Above: brilliant, energetic, and super cool, Giulia Cataldi Madonna isn’t the winemaker that most people expect to find when they visit Abruzzo, one of Italy’s most undervalued wine regions. The work people like Giulia are doing there might just hold the key to the future of Italian viticulture.

Last month, I headed to Italy just as the red grape harvest was about to begin in the country’s central and Adriatic wine growing regions.

And thus began my journey in search of the 2022 harvest.

So much has already been written about this vintage: the winter drought that lasted nearly all spring and summer, combined with the record high temperatures in July and August, had a lot of people predicting genuine financial catastrophe. Even where emergency irrigation was allowed this year (and it was allowed throughout the country), there sometimes wasn’t enough water to feed the thirsty plants.

Gentle rainfall in mid-August — deus ex machina — was just enough to save this year’s harvest. But growers are coming to terms with the fact that extreme weather events are going to become more frequent and (excuse the pleonasm) more extreme.

On September 6, I landed in Milan very late, caught some shut eye in a sordid hotel near the train station, and then got on an early high speed train to Rome the next morning. From there, I picked up a rental car and headed straight to Abruzzo.

Above: Pecorino grapes at Cataldi Moadonna in Ofena commune were healthy and ready to pick despite the hot conditions. Ofena growers like Giulia have been dealing with extreme weather for generations. Their strategies offer clues into how Italian winemakers will need to face the challenges of climate change.

My first stop was Cataldi Madonna where the unstoppable Giulia Cataldi Madonna gave me a great tour of her family’s vineyards.

I’ve enjoyed her family’s wines for years and have often included them on wine lists I’ve managed. Their quality-price ratio can’t be beat.

But I had no idea how soulful and thoughtful this family is and why their wines matter so much — especially today.

And that was the first of many things I got wrong about Abruzzo. Gloriously wrong.

Above: I’m going to get into trouble for saying this but Giulia told me that she agrees with me 100 percent when I say that Cerasuolo d’Abruzzo is not a rosé wine. It’s a red wine. More on that later.

Maybe because of the way the wine has been marketed in the U.S., it was always my perception that Cataldi Madonna was just another huge producer that made extremely restaurant-friendly wines in large quantities.

What I learned was that Giulia and her family have been pioneers of organic farming and — more importantly in my view — of smart, healthy, sustainable, and forward-looking farming in their region.

The work they are doing with pergola training alone is going to have legacy impact on how Italians grow grapes in future.

Giulia like the other winemakers I met on my trip are forging a new “climate change era” path by showing how canopy management and — as I later learned — solar radiation are going to be two of the keys to dealing with increasingly warm and arid vintages.

Half way into my conversation and tour with Giulia, it was abundantly clear that everything I thought I knew about Abruzzo was wrong.

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing my notes from visits to three different wineries there (and a restaurant note or two). I hope you’ll join me on my journey of discovery. Thanks for being here.

Next Thursday (10/13) in New York, I’ll be pouring and talking about “a wine for the worst kind of thieves”: Garganega (pictured in photo above, snapped a few weeks ago in Soave).

The wine will be one of three in a flight inspired by readings of Medieval Italian literature and proto-Italian “pomology.”

Why was Garganega known as a “wine for the worst kind of thieves”? You’ll just have to attend my tasting to find out! We’ll also be tasting a fantastic Schiava and an old-school Nebbiolo, a wine connected to Italy’s early #MeToo movement (no joke). The latter’s role in social justice will be revealed in my talk

It’s a charity event and so it’s not a cheap date. But the deal sweetener is the fact that it will be hosted at the Robert Simon gallery on the upper eastside. Yeah, Robert’s the dude the identified the last known painting by Leonardo da Vinci.

Click here for details and registration link.

Later this month, I’ll be leading an olive oil tasting and will be bopping around the Taste of Italy Dallas trade fair at Eataly on October 27.

It’s the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce’ first bona fide trade fair there. And it should be a good time, especially because the folks at Eataly Dallas do such a bang-up job.

Buyers and media, click here to register for the walk-around tasting.

Click here to register for my Calabrian olive oil tasting.

Above: “Fruit, Flowers, a Ceramic Dish and a Vase on a Stone Ledge Beneath a Grape Arbor, with Two Women Gathering the Bounty” (oil on canvas) by Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo (Naples, 1629 – 1693) and Luca Giordano (Naples, 1634 – 1705), currently on display at the Robert Simon gallery in New York.

Please join me on Thursday, October 13 in New York where I’ll be presenting readings from Italy’s oldest book on viticulture and Giovanni Boccaccio’s Decameron at the Robert Simon gallery on the Upper East Side.

Some beyond the New York art scene will remember Robert: he was the researcher who proved that the painting “Salvator Mundi” was indeed by Leonardo da Vinci. That canvas later sold for a record $450 million, a work that some have called the “world’s most expensive painting.”

The event is being organized by my friend and dissertation advisor, Italian poet and scholar Luigi Ballerini, and his wife Paola Mieli, a practicing Lacanian psychoanalyst and writer.

The readings, mostly from my translation of Pietro de’ Crescenzi’s Ruralia commoda and related passages in Boccaccio, will be accompanied by a guided tasting of three grape varieties that appear in the 14th-century works.

I am super geeked about this, in part because I haven’t been back to the city (aside for a quick business lunch) since 2019 — for reasons all too familiar.

Here are the details. It’s a benefit so it’s not a cheap date. But I promise not to disappoint. How could I when I have Robert’s gallery as the setting? I hope to see you there. And thanks for checking it out.

And btw, I’m also preparing notes on the above painting, currently on display on East 80th St. Isn’t it grand?

A Wine for the Worst Kind of Thieves

Wine Tasting and Medieval Readings with celebrated Wine Historian and Sommelier Jeremy Parzen.

Thursday, Oct 13, 2022 at 6:30 PM

Robert Simon Fine Art
22 East 80th Street • Fourth Floor
New York NY 10075

Tickets: $150

Taste three wines as Jeremy shares three colorful readings from Italy’s oldest book on wine and Boccaccio’s Decameron. The event includes a guided tasting of three native Italian grape varieties that were popular during Boccaccio’s time and are still widely enjoyed today.

Additionally, enjoy a special preview of the exhibition: “Beyond Boundaries: Historical Art By and Of People of Color.”

All proceeds from the event will be donated to Animal Zone International, a Greek-based non-profit devoted to the sustainability of the environment through the protection and control of animals.

Click here to reserve.

Above: Colline Teramane (Abruzzo) grower Bruno Nicodemi built an artificial pond on his family’s property in the 1970s. At the time, it was intended to foster biodiversity. Today, it’s a lifeline.

As Italian grape growers faced extreme heat and prolonged drought in what could have been an existential threat for many of them in the 2022 vintage, there was ample talk across the peninsula about the need to build artificial ponds and loosen restrictions on so-called “emergency irrigation.”

In fact, emergency irrigation has become the norm, not the exception, in central and northern Italy as the wine industry comes to terms with the impact of climate change.

In the second half of the 1990s, a string of warmer and less rainy than usual vintages seemed to herald a time of more regularity and increased prosperity for Italian winemakers.

But today, the unrelenting heat of recent summers, drought that persists through the growing season, late spring frosts, and intense weather events that can wreak havoc on ripening fruit have created a “new normal” in terms of the challenges that growers face.

Above: Lake Garda as seen from the vineyards of Ca’ dei Frati in Lugana.

In northern Italy, many farms have already outfitted their vineyards with permanent irrigation systems — where they are allowed — because the authorization for emergency irrigation is no longer an exceptional event. It’s not a question of if anymore. Now, it’s a question of when the call will be made.

In central Italy, one winemaker told me that they would have irrigated if they had the means to do so. They had never irrigated before, they told me, and so they had no infrastructure in place to water their wines once the authorization arrived.

Another grower in central Italy told me that the authorization is something they have come to expect. But this year, something unexpected happened as well: there simply wasn’t enough water to go around. Authorities, they told me, only turned on the taps for a few hours each morning and grape farmers essentially had to compete with their neighbors for their allocation.

