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…

One of the things that’s so cool about the Marche (Marches) is that there hasn’t been a lot of industrial development here. Driving to the tasting this morning in Ascoli, I couldn’t help but wonder if this was the way that the Italian countryside looked fifty years ago.

Here are some photos I took this morning at the Agriturismo Fiorano in Cossignano village where I slept the last two nights (great place, btw).

Great seminar!

Marche wines as an expression of mountain viticulture.

Nearly every restaurant you visit in Langa serves the Piedmontese classic vitello tonnato (one of my all-time favorite dishes).

Of the three places (in two and half days) that I was served the dish, my number-one, top, best was Osteria More e Macine in La Morra.

Just look at that sexy presentation and the yellow of the tuna sauce (from the rich egg yolk used to whip the housemade mayonnaise).

Another highlight of my sojourn was a vertical of six vintages of Barolo Ravera by Elvio Cogno with winemaker Valter Fissore yesterday.

Such beautiful, elegant, and focused expressions of Nebbiolo. My favorite vintages were the 2008 and 2011. Look out also for the 2006: it’s very tight at the moment but I’m sure it is going to deliver in the long term.

Thank you, Valter!

Posting on the fly this morning as I head down to Montefalco and then on to Ascoli Piceno…