Holy cannolo (and Franco’s thoughts on EU reform of the Italian DOC system)

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Miracles appear in the strangest of places…

It may be hard to believe but I had what was probably the best cannolo I’ve ever had in… yes, you won’t believe it… in Little Rock, Arkansas where I was traveling for business (cannolo is the singular of cannoli, btw). For me, the cannolo is all about the buccia, the shell. It needs to be firm but light, crunchy but consistent, sweet but not too much so, with just the right amount of savoriness to balance the richness of the cream filling.

I’m not quite sure how they got there, but Santo Sacca (left) from Messina (the front of the house) and chef Rosario Patti from Palermo run a fantastic little Italian restaurant in Little Rock. Some may come close, but their cannolo cannot be beat.

Rosario seasons his excellent pasta mari e monti (sea and mountain) with saffron. It was delicious.

Vesuvio Bistro
1501 Merrill Dr
Little Rock AR 72211
501-225-0500

Holy cannolo Bill Clinton! Now it’s time for me to get my butt back to Austin for some holy mole at Polvo’s.

In other news…

A lot of people have asked me about upcoming EU Common Market Organisation reforms whereby the Italian appellation system will be absorbed by the EU, to take effect on August 1. The names and classification of Italian appellations won’t change but the power to issue new appellations will pass from Rome to Brussels. I’ve translated and posted Franco’s editorial at VinoWire, including some useful links. Other alarmist bloggers have claimed erroneously that the CMO reform will wipe out the Italian system. The real question is how EU bureaucrats will deal with requests for new appellations starting in August.

The best restaurant in Texas?

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Above: A furtively photographed bottle of 2004 Potel Les Epinotes, well-priced and served with grand style by Fabien Jacob, sommelier of Le Rêve in San Antonio.

A good friend of ours (a reputable wine writer and wine blogger of note) remarked to me the other day that “there is nothing good to eat in New York.” She exaggerated for effect, of course, and I think her bleak assessment was partly affected by the gray, drab late winter months, when the snow-lined shop windows of yesteryear’s Christmas have been usurped by the sludgy grime of Manhattan’s slow unthawing. However hypertrophic, her lament made me think about how the island of New York is a culinary utopia (in the etymologic sense of the word), a “non place,” a locus where restaurateurs attempt to recreate the food of other places: on the same block of E. 27th St., you can eat at Danny Meyer’s Blue Smoke (a southern BBQ joint) or Nicola Marzovilla’s I Trulli (featuring the cuisine of his native Apulia); around the corner myriad Indian restaurants dot Lexington in the high 20s and the “falafel nazi” (how’s that for an oxymoron?), Kalustyan, resides between 27th and 28th. I love all of these restaurants and recommend them highly but when you visit them, they take you somewhere else, beyond the island of New York.

Above: The “foie gras club” at Le Rêve. My low-light photography doesn’t do justice to this brioche-layered sandwich of foie gras, tomato confit, and mango. (I didn’t want the flash to encroach on the intimate mood of the low-lit room.)

One of the things that has struck me about living in the South is how people here are connected to local culinary tradition and ingredients, whether the gulf oysters I enjoyed the other night in New Orleans or the mudbugs of an impromptu crawfish boil last Sunday (not to mention home-smoked ribs on one of my first trips out here).

Above: “Hydroponic lettuces” at Le Rêve, garnished with candied Texas pecans. I’d never tasted a great pecan until I first came to Texas. Hydroponic lettuces? Not the sticky icky kind.

On Saturday night, Tracie B and I had dinner at Le Rêve in San Antonio, a restaurant called by many the “best in Texas,” a perennial winner of top accolades. Whenever a venue is so hyped, my inclination is to disbelieve (and, truth be told, how many times do Michelin stars disappoint?). But Le Rêve lived up to its name with every oneiric mise-en-place: a truly world-class dining experience, four-star service, a superb and well-manicured if small wine list with great pricing (wine directors, please take note), and genuinely inspired haute cuisine that didn’t need to lean on the crutch of affectation to transcend its place and time.

