Thieves steal Cantele’s current vintage

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Not only is the Cantele family a client of mine, they are also my close friends. It is with great sadness that I share the following message (which I translated for them this morning). Tracie P and I are keeping their families in our hearts, thoughts, and prayers. We’ll be visiting them early next month and will report back on this tragic story. That’s Cantele Chardonnay, from a past vintage, in the image above.

Dear Friends,

I’m writing you to let you know that on August 2, 2012, our winery was the victim of a robbery. An enormous quantity of bottled wine was stolen by a large and very well organized group of thieves (numbering at least 12-15 persons).

A detailed list of the stolen wines follows:

2,052 bottles Chardonnay Igt Salento 2011
174 bottles Verdeca Igt Puglia 2011
4,242 bottles Negroamaro Rosso Igt Salento 2010
4,746 bottles Primitivo Igt Salento 2009
2,640 bottles Salice Salentino Doc Rosso Riserva 2008
3,576 bottles Varius Syrah Igt Puglia 2010
3,972 bottles Varius Merlot Igt Puglia 2010
66 bottles Alticelli Aglianico Igt Puglia 2008
168 bottles Alticelli Fiano Igt Salento 2011
78 bottles Teresa Manara Chardonnay Igt Salento 2011
2,028 bottles Teresa Manara Negroamaro Igt Salento 2009
5,082 bottles Amativo Igt Salento 2009
12 bottles Le Passanti Fiano Passito Igt Salento 2007

Needless to say, we reported the crime the next day, August 3, 2012, to the Carabinieri stationed at Gaugnano.

In order to avoid any misinformation and/or to preclude idle gossip, I would like to confirm the following:

1) The stolen property was not covered by insurance.

2) Our storage of market-ready products was not protected by an alarm system; it was monitored solely by a video camera system.

In the wake of the theft, our initial sense of powerless disappointment was quickly overcome by our shared resolve, making us even stronger and more determined than before.

The only way to react to incidents like this is to get back to work. And in this spirit, I can confirm the following:

1) Tomorrow we will begin to harvest our 2012 crop, starting, as usual, with our Chardonnay.

2) The new 2010 vintage of Primitivo, Teresa Manara Negroamaro, and Amativo has been aging in bottle for a number of months and in the next few days, we will proceed to label the bottles so that the wines can be released onto the market by early September.

3) None of our winery’s projects has been or will be hindered by this deplorable event.

Lastly, I’m hoping that you will take note of any anomalies that might occur in the market in coming months.

It’s vital that we maintain and protect the supply chain, positioning, and correct pricing of each of our wines.

Thank you in advance for your much appreciated help in this matter.

Sincerely,

Umberto Cantele

@EvanDawson on corkage @PalatePress @SottoLA (& note on Ah So)

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Above: We may never know the true etymon of the brand name “Ah So” but I’m working on it! See below (image via Bonanza).

My good friend and super cool dude Evan Dawson gave me and Sotto (the Los Angeles restaurant where I curate the wine list) a shout out today in his excellent post on corkage for Palate Press.

Corkage is such a delicate and often emotionally charged issue in our country. That may sound like an overstatement but it’s really true. As Evan notes in his piece, when someone brings in a bottle of Valdicava Brunello di Montalcino to Sotto, shows it to me or Rory, and asks us (with an air of condescension, of course) if we are “familiar” with this wine, it’s like a punch to the gut. Does it not occur to them that our heart and soul has gone into the selection of wines to pair best with the chefs’ food? Of course, we just smile and open their shitty, overpriced barriqued wine for them. They might as well be drinking KJ (and they often do). But it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t hurt. It just means that we’re professionals.

Check out Evan’s piece here.

In other news…

Image via kooky kitsch.

I’ve been working on a magazine piece on Italian wine basics, including a note on corkscrews. The gig led me back to an etymological conundrum that I have yet to resolve: the origin of the name “Ah So.”

In my research over the weekend, I discovered that the reason why we call pronged corkscrews Ah So in this country is that the “butler’s friend” (as it is often called) was first marketed in the U.S. by a German company, Monopol, who called it the Ah So. The Ah So was one of many names used by Monopol, who had also called it the “Ah-Ha.” Another German company in the 1930s had called it the “So So.” And the Atelier Saint-Germain had marketed another version around the same time as “A.S.”

It just so happens (sorry for the paronomasia) that the Monopol was the one that became so popular in the U.S. The earliest mention I’ve discovered is in a November 1970 issue of The New Yorker, where it is referred to as a new product in the U.S., used by European sommeliers.

