in LA.

My night ended with me Ubering back to my hotel and soundly asleep by 11, something that rarely happened during that time in my life.

In those days matzah ball soup and beer were the daily victuals. Today Nebbiolo and pizza dipping sauce are the order of the day. But Canter’s still sits there, unchanged and unmoved.

My, how things must stay the same for everything to change.

Blogs are about remembering. “Web logs” is what they were called early on. They were and are diaries of their authors’ lives.

Every Memorial Day, I remember Melvin Croaker in the photo (above, right).

Every one in Tracie P’s family made me feel welcome when I first moved to Texas to be with her, to start a new family and a new life together nearly seven years ago now.

On the first Christmas Eve we spent together in East Texas in 2008, Melvin — a close family friend of my now parents-in-law — presented me with a cowboy hat and six-pack of Lone Star beer as he officially welcomed me to Texas.

I still have that hat and I still have one of those six bottles. We drank the others in his memory after he passed away in 2010.

Melvin was a U.S. Air Force veteran. When I wrote about sharing beers with U.S. Marines on their way back from Iraq while Tracie P and I were on our way to honeymoon in 2010, Melvin commented on my Facebook — I remember well — about how important it is to acknowledge their service and sacrifice.

There won’t be any grilling or beer cans popping today at our house. It’s just going to be a quiet day at home for me with the girls and Tracie P.

But today we’ll remember Melvin and all of the men and women who serve and have served our country.

As the Romans used to say, it’s a day to remember and to be grateful… memorem et gratum esse…

And so another trip to Italy comes to an end.

Every time I pack my bags, whether coming or going, I remember that very first visit in 1987 when I was 19 years old and came for my junior year abroad at the University of Padua. I’ll never forget that sensation and sense of urgency: record every aroma, flavor, view, and sound — I thought to myself at the time — there is something here that will reveal greater meaning in life’s time; I don’t know what it is yet but I know it’s there.

Now I’m 47 and nearly 30 years after that first sojourn, I still experience that same feeling — every time, coming or going.

Yesterday, following the last seminar and tasting at the TerroirMarche festival in Ascoli Piceno (three mini-verticals of jaw-dropping Verdicchio dei Castelli di Jesi), I made what might have been the most beautiful drive of my life.

Departing from Ascoli, I drove through the Apennines to Norcia as the sun was setting before me in the west. And as I headed on from Montefalco and Trevi toward Pisa (where begin my journey back to the states today), I drove past Lake Trasimeno at dusk. Awe-inspiring!

All in all, it was a five-hour drive but it seemed to go by in a flash.

In another time in my life, it was poetry and literature that opened a window on to Italy and Italian culture for me. Today, it is a wine glass that I see through but darkly.

As for Petrarch who, upon discovering a manuscript of a work by Cicero, remarked that he was enchanted by the words even though he did not [yet] know what they meant, Italy is for me a text that I continue to parse with great and joyous curiosity, scanning each syllable and scratching its surface looking for a greater and deeper meaning in its rhythms.

Arrivederci, Italia, you never cease to amaze me. Thank you to all who hosted, poured, and shared their thoughts and impressions. It was a long and rich trip for me. Thank you.

Now to get back to my love and the place where I belong…