Chef and owner Andrew Weissman’s cooking is muscular but not angular, refined but not precious, honest but never apologetic. My main course was Texas-raised venison, blood rare loin and a rack of ribs so tender that no steak knife was required to slice the lean, flavorful meat. (Dulcis in fundo: I also loved Andrew’s signature raw honeycomb served with the cheese course.)

Andrew clearly belongs to the Admiral’s club of aggressive, extreme, highly competitive American chefs but the fact that he presides over a world-class cuisine in an unlikely locale seems to give him an unbridled freedom of verve and choice in his ingredients and creativity. It’s not because he’s off the beaten track. It’s because he beats his own drum and embraces the frontier spirit of a place where only a handful are so ambitious.

Above: Tracie B and I stayed the night and visited the Alamo the next day. I’ll remember the Alamo and I’ll remember Le Rêve.

San Antonio is the culinary destination that has impressed me the most since my arrival in Texas — more so than Houston and Dallas — and you might be surprised by what I’ve found there… stay tuned…

Par condicio: enthusiastic tasting notes on 2004 Brunello by Banfi

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Above: A political cartoon poking fun at Italian premier Silvio Berlusconi who called a fan a “ball breaker” at a rally last year.

The Latin expression par condicio is used in contemporary Italian to denote “equal air time.” (See my explanation of its origin here.)

In keeping with our “fair and balanced” policy of reporting Italian wine news, Franco and I have published this enthusiastic review of the 2004 Brunello di Montalcino by Banfi by our friend, respected colleague, and Italian wine authority Charles Scicolone at VinoWire. Charles called it “classical” in style and “the best Brunello that Banfi has ever produced.”

I haven’t tasted the wine yet but am looking forward to tasting it at the earliest opportunity and I will promptly post my tasting notes.

Another authority on Italian wine, Kyle Phillips, also gave the wine a good review in his excellent overview of 2004 Brunello. I really like what Kyle had to say about the annus horribilis in Montalcino and how the 2004 bottlings tend toward “garnet” in color as opposed to the opacity favored by certain producers in the past:

    It is quite possible that those who in the past bent the rules, adding other things to make their Brunello more appealing to the international markets before bottling it (while some people to blend wines made from several varietals at the outset, many prefer to keep the varietals separate until bottling, because doing so allows them more control over the wine) decided to forego the practice, and I cannot but view this development favorably, as I think that a well-made Sangiovese has no need of crutches. I also think it is sad that it took the concrete threat of criminal investigation to deter the practice, and can only hope that garnet will continue to be as prevalent in future vintages as it was in this one.

I, too, hope that “garnet will continue to be prevalent” and — to borrow a phrase from James Suckling — that Montalcino producers will continue to “let Brunello be Brunello.” (For the record, Suckling liked the 04 Brunello by Banfi as well and gave it 93/100 points.)

My first crawfish boll (boil)

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From the “ain’t this living?” department…

The weather’s still cold here in Texas but folks are already beginning to hold their annual crawfish bolls (boll is Texan for boil). The crawfish boll is a true convivium, in the etymologic sense of the word, a “feasting together” or “living together.” Although the crawfish are sometimes served on trays after being bolled (boiled), most folks spread them out on a table over newspaper and everybody eats standing, shelling and sucking the crawfish communally. Yesterday, I attended my first crawfish boll ever at the invitation of my new friends, wine professionals Craig Collins and his lovely wife April.

Baby onions, whole bunches of garlic, mushrooms, corn, sausage, and spices are set to boil in a large pot. Then, the crawfish are dumped live into the cooking water. Crawfish or crayfish are also called “mud bugs,” said Tracie B.

They simmer, covered, for about 20 minutes. When asked if it was okay that the pots were boiling over, Chef Drew Curren said, “actually, it’s preferred.”

The crawfish are strained and then seasoned again with hot spice.

The crawfish are then distributed over newspaper (we finally found a good use for Dorothy and John’s article on money-saving wine list tips!). As in a bollito misto, the flavors of all the ingredients intermingle. As the crawfish cool, they purge their savory juice, which is sopped up by the baguettes. So tasty…

You twist the crawfish at the top of their tails. You suck the head and then peel the tail.

