The new Google HQ in Venice. Funny thing is that those binoculars where already there… been there as long as I can remember from my UCLA days…
Met one of my oldest and best friends from La Jolla days Irwin at the Local 1205 on Abbot Kinney, fellow La Jollan Craig’s new market and eatery.
We had “La Jollans,” inspired by a little health food grocery from way back in the day on the corner of Nautilus and La Jolla Blvd. None of us can remember the name of the shop but we remember the avocados and the sprouts on the whole grain.
Had to start with the pittule (Pugliese fritters with vincotto and ricotta), paired with Donkey & Goat Sluicebox (pronounced PEE-too-leh, btw).
All things considered, I still think that pizzaiolo and chef Zach makes one of the best — if not the best — authentic Margherita in the U.S.
To celebrate the birthday of my good friend (and agent who just scored us the NN+ HBO Girls license) Michael, we opened a bottle of 1993 Struzziero Taurasi Campoceraso — unbelievable.
93 was a classic, balanced (as opposed to americana) vintage in Taurasi and is considered one of the greatest of the decade.
I was blown away by the bright acidity and brilliant fruit in this wine, tempered by the characteristic minerality and earthiness of botte-aged Aglianico. (The most hilarious tweet today, btw, by @JohnQBoxler: “I like big botti and i cannot lie.”)
Thanks to the coolest lady on the Los Angeles wine scene, Amy Atwood, of the 90 or so cases produced, we were able to score enough of Hank Beckmeyer’s off-the-charts good La Clarine Farm rosè for a by-the-glass campaign at Sotto (to be launched shortly).
Think: a judicious schmear of qunce jam and lightly salted crème fraîche on gently toasted crusty bread. I cannot wait for Tracie P to taste this wine. It’s salty and crunchy and utterly satisfying.
Domaine LA is the best retail outlet for Hank’s wines in the Southland and I was able to secure some for Do Bianchi Wine Selections (my wine club) for later this spring.
Primitivo di Manduria Tradizione del Nonno by Pichierri, such a classic. Not for everyone but one of my favs at Sotto where I’m working the floor tonight and tomorrow night.
Unfortunately, I’ve got to leave Austin again tomorrow for a few days. But it sure has been nice to be in one place for a while.
Most early evenings, I tune out around 5 p.m. and play guitar and sing for Georgia P until she’s ready for her bath. All she has to do is look at me and another love song just seems to flow from my finger tips. She’s such an inspiration and such a joy for us…
Since I’ll be heading to Los Angeles later this week to work the floor at Sotto (where I curate the wine list) on Thursday and Friday nights, I also wanted to post this entry (above) on Taurasi by one of my favorite producers, Struzziero.
Struzziero is old-school Taurasi all the way and we’ve featured a vertical of the wines — 92, 97, 01 — on our list since we first were able to secure an allocation last year.
I love the wines…
And I couldn’t resist making this “outtake” video of my “shoot” with Mario Struzziero at Vinitaly.
With true campano style, he added a short gloss using a word that has a particular meaning in Italian: peripezia or peripeteia (“In classical tragedy [and hence in other forms of drama, fiction, etc.]: a point in the plot at which a sudden reversal occurs. In extended use: a sudden or dramatic change; a crisis,” Oxford English Dictionary). It’s an ancient Greek word that is still used regularly in Italian today, especially in Rome and southward. In workaday language, it means simply mishaps or vicissitudes. But in this case, his usage has layered meanings… It’s one of the things I love about Italy and Italian language…
My editor asked me to write something about a wine from Argentina and so I just couldn’t help myself…
When my wife Tracie P and I pulled the synthetic cork out of a bottle of Terrazas de los Andes Altos del Plata Malbec on Saturday evening at a family function, we joked that we could write the tasting note without even sampling the contents: “Bright jammy fruit, with an intense blueberry note, aggressive but balanced alcohol, reluctant acidity but quaffable nonetheless, a crowd-pleaser for under $10.”
Let’s face it. Wines from Argentina are like McDonald’s. And that’s a good thing, people! No matter where you go, you know that a Big Mac will taste exactly like the Big Mac you enjoy (when hungover) at your corner franchise.
And like Mickey D’s secret sauce, the Argentine wine formula is a winner all over the world.
Eric the Red was right to “have a little fun with it” when he wrote me asking about the pronunciation of the Italian grape name Lagrein last year.
“FEW things are simple in northeastern Italy,” he wrote, “least of all lagrein, a red grape that can produce fresh, aromatic, highly seductive wines. Why, just last week, I asked a linguistically minded friend who is fluent in Italian for the proper pronunciation of lagrein. Here is his response, or part of it:”
“Lagrein is a tough one,” he said, “in part because it’s pronounced using a Germanic, as opposed to an Italianate vowel system.” He went on to offer his preference, lah-GRAH’EEN, but allowed that lah-GRINE and lah-GREYE’NE (where greye rhymes with eye) were also acceptable. Well, linguists are nothing if not perfectionists. But even allowing for such hairsplitting, lagrein comes with ample grounds for confusion. It is grown primarily in Alto Adige, a region so far to the north in Alpine Italy that it practically touches Austria and Switzerland. There, the culture is more Tyrolean than Italian, and the first language is often German. Many wines from the region are labeled in both Italian and in German. Even the name of the region, Alto Adige, does not speak for itself; it is generally rendered bilingually with its German counterpart, Südtirol (South Tyrol, using the Germanic vowel system, of course).
Here’s the link to his profile of Lagrein and tasting panel notes.
And so I made a beeline to the Franz Gojer stand — in my view, one of the greatest producers of Lagrein — and asked Franz’s son Florian to speak for my camera. While Florian is bilingual (and of course, we spoke in Italian), German is his first language. And as per what I told Eric above, Lagrein, linguistically speaking, is first and foremost Germanic.
Do Bianchi 