You can imagine my surprise when my friends from Brescia (in Lombardy in northern Italy, about an hour and a half east of Milan) called me to tell me a month or so ago that Joe Bastianich had opened a restaurant there.

It’s called Artemis Persian Tapas Bar and as the restaurant’s site says, “è il nuovo progetto di Joe Bastianich con un concept mai visto prima” (“it’s Joe Bastianich’s new project, with a concept never before seen”).

None of my friends have been there yet. But there has been at least one sighting of Joe, an avid guitar player, busking in the streets of the city (I doubt he’s got a tip hat out but in my day, when you played in the street, that’s what it was called). A friend shared a video of him singing and playing Prince’s “Purple Rain,” unaccompanied, with just him on guitar and vocals.

Joe is a major television star in Italy and he’s even had his own line of McDonald’s sandwiches there. I’ve heard that he spends a great deal of time in Milan these days.

Why open a restaurant in Brescia? I have no idea. What I do know that Brescia has a even more vibrant nightlife than it did before the lockdowns in 2020. Because of my deep ties to the city, forged over the many years I’ve been hanging out there, I’ve seen its transformation from an industrial and university town to a top tourist destination. Especially over the last two years, its historic center and incredible campus of Roman ruins (the largest outside of Rome) have become a favorite destination for European tourists. I don’t see a ton of Americans there. But I imagine that’s beginning to change as well.

It used to be that the Brescia food scene was populated by old school trattorias and the occasional (and exceptionally delicious) hamburger and beer joint. Today, there are tons of sushi and poke restaurants, a handful of American-themed casual eateries, and even an extremely popular Indian restaurant. The city’s population has also diversified quite a bit since I started spending time there in 2011. It’s really magical. They even have a left-leaning mayor, my friend Laura Castelletti. That’s unusual for Lombardy where most tend to the hard right. They call it the “Stalingrad” of Italy!

Check it out next time your in Italy.

That’s the city’s famous Piazza della Loggia in the image below, snapped just last week.

Man, what a trip to Italy! An evening in Brescia, four days of teaching in Piedmont, a night in Lucca, and a Saturday night and Sunday lunch coda in Reggio Emilia. A lot of travel and not a ton of sleep. But some great meals for sure.

I didn’t actually eat the tortellini in the image above (I had had tortellini in brodo the night before). But I just had to share this dish, ordered by my friends’ teenage daughter. She put a glass of Lambrusco in the broth like the old folks used to do back when I was a student here.

That was Sunday lunch at Locanda dei Pontieri along the banks of the Po River in Guastalla (Reggio Emilia).

This griddle-fired coppa was another highlight at Pontieri. Super fun place and highly recommended. Make sure to take a stroll along the river.

Stewed rabbit at Tre Spade in Correggio (Reggio Emilia). Forget Bottura! Eat here! Everything was off-the-charts delicious but the rabbit was a 2023 standout for me. Those are pickled onions in the sauce. This was so good. I’m literally salivating as I write this (sorry for TMI!). Paired with Lini 910 Lambrusco Metodo Classico. It couldn’t have been more perfect.

I found this never-before-tasted Prosecco Col Fondo in the most unlikely of places. Excellent. Note the Lalique stemware.

There’s really nothing quite as good as a plate of Tuscan beans, is there? Paired with a popping Ciliegiolo at Da Giulio in Lucca. This one of those big, classic osterias, with great food. Another solid recommendation (especially for a city with a lot of more touristy dining options).
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According to a post published today by leading Italian wine blogger and publisher Filippo Larganà, Italian wine pioneer Michele Chiarlo has died at age 88.

Owner of the Michele Chiarlo estate in Asti province, he was one of the early Piedmont growers to ship Moscato d’Asti and Barbera d’Asti to the U.S. A generation of American wine professionals and wine lovers tasted these categories for the first time thanks to his family. He was also an acclaimed producer of Barolo.

See Filippo’s obituary here on his Sapori del Piemonte blog (one of Asti’s “papers of record”).

I had the opportunity to taste with Michele on a number of occasions. Most of those were formal settings. He was always affable, approachable, and always eager to engage with anyone who wanted to talk about the family’s wines.

My favorite anecdote about him comes via his son Stefano Chiarlo, who’s become a friend over the years.

We were presenting a flight of Moscato d’Asti in Dallas one day, just last year, when he remembered how his father sent a pallet of their Moscato d’Asti to one of the top Italian importers at the time. It was back before Italian wine had become a hot commodity in our country.

Said importer told him that he didn’t like Moscato d’Asti. He didn’t know what to do with it, he protested. Michele told the importer that he could have the wine as his gift. If he sold it, great. If not, he could do whatever he wanted with it.

The importer quickly sold the entire lot and was soon asking for more. It was the type of gamble only someone like Michele Chiarlo could have pulled off. And the rest is history. Today, Moscato d’Asti is one of Italy’s best-selling wines.

Our family’s condolences go out to his sons Stefano and Alberto Chiarlo and to the entire Chiarlo family.

Sit tibi terra levis Michael.

Above: 90+-year-old Barbera vines in a vineyard owned by my client Amistà in the Nizza DOCG; photographed yesterday.

It’s a question and a topos that comes up often in winespeak: what are old vines and why are they important in winemaking?

While there doesn’t seem to be a broadly-embraced consensus on what constitutes “old vines,” most industry observers seem to agree that vines that are 50 years in age or older can definitely be referred to as “old vines.”

Nearly all winemakers and wine trade members concur that old vines make for higher quality wines. Old vines, the conventional wisdom goes, have less “vigor” than younger plants. As a result, they tend to focus their energy on a fewer number of clusters. Those bunches will have richer flavors and aromas, even though their yield — the volume of fruit they produce — will generally be smaller than for younger plants.

Many top producers reserve fruit from their oldest plants for their best wines.

Extremely old vines, like the ones in the image above, are also prized by winemakers because they can often be “ungrafted,” what Europeans sometimes call piè franco, meaning literally free standing.

Toward the end of the 19th century and in the early years of the 20th, many European vineyards were affected by phylloxera, a nearly microscopic insect that feeds on the roots and leaves of the plants. The only known cure for phylloxera is to graft the plants with rootstock from phylloxera-resistant plants. The know-how and phylloxera-resistant rootstock that was used to save the European wine industry came from the U.S.

In the case of the vines in the image, they were planted in the third decade of the last century and for reasons unknown were naturally resistant to phylloxera. They never needed to be grafted with American rootstock.

Ungrafted, piè franco vines are highly prized because they represent a continuity with the pre-phylloxera era.

In my experience, wines made from old vines like the Nizza produced by Amistà, can be highly more compelling than their younger-vine siblings.

Can you really taste the difference in wines that come from piè franco plants? I don’t believe that you can. But the romance of drinking a wine from a vine that was planted before my grandparents were born does have a certain appeal.

Above: the Nicodemi farm in Colline Teramane. Last year when I visited Abruzzo right before harvest, growers were dealing with a prolonged, nearly nine-month drought. This year when I visited following harvest, growers had lost an average of 70 percent and up to 90 percent of their crop because of excessive rainfall and the resulting peronospora issues. See link to learn more.

Bay Area and Atlanta wine professionals: Abruzzo needs you! And I need you, too!

On Monday, December 4, 2023, I will be leading a guided tasting of Abruzzo wines and dinner at Antica Posta in Atlanta; and then on Monday, December 11 at Mama Oakland. Both events are being hosted by the Consorzio Vini d’Abruzzo, the association of Abruzzo grape growers and winemakers.

The dinner is open to anyone who works in the wine or restaurant trade. And it’s free (thank you, Abruzzo consortium!).

If you’d like to attend, simply send me an email at jparzen [at] gmail [dot] com or by clicking here.

The idea is for us to get together, taste a flight of Abruzzo wines paired with great food (menus forthcoming), and spread awareness of the compelling viticulture that’s happening there.

I just got back in late October from leading a group of wine pros to the region and I know that all of my colleagues will agree: the work that Abruzzo growers are doing right now is immensely inspiring and the wines can be astounding.

Cocciopesto-aged Trebbiano d’Abruzzo, anyone?

I’d love to meet and get to taste with you. Please feel free to share this with any trade member you think would enjoy and appreciate it. Any and all are welcome!

Thank you for your support.

It may just be one of those dumb internet factoids. But according to one internet search, the only major city farther away from Houston than Hong Kong is Perth, Australia.

It’s another way of saying that on my trip last week delivered me literally to the antipodes.

For many of my fellow Houstonians, traveling to Hong Kong for work, pleasure, or family is a workaday journey.

But for me, there was nothing quotidian about it. It wasn’t just my first trip to China but my first trip to Asia as well.

Here are some of the highlights from my unforgettable experience.

That’s a selfie, above, that I took at Victoria Peak, highly recommended.

Late night street food.
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Above: the view of the Maiella massif from the Frentana cooperative in Chieti province on Thursday of last week.

On Friday of last week, the Consorzio dei Vini d’Abruzzo (Abruzzo wine growers association) published this video of its president Alessandro Nicodemi talking about the current peronospora (downy mildew) crisis in Abruzzo.

The average drop in production in the 2023 vintage in Abruzzo, he says, is 70 percent, with estimates exceeding 90 percent in some cases. The cause, as has been widely reported, was peronospora, downy mildew, a fungal disease that affects the vines after excessive rainfall.

Last week, I led a group of top U.S. sommeliers through the region. Nearly every where we traveled, we saw entire vineyards that had been left unharvested. We also saw many sites where the plants had lost all their vegetation.

Numerous growers told us that the problem was the continuous rainfall in the late spring and early summer. It rained for so many days in a row, they explained, that the muddy soil made it impossible to enter the vineyards with tractors to treat the plants. As a result, the fungal disease spread unchecked. Despite the dry and hot summer that followed, it was too late to stop the scourge.

Many wine trade observers don’t realize that organic farming (certified or simply practiced) is the norm in Abruzzo. That trend is owed to the fact that the region’s arid climate and excellent ventilation — nestled between Italy’s highest mountains and the Adriatic coast — keep the vineyards dry throughout the growing season. That’s what makes it so easy to farm organically there.

Organic growers were dismayed by their drop in production but they seemed, anecdotally, to have fared better than their conventional counterparts.

I have much to report about our tour and will be heading back with another group of wine professionals at the end of November.

But right now I wanted to bring attention to what is becoming an existential crisis for certain growers there. There couldn’t ever be a better time to buy and support Abruzzo wines than right now. Thanks for the solidarity.

Tracie and I will be leaving tomorrow for the Boulder Burgundy Festival where I’ll be doing my yearly gig as the event’s official blogger. This year, festival founder and owner of the Boulder Wine Merchant, Brett Zimmerman, has also asked me to moderate a panel of super sommeliers on “Rethinking the Négociant.” I’m super geeked about that and just feeling blessed to have such great work these days.

On Sunday morning, I’ll kiss Tracie goodbye as she heads back to Houston and I’ll travel to Aquila in Abruzzo where I’ll be leading a seminar on the region’s wines for a group of top wine pros. This trip came about at the last minute when a trip to NYC next week got postponed. I’ve been developing the seminar for a few years now and I’m excited to spend a few days with colleagues tasting and talking about the compelling wines that are made there. We’ll be in Chieti as well. Seafood and Cerasuolo, anyone?

Then it’s back to Houston where I’ll be conducting a seminar on Piedmont Collectibles with a local partner on Monday, October 30. See the link to register. The last event was so much fun and such a great group of folks. As fried as I’m going to be, I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve always found Nebbiolo to be an excellent remedy for jet lag!

I’ll only be at home with the girls for a few days when I leave for Hong Kong on Halloween. I’ll be pouring and speaking at James Suckling’s Great Wines of Italy event on Friday, November 2. If you happen to be in the neighborhood, please stop by!

After that, it’s on to Dallas for a seminar at the Taste of Italy festival there and then back to Italy to teach…

My schedule is so intense these days that it reminds me of being on the road with the band back in the day.

Wish me luck and wish me speed and thank you to everyone for their support and solidarity. I feel truly blessed to do what I do for a living. Thanks for being here.