That’s April and Craig in the foreground, right. What an awesome way to spend an afternoon. Tracie B and I brought Camillo Donati Lambrusco, which showed beautifully with the spicy flavors of the boll.

The wine cowboy drank beer, the lady sipped Riesling.

Showdown with the Best Sommelier in Town

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Round these parts, they call me the San Diego Kid. You see, I’m a cowboy… a wine cowboy, and I ride a silver Hyundai with a six pack slung across my back. It’s a tough job keeping the mean dusty streets of these towns safe for Italian wine. But someone’s got to do it.

Last night, me and my lady Tracie B were at the hoe down when Mark Sayre showed up. Some say he’s the “best sommelier in town” and I knew the moment of Nebbiolo truth had arrived.

He drew a 1999 Pajé by Roagna and said “reach for it, mister!” Me? I reached in my holster for my trusty Produttori del Barbaresco… Luckily for me, I happened to have the 2001 Pora on me. Bullets began to fly and charcuterie was served…

Yesterday’s Wine: Merle Haggard

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Your presence is welcome with me and my friend here.
This is a hangout of mine.
We come here quite often and listen to music
Partaking of yesterday’s wine.

(from “Yesterday’s Wine,” written by Willie Nelson, performed by George Jones and Merle Haggard as a duet, and by Willie Nelson)

Above: The inimitable Merle Haggard at the Austin Music Hall on Wednesday night. Tracie B surprised me with tickets!

With the awesome show we saw on Wednesday night in Austin, Tracie B and I have fulfilled two panels in our “Yesterday’s Wine” triptych, Willie Nelson, George Jones, and Merle Haggard (we saw Willie in October and so we’re just missing George Jones now). We had a blast: he played a lot of the hits, including “Okie from Muskogee,” “I Think I’ll Just Sit Here and Drink,” “If We Make It through December,” and “Are the Good Times Really Over.” It was amazing to think about how apropos the latter two are today, with the economy in tatters and the future uncertain:

    I wish coke was still cola,
    And a joint was a bad place to be.
    And it was back before Nixon lied to us all on TV.
    Before microwave ovens,
    When a girl could still cook and still would.
    Is the best of the free life behind us now?
    Are the good times really over for good?

    Are we rolling down hill like a snowball headed for hell?
    With no kind of chance for the Flag or the Liberty bell.

Above: Isn’t she a doll?

In other news…

I had some of the best ragù (not counting Tracie B’s) I’ve had in a long time at Samson’s in McKinney (north Dallas) where I was traveling for work. Served over potato gnocchi, it had just the right consistency and balance of sweet, savory, and fatty flavors. Chefs and brothers Samuele Minin (who makes the gnocchi) and Germano Minin (who makes the ragù) are from Udine (Friuli) and they really know what they’re doing. Paired wonderfully with 2006 Langhe Nebbiolo by Produttori del Barbaresco, which is simply singing right now. Life could be worse… especially when you’re on the company dime!

Dorothy, here you come again

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Half-jokingly, a wine publicist and good friend recently remarked to me: “I mean, come on, let’s face it. No offense, but how many people read your blog anyway?” As much personal satisfaction that my blog gives me, I recognize that I’m no Eric, Alder, Tyler, or Franco.

But that’s partly what makes me all the more angry (and I promise this is my last rant for the week) when one of the truly influential sources of food and wine journalism publishes disinformation, like Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher’s supercilious take on 2004 Barolo, published last week in The Wall Street Journal, or their truly offensive and imbecilic “10 Ways to Save Money Ordering Wine,” published on Saturday. (I apologize in advance to my friend J, a WSJ editor and writer I admire greatly for this second harangue about his colleagues: the poorly delivered humor in my post about the 2004 Barolo piece was simply that — poorly delivered.) Especially in this day and “age of responsibility,” when many of our nation’s restaurateurs find themselves gripped in a day-to-day battle for survival, Dorothy and John’s tips for not being “hosed” by restaurateurs (they actually use the word hose! in the WSJ!) and the accusatory, paranoid tone or their article are no less than nefarious. It’s important to acknowledge that restaurant-going consumers are feeling the financial pinch these days as well: Dorothy and John’s readers would have been better served by “tips on how to find value on the list at your favorite restaurant.”

