Massacre in Bologna, living with terror since 1980

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massacre strage bologna 1980

Image via Fotografando Emily.

My backlog of tasting notes, winemaker profiles, and food photography brims over from our recent trip to Italy.

But all I can think about this morning is Monday’s tragedy in Boston.

Maybe it’s because of the fact that, for the first time, I felt compelled to shield Georgia P from the news. She’s walking and talking up a storm these days. She certainly can’t understand what the newscasters say (and the media outlets have been conscientious about not showing graphic images from the tragedy; something, as parents of a toddler, we appreciate very much). But we felt compelled, nonetheless, to make sure that she wasn’t exposed to the reports.

I can’t help but be reminded of the 1980 Massacre in Bologna, when a terrorist attack killed “killed 85 people and wounded more than 200.” A bomb went off in the crowded Bologna train station, one of the busiest traffic hubs in Italy, and a new era of terror — one that came in the Years of Lead — had dawned.

In 1980, the year I was bar mitzvah, I was hardly aware of Italy or the Bologna Massacre. But when I traveled to Italy in 1987, the tragedy was still very fresh in the minds of the Italian students with whom I lived. The first time I took a train from Padua to Rome, my cohorts urged me to visit the station memorial when I changed trains: a part of the wall destroyed by the bomb is filled with glass instead of brick to remind travelers of how the explosion blast through the station.

The thing that set the event apart was that no one was certain who was behind the attack.

Note the subtitle in the headline above: due iptoesi: attentato o sciagura? (two hypotheses: attack or accident?).

Many in Italy remember the Bologna tragedy as the beginning of the so-called strategy of tension, whereby the anonymity of the architects of terror played into the hands of the terrorists. In other words, it didn’t matter who committed the act of terror. What mattered was that people were terrorized.

I wish speed upon the authorities as they try to uncover the authors of the despicable and cowardly attack of Monday. And may G-d bless the victims and their families. Our prayers and thoughts are with them.

In other news…

shawn amos

Above, from left: Friends Charlie George, Shawn Amos, and Shawn’s wife Marta in Luca’s vineyard a week ago Saturday.

One bright spot yesterday was my friend Shawn Amos’ Huffington Post article about our trip to Italy. I loved his notion of wine as content.

Wine is content. Glass is the vessel. And the message is in the bottle…

A song for Prosecco (by a closeted Eagles fan)

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Over the weekend, as I was editing the homey video above for the Bele Casel blog, I racked my brain (wine connoisseurs know the origins of this expression!) thinking about what kind of song I should write to accompany my little homemade film.

In the end, I just kept coming back to country, you know, that peaceful easy feeling that Proseccoland gives ya’…

Yeah, yeah, I know… for years, I denied being an Eagles fan. Only my therapist knew…

But a few years after I met Tracie P, a lot of heart-to-heart talks, and a mountain of 8-track tapes later, I realized it was okay to come out of the closet and tell the world: “World, I am an American and I’m an Eagles fan!”

Today, I feel confident enough with my country cred that I can admit it.

So there you have it…

I hope you enjoy the video and the music as much as I enjoyed tracking it yesterday…

jeremy parzen musician

Angelo Gaja for president?

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angelo gaja new york

Above: I took this photo of Angelo Gaja when I met with him in June 2012. He’s in his 70s and looks great. Angelo Gaja for president? Why not?

“The most important battles to fight,” once said traditionalist Barolo producer Teobaldo Cappellano, “are those which you know you cannot win.”

Surely there was a quixotic spirit behind this utterance (he was referring to the traditionalist opposition to Brunello’s inevitable slide into modernism).

But he was also embracing a notion — very Italian at its core — that taking a stand, even when a last and inconsequential stand, has an indisputable intrinsic value that may transcend the stakes in play (does anyone remember the Alamo?).

In the wake of two weeks that our family just spent in Italy (eating and drinking, playing music, and attending the wine fairs), one thing has become abundantly clear to me: Italians have their backs to the wall. The financial crisis, the Euro crisis, and the Italian frugal spirit have the Italian everyman everyperson in a chokehold.

Everywhere I went, winemakers and restaurateurs repeatedly began their discourse with the expression, con i tempi che corrono (in times like these). People simply aren’t spending the money that they used to. I watched one of the richest men in the Veneto sit down at one of the best restaurants in the province of Treviso and order an Euro 8 bottle of wine.

Extreme times call for extreme measures. It didn’t come as too much of a surprise when I received a press release last week from Vinarius, the association of Italian enoteca owners, in which the authors put forth Angelo Gaja as their candidate for President of the Republic.

birreria pedavena brewery

Above: While in Italy, we visited the beer garden where my band used to play in the 1990s before the Tangentopoli bribe scandal. The mural depicts Italian history through the fascist era, when the gesso was painted. Today, the main dining room is used for “lapdance” evenings (note the pole).

