On the day that she was born…

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Tomorrow marks the day that the love of my life was born. :-)

We’re in San Antonio tonight to start celebrating, with a Saturday night getaway and dinner at Andrew Weissman’s Il Sogno. Tomorrow we’ll have a little birthday cake and champers back in Austin with the gang.

If ever a song lyric rang true in my life, it would be the line from “Close to You”: on the day that you were born/the angels got together/and decided they would make a dream come true.

Tracie B, you’re my dream come true…

As part of her birthday celebration, I made sweet Tracie B a mixed CD, including this track that I wrote and recorded just for her…

Happy birthday sweet Tracie B!

happy_bday

“Wine and mortality” and the last bottle of 2004 Produttori del Barbaresco

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Above: One of the first times I tasted the 2004 Produttori del Barbaresco was in February of 2008 with my good friend John Yelenosky at a pizzeria in San Diego. Tracie B and I drank our last bottle of 2004 Produttori del Barbaresco last night… and so did a Good Friend…

“Wine and mortality” was the subject line of an email I received today from a Good Friend. As I write this, One of the Good Friend’s loved ones is leaving this world for the nec plus ultra of the beyond. The One’s transfiguration is being observed in their home, with friends gathering to tell the One how much they love the One and to hold the One’s hands and massage the One’s feet.

The Good Friend wrote that two bottles of wine were opened last night to toast the One. Of those, one was “my last bottle of 2004 Produttori.”

As it so happens, Tracie B and I decided unknowingly to open our last bottle of 2004 Produttori del Barbaresco last night — not for any particular reason other than the fact that it seemed to have found its way to the front of the refrigerator that we use as a wine cellar.

Unwittingly, we discovered, we shared the same wine as the Good Friend and the One.

Wine and our perceptions of wine are a visceral experience by which we share our humanity and our humanness — and ultimately, our mortality. The miracle of wine (and until modern times, wine was considered a divine miracle) is a mystery of life that some of us (the ones and the others) often contemplate more or less profoundly on a nearly daily basis, a riddle of the Sphinx that more often than not leaves us speechless, unable to describe it.

I’ve often thought of the winemaker as a medical doctor who captures the “life” of the grape in its liquid form and preserves it for years and even decades longer with a cork. When the liquid is released again, the grapes’s life begins to transpire, and we often experience a sense of awe and ecstasy as this takes place (consider, here, the word ecstasy in its etymologic sense).

Last night, the Good Friend and the One and Tracie B and I all tasted the same Nebbiolo grapes from the same vintage, bottled at the hand of the same Other.

“Do not know what we will drink tonight,” the Good Friend concluded the email, “but do know to whom our glasses will be raised.”

This post is devoted to the Good Friend and the One. Tracie B and I will raise a glass to you both tonight.

You are in our hearts and our thoughts.

Who cuts Jim Clendenen’s unruly hair? (and Dr. J in the Statesman)

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felice partida

Above: You wouldn’t believe it but rockstar winemaker Jim Clendenen and I have the same hair stylist, the rockin’ Felice Partida. The only difference? Jim has hair…

BrooklynGuy is not the only guy who gets to go to cool tastings this week, during our industry’s fall preview season (although I have to confess I wish I had had a chance to check out the Jenny and François portfolio in New York with him).

Those highfalutin New Yorkers might be surprised by the caliber of wine folk who come out to visit with us down here in central Texas. ;-)

Yesterday, I tasted a lot of great wines, including current releases from some of my favorite Italians from importer Dalla Terra — Selvapiana (07 Chianti Rufina was KILLER), Marchesi di Grésy (05 Barbaresco was stunning), Tenuta Sant’Antonio (05 was great, always one of my favorite expressions of Amarone).

I also enjoyed tasting with Jim Clendenen, whose wines — especially the high-end bottlings — are always fresh, elegant well-balanced expressions of California Pinot Noir. And I couldn’t resist the above photo op moment: Jim and I share the same hair stylist, Felice Partida! She and I met simply because I booked an appointment last year with the first stylist available at Tracie B’s salon, James Allan, in the Rosedale neighborhood of Austin where we both live. Felice is simply the coolest and as it turns out, her big sis’ Susana is also one of the coolest wine brokers in Texas, AND Felice’s boyfriend Ronnie James is one of the town’s hottest bass players (who plays and tours with the likes of Booker T, Gary Clark Jr., and Jimmy Vaughn — not bad eh?). I highly recommend Felice: being her client comes with “fringe” benefits! ;-)

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Above: Restaurateur and winemaker Brian Duncan is one of our country’s most dynamic food and wine experts. He’s also one of the coolest guys in the biz.

I also got to catch up with rockstar restaurateur and winemaker Brian Duncan from Chicago. I thought his Pinot Noir show beautifully and the packaging alone made it worth the price of admission. The back label reads: Sexy Pinot Noir seeks short term relationship with recipes that include mushrroms, pork, beef, or poultry (No strings attached).

In other news…

Check out Mike Sutter’s excellent article in yesterday’s Austin American-Statesman, “Messages in a bottle: The mystique of the restaurant wine list.” I was thrilled that Mike interviewed me for the piece and was glad to make the point that you shouldn’t “go into a restaurant with the presumption that people are going to try and take advantage of you… When you pay for a glass of wine in a restaurant, you’re not just paying for the wine. You’re paying for the restaurant’s cellaring of the wine. You’re paying for the service of the wine, and you’re also paying for the expertise.” The other wine professionals interviewed for the piece give some great advice about how to decipher a wine list. The bottom line: go out and enjoy restaurants and their wines. That’s what they’re there for! :-)

In other other news…

Above: Tracie B and I tasted 1988 Bertani Amarone with our friends Charles and Michele Scicolone and Frank Butler earlier this year when we were on tour with Nous Non Plus.

Today, Franco published this great interview with our mutual friend (and one of my mentors) Charles Scicolone. It’s in Italian so if you’re not Italophone, check out Charles’s blog. Charles started drinking and collecting fine Italian wine in the late 70s and early 80s, long before the current renaissance of Italian food and wine. His insights into how the Italian wine industry has evolved over the last 40 years are invaluable.

In an unrelated story…

Is Berlusconi’s number finally up? The Italian courts have revoked his immunity.

Buona lettura!

A killer Tocai (and a new system for wine ratings?)

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Above: Bobby Stuckey, Master Sommelier and probably the nicest guy I’ve met in the world of fine wine and dining. He came to Austin recently to show the new vintages of his killer wines from Friuli.

“We’re not making a lot of wine,” said Master Sommelier Bobby Stuckey, when he showed his Scarpetta Pinot Grigio and Tocai Friulano from Friuli in Austin the other day to a group of Texas wine professionals. “But Texas stepped up to the plate with our 2006 and so we’re going to give you an allocation even though there’s not a lot to go around.”

As Willie Nelson once wrote, “Miracles appear in the strangest of places”: you wouldn’t expect to find small-production wines like these in Central Texas but I’m finding more and more that the Texan style and passion for great food and wine brings some of the brightest and the best out to see us.

Above: The pig on the label of Bobby and chef Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson’s Scarpetta is inspired by their love of Prosciutto di San Daniele. The name “scarpetta” comes from the Italian word for “sopping up leftover sauce from your plate.”

I liked Bobby’s 2007 Pinot Grigio a lot: bright acidity, freshness, and nice fruit, with balanced minerality. A totally clean wine, easy to drink, a great quaffing wine.

But I REALLY DUG the Tocai Friulano: while the Pinot Grigio is aged in stainless steel, the Tocai, Bobby told me, is aged in botti, large old oak casks — totally old school, the way I like it. This wine had the richness and grassy notes that I love in traditional style Tocai and I’m totally geeked that it will be coming to Texas (at under-$20 retail, I was told). I can’t wait for Tracie B to taste it.

Btw, even though the EU prohibits Italians from writing Tocai on the label, I still can’t help myself from calling it Tocai. Surprisingly, the new requirement to call it Friuliano has resulted in an increase in sales, as Franco and I reported earlier this year at VinoWire. (In 2007, in decision in a complaint by Hugarian producers of Tokaj, the EU constitutional court prohibited Italian producers from using Tocai on bottles sold outside Italy.)

I also liked what Bobby had to say about it: “I wanted a wild beast, not a lap dog in a Gucci bag.”

Bobby is part of an expanding group of master sommeliers who are making wines or consulting with winemakers, approaching them from the perspective of the restaurateur rather than the trophy wine seeker.

In other news…

We tasted some great Italian wines last night at my sold-out Italian 101 seminar at The Austin Wine Merchant. Participant Pat Kelly posted this nice review at her blog.

And our new friend Mary Gordon surprised me by showing up after she snagged one of the waiting-list spots.

During the tasting, I realized that I, too, am guilty of using a de facto rating system: I found myself calling a grapy, easy-to-drink Montepulciano d’Abruzzo a “Wednesday night wine,” an elegantly tannic Rosso di Montalcino a “Friday night wine,” and when we tasted a rich, earthy Aglianico, Mary Gordon asked, “what night of the week is this wine?” Another participant chimed in, to the amusement and agreement of all, without skipping a beat: “Definitely a Saturday night wine!”

Next Tuesday’s Tuscany class is already sold-out but there are still some spots available in later sessions. Click here for the full schedule.

Mmmmm… tonight is Wednesday night. I wonder what Tracie B and will drink… ;-)

Salacious secrets of Italian wine: rocks and manure at 3 pm Texas time

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out and about

Salacious secrets: I forgot to mention in my post earlier today that you’ll be able comment on my answers and ask questions when I chat with Austin American-Statesman columnist Michael Barnes today at at 3 p.m. (Texas time). At shortly before 3 p.m., click here to visit his Out and About blog, register (if not already registered), and please weigh in.

I’ll be fielding all kinds of tough, hard-hitting questions, like why I like my Garganega to taste like rocks and my Nebbiolo to smell like manure.

I’m really looking forward to this new live interview format since I have “such a great face for radio”! ;-)

Do Bianchi live at Austin360.com today

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Above: Sunday evening found me and Tracie B tattered by the rain and mud at the Austin City Limits musical festival but warm and happy at the dinner table of the inimitable Bill Head — Austinite bon vivant and all-around good fellow. Bill made a wonderful ragù alla bolognese and so I brought along a bottle of Lini Lambrusco (in this case, Lambrusco di Sorbara). As restaurateur Danny Meyer likes to say, “if it grows with it, it goes with it.”

If you happen to find yourself near a computer this afternoon at 3 p.m. (Texas time), please check out a live chat that I will be doing today with Austin American-Statesman social columnist Michael Barnes at Out and About (Austin360.com).

Above: We were also joined Sunday night by Austin natural treasure Mary Gordon Spence (to Bill’s left), writer, humorist, and radio personality, who had many wonderful tales to tell of her recent trip to Italy, and University of Texas professor of government David Edwards.

We’ll be chatting about the series of classes on Italian wine I’m teaching every Tuesday at The Austin Wine Merchant beginning this evening.

Tonight’s class is sold out and the others are filling up quickly but there is still some space available. My favorite session is Italian Wine and Civilization (Tuesday, November 10), where we read a passage from Italian literature or history, and then taste a wine in some way pertinent to the text. Did you know that Niccolò Machiavelli was a winemaker, for example?

In other news…

Tracie B and I braved the rain and mud at this year’s Austin City Limits festival on Sunday. We didn’t stay long but did get to catch the B52s’s set, which couldn’t be anything other than super fun, and we also enjoyed super-shiny sisters-and-brother bluegrass/country act Jypsi (below). Jypsi was a little slick for my taste but man can they play!

Just over a year ago, I came to Austin for the second time to visit with Tracie B. Do you remember? Here’s a little post from the archive. We recreated the Austin City Limits photo op this year, except for this time sans mustache! ;-)

Unforgettable: James Burton at the Continental Club, Austin, TX

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From the “Nebbiolo meets the Hag” department…

james

Above: THE LEGENDARY JAMES BURTON has played on more of my favorite albums and tracks than I can count. Check out his discography here. Last night’s show at the Continental Club in Austin was one of the most amazing experiences of my life… literally… We had a blast. Photo by Tracie B.

It’s all thanks to my cousin Marty, who gave my number to Joe Pat, who used to be the wine director at Tony’s in Houston, where Marty is a regular (“John Kerry could be in the house,” said Joe Pat, “and if something was wrong with Marty’s salad, Tony would drop everything to take care of it.”) After taking a glance at my blog, Joe Pat knew what kind of music I liked: “The Hag and Barbaresco are two great things,” he once wrote me in an email (before we met last night), referring to Merle Haggard, “and why are there more references about wine in country music than all genres combined.” Friday, Joe Pat called me to tell me that James Burton was playing at the Continental Club in Austin, one of the greatest American honky tonks (in my humble opinion).

chicken_pickin

Above: James Burton is the father of a style of guitar playing called “chicken pickin.” A special gauge (thickness) of strings is used to allow the player to bend the strings easily with the middle, ring, and little fingers, while s/he holds a pick in between the thumb and index finger.

He opened his set with “Las Vegas” by Gram Parsons — the opening notes are one of his most famous riffs. What followed was a string of “hits”: he played everything from Ricky Nelson to Elvis and Merle Haggard, and everything in between, all the unforgettable riffs and solos that took some of the greatest songwriting and performances from A to A+. The number that moved me the most was “I am a Lonesome Fugitive” by Merle Haggard: if you’ve never heard it, check it out and you’ll see/hear why his guitar playing is so important in terms of how it shaped popular music in this country.

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Above: Isn’t she gorgeous? I am simply the luckiest guy in the world to have found her. I mean, she is the sweetest girl in the world and she LOVES her some James! And she can cook… AND she can speak Italian! ;-)

Man, I love this town and I love that girl for bringing me here!

We’re heading out to a day at the Austin City Limits music festival…

Happy Sunday ya’ll!

I love this town: Gary Clark Jr. at Antone’s

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gary clark jr

It’s ACL weekend here in Austin and there are so many major cats playing at all the great clubs here in town.

Last night Tracie B and me caught Gary Clark Jr.’s set at Antone’s. He lives here and MAN CAN THAT DUDE PLAY GUITAR. The below YouTube is a taste (from another show) of what we heard.

I love this town…

Eating crow: Australian wine that I truly loved

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jaynes_burger

Above: No trip to San Diego is complete without a Jaynes Burger at Jaynes Gastropub.

It was the white wine that first intrigued me and lured me in. And then it was the red — gritty and tannic but just old and wise enough — that seduced me.

For many years it seemed inconceivable to me that I would even approach Australian wine, let alone like it. When my band Nous Non Plus played in Germany last year at a Green party conference, I even tried to talk some young attendees out of drinking the famed critter wine, telling them that its consumption was diametrically opposed to their ideals.

But as some of the exchanges of the last few months have taught me, the extremes of extremism go the way of the historical avant-garde and Yale school deconstruction: after you kill the author (or the winemaker), you ultimately are left with nothing, n’est-ce pas?

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Above: Chef Daniel made a wonderful yellow tomato coulis vinaigrette with his seared scallops. The pairing with the 1986 Semillon was off-the-charts good.

Well, it’s time for me to come clean: on Saturday night I hosted a wine dinner in San Diego at Jaynes Gastropub where I poured 6 Australian wines that I truly loved. Three bottlings of older Semillon, including Mt. Pleasant 1986 Lovedale Semillon, and three bottles of older Shiraz, including Hardy’s Eileen Hardy 1998.

The whites — including the 23-year-old — showed beautiful acidity and white fruit and all were at about 11% alcohol. The Tyrell 95 and 96 were still babies in the glass but opened up beautifully as they arrived at room temperature and aerated: they drink more like red wines than white.

The reds were gritty and tannic, with integrated wood, but with approachable berry fruit and woodsy flavors. The only wine that seemed a little bit “slutty,” as we sometimes say in the business, was the crowd-pleasing 2001 Tower Barossa Shiraz. But I have to say that I liked it. It wasn’t overly jammy and although it lacked the structure of the Hardy, it was fun and easy to drink and not offensive in the way that some of the commercially produced wine that I’ve seen from Australia.

So, there! Do I have to write a recipe for eating crow? What would you pair with crow anyway?

All I do know is that the 1999 Hardy’s that I discreetly opened and paired with the Jaynes burger the night before was decadently brilliant.

One crazy ass psychedelic wine shirt

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Casual was the call for attire at the wine dinner I hosted on Saturday night at Jaynes Gastropub and so I decided to don the above psychedelic vintage 70s disco shirt (recently unearthed in a box that arrived with my library from my Manhattan storage). I’ve never really been able to figure out what it means. On the back, a bunch of grapes transforms into silver balls. On the front, silver balls reveal a convex image of a wine bottle and one of the balls falls to the ground and bursts. There is an upside down dessert sunset that lines the bottom of the shirt (from the wearer’s POV, it looks like a sunset).

I’ll post more on the dinner tomorrow so stay tuned: Australian wines I like! Yes, I actually found some!

In other news…

Tom, I thought you’d never ask! Tom over at Fermentation posted my BloggerView interview yesterday. Tom’s blog is currently the number 1 most-visited wine blog in the world and I was thrilled that he asked me to do an interview. I had a lot of fun with it and was flattered by Tom’s generous words. Click here to read.

Even more thrilling was the revelation of what will become my new tag line: “Guitar slingin’ somm and scholarly scribe of vinous humanism Jeremy Parzen.” Thanks, McDuff, for the new epigram and thanks for the generous shout out.

Lastly, due to an editing error on my part, one of my favorite wine blogs ended up on the cutting room floor of Tom’s interview: Wayne Young’s blog The Buzz is most definitely one of my daily reads. Sorry about that, Wayne!

In other other news…

Check out this way cool Austin slide show and profile in The New York Times Travel mag. It features the Broken Spoke where I’ve been playing some gigs lately.

Who knew that Austin was such a great place to live? ;-)

I moved here for LOVE. :-)