Here are some highlights from their piece…

1. Skip wine by the glass.

I studied Italian literature at university but it doesn’t take a Ph.D. to figure out that a glass of wine costs less than a bottle. Wine by the glass is one of the ways that we find new wines we like without having to pay for the bottle. Better advice would be: when ordering a wine by the glass, ask your server if you have the option to purchase the whole bottle at the bottle price if you like the wine.

3. Bypass the second-cheapest wine on the list.

A generalization like this is simply stupid, irrelevant, and inappropriate. Honest restaurateurs (and most of them are honest) price their wines in accordance with the prices they are charged by wholesalers. Better advice: figure out what you want to spend and ask your server or sommelier which wines in that price point meet your expectations in terms of style, aromas and flavors, and desired pairing.

6. Never order Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio.

Even Eric and Charles — two palates who really do know something about Italian wine — liked Santa Margherita Pinot Grigio when they tasted it blind in a New York Times tasting panel. Dorothy and John, come on: this is insulting. Better advice: order what you like and enjoy when you go to a restaurant. Whether you like Pinot Grigio by Santa Margherita, white Zinfandel by Beringer, or first-growth Bordeaux (wines many would consider over-priced but coveted and thoroughly enjoyable nonetheless), then go for it. You go to a restaurant to have fun… not to be scared of being ripped off!

9. BYOB.

Dorothy and John, I hate to break it to you but bring-your-own-bottle is appropriate in two cases: 1) when a restaurant doesn’t have a beer and/or wine license; 2) when you bring an illustrious and expensive bottle that doesn’t appear on the restaurant’s list. And remember: whenever you bring your own bottle to a restaurant, be sure to order a bottle of equivalent value. Thrift, Dorothy and John, is no excuse for rude behavior or bad tipping.

Here you come again, Dorothy and John, Just when I’m about to make it work without you.

Banfi manufactures consent

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The strangest post found its way to my inbox yesterday. In it, someone who calls her/himself WineCentric reports that last year the Banfi winery “came under fire from Italian authorities who claimed that varietals other than Sangiovese were being blended into Brunello di Montalcino” and she/he claims that the winery “has emerged sagacious and smelling as sweet as the rose petal and raspberry bouquet found in their Rosa Regale sparkler… Lab tests eventually cleared Banfi of any impropriety.”

Sagacious? Smelling sweet as rose petal?

Reports by leading Italian news outlets don’t jive with such claims. According to L’Espresso, for example, wineries like Banfi had to declassify considerable amounts of Brunello in order for their products to be allowed back on the market.

I wrote to Winecentric but received no response.

I’m sorry, Banfi: you still stink… Me? I’m just trying to keep the world safe for Italian wine.

Fight the power…

Bite your tongue, Dorothy

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tongueMy Google Reader overflows with feeds these days. It’s hard to keep up with them all and I regret that it took me a few days to catch up to Alice’s post on Dorothy J. Gaiter and John Brecher’s article “A Waning Affair with Barolo”. In their piece, the wife-and-husband team priggishly express their disappointment with the 2004 vintage of Barolo. (I read The New York Times daily. It’s my tie to the Big Apple. And I dogmatically avoid The Wall Street Journal — required reading for the rich, a manifesto and manual for capitalist subjugation of the proletariat. As a result, I was unaware of the piece.)

They say they set out to find 50 bottles under $70 so it’s not clear how many they actually tasted. But their unwarranted, superfluous, and supercilious take on the 2004 vintage is decidedly negative. The wines, they write, “really just weren’t that impressive. You can’t imagine our shock and disappointment. Flight after flight left us cold. They weren’t bad. They were pleasant enough. But with wine after wine, we used a word that should never be used to describe Barolo: simple.” Pleasant enough? Simple?