My philological hunch tells me that Monopol was trying to imitate the proprietary name of another successful marketer of the device.

My dissertation advisor didn’t call me the bloodhound for nothing!

Oblong Table & Bible Study w/ @LouAmdur @SottoLA Tues. Aug. 14

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The “Oblong Table” series that we’ve been doing with Lou at Sotto has been so popular and so much fun that we’ve decided to do one more before fall.

Tuesday, August 14, Lou and I will be leading a guided tasting of some of our favorite Natural wines from Southern Italy (including the Fatalone, white and red, from Puglia).

At the July event, it was fascinating to hear Lou compare the current debate over Natural wine (and whether or not the category really exists) to the dietary laws in Leviticus.

It was such a brilliant analogy: the current dichotomy between the Natural wine purists, on the one hand, and their abjuration of the industrial complex, and the conventional winemakers, on the other, and their disdain for a category they believe doesn’t even exist, is nothing less than biblical in the breadth of acrimony it has generated.

In essence, the laws of kashrut divide the animal world into “clean” that you can consume and “unclean” that you cannot. During the conversation (and btw, it’s an informal setting where wine professionals and lovers chime in with observations and questions), it occurred to me that both parties in this logomachy (a fight over words more than wines) apply the terms clean and unclean. The Natural purists say the conventional winemakers’ wines are unclean because they’ve been manipulated with additives while the conventional winemakers say the Natural wines are unclean because they have unwanted bacteria and “off” aromas and flavors.

At one point, I brought up Eric the Red’s recent The New York Times article “Wines Worth a Taste, but Not the Vitriol” and the Italian authorities’ recent crackdown on the use of the term Natural in advertising.

“Is this a line in the sand?” I asked Lou. “Is this the end of the beginning or the beginning of the end?” I queried in chiasmus.

Lou’s answered simply that he didn’t care. Enjoying the aroma of the Cornelissen (arguably the most extreme expression of Natural wine today), he talked about how much he enjoyed the way was changing in the glass and how he would continue to call it Natural because it’s a term that captures the spirit of these wines (“like obscenity, I can’t tell you exactly what it is but I know it when I see it”). And he said that he agreed with our mutual friend Ceri Smith who recently proposed that the category be defined by “those winemakers who tell you what they put in the wine and those who don’t.”

The conversation at our Oblong Tables is always fascinating and you’ll always find some of the top wine professionals in LA there with us. I hope you can join us!

Here are event and reservation details.

Zanotto Prosecco Col Fondo is here! (and my band circa 1993)

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Above: Zanotto Prosecco Col Fondo is the Prosecco that I tasted back in the early 1990s when I was living in the Veneto. Bottle fermented, lees aged, unfiltered, salty, crunchy Prosecco made from 100% Glera. That’s the traditional glass, btw, for real Prosecco. No flutes please!

The story of how Zanotto Prosecco Col Fondo got to the U.S. stretches back to the early 1990s when I was the band leader of a cover band touring the Veneto during my summers off from graduate school.

Above, from left: me, Shawn Amos, and Charlie George circa 1993 in the village of Pedavena (Feltre).

After I found success doing a piano bar act in the many pubs and beer houses that line the Piave river, the owner of one of the venues, Renato Dal Piva (who later became one of my best friends in Italy), asked me if I’d be interested in doing a summer residency at the historic Pedavena beer garden just outside of Feltre.

Above, from left: My super good friend and amazing guitar player and all-around musician Gabriele “Elvis” Inglesi and the rest of us at the façade of the Siena duomo. We also played a one-night stand in Montalcino in the village of Bagno Vignoni, a night of fried wild-boar liver and Sangiovese.

That was an amazing and unforgettable time in my life. I was in my twenties, studying Italian philology and cinema, living on the many scholarships I won (including a Fulbright), and playing in a cover band at beer festivals (many of them celebrating unpasteurized beer) throughout the Veneto during the summers.

Above: I believe that this article was published in Il Mattino di Padova. If you really want to read it (in Italian), click the image for a PDF (very large file!).

Fast forward to 2010: I get a Facebook message from Riccardo Zanotto who used to come every summer to see us play and drink many, many beers with us.

In early 2011, on the occasion of my trip to Italy with Tracie P, he organizes a tasting of a small group of brave young producers who are making REAL Prosecco, the wines that I used to drink during my years there in an era before the consumerist hegemony of yeasted, banana-candy large-vat fermented Prosecco (you know the brands).

Here’s the link to our tasting notes.

Riccardo’s Prosecco Col Fondo is bottle fermented, lees aged, unfiltered, and unsulfured.

It’s being brought to California by a Los Angeles importer: I’m making it available for sale retail through my wine club and we’re doing a public tasting of the wine in San Francisco at Ceri Smith’s excellent shop Biondivino on Friday, August 17, 6-8 p.m.

I couldn’t be more thrilled… if only because we love these wines and we want to drink them!

And some story, huh? See, mom? All those years of rock ‘n’ roll actually delivered some great rewards… and they just keep on giving…

Thanks for reading, yall!

Utterly self-absorbed & absolutely delicious Friulano by Di Lenardo

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Hey, I’m the first one to tell you that wine blogging is all about the vanity. The best advice that anyone ever gave me about wine blogging was 1) remember that all blogs are vanity blogs (so true); and 2) write what you feel (as William James once famously said, truth is what works).

“I may not be perfect but it scares me how close to it I am,” reads the message that greets you when you visit the Di Lenardo winery website.

Honestly, I’d never heard of Massimo Di Lenardo and his unrivaled self-absorption and narcissism. And when a friend poured me his Friulano by the glass last night in Houston, I wasn’t expecting much: usually, low-end wine with packaging like “Max’s” delivers yeasted and overly sulfured quaffing wine at best.

It’s a good thing that I had never seen his website before tasting his wine because I don’t think I’d be able to palate it if I had (“take your time, relax and… fly into my world!” he writes).

But when top Houston sommelier Sean Beck poured it for me last night at the Backstreet Café, I was blown away by how fresh, varietally correct, and utterly delicious it was. It had this crazy spearmint note that put it up there with some of the best Friulano I’ve ever tasted (and I’ve tasted A LOT of Friulano). Sean’s pouring it for $7.50 a glass and a quick look at WineSearcher reveals that it generally retails for under $15 in the U.S. I loved everything about this wine.

And the vanity? Max, bring it on!

Above: Caravaggio’s Narcissus. “We watch in reverence, as Narcissus is turned to a flower.” (Can anyone tell me where this lyric comes from? Hint: 1970s prog rock.)

Ready or not: 07 Produttori del Barbaresco Asili vs. 07 Chiarlo Tortoniano

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Unfortunately, it happens all the time: you find yourself at dinner with a good friend (in this case, a best childhood friend) who is new to the wine world and who insists on tasting you on a wine that they’ve discovered with no regard for your personal tastes or palate (how could she or he know?).

It’s exactly what happened when Yele and I visited a restaurant in La Jolla the other night with a close high school friend of ours (a Hebrew school friend for me; that’s how far we go back). I had a bottle of 2007 Produttori del Barbaresco Asili in my bag: however young in its evolution, I wanted to taste a bottle from my allocation just to check in with the wine, see where it’s at in its development, and indulge in one of my favorite wines of all time.

Said friend, who had eaten at said restaurant a few nights earlier, wouldn’t listen to our gentle admonitions and he insisted that he allow him to buy our table a bottle of Chiarlo 2007 Barolo Tortoniano in 375ml.

The 2007 Asili was extreme in its tannic expression and frugal with its fruit. California, where I maintain my cellar, gets a smaller allocation of Produttori del Barbaresco crus and I’m thrilled that I was able to get a case of this wine. I probably won’t revisit it for another few years but there’s no doubt in my mind that it’s going to become one of the gems of my collection. The practically winterless 2007 vintage in Langa has delivered some of the most muscular, opulent expressions of Barbaresco that I have ever tasted (remember when Tracie P and I tasted the 07 Asili with Bruno Giacosa on our honeymoon?).

My experience with Langaroli wines from 2007 was a stark counterpoint to the bright cherry cough-syrup fruit of the 2007 Tortoniano by Chiarlo. There’s no doubt that this is a well made wine but it’s just “not my speed,” as I like to tell folks when I politely decline to taste a given wine. The tannin was well-balanced in the wine but I just couldn’t get past its yeasted quality and its softness. It wasn’t bad (in fact it was very elegant). But it simply didn’t reflect the appellation or the vintage. It tasted more like a high-end Russian River Pinot Noir than it did Langa Nebbiolo — at least to me.

Having grown up in San Diego, I often find that my peers took paths in life widely divergent from mine — in wine tastes and ideology. Actually, I should say the opposite: I spent my entire adolescence leaving Las Vegas La Jolla, heading to Mexico, to Italy, to New York, and now Texas.

It’s often hard to taste wine with them. But ready or not, I love them just the same.