Italy has had pornstar politicians (most famously Staller) and today its “kingmaker” anti-establishment and anti-status-quo Five Star Movement party is headed by a comedian.

So why not a winemaker? After all, the role of President of the Republic (largely ceremonial and not to be confused with the executive Prime Minister or “President of the Council”) has been previously fulfilled by a winemaker (and iconic economist), Luigi Einaudi, Italy’s second president.

According to the president of Vinarius, Andrea Terraneo, who issued the press release last Thursday:

    Gaja represents all Italians inasmuch as he is a citizen, a worker, and a symbol of excellence. He is a leader in the world of agriculture and in the view of Vinarius, his candidacy would be a true resource in an extremely complex economic moment…

    [He] is by far one of the world’s best known Italian wine world personalities. He possesses extraordinary moral and empathetic characteristics and he has the charisma needed to perform such an important role.

While Italian politicians hardly seem to have taken notice, Italian wine industry observers have set about commenting the implications of a Gaja candidacy (just Google “Gaja” and “presidente” and you’ll find all the links, including posts that have appeared in some of the country’s leading wine blogs and mastheads).

However ceremonial the office, the President of the Republic is the only one who can dissolve parliament and call for new elections. (The current president, Napolitano, who is at the end of his seven-year term, cannot call for new elections because the Italian constitution forbids him from doing so in the last six months of his tenure.)

The austerity and financial crises are only exacerbated by the fact that Italy hasn’t had a government since February elections failed to produce a coalition (according to reports today, Berlusconi would be the next PM “by a hair” if the vote were held today).

And beyond the technical issues that the government-less nation faces, there is also the issue of morale in a Europe that increasingly looks to Italy as one of the sources of its financial ills (the Euro crisis was what forced Berlusconi out of power last year).

Gaja for president? It could only do the country good. The only problem, as Franco Ziliani noted the other day on his blog (one of the most popular and most controversial wine blogs in Italy), is why would anyone who is already King [of Barbaresco] accept a demotion to president?

Friulian dream list & spectacular seafood at Nalin, Venice terra firma

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boiled seafood venetian cuisine

Above: The food at Trattoria Nalin (in Mira, Venice terra firma) was as traditional as it was spectacular. One of the best meals of our trip.

As any Italian gastronaut will tell you, one of the most rewarding experiences of culinary adventure is stumbling into a great food destination by chance.

And such was the case on our last day in Italy, when Tracie P and I decided spontaneously to hop off the autostrada in the town of Mira (mainland Venice) to eat at one of the many osterie and trattorie that dot the canals like tiny fried shrimp on creamy polenta (see below).

We landed at the Trattoria Nalin, an establishment that dates back to the era of the Great War.

Mainland Venice (Venezia terra firma, towns like Mira and Dolo) were once home to the summer villas, may of them still standing, of the Venetian patrician class. Today, these sleepy villages are a less frenetically touristic yet entirely authentic alternative to lagoonal Venice (as you’ll see below).

On the day we visited Nalin, we were the only Americans there and the dining room was populated otherwise by Venetian businessmen and one older Venetian couple. The lingua franca was veneto (not Italian).

The food at Nalin was nothing short of spectacular (see below). But it was the wine list, and its concentration in Friuli in particular, that will bring us back to this amazing restaurant: verticals of Radikon, Kante, Castellada, Damijan, Keber, Miani, Borgo del Tiglio, Venica, Zidarich, and so on and so on. I was floored by the mimetic desire.

A bona fide dream come true: the best of Friulian winemaking and superbly executed traditional Venetian seafood. There was also an impressive vertical of Gaia e Rey, with prices that would make any New York collector swoon.

Here’s what we ate…

best shrimp and grits

Fried tiny shrimp, schie in Venetian, always served with creamy polenta. The original “shrimp and grits”!

baccala mantecato

Note how the bac[c]alà mantecato is chunky and not creamy. Po[l]enta e bac[c]alà… perché non m’ami più… Who knows the song? See below…

antipasti bolliti cucina veneziana

Traditional Venetian bolliti, boiled seafood. What a thrilling restaurant this was for us!

spaghetti vongole

Spaghetti alle vongole, a dish we only eat in Venice and Naples. As a song writer once observed, a man feel proud to give his woman what she’s longing for… (Who knows the song?)

linguine vongole

Linguine with scampi (langoustine) “meatballs.” This dish alone was worth the airfare to Italy.

scampi alla griglie grilled langoustine

Grilled seafood is Nalin’s specialty. We paired with 2008 Sauvignon Blanc in 500ml by Kante. Such an elegant expression of the grape variety (we also tasted 2007 on this trip).

radicchio di campo

Note the radicchio verdolino in the foreground, a type of field chicory that can only be found during this time of year. We had some up in the mountains as well.

