06 Barbaresco: a final (?) clarification from Aldo Vacca, Produttori del Barbaresco

Posted on by

Above: As my good friend and top sommelier David Rosoff will tell you, “I learned more about Barbaresco talking to Aldo Vacca for 10 minutes” than I have in my whole career.

I wanted to draw your attention to a comment made by winemaker Aldo Vacca, Produttori del Barbaresco, posted the other day here at Do Bianchi. He was commenting in response to Charles Scicolone, who had asked plaintively whether or not Produttori del Barbaresco typically executed different bottlings destined for its domestic and international markets (the thread appeared in a post on the winery’s decision not to bottle its single-vineyard wines for the 2006 vintage).

Here’s what Aldo had to say:

    Just a quick note: we at Produttori Barbaresco never bottle wines specifically for one market or another. We do not look for specific taste for specific market and all that, we just make the wine at the best of our knowledge in one very define style. If we do more than one bottling, we try to have a similar blend in all bottling.

    We do release our new vintage in the Fall in Italy and usually, because of the logistics of the market and because we like to give some more bottle aging when we can, the next January is most export market. So, it is usually the case that the first bottling is mainly sold in Italy while the second bottling (which is also larger in size) goes to export and Italy as well: it is just a matter of timing, not of deciding which market gets what.

    Normally this will not make any difference anyway because the two bottling would be very similar.

    The one thing that happened with the 2006 vintage was the late decision of not bottling the SV. If we had made the decision earlier, as we usually do, all bottlings would have been the same.

In a somewhat unrelated note, yesterday I poured the 2008 Langhe Nebbiolo by Produttori del Barbaresco in a tasting in Austin. Man, it’s light and bright and showing great right now, better than when it first came into the market. A tough vintage in Piedmont but great for entry-level wines like this, where some of the better fruit ended up in the front-line wines.

And in a totally unrelated note, in the light of Aldo’s love of Neil Young, we’re trying to get him out to San Diego on July 8 to sit in with The Grapes.

In other news…

I highly recommend my good friend Thor’s excellent post over at the 32 Days of Natural Wine on the natural wine scene in Paris. I really love his writing and I especially appreciated his hypercorrective neolgism oenopiphany. After all, there are men who know what the word epistemology means without having to look it up in a dictionary and there are others who have to go to Brooks Brothers to find out.

In other other news…

For the wine geeks out there and anyone else who wants to wrap her or his mind around what sulfur, sulfites, and SO2 have to do with wine, I highly recommend this post on the use of sulfur in wine by bonvivant Bruce Neyers, a man who needs no introduction to the oeno-initiated.

Buona lettura e buon weekend, ya’ll!

Out-of-state shipping restrictions in the U.S.: Texas, a case study

Posted on by

I’m not sure where she got her information but my blogging colleague Lindsay Ronga (scroll down) published a pungent post over at the latest Gary V foray into the world of eno-social media, cork’d. In it she wrote:

“Just this week, wine retailers around the country received cease and desist letters from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission (TABC) saying they can no longer ship wine to Texas consumers. The letter specifically told FedEx not to accept any wine retail packages to Texas. Wineries can still ship direct-to-consumer in the state of Texas.”

Good for Texas wine retailers? You bet. Good for wineries? Yes sir. Good for competition? Not a chance. Definitely not good for the Texas consumer. What government decided has put Texas wine retailers ahead of the online competition who most likely offers wine at lower prices.

Her information seemed a little skewed and so I got on the phone with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission this morning to set the record straight (everyone I talked to there was extremely nice, btw, and responded to me very promptly).

Basically, here’s what I found out.

Back in 2005, the Supreme Court ruled that U.S. wineries could ship directly to consumers. Here’s the reference in the Wiki. The idea was that the Congress has the right to regulate commerce between states, trumping the states’s regulation, and that states must allow other states to ship their products to them (this is one of those over-arching concepts at the heart of our country’s creation, evolution, and spirit: free commerce among states).

Back in 2006, a Florida retailer filed a complaint against the governor of Texas, arguing that if wineries had the right to ship their products to Texas, so did retailers.

In 2008, the judge in the case ruled in favor of the plaintiff but after a series of appeals and a decision issued in February 2010, it was decided that out-of-state retailers could ship to Texas if they applied for and obtained the appropriate permits BUT they had to purchase the wine from Texas-based distributors and have the wine shipped to them before they ship it to their customers. See the last ruling in the documentation provided (click to download a large PDF) to me by the TABC and check out this link as well.

Bottom line: IT IS LEGAL for out-of-state retailers to ship here but the logistic and legal hurdles they face makes it impossible to do so.

Having said that, the TABC public relations spokesperson told me that no one has applied for a permit since the 2008 ruling. She also told me that the TABC is aware that out-of-state retailers regularly ship to Texas regardless of the law.

Above: This morning, I grabbed this screen shot from Wine Searcher. It speaks for itself.

According to the spokesperson, the TABC has never sent cease and desist letters to retailers (as stated by Lindsay) but it has sent repeated letters to UPS and Fedex telling them not to ship wine from retailers. The last letter was sent May 14, she said.

She also told me that as long as a purchase was made outside of Texas, an individual may ship wine to Texas. The purchase may not be made by a phone call placed or an email sent from Texas (because the state of Texas considers that a purchase made in Texas).

She pointed out that it’s not the TABC that makes the law but rather the Texas legislature. It’s clear from the documentation provided to me that the big commercial distributors in Texas have lobbied heavily to stop out-of-state retailers from shipping here and they are named as cross-appellants in the documents.

She also told me that she’d never heard of Gary V.

Sorry, Gary.

(Photo of Gary via Peter Hodges)

An Oltrepò Pavese Riesling that commands our attention

Posted on by

Above: Lombardy and the Oltrepò Pavese are home to an active community of 17th-century carriage collectors and competitors. The Riesling “Landò” produced by Le Fracce is so-called after its owner Count Bussolera’s collection of landau carriages.

Have a look today at a post on an Oltrepò Pavese Rhine Riesling by Italy’s top wine blogger and leading enojournalist Mr. Franco Ziliani, translated by me over at the blog we edit together, VinoWire.

For those of you studying for your master sommelier and certified wine specialist and educator exams, it’s most definitely worth a look-see. We tend to think of the Oltrepò Pavese solely as a producer of great Pinot Nero, Croatina, and Bonarda (including the many excellent traditional-method expression of Pinot Nero made there). But the appellation is one of the few Italian growing zones that can produce a Riesling DOC and bottle it with the grape name on the label (unlike, say, Piedmont, where producers like Vajra can bottle 100% Riesling but have to call it “Langhe Bianco”).

Le Fracce’s “Landò” is so-called because the owner of the estate collects 17th-century landau carriages.

Check it out here…

Don’t read my wine blog (and great things I ate in San Diego)

Posted on by

Above: Fish tacos at Jaynes Gastropub (served only during happy hour). So good with the Grüner Veltliner by Domäne Wachau by-the-glass.

As my lovely and most definitely better half Tracie P will surely agree: it is a rare occasion that I am left speechless. Today is such an occasion.

I was left entirely FLOORED by Levi Dalton’s piece over at the 32 Days of Natural Wine.

Above: Camaronillas (corn tortillas stuffed with shrimp and then deep-fried) at Bahia Don Bravo in Bird Rock with the crew (SO MUCH fun last night). Bahia Don Bravo 5504 La Jolla Boulevard, La Jolla, CA, (858) 454-8940. (Thanks Salavdor, Roberto, and Dora! YOU’RE THE BEST!)

I highly recommend that you check out and follow the 32 Days and there are so many great posts to come.

Above: And only because Zio Alfonso is so concerned about my cholesterol level, I only ate half of the homemade pork sausage (generously studded with fennel seeds) at Pete’s Quality Meat in Little Italy on my way to the airport. Pete’s Quality Meat, 1742 India Street, San Diego, CA, (619) 234-1684.

I’m so stoked that I got to be part of this epic undertaking and entirely humbled by the caliber and talent of the contributors.

Here’s a useful link to see an overview of all the posts to date.

Buona lettura, as the Italians say!

Debut of my new band THE GRAPES (and New England giant bluefin tuna)

Posted on by

From the “man cannot live by wine alone” department…

Above: The Grapes, me on guitar and vox, Andrew Harvey drums, John Yelenosky guitar and vox, and Jon Erickson bass and vox. We’ll be playing our first gig in La Jolla on Thursday July 8.

We named our new country-rock band “The Grapes” after the legendary Liverpool pub where the Beatles used to hang out (Vinogirl can verify this).

We’ll be performing for the first time at one of my favorite sushi restaurants in the world, Zenbu in La Jolla on Thursday July 8.

Above: When I visited Zenbu the other night, owners Matt and Jackie Rimel (high school friends of mine) shared some lightly seared New England giant blue fin tuna belly with me. All of the fishes are fished individually by harpoon, Matt told me, so as not to harm dolphins. Matt is one of the most interesting dudes I know in the restaurant business and has hunted and fished and surfed all over the world. Zenbu is a unique sushi experience. Tracie P and me love it.

We’ll be bringing a little country music to the Pacific Coast with some tunes by Willie Nelson, Doug Sahm and the Tex Mex Trip, Gram Parsons (de rigueur), and some rockers like Tony Joe White’s Polk Salad Annie.

I hope you can join us. There might even be some interesting bottles of wine being opened that night!

In other news…

Did I mention that I’ve wanted to be a cowboy all my life? Found this photo while visiting mama Judy in La Jolla over the weekend (taken at Hebrew school in Chicago).

Chicharrones at Super Cocina in City Heights (San Diego) knocked my socks off, amazing

Posted on by

Brother Tad’s office is out in City Heights on the east side of San Diego. I went out there this morning to meet him for lunch at Super Cocina. Man, I’m here to tell you, this place ROCKS… well worth the drive and then some… I can’t remember the name of this beef stew with potatoes, a dish the owner said was from Mexico City. Anyone know?

But the chicharrones… o my goodness… the chicharrones… slowly stewed melt-in-your-mouth pork rind and tomatillos… I also had the green mole (on the right of the dish).

One of the crazy things about this family-friendly, more-than-reasonably-priced restaurant is that the owner gives you little tasting cups of any and all of the dishes in the food line. The owner knows that he’s got the good stuff and that you’re going to like it.

Highly, highly recommended… and definitely worth the drive. Thanks Brother Tad for hipping me to this awesome place!

Super Cocina
3627 University Avenue
San Diego, CA 92104-2316
(619) 584-6244

My 32 Days of Natural Wine post (and a note on the accompanying Latin motto on grape growing)

Posted on by

Why is there a photo of spiders on my blog today? You’ll have to visit my contribution to the 32 Days of Natural Wine, day 2 to find out. I wrote my post on Lewis Dickson, the only natural winemaker — to my knowledge — in Texas. Those spiders live above his cave.

In case you aren’t already hip to the 32 Days of Natural Wine, it’s one of the coolest happenings in the enoblogosphere (now in its second year) and it’s run by one of the nicest dudes in this wacky world of wine blogging, Cory Cartwright.

Cory is a friend and a greatly admired blogging colleague of mine and his writing is among the best on the internets when it comes to wine. I’ve drawn much inspiration and guidance from his blog, especially when it comes to Loire and Jura wines.

I was thrilled that he asked me to be part of the project again this year.

Please check out my post The Wild West of Natural Wine: the Texas Hill Country on winemaker Lewis Dickson and his incredible estate, Cruz de Comal.

A note on the Latin motto that opens the post

You’ll see that the post begins with a Latin motto:

    Uva uvam vivendo videndo varia fit.

    —Juvenal 2.81 (Hat Creek Cattle Company)

The strike-through is a reference to the novel by Larry McMurtry, Lonesome Dove. In the novel, a 1985 Pulitzer-prize-winning narrative that Texans have embraced as the state’s “Gone with the Wind,” a work that “forever changed the image of Texas,” according to Texas Monthly magazine, one of the cattlemen adopts the motto as his own, even though he doesn’t know what it means. And he transcribes it erroneously (hence my strike-through).

Above: The sign used in the TV mini-series version of the novel now resides in a museum collection devoted to the book and its legacy. “It was his view that Latin was mostly for looks anyway, and he devoted himself to the mottoes in order to find one with the best look. The one he settled on was Uva uvam vivendo varia fit, which seemed to him a beautiful motto, whatever it meant. One day when nobody was around he went out and lettered it onto the bottom of the sign.” (Lonesome Dove, p. 91)

The motto itself means when one grape sees another grape [change], it changes [color]. The aphorism is akin to the contemporary saying one bad apple can ruin the whole bunch.

It comes to us via a commentator of Juvenal’s Satires (2.81).

In the second Satire, Juvenal warns Creticus about the decay of morals in Rome: “This plague has come upon us by infection, and it will spread still further, just as in the fields the scab of one sheep, or the mange of one pig, destroys an entire herd; just as one bunch of grapes takes on its sickly colour from the aspect of its neighbour.”

The author of a gloss on this passage (a commentary probably written around the 4th century B.C.E., a few hundred years after Juvenal died) points to the Latin motto uva uvam videndo varia fit as a source for the line in the satire.

Anyone who has observed the vegetative cycle of a vine knows that the grapes do not ripen all of sudden nor at the same pace. A few berries will begin to ripen and then, as if the other berries are watching their riper counterparts, the entire bunch will begin to ripen more rapidly. The same thing happens as the grapes begin to rot, hence the line in Juvenal.

I wanted to make a reference to Lonesome Dove in my post about Lewis not only because June marks the 25th anniversary of this landmark novel but because like the characters in the book, Lewis has embraced the frontier spirit: he has courageously raised the Natural Wine flag for the first time in the state.

I also liked the motto because I hope that Lewis’s “bad example” will lead and inspire other Texas winemakers to revisit (or visit for the first time) the notion of place in wine. It only takes one bad apple like Lewis to ruin the whole bunch!

Chapeau bas, Lewis!

Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy my post over at the 32 Days of Natural Wine, day 2.

The aura of BrooklynGuy’s table

Posted on by

From the “through a glass darkly” department…

Above: Anyone who reads BrooklynGuy’s blog knows the “aura” of his famous table. Tracie P took this photo of through a wonderful glass of Jura that he poured us when we visited with him and BrooklynFamily on a beautiful spring day in late May.

Alice has sat there. McDuff has sat there. Eric has sat there.

I just can’t convey the delight that flowed through my veins when Tracie P and I were invited to sit there last month while sojourning in New York City (once my home, too) in May.

For the life of me, I simply can’t remember why or how I discovered and started following BrooklynGuy’s blog. Over the course of the two years or so that I’ve been a fan, I’ve found vinous and culinary inspiration, buying guidance, good-natured humor, and an honesty and integrity of writing that are rivaled solely by the genuineness and purity of the style.

Above: There it is, the famous table, the one the appears in many of BrooklynGuy’s posts. Can you feel its aura?

But perhaps even more thrilling than the thought of sharing a glass of wine with BrooklynLady and BrooklynGuy and meeting the BrooklynChildren was the prospect of sitting at the storied table that appears in many of his posts and experiencing its aura.

The bottles that grace and graze that surface have passed the Litmus and acid tests of BrooklynGuy’s impeccable palate. It’s a classic case of Benjaminian mechanical reproduction. Through the repetitive appearance of the image of this simple wooden table in BrooklynGuy’s blog, the object itself has attained an aura that assumes its own unique meaning within the paradigm of ritualistic wine tasting.

Above: Look to BrooklynGuy’s blog for great tips in growers Champagne, the “mine field” of affordable Burgundy, and the often uncharted nuance of the Jura.

Over the course of these two years or so, BrooklynGuy’s become a friend and our visit with BrooklynFamily the other day revealed that not since Mel Brooks and Carl Reiner have two schlubs enjoyed the company of two such beautiful and simpatico wives.

Thanks BrooklynFamily for the wonderful Saturday afternoon visit, for the great wines and blog, and thanks — most of all — for the friendship.

Welcome back,
Your dreams were your ticket out.

Welcome back,
To that same old place that you laughed about.

Well the names have all changed since you hung around,
But those dreams have remained and they’re turned around.

Who’d have thought they’d lead ya (Who’d have thought they’d lead ya)
Here where we need ya (Here where we need ya)

Yeah we tease him a lot cause we’ve hot him on the spot, welcome back,
Welcome back, welcome back, welcome back.

The oil spill

Posted on by

Above: Facing east, looking out onto Galveston Bay at sunset on the Gulf of Mexico the other evening, in Kemah, Texas (pronounced KEE-mah). The Louisiana border is but a two-hour drive from there.

Did anyone hear the interview with Acy Cooper, vice president of the Louisiana Shrimp Association yesterday afternoon on NPR? When Tracie P and I finally got to sit down for dinner last night, we talked about the piece we both had heard.

    [Melissa] BLOCK: You know, I’m curious, yesterday, we heard a term come out of the mouth of the chairman of BP, who talked about doing better by the small people who were affected by the spill. I wonder if you heard that, and what you made of that term, small people.

    Mr. COOPER: Yeah, I was offended. We’re not small people. We are a lot bigger than they can actually imagine. We don’t need help around here. No, we’re not small. We do – we make our living on our own. We’re hardworking people. Where he get terminology of small is very offending to us. We’re all Americans and we’re not small.

Please listen to the story (you can also read the transcript there). The man in the interview talks like a lot of the folks I’ve met since I moved down to Texas. Folks I’ve met in Louisiana and in East Texas where Tracie P grew up.

I took the above photo the other day when I was down in Kemah, Texas, on the Gulf, doing a restaurant review for one of the blogs I author. The restaurant was a seafood restaurant, of course. So far, said the nice folks I met down there, the only thing that they can’t get this summer is oysters. But that’ll probably change, they said.

Please listen to the interview. And please keep all those folks in your hearts and your thoughts.

Good Italian food and wine grow in Brooklyn

Posted on by

brooklyn

Above: The Bisci Verdicchio di Matelica was just one of the killer wines poured for me and BrooklynGuy by Albano Ballerini at his excellent restaurant Aliseo Osteria del Borgo in Brooklyn. Aliseo doesn’t really have a website (although it does have a FB). Trust me: just go there and ask Albano to bring you food and wine.

May is the most beautiful month in Brooklyn. When I visited with Tracie P, her gorgeous blue eyes sparkled in the springtime sunshine of Brooklyn Heights by the waterfront. And when I returned — alas, alone this time during my work week — for dinner with BrooklynGuy and Brooklyn Lady, I discovered that the sunny days of May and its temperate nights are ideal for fine wine and dining in this borough so often neglected by the gastronomically minded.

brooklyn

Above: This Colline Pescaresi 2008 Pecorino by Ciavolich was awesome. Originally from the Marches, owner Albano (an ex-fashion photographer) offers his patrons a tidy but impressive list of wines from the central Adriatic coast of Italy — probably the best representation of the Marches and Abruzzo I’ve seen.

I must confess that I loved everything about Albano Ballerini’s Aliseo Osteria del Borgo: the décor, the vibe, the food, and the excellent wine list. I can see why it’s become one of BrooklynGuy’s favorite haunts. Albano and chef Gustavo Fernandez seem to operate in perfect synchronicity and symphony.

brooklyn

Above: Handmade spaghetti alla chitarra tossed with herbs and fresh pistachios were off-the-charts good.

Who knows how many lives Albano has lived? He’s a real character (un vero personaggio) and an ex-fashion photographer who loves (and knows) great food and wine. When you enter his restaurant, you enter his world, you enter his stories, and you are bound (quite literally) to eat and drink well.

brooklyn

Above: Even something as simple as Gustavo’s grilled steak and pork loin was prepared and presented with such care and poetry that the experience (very reasonably priced) went from A to A+.

When I moved to Brooklyn back in 1997, there was no Al di là, Convivio, or Franny’s (these names will not be unfamiliar to anyone who watched Brooklyn’s culinary street cred grow in the late 90s and early 00s). Back then there was just Cucina on 5th Ave. (remember that joint?).

Albano is an amazing and ambitious gourmand and gourmet and a great host. His tidy wine list is probably the most interesting gathering of central Adriatic wines in this country.

brooklyn

Above: This 50% Montepulciano and 50% Merlot from the 2001 vintage was killer (and I do not use that term lightly where Merlot is concerned!). I’d heard of Serenelli’s wines but had never tasted them. I’d really love to taste the winery’s Rosso Conero (pronounced KOH-neh-roh btw).

Thanks again, BrooklynGuy and BrooklynLady, for hipping me to this excellent dining destination. Great stuff. Highly recommended.

Aliseo Osteria del Borgo
(no website)
665 Vanderbilt Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11238-3831
(718) 783-3400

osteria del borgo