Drinking great at the G8? No great moment in history without Spumante

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tony the tigerYou might remember my post White, Green, and Red All Over: Obama to eat patriotic pasta at G8 from a month ago. The G8 summit began today in L’Aquila in Abruzzo and the Italian press is relishing the Obamas’s every move with great gusto.

As Franco pointed out today at Vino al Vino, there was even a post today at the ANSA (National Italian Press Association Agency) site that includes not only the official schedule for today but also the official bottles of wine and spirits to be given to Italy’s “illustrious” guests. G8 members will receive a “magnum of Amarone Aneri 2003 in a wooden box on which the initials of each of the presidents or prime ministers present has been engraved. All official lunches will begin with a toast with Ferrari spumante, [a wine] which is never missing at great appointments with history [sic; can you believe that?]. As an official gift for the illustrious guests, a highly rare ‘Ferrari Perle’ Nerò has been chosen [sic; the wine is actually called Perlé Nero], together with ‘Solera’ Grappa by the Segnana distillery. 1-3 p.m.: working G8 lunch on global economy.” (The post at ANSA’s English-language site did not include the wines or plugs.)

The American press doesn’t seem to be taking the G8 Summit and Silvio Berlusconi’s carefully choreographed hospitality as seriously as the Italian press corps. “Inexcusably lax planning by the host government, Italy, and the political weakness of many of the leaders attending, leave little room for optimism,” wrote the editors of The New York Times today.

With more humble tone, I was forwarded an email from the Dino Illuminati winery announcing that one of its wines had been chosen as the official wine for the luncheon and another for the closing dinner tomorrow. “We are sure You’ll like to enjoy,” it read, “the very good news with us: Our wine ZANNA Montepulciano d’Abruzzo Colline Teramane DOCG 2006 has been choiced as official red wine for the G 8 lunch of Wednesday July, 08. Besides, our wine LORE’ ‘Muffa Nobile’ will be the dessert wine for the G 8 dinner of Thursday July, 09.”

I guess Dino didn’t make the ANSA deadline.

In other news…

Check out our post today at VinoWire: Barbaresco producers speak out on Giacosa’s decision not to bottle his 2006. Giacosa claims that the rains of September ruined the vintage but our post reveals other points of view.

I have seen the Futurism: the Negroni

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Above: A Negroni at Annies in Austin, the latest addition to the restaurant and nightlife scene here. Not bad for a snap taken with my Blackberry Curve, eh?

No one needs me to retell the story of the Negroni: the tale of Count Camillo Negroni and the cocktail named after him has been retold countless times (however apocryphal those chestnuts may be).

But what few remember these days is that the Negroni was one of the favorite cocktails of the Futurists, the avant-garde movement founded in 1913 by F.T. Marinetti (often called the father of the historical avante-garde). The Negroni — made with Campari, the quintessential Futurist bitters — was one of their polibibite or polybeverages, each intended to stimulate the idealized Futurist (in one way or another).

Yesterday evening, when I tasted a Negroni at the newly opened Annies Café and Bar on Congress in downtown Austin, I couldn’t help but think of the Futurist banquet I attended in 1993 at the Getty Villa in Malibu. (A few years later, I worked as one of the bibliographers of the Marinetti archive at the Getty’s Special Collections.)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how Futurism and the historical avante-garde were essentially self-destructive movements, like much of twentieth-century critical theory: by destroying its fathers (and mothers, for that matter), the historical avante-garde presupposed its own destruction by future generations.

But the cocktails sure were good…

The Negroni at Annies wasn’t bad (although it should have served with an orange wedge or orange zest). The Lousiana-style gumbo I sampled wasn’t bad either. Seems like they have a few kinks to iron out there but I’ll be back: I liked the feel of the place, the hipster mixology, and the old-time music they had going.

Good as Fiumicino: Andrew Weissman’s Il Sogno slated to open July 25 in San Antonio

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andrew weissman

Above: “As good as Fiumicino.” That’s what Chef Andrew Weissman told me this morning when he made me an espresso at his new Italian restaurant Il Sogno in San Antonio, meaning that it tastes as good as that first espresso you crave and drink as soon as you get off the plane in Rome. He wasn’t kidding.

This morning found the San Diego Kid leading an Italian wine seminar and tasting for the staff at Il Sogno in San Antonio, Chef Andrew Weissman’s new Italian restaurant, slated to open July 25 in the old Pearl Brewery complex in downtown.

The wine list will have about 100 wines and lot of great values. I was really liking the 2007 Barbera by Giacosa (despite the current “fatwa,” as Franco has called it, that the winery has issued on the 2006) and the 2007 Produttori del Barbaresco Langhe Nebbiolo, which they told me would be about $35 on the list.

il sogno

Above: Kinda looks like a Pink Floyd album cover, doesn’t it? The old Pearl Brewery complex in San Antonio is about to become one of the hottest food and wine destinations in central Texas.

Beyond the guided tasting I led and the “as good as Fiumicino” espresso Andrew made me, I didn’t get to taste any food but judging the from the cheese expert who followed me, Il Sogno is going to be as good as Andrew’s flagship restaurant, Le Rêve (click to read about the night we I ate there). Tracie B and I are entirely and totally geeked…

Barbaresco and Barolo producers respond to negative reports in English-speaking press

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Please read my translation of a press release issued just moments ago by the Barbaresco and Barolo producers associations.

I’m running out the door to do an Italian wine seminar in San Antonio (why do these things always get scheduled for the morning???!!!) and I will post more on this later — an issue that commands every Nebbiolophile’s attention!

In other news…

Today is Alice’s birthday. Happy birthday, Alice!

It’s also Randy’s birthday. Happy birthday Rev. B! (We all celebrated with him at his church yesterday in Orange). :-)

I had a great time in Orange for 4th of July weekend. Thanks again!

Sunday poetry: For You, O Democracy (red, white, and rosé)

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Above: We spent the Fourth of July in Orange, Texas, along the Louisiana border where Tracie B grew up.

Had you told me a year ago that I was going to fall in love with a gorgeous Texana and move to Austin, I would have told you you were crazy. But, then again, stranger things have happened. I can’t complain: for all of its surprises, life certainly has been good to me so far. Yesterday, Tracie B and I celebrated the birth of our nation with her beautiful family in Orange, Texas, along the Louisiana border (pronounced LUZ-ee-AH-nah), where Tracie B grew up.

Above: Tracie B’s Uncle Tim — an outstanding cook — used his grill as a smoker. He stuffs his bacon-wrapped jalapeños with cream cheese and chicken (or duck when he has it).

Living in the South has been an interesting experience for the San Diego Kid. There’s perhaps no other place I’ve lived in the U.S. where people feel such a strong tie to culinary place and culinary tradition. And I can’t imagine a warmer welcome anywhere in the world.

Above: “Low and slow.” That’s the mantra of Texas Barbecue. The centerpiece and litmus test of any Texas barbecue is the smoked, dry-rubbed brisket, smoked for 10-12 hours at 200-225° F. The “depth” and evenness of the pink “smoke ring” are two of the criteria used to judge Texas barbecue.

Yesterday, we were the guests of Tracie B’s Aunt Ida and Uncle Tim who were also celebrating their return to their home: flooding and storm damage following hurricane Ike had forced them out last September. What a difference a year makes…

Above: Tracie B’s Mee Maw’s deviled eggs paired beautifully with the Bisson Golfo del Tigullio Ciliegiolo, which has become my new favorite barbecue wine and probably my favorite rosé for the summer of 2009. It was the hit of the flight that Tracie B and I brought to the party.

Tim, an excellent cook (his gumbo is off-the-charts good), made barbecue and Tracie B and I opened a bottle of Inama Soave, Bisson Golfo del Tigullio Ciliegiolo, and Villa di Vetrice Chianti Rufina — a tricolor summertime triptych.

Above: Ida and Tim live on a bayou. They only recently moved back into their home. The backlog of reconstruction in the area kept some people out of their homes for nearly a year.

Yesterday’s celebration made me think of this poem by Walt Whitman.

from Leaves of Grass, 1855

For You, O Democracy

Come, I will make the continent indissoluble,
I will make the most splendid race the sun ever shone upon,
I will make divine magnetic lands,
With the love of comrades,
With the life-long love of comrades.

I will plant companionship thick as trees along all the rivers of America,
and along the shores of the great lakes, and all over the prairies,
I will make inseparable cities with their arms about each other’s necks,
By the love of comrades,
By the manly love of comrades.

For you these from me, O Democracy, to serve you ma femme!
For you, for you I am trilling these songs.

Above: At the end of the night, the glow of the DuPont plant down the road lit up Cow Bayou. The image reminded me of the first part of the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at the original Disneyland in Anaheim.

Happy Fourth of July, y’all! Thanks Ida and Tim and thanks Mrs. B and Rev. B for having me!

Big news: the San Diego Kid heads back west

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That’s me, The San Diego Kid, back in 1978, when I was just 11 years old, the year the whole world changed around me (but that’s another story, for another time).

I wanted to let y’all know that me and my squaw will be heading west next month to pour and talk about natural wine at the first-ever San Diego Natural Wine Summit at Jaynes Gastropub.

Now, mind you, it ain’t that we ain’t coming back to Austin, Texas. That’s the Kid’s home now. But summertime is here and the Kid has a hankering for some ceviche and some waves… and some natural wine.

SAN DIEGO NATURAL WINE SUMMIT

Sunday, August 9, 2009
Noon – 2 pm Media/Trade Preview
2 pm – 6 pm Public Tasting $45/person

Jaynes Gastropub
4677 30th Street (@ Adams Avenue)
San Diego 92116

To reserve, please call 619.563.1011 or email info@jaynesgastropub.com

Space is extremely limited so please reserve now!

WINE AS NATURE INTENDED IT.

In other news…

Want to drink what me and Tracie B drink? Send me an email and I’ll add you to my email blast list: I’ll be doing a 6-pack offering next week, including some of my favorite wines and Dora and Patrizia’s Vino Nobile di Montepulciano — stinky and natural like we like it!

Fiorano 94 Malvasia and Il Postino

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The story has been told many times but was first recounted famously in English by Eric: somewhere in the 1960s and 70s, the eccentric Italian noble, Alberico Boncompagni Ludovisi, prince of Venosa, developed what are still undeciphered methods of vinification and aging that allowed him to create unique, powerful, nuanced long-lived expressions of Malvasia di Candia, Sémillon, and Sauvignon Blanc. The secret at the Fiorano estate (located in the region of Latium, just north of Rome)? Mold… mold on the covering the aging casks, mold covering the bottles aging in the cellar.

I’ve had the great fortune to taste the wines many times. The first occasion was when they arrived in the U.S. in 2005. They had been rebottled and relabeled expressly for sale in the U.S. market and they commanded and continue to command a price that reaches beyond my means. But, man, they were good and they still are.

Yesterday, my friend Susana Partida, owner of Salute Wine, who brokers the wines in Texas, generously brought a bottle of the 94 Malvasia to lunch in Dallas (she and I became friends because her sister Felice cuts my hair at the James Allan Salon in Austin!).

Above: We lunched yesterday at Adelmo’s in Dallas, the see-and-be-seen wine industry hangout, where the simpatico proprietor Adelmo allows trade to bring wine. Adelmo is originally from San Vincenzo in Maremma (along the Tuscan coast) and he grew up in Florence. It’s always great to taste with him and glean wine knowledge from his many years in the business. He sent over some pâté and crostini after he tasted the Fiorano with us — his recommended pairing.

Would the prince have called these natural wines? Probably not. But are they? I believe they most certainly are. When you drink these extraordinary (and extravagant) wine, you taste the hand of an Italian aristocrat who recognized the nobility of the grape and the place, who got out of Nature’s way and let her do her work.

This was a wine, as Tracie B put it last night over our dinner of quesadillas, that “speaks of a place, of tradition. It’s real and it’s a product of its environment and of the culture, not of technology and manipulation.”

Susana generously sent me home with a half a bottle (we each had a glass with our lunch) and Tracie B and I lingered over the wine through dinner and a movie: Il postino, also from the 1994 vintage. In my more militantly Marxist university days, I might have dismissed this poignant romance as cloyingly engagé. But now that I’m a “Brunello socialist,” I can openly say that I found the movie irresistibly charming and ingenuously touching. Maybe it was because I remembered what Brunetta said about Troisi’s performance, in his History of Italian Cinema (translated by yours truly). Troisi, he wrote, gave “the world his career’s most heartbreaking hymn to life and love.” Maybe it’s because Tracie B’s generosity of heart and her wonderful spirit are rubbing off on me… The answer probably lies somewhere between a glass of 94 Malvasia and a kiss…

In other news, more mazel…

Mazel tov, Ale! His Wine Advocate scores and reviews are in and Il Poggione’s current releases are enjoying high marks from Antonio Galloni. Any one who reads Do Bianchi knows how much I love Il Poggione’s traditional-style Brunello and it’s great to see the winery get the recognition it deserves. These reviews and notes are testament to Antonio’s love of terroir-driven Italian wine. Chapeau bas, Antonio. I’ve been a fan since the days of your Piedmont Report and I love what you’ve done with the Italian notes at WA.

Another Italian wine guy, whose palate I respect immensely, Tom Hyland, also posted recently on a vertical of Il Poggione here.

The sweetest reward: one of the best figs I have ever eaten

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francesco secchi

Above: Sardinian-born Francesco Secchi, owner of the Ferrari Italian Villa chain in Dallas grows all of his own herbs, including Sardinian mirto (myrtle). Who needs Viagra?

It’s getting to be that time of year that people start bragging about their fig trees. There are those who brag and those who deliver.

Italian Wine Guy and I had dinner last night with clients of mine, Francesco Secchi and his son Stefano (below), owners of Ferrari Italian Villa in Grapevine (Dallas). The food was very good, but the figs… aaaaaaahhhhh the figs… the figs wrapped in perfectly sliced prosciutto were FANTASTIC. The 30-minute trip from Downtown Dallas to Grapevine (where Stefano presides over the kitchen) is a small price to pay for this paradisiacal experience. I highly recommend the wood-fired flatbread and antipasti misti. (It’s so hard to find well-sliced prosciutto, btw, anywhere in the U.S. and I was thoroughly impressed by Stefano’s deft hand at the slicer.)

stefano secchi

In other news, I’d like to thank the academy…

Our friend Howard and fellow lover of natural wine has been inducted into the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences! Mazel tov, Howard! I can’t believe you’d join a club that would have you as a member!

AND…

Jaynes Gastropub was named one of the top 5 gastropubs in the U.S., together with the Linkery (also in San Diego) and the Spotted Pig (NYC). Not too shabby, mates! And they said this whole gastropub thing would never take off! ;-)

Btw, I’ll be announcing some very exciting news about me, Tracie B, and Jaynes in just a day or so… stay tuned…

In other other news…

After running a wine dinner in San Antonio on Monday night and then working the market all day yesterday and today in Dallas, I cannot wait to get home to my super fine lady, the lovely Tracie B, tonight. Her nachos and some natural and stinky old natural Dolcetto di Dogliani happily await me. Life could be worse…

tracie branch

Contempt: Italissima “big mess” at Vinexpo in Bordeaux

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Above: Produced by Carlo Ponti, Jean-Luc Godard’s 1963 Contempt, based on Alberto Moravia’s novel, Il Disprezzo, was an Italian and French co-production. The results were decidedly better than last week’s Italissima at Vinexpo in Bordeaux.

It would have been enough that Franco rightly chastised his French counterpart and longtime sparring partner Michel Bettane for the selection of Bordeaux-inspired Italian wines to be presented in Bettane’s seminars at last week’s Italissima, a would-be Italian wine fair held in Bordeaux in conjunction with but with no official affiliation to Vinexpo, the annual see-and-be-seen French wine trade fair.

“Instead of calling it, ‘Italissima, the Italy that you love,’” wrote Franco, “they should have called it ‘Italissima, the Italy that they love,” where the ‘they’ stands for presumptuous French critics who do not know the real Italy of wine. In fact, they don’t understand it at all and they wouldn’t understand even if they seriously tried to study it…”

Wouldn’t the French be offended, asked one commenter to Franco’s post rhetorically, if Italians were to present French wines made with Italian varieties as authentically French?

But making matters worse was a slew of reports and blog posts about how Italissima participants were left sadly disappointed by lackluster turnout and poor organization. One Italian blogger called it a pasticciaccio brutto, borrowing from the title of Gadda’s 1957 novel Quer pasticciaccio brutto de via Merulano written in Roman dialect (That Awful Mess on Via Merulana).

Adding insult to injury, the French daily Sud Ouest called the event the “pavillion de la discorde,” a “monster,” and a case of “parasitism,” where the organizers were trying illicitly trying to piggy back on the exposure of Vinexpo just 200 meters down the road.

There was an even a report of wine destined for Italissima being hidden by Vinexpo organizers and a claim by the Italissima organizer that she had been attacked by one of the Vinexpo organizers.

Some of the greatest movies ever made were the French and Italian co-productions of the 1960s, like Godard’s Contempt. Maybe it’s best if dreamers of French and Italian partnership stick to movie-making.

BYOB Trailer Park Tacos, Soave, and Sangiovese

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Above: Tracie B and me’s favorite wine to pair with Torchy’s trailer park tacos is Inama Soave. It has just enough richness in the mouthfeel to wrap itself around the intense flavors of the spicy pork and salsa.

It’s summertime in Texas and that can mean only one thing: BYOB trailer park tacos.

After we watched The Hangover at a matinee yesterday (hilarious, especially the raunchy closing credits), we headed out to spend the steamy summer evening with Tracie B’s childhood friend Jennifer and her husband CJ (check out their cool wedding photography blog), munching on chips and salsa and tacos, sipping Soave and Sangiovese at the Trailer Park Eatery in Austin — trailer park dining world capital.

Above: One of the trailers at the Trailer Park Eatery makes tacos, one makes burgers, and one makes S’mores — yes, S’mores. How’s that for an impossible wine pairing Dr. V?

Inama Soave is always one of our favorite pairings for BYOB tacos because of its bright acidity but also because it has a certain richness and unctuousness to the mouthfeel that wraps around the texture of steaming hot, soft corn tortilla stuffed with juicy roast pork and delivers ineffable pleasure.

I also thought the 2003 Villa di Vetrice Chianti Rufina Riserva showed well. I was a little hesitant to buy this wine: I’ve had too many 03s from Tuscany that are too stewy. But this wine was a beauty: 100% Sangiovese, grown at proper elevations (your ears pop as you drive up to Rufina), and vinified in a traditional manner. Great acidity, great plummy fruit, and lightness in body balanced by tannin that I just can’t resist. Both of these wines retail for under $20, btw, perfect for BYOB tacos.

There’s no doubt about it: Austin has some of the best Mexican food I’ve ever eaten — from the haute to the bas.