Trattoria Nalin (Mira, Venice terra firma). Recommendation: get there as fast as you can! :)

Se il mare fosse de tocio
e i monti de polenta
oh mamma che tociade,
polenta e baccalà.
Perché non m’ami più?

If the sea were made of gravy
and the mountains of polenta
oh mama, what sops!
polenta and baccalà.
Why don’t you love me anymore?

— from “La Mula de Parenzo,” traditional folksong of the Veneto and Friuli

dulcis in fundo, the last meal of our 2013 trip to Italy

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mother and child leonardo

Our two-week trip to Italy 2013 ended, dulcis in fundo, with one of the best meals of our stay: classic Venetian seafood lunch in Venice terra firma.

Tracie P and I are so blessed that our livelihood and our family life align so seamlessly and so happily.

Here’s a preview, below, of what we ate yesterday in Mira (paired with Kante 2008 Sauvignon Blanc). I’ll tell all tomorrow…

Heading back to Texas today…

spaghetti alle vongole veraci

1983 Chianti Rufina by Selvapiana, holy crap!

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best chianti rufina 1983

Posting in a hurry again this morning as we prepare to head up to Milan on our last day here in Italy.

But I just had a share a taste of the 1983 Selvapiana Riserva poured for me at the winery’s stand yesterday at the fair.

I must have tasted 60-70 wines yesterday… but I didn’t spit this one.

So vibrant, so bright, so unbelievably fresh. Stunning wine… The best wine I’ve tasted in 2013…

We head back to Texas tomorrow. I’ll see you on the other side!

Italian wine fair highlights so far

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Posting in a hurry as I rush to drive back down to Verona today for my last day at the Italian wine fairs.

It’s remarkable to think about how many wines I’ve tasted over the last two days… with one more day to go.

Here are some highlights from Vinitaly and Vini Veri, in no particular order or hierarchy.

best marzemino

barone pizzini rose

cogno barbera

poggione brunello

a vita ciro

pinot grigio pink

Franco Biondi Santi, for whom the bell tolls

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franco biondi santi

Era ‘l giorno ch’al sol si scoloraro
per la pietà del suo Fattore i rai

It was the day the sun’s ray had turned pale
with pity for the suffering of his Maker

(Rerum vulgarium fragmenta 3, translation by Mark Musa)

I couldn’t help but be reminded of these lines by Petrarch yesterday when I heard the news that Franco Biondi Santi had passed away.

(See this translation of a statement issued by the Brunello bottlers association, including notes from Consortium President Fabrizio Bindocci. It was Fabrizio’s son Alessandro who shared the news with me when I sat down to taste with him in the Tuscany pavilion at Vinitaly.)

Just like the Good Friday that Petrarch recalls in his songbook, it was as if the rays of the sun had grown pale over the wine fair yesterday, as winemakers and fair-goers whispered to one another in hushed tones, did you hear the news that Biondi Santi died?

I never met Franco Biondi Santi in person but I did interview him once by phone.

Of all the winemakers I’ve ever had the chance to interact with, he was perhaps the one most free from the chains of megalomania and most guided by intellect and passionate focus.

A few weeks after our conversation, I received a package sent from the winery. It didn’t contain samples or a vanity folio.

Instead, he had sent an autographed academic offprint of his most recent research on the DNA of his prized Brunello. I still have it, filed in my library next to signed offprints from the many professors of philology and paleography who aided me throughout my academic career.

According to media reports today, he was ninety-one years at the age of his passing.

While his involvement in the winemaking at the legendary Tenuta il Greppo was probably very limited in recent years, his legacy as the caretaker of Brunello’s origins, steadfast defender of its integrity, and producer of one of the world’s greatest wines cannot be underestimated.

Since the Brunello inquest of 2008, the appellation has been dogged by a series of regrettable and often avoidable controversies. (Most recently, one of its most high-profile producers sparred publicly with the Brunello bottlers association in an ugly display of hubris.)

With Biondi Santi’s passing, Montalcino loses an unimpeachable patriarch, whose stewardship and leadership will be missed as sorely as his impeccable style and humanity.

I took the photo above at the Biondi Santi stand yesterday in the Tuscan pavilion in Vinitaly.

Today, the shadow cast by his passing will surely dim the glitz of the trade fair as it reminds us that the Italian wine world continues to navigate and negotiate uncharted waters.

O lovers of Brunello, do no send to know for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee…