Last night in San Diego was a blast at Soda Bar…
Come see Nous Non Plus in San Francisco at Rick Shaw Stop tonight!
Stunning Pallagrello Nero from Nanni Copè
A thrilling, brilliant day and evening yesterday at Sotto in Los Angeles — my first day back on the job after paternity leave — with all the wine [sales] reps coming in to taste us on new wines for our spring 2012 list.
Wine captain Rory Harrington (below) and I tasted an exhilarating flight of wines (and the occasional clunker from an old fart who always manages to weasel his way in). So many great wines come from southern Italy right now, especially from Campania and Sicily.
But the wine that sticks out in my mind this morning is the 2008 Nanni Copè created by revered “taster” Giovanni Ascione from Caserta (Campania).
The wine — as I learned reading this excellent post by colleague Monica Piscitelli — is named after Giovanni’s preferred appellation as a youngster: Nanni (diminutive of his Christian name) and Copè (an infantile corruption of his mother’s maiden name, Cioppa).
It’s made primarily from Pallagrello Nero, with smaller amounts of Aglianico and Casavecchia, raised on 2.5 hectares of semi-pergola-trained (yes!), meticulously curated vines in Caserta.
Tongue-splitting acidity, fresh bright red fruit, and earth, earth, earth… Gorgeous black earth…
We tasted a lot of great wines yesterday but this one — its first vintage on the market — stands out in my memory this morning as an original wine, a wine that surprised me and taught me something new about the grape variety.
I’ve got a very busy dance card today with my regular blogging duties and a show tonight in San Diego with my band Nous Non Plus.
But I wanted to give a big shout out to my friend and colleague Rory Harrington (above, left, with my high school friend Mike Andrews, photo by my bandmate Dan Crane).
I’m the curator of the wine list at Sotto but Rory is the guy who makes it hum and sing. We taste all the wines together and then decide what’s going to make the cut. I greatly admire his palate and cherish his friendship. If you ever visit Sotto, please check in with him and ask him what’s drinking well… he’ll never steer you wrong. His aim is true and his heart is pure…
Ok, gotta go make some rock ‘n’ roll! As we say, in French, wish me merde! (Yes, I just had to talk about poop…)
Bucatini al pomodoro fatti in casa @SottoLA
I bucatini leggerissimi e il pomodoro perfettamente saporito oggi a mezzogiorno presso Sotto a Los Angeles.
Venitemi a trovare stasera al ristorante!
Georgia P’s first plane ride
She slept through the whole flight and this morning she woke up to the sound of waves crashing on Seal Rock in La Jolla.
California, I’m coming home… @SottoLA @NousNonPlus
You can catch me as Dr. Jekyll tomorrow night (Weds. Feb. 8) at Sotto in Los Angeles where I’ll be working the floor pouring and talking about wine or you can catch me as Mr. Hyde (aka Cal d’Hommage) on guitar with Nous Non Plus on Thurs. in San Diego, Fri. in SF, or Sat. in LA.
Ever since I was a child (when I lived and grew in California), the song has had a profound meaning for me… Nostalgia and longing played out in falsetto and dulcimer… Will you take me as I am?
This time around the song has a whole new meaning as Tracie P bundle up our “little green” Georgia P for her first trip to meet her California family and see where her daddy grew up. Just the thought of her seeing the Pacific Ocean for the first time fills my heart with a joy that I could never have imagined before she came into our lives…
California I’m coming home
I’m going to see the folks I dig
I’ll even kiss a sunset pig
California I’m coming home
…
Oh California I’m coming home
Oh make me feel good rock n roll band
I’m your biggest fan
California, I’m coming home
Will you take me as I am?
Photo by the amazing Nichols family.
1971 Monsecco (Gattinara) and Rock ‘n’ Roll Baby G
A couple of my favorite rock stars were over on Friday night, to meet Georgia P and to share a special bottle of a wine.
The 1971 Gattinara Monsecco by Conte Ravizza was vinified the same year that David Garza was born: David (above, center) is one of the greatest musicians I’ve ever had the fortune to work with and he played on our last album “Freudian Slip.” And he’s also just a super cool dude to hang with.
Céline Dijon (right, holding Georgia) currently calls New York (not Paris anymore) her home and she was in town because we’re working on material for our new album. (BTW, our band Nous Non Plus playing in San Diego, San Francisco, and Los Angeles this week, Thurs.-Sat.; click here for the show details.)
I had saved the 1971 Monsecco for David. It had been given to me by Brooklyn Guy’s good friend Dan when we visited in Brooklyn in January 2011 (when we tasted a bottle of it together; here are my complete notes together with the research I did on the bottling).
After a Texas summer in my home cellar (the hottest on record), I wasn’t sure how the wine was going to stand up but we were all impressed with how bright the wine was, with healthy acidity and gorgeous fruit — thoroughly delicious paired with Tracie P’s risotto al radicchio veronese served all’onda. It just goes to show that even in tough vintages, great producers can make great wine (I reported Wasserman’s notes on the harvest here).
David was so sweet: he taught me how to play a new lullaby he wrote and he sang it for Georgia… too cute for words…
If you’re in California this week, come see me and Céline at one of the shows!
Here’s another shot from Georgia P’s recent photo shoot (by the amazing Nichols family):
Preview of the wine list at Uchi (Houston) @EatingOurWords
Susumaniello, what a sususurprise! (and Georgia P’s photo shoot)
Honestly, I really didn’t know what to expect from a 2010 IGT Tarantino Susumaniello (100%) by the Poderi Angelini winery in Manduria (west coast of Puglia).
The craze for indigenous varieties has inspired a number of producers to deliver monovarietal bottlings of grapes that were used strictly for blending in the past.
In the entry for Susumaniello in the landmark Vitigni d’Italia (Grape Varieties of Italy), last revised in 2006, the editors underline the fact that “the grape is never vinified on its own” and is used strictly to produce vino da taglio, i.e., blending wine (employed historically to beef up otherwise “thin” wines).
Unfortunately, some of the well intentioned efforts to champion such indigenous grapes has been misguided (Uva di Troia in purezza, anyone?).
But Angelini’s 2010 Susumaniello was delicious last night: bright and surprisingly light on the palate, with the acidity that we crave, high but balanced alcohol, and juicy, chewy red berry fruit. I loved it, as did the group of wine professionals with whom we tasted it.
Inspired by our tasting, I went into the stustustudio and dug out some footage of my good friend Paolo Cantele pronouncing the grape’s name for us. Phil Collins ain’t got nothing on this baby!
In other news…
Georgia P went to one of her first photo shoots (I am such a stage father!) yesterday with our good friends and AWESOME photographers the Nichols here in Austin yesterday (remember when they shot our wedding?). Here’s a preview… WE LOVE HER SO MUCH! :)
Flute elitism in this day & age? Assessments from Franciacorta
Above: Many late evenings tasting Franciacorta and kibitzing with my good friend and extreme life force Giovanni Arcari in Brescia…
Franciacorta lover Franco Ziliani’s post this week on “Which Glass for Our Bubbles?” got me thinking fondly about my visit to Brescia and Franciacorta in October of last year for the European Wine Bloggers Conference.
Over the course of five or so days that I spent there, I drank sparkling wine from Franciacorta at nearly every meal and it was never served to me in a conventional flute. Nor was the question of what glass to serve Champagne-method wines ever even posed.
Above: At the restaurant Novecento in Brescia, our server — who wasn’t particularly wine savvy — poured Gatti’s Franciacorta Nature in Bordeaux glasses.
In Franco’s post, he quotes Champagne scion Pierre-Emmanuel Taittinger (in a passage culled from a pseudo-advertorial post on Drinks Business).
- “Champagne is not only a wine but a symbol of love and generosity and if we forget that we are dead, and I am fighting that,” [Taittinger] stated.
Continuing, he referred to a battle with “marketers” who, he said, “want us to drink Champagne in a wine glass.”
“But we have a specific glass…”
The Taittinger quote brought to mind the infamous statement by Frederic Rouzaud of Cristal from a few years ago: we can’t stop them from drinking it…
It’s been many years since I’ve served Champagne or any other sparkling wine in a flute. In fact, I don’t even own any flutes: in my view and experience, the flute is the worst possible glass to serve any wine in because it obstructs the wine’s aroma, especially when your drinking a Pinot Noir-based wine that can tend toward the tannic and tight (we’ve even begun decanting certain sparkling wines at our house).
Above: The Lago d’Iseo in Franciacorta. I still need to post my notes from some of the interesting tastings I attended in Franciacorta in October. The photo, above, of the Lago d’Iseo gives you a sense of the Morainic subsoil and the maritime climate that give the wines their minerality and make them so fresh. Click the image for the hi-res version.
How do you serve sparkling wine at your house?
1979 Vino Rosso dai Vigneti di Brunello @BrunelloMaker
Tracie P and I celebrated our second wedding anniversary on Friday night with one of the most stunning bottles we have ever shared together: 1979 Vino Rosso dai Vigneti di Brunello by the Tenuta Il Poggione (our anniversary is actually today but we celebrated on Friday because Rev. and Mrs. B were in town and we had our first date night out since Georgia P was born!).
The bottle was given to me by my friends Fabrizio and Alessandro Bindocci at the winery back in October when I visited with them (I had it shipped from Siena, fearing that such a delicate bottle would not withstand travels in the trunk of my rental car and in the cargo of a commercial airliner). It had been cellared there since bottling and it had not been recorked or topped off. The shoulder was impressively high for a bottle this old.
Until 1982 when the DOC for Rosso di Montalcino was created (see Alessandro’s post here), the rosso was a vino da tavola labeled as Vino Rosso dai Vigneti di Brunello (Red Wine from Brunello Vineyards). Note the alcohol content (13.5%) and note the bottle format (720ml).
Usually when you open a bottle of wine this old (and especially in the case of a wine originally intended to be drunk in its youth), you expect it to deliver one last gasp of life: you pull the cork and pour it into your glass and you enjoy it immediately, as its vibrancy quickly fades.
Not knowing what to expect (in part because Bindocci father and son had told me that it could be past its prime), Tracie P and I were BLOWN away by its bright acidity and fruit. And as we tasted it over the course of an hour and a half, it just continued to reveal layer upon layer of ripe red and berry fruit. It paired exquisitely with a black and blue New York sirloin. I had brought the bottle to the restaurant (Trio in Austin) three days prior and it had been stored upright. I asked our sommelier Coalminer Mark not to decant it and we opened it just a few moments before our main course arrived. I’m sure it could have kept its life for many more hours had we not slurped it down!
An truly unique and special bottle of wine for a magical moment in our lives: (not so) Little Georgia P was seven weeks old yesterday. We love her so much!
Thanks again, Fabrizio and Alessandro, for sharing this experience with us — from Montalcino to Austin… BRILLIANT!
Do Bianchi 