In another one of her excellent posts wherein she continues her struggle (la lotta continua) to defend the world from Parkerization (and here I take her concept of Parkerization as it relates to the arrogant, chauvinist attitude that his followers — more so than he — exude), Alice rightly laments: “I have a hard time when writers smack down vintage. In this case, especially as they really don’t seem to be experienced when interpreting young vintages, it seems irresponsible.”

It is more than irresponsible. In fact, it’s reprehensible.

When you taste a great wine (like Barolo) in its youth from a great vintage (and it certainly will prove to be an excellent vintage, if not a great one), you don’t look for greatness in the wine. You look for the potential for greatness in the wine. Beyond its tannic structure (dominant in this phase of the wine’s evolution), you look for the presence of defects. In their absence, you can begin to assess the wine’s potential for development. You also ask growers and winemakers what they think of the vintage (they know better than any) and you do your homework by reading your colleagues’s assessment of a given wine.

I looked up Franco’s post on a tasting of 57 bottlings of 2004 Barolo in September 2007 with Roy Richards, Nicolas Belfrage, David Berry Green, and Stuart George. (Dorothy and John, if you don’t know who these guys are, please add them to your reading list. They seem to know something about Italian wine.) According to Franco, Barolo 2004 was “classic vintage.” He noted that “2004 seems to be a great vintage and there are many wines worth buying and cellaring — with all likelihood, wines that will get greater over the years… [In 2004], Nebbiolo triumphed with its elegance and its singularity… One thing is certain, 2004 Barolo is a great wine and it deserves our attention, our trust, and the consensus of all lovers of great wine. In English, you would call these wines fine wines: they are elegant, refined, complex, and nothing less.”

Arrogance, hubris, chauvinism, superciliousness, ignorance, disinformation: these are words come to mind as I ponder Dorothy and John’s irresponsible and reprehensible journalism. Once again, the haughty American attitude shows its ugly head. Once again, American wine writers haven’t considered the most important elements in any wine: the people who made it and the place where they live and work. Bite your tongues, Dorothy and John.

It’s sgroppino time (I wish it were)

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Man, it’s been a long week… and it’s only Thursday. I’m on the road again today and am looking forward to some relaxing (and gastronomic-literary pursuits) this weekend. I sure wish it were sgroppino time!

A sgroppino is made from sherbet (usually lemon) and Prosecco (and sometimes a shot of vodka). It is served at the end of the meal to aid in digestion. The word itself, from the Italian groppo or knot (akin to the English crop; see below), means “a little helper in pushing out a knot in the — ahem — digestion.”

A sgroppino was mandatory after our horse meat dinner (left) last April in Legnaro (Padua, Veneto).

And a sgroppino (below) really hit the spot after dinner at the osteria of the famous restaurant and inn on the Slovenian border La Subida (Cormons, Friuli), also last April after NN+ played at Movia.

Be sure to check out the Miller Time commercial below. That’s just about how I feel right now!

From the Oxford English Dictionary Online Edition:

[OE. crop(p = OLG. *crop(p, MDu. crop(p, MLG., LG. and Du. krop, OHG. chropf, MHG., Ger. kropf, ‘swelling in the neck, wen, craw of a bird’, in ON. kroppr hump or bunch on the body, Sw. kropp the body, Da. krop swelling under the throat. These various applications indicate a primitive sense of ‘swollen protuberance or excrescence, bunch’. The word has passed from German into Romanic as F. croupe, and It. groppo, F. groupe: see CROUP, GROUP. OE. had only sense 1, ‘craw of a bird’, and 3, ‘rounded head or top of a herb’; the latter is found also in High German dialects (Grimm, Kropf 4c); the further developments of ‘head or top’ generally, and of ‘produce of the field, etc.’, appear to be exclusively English. The senses under IV are new formations from the verb, and might be treated as a distinct word.]

I. A round protuberance or swelling, the craw.

1. a. A pouch-like enlargement of the {oe}sophagus or gullet in many birds, in which the food undergoes a partial preparation for digestion before passing on to the true stomach; the craw.

2. transf. and fig. The stomach or maw; also the throat. Now Sc. and dial. Cf. GIZZARD.

If you’ve got the time, we’ve got the sgroppino: