Above: Barbera was featured as one of Italy’s greatest grape varieties in Giorgio Gallesio’s landmark work of ampelography, published in the early 19th century.

It’s hard to believe in this day of growing wine awareness, appreciation, and enthusiasm.

But it’s still not uncommon to encounter wine professionals, including wine industry institutions, who continue to call wine made from Barbera the “wine of the people.”

Roughly a quarter century after the Italian wine renaissance began (1998 is the year, in my view, of the shot heard round the world), it’s unfathomable and entirely unacceptable that we continue to divide wine lovers into “haves” and “have-nots.”

Let’s put it this way, if Barbera were in fact the “wine of the people,” are other wines reserved, intended, or conceived exclusively for nobility and the managerial classes? If that were the case, shouldn’t the classist-minded among us call it the “wine of the proletariat”?

Joking aside, haven’t we outgrown this caste-driven view of the wine world?

Historically, Italy’s aristocracy and haute bourgeoisie preferred French wines. Cavour, the Piedmont noble and first prime minister of Italy, wrote that he didn’t believe Italian grape varieties could reach the same heights as Pinot Noir. The Incisa della Rocchetta family, also Piedmont nobility, famously planted Cabernet on their horse ranch on the Tuscan coast. The producers of what would become Sassicaia drank Bordeaux-style wines while the local Tuscan cowboys drank Sangiovese, or so the legend goes.

In the early 19th century, Ligurian botanist Giorgio Gallesio devoted ample space to Barbera in his landmark work of ampelography and Italian botany Pomona italiana. Only the fig tree received more face time. Nebbiolo is a footnote by comparison.

Gallesio’s love of Barbera was echoed loudly in another seminal work of ampelography, Ampélographie universelle, by the great French viticulturalist Alexandre Pierre Odart, who describes Barbera as one of the best grape varieties in Italy. With evident and warm enthusiasm, Odart quotes Gallesio’s work and points to Barbera as a variety that growers, French and otherwise, should know.

Before you call Barbera the “wine of the people,” please remember that we — rich or poor — are ALL people. It’s just that only some people know how good Barbera can be.

Have you ever heard the word “haunted” used in winespeak?

As in the sentence, the wine that continues to haunt me is….

Wine professionals occasionally seem to use that expression when they are talking about a wine that they can’t stop thinking about, that they can’t get off their mind…

For me personally, once such wine has been the Amarone by Torre D’Orti, a farm in Valpolicella Orientale (eastern Valpolicella).

The wine is actually made by a famous producer of Custoza, Cavalchina (fantastic white wines btw, really super and worth checking out if you don’t know them), about 30 minutes to the west by car.

The name, as I understand it, comes from a place name, a guard tower outside Montorio castle in the San Martino Buon Albergo commune. It’s the “tower of the gardens,” so to speak, probably known in another era for the high quality crops grown there.

The soils in eastern Valpolicella are a blend of the classic limestone (found farther to the west) and the volcanic soils that you find further east. It’s no surprise that the land there produces richly flavored crops.

The area is known for its leaner, more taut style of Amarone and Valpolicella.

In my view, this wine is the result of a top growing site combined with the aesthetic and viticultural approach of the Piona family whose legacy in Custoza gives them a “white wine” sensibility.

Their Amarone, which I retasted in June during a visit to Valpolicella, is extremely elegant and keeps its hefty alcohol in check with impressive balance and finesse.

Its flavors were a blend of delicately juicy fruit and minerality, with a lithe texture that danced on the palate.

I loved this wine and highly recommend it, especially for those curious to travel outside of Valpolicella Classico to the west where some of more famous wines are made.

It beguiled, it bewitched, it enchanted, it dazzled, it spellbound… It was that damn good.

What an incredible year it’s been already!

From Lucciola in New York City to The Wine Country in Long Beach, California; from Pasta And… in Margate, Florida to Cry Wolf in Dallas and Davanti in Houston.

Over the last six months, I’ve had the opportunity to interact with some of the brightest and best people in our business.

Just this month, I presented wines in Florida (at the amazing Vinya wine shop in Key Biscayne), in California (at The Wine Country), and here in Houston where I hosted a trade and media dinner for 25 of my colleagues (at Davanti).

And I just found out that I’ll be the moderator for this year’s Boulder Burgundy Festival in October and I’ll be teaching a seminar for the Abruzzo consortium in November in Abruzzo.

I couldn’t feel more grateful for the community, the solidarity, and the support I’ve received.

The wine world is small and close-knit and I feel truly fortunate to be part of such a vibrant scene.

Between my trip to Italy to teach at Slow Food U and my domestic travels this month, I’ve been on the road nearly non-stop.

And so now it’s time to take a break and be with Tracie and the girls. I’ll be taking the next week off and we’re all looking forward to date nights with Tra and our fun escapades with the girls.

I couldn’t feel more blessed.

Have a great summer, everyone! I’ll see you week after next. Thanks for being here.

Notes on much needed rainfall in Piedmont, from my recent trip to Slow Food U, today on the Boulder Wine Merchant blog.

Thanks for checking it out!

Stay cool out there. Buon weekend a tutti.

Houston wine trade and media folks, I need you to join me on Monday, June 26 for a classic Abruzzo menu paired with Abruzzo wines at Davanti, Chef Roberto Crescini’s casual Italian on Wesleyan.

It’s my first event for the consortium of Abruzzo wines and we’ve just got a couple of spots to fill to knock this one out of the park.

Chef Roberto is closing the restaurant just for our party that night. It’s going to be a great one! And I PROMISE: no boring speeches to sit through or videos to watch. Just great food and wines.

The flight of wine is forthcoming. But in the meantime, here’s the menu that Chef Roberto has created especially for our group.

antipasto
pizza rustica abruzzese

primo piatto
ravioli alla teramana

secondo piatto
agnello alla neretese

dolce
parrozzo abruzzese

The dish agnello alla neretese is lamb braised with tomato, sweet and hot peppers. Sound good?

This event is open only to trade and media and again, we just have a few spots to fill at this point.

Please DM me via jparzen [at] gmail.com to RSVP. There is no cost to guests and only a business card is required to attend.

Please feel free to share with any members of trade or food and wine-focused media.

Thank you for the support and solidarity and hope to see you on Monday, June 26! Buon weekend a tutti!

For many years now, I’ve pondered the notion of “wine writing” as a self-referential exercise.

Whenever you describe a wine, you’re not actually describing the wine but rather your experience tasting the wine (or experiencing the wine). Even when you tell the “story” of a wine, you are ultimately describing your own story.

Students of 20th-century critical theory will remember Gertrude Stein’s 1933 book The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. It is an “autobiography” not written by the subject but rather by her partner.

Many before me have called the work a “new paradigm” in Western narrative where the author (in this case, Stein) explores her own perceptions and experiences by purporting to be the subject and author. In doing so, she presaged one of the great conundra of the post-war Deconstruction movement where critical theorists like Barthes and Derrida declared that the “author was dead” (until Eco decided the author was actually still alive).

Stein’s book is one that comes up in my seminars on wine communications in the grad program at the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences in Piedmont.

Reading through the examples of the “tyranny of the tasting note” in Eric Asimov’s “memoir and manifesto” How to Love Wine (2012), it’s abundantly clear that the writers in question are not describing wine but rather their experience tasting the wine in a given sitting. And my analogy here is that Stein is not describing the life of Alice B. Toklas but rather her perception of that life.

In writing a tasting note for a given wine, instead of saying “this is what the wine tastes like,” it would be more precise to say “this is what the wine tasted like to me when I tasted it that day.” The infamous case of Matt Kramer a wine writer from the 2000s saying [updated March 4, 2024] that Bartolo Mascarello tasted like “wet dog” “a warm room with two dogs in it” comes to mind in this context [updated March 4, 2024]. Instead of saying “this is what the wine tastes like,” he should have said, “this is what the wine tasted like to me on the day that I tasted it.”

[As Mr. Kramer recently pointed out to me, it was not him but rather a colleague of his at the time that wrote the note. For more on the episode of the wine that tasted like “a warm room with two dogs in it,” see this post by Craig Camp.]

But it wasn’t until recently that I realized that wine writing isn’t just an exercise in Deconstruction. It finally occurred to me that wine writing is actually ekphrastic in nature. The Greek term ekphrasis denotes the art of describing a work of art. And that is exactly what happens when we describe a wine.

Not only do we not tell our own story — our own experience as opposed to an empirical evaluation of the wine — but we perform that story. Along the way, we can’t help but compete against our peers and even ourselves as we try to excel as wine communicators.

Or do we?

I’m still working it out. Thanks for following along as I do…

Above: some of my students in the graduate program at the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo, a hamlet of Bra commune in the Roero subregion of Piedmont.

During their seminars on digital wine communications, the wine and spirits grad students and their instructor decided to take artificial intelligence “out for a drive,” so to speak. Their goal was to determine whether or not Bard, Google’s generative artificial intelligence chatbot, could create humanlike content about wine and viticulture.

The group started by lobbing Bard a soft ball.

“Please write a blog post, with title, about the Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences.” This was to be the “control” entry, a relatively easy pitch that the students could swiftly verify (given that they are students at the university).

As expected, Bard regurgitated and even quoted passages from the densely populated UniSG website:

The Slow Food University of Gastronomic Sciences (UNISG) is a unique institution that offers a multidisciplinary approach to food studies. Founded in 2004 by Carlo Petrini, the founder of Slow Food, UNISG is located in Pollenzo, Italy, a small town in the Piedmont region.

UNISG’s mission is to “educate gastronomes, people equipped with knowledge and skills in the agricultural and food sector, capable of driving food production, distribution and consumption towards proper, viable choices and helping to create a sustainable future for the planet.”

But students and instructor alike were surprised that there was absolutely no mention of wine, viticulture, and spirits studies — all core subjects.

But even more startling was that toward the end of the post, Bard shifted from a descriptive tone to an optative mode.

“If you are looking for a challenging and rewarding educational experience,” wrote Bard using language seemingly lifted from a 1970s ad campaign, “UNISG is the perfect place for you.”

All the more unexpected since the group had not asked it to recruit new students. But the content was solid.

Then, they asked Bard to write a post about a winery with attenuated but lyrical web presence. Beyond fact sheets about the wine, the estate’s website’s primary content is a poetical discourse on the winemaker’s philosophy.

And here things started to get strange.

“The winery is certified organic and biodynamic.” Not true.

It’s “a popular destination for wine lovers, and the winery offers a variety of wine tastings and tours. The winery also has a restaurant, which serves traditional Piedmontese cuisine.” Not true, not true. In fact, entirely made up!

Then came the tasting notes.

“The wine is full-bodied and flavorful, with notes of red fruit, spice, and tobacco.”

One member of the group had recently tasted at said winery. They found it unusual that “tobacco” was used as a tasting descriptor for wine in question. The tasting notes, in general, seemed odd. The winery’s fact sheets don’t include any mention of tobacco.

In conclusion, wrote Bard, “I hope this blog post has inspired you to visit [the] winery in Roero. The winery is a great place to learn about sustainable winemaking practices, taste award-winning wines, and enjoy a traditional Piedmontese meal.”

As my daughters, ages 10 and 11 would say, “CRINGE!”

Two things became clear with subsequent queries:

1) when Bard was tasked with creating content about subjects where ample information was available on the internet, it produced a generic but honest blog post;
2) when tasked with create content where scant info is available, it created misinformation.

The group’s conclusions were that:

1) AI still cannot be relied on for useful, factual information when it comes to wine and viticulture;
2) AI’s wine-focused copy still comes across as wooden and overly generalized; it lacks the verve and originality of human-generated content.

My personal thought is that wine writing remains an entirely idiosyncratic enterprise and lacks the kind of overarching standards and conventions that would facilitate the creation of AI-generated content.

When we asked Bard to write about Google authority, a subject we discussed at length, it did a great job. When asked to describe a groovy winery in Roero, it came across as a phony and fake.

But how long is that going to last?