In appellations like Lugana in Italy’s Veneto region, water allocation is not an issue thanks to nearby Lake Garda (see above).

But in places like Abruzzo or Tuscany, the ongoing drought conditions are prompting winemakers to build artificial lakes, an approach that has been publicly advocated by prolific Italian winemaker Andrea Lonardi.

Even with the creation of these reservoirs (invasi, as they are called in Italian), there will still be a question of water management: who will get the water and when.

During my recent trip to Italian wine country, a number of growers told me they are planning to build such ponds and some of the country’s top consortia are working with their members to plan and authorize their construction.

Above: Pergola-trained Garganega clusters in the heart of Soave. Note permanently mounted irrigation hose.

One of the most telling moments of my trip came when I asked Roberto Anselmi when the Soave consortium had authorized emergency irrigation this year.

He laughed and reminded me that he had famously left the appellation more than 20 years ago.

Not only are his vineyards equipped with irrigation systems. He also recently hired a rhabdomancer to help him find a water source atop one of most important vineyards, thus ensuring an independent source for challenging vintages like 2022.

Thanks to this foresight, his yield will be in line with normal years and new vines that he planted have ample water to make it through their delicate early years of growth.

“Emergency irrigation is one of the few smart things they actually did in the [Soave] consortium,” he said.

But the problem now, he pointed out, is that some have natural water resources while others don’t.

Irrigation has been a dirty word in Italian viticulture for a generation. Dry farming, it has long been held, was a key element in true “terroir expression” and “sense of place.”

But as wine growers in Italy have come to discover, if they don’t loosen the regulations on irrigation — and abandon the taboo — there might no longer be a terroir to express or a place to taste.

The above figures come via vineyard consultant, publisher, and writer Maurizio Gily’s excellent online and print journal MilleVigne.

“Harvest 2022: +5 percent growth with respect to 2021 in spite of drought?” he writes in the title.

The table below reports official-channel predictions for must and wine production in Italy in thousands of hectoliters.

While the numbers don’t paint a rosy picture for all regions, they reveal that the disastrous scenario that many expected never materialized — a relief to all, no doubt.

I have a lot to report from my recent “harvest 2022” trip to Italy. I’m still working on putting that together. But in the meantime, I wanted to get this info out asap. Thanks for being here and please stay tuned.

Above: Turbiana grapes photographed last week (September 14) in the Lugana appellation south of Lake Garda. Note the permanently mounted irrigation hose in the bottom of the image. “Emergency irrigation” was allowed across Italy in efforts to counter a drought that began in winter and persisted throughout the summer. Combined with prolonged, extremely high temperatures, it could have represented an existential threat to this year’s crop.

“The harvest is safe. Now we need to address the market situation.”

That’s the title of an e-blast sent out today by the Corriere Vinicolo, the official voice of the Unione Italiana Vini (UIV, the Italian union of grape growers and winemakers).

The missive, including assessments from Italian wine industry leaders, paints a cautiously optimistic picture for this year’s grape crop. Just a month ago, some trade insiders were predicting catastrophe for Italian growers. But early August rains, like a deus ex machina, changed the mood from despair to relief.

“Once again,” said UIV president Lamberto Frescobaldi, borrowing a metaphor from the world of basketball, “the vine has proved to be our team’s center. It has shown that even with high temperatures and drought, we can make high-quality wines in ample quantities.”

“The harvest currently underway is delivering grapes that range from good to excellent in quality,” said Riccardo Cotarella, president of Assoenologi (Italian enologists association).

But as the editors of the Corriere point out, the short-term challenge ahead is market uncertainty.

“Demand [for Italian wines] in foreign markets seems to be holding even though it’s not as strong as 2021” according to Fabio Del Bravo, director of ISMEA (the Institute of Farming and Food Market Services), who is also quoted in the report. “But in the domestic market, there are signs of dropping sales.”

Please join me next Tuesday at Vinology in Houston as we open three wines from Montalcino and discuss Montalcino subzones, including the classic and the new, and I share notes from my harvest 2022 trip. Click here to reserve. Thank you for your support.

After I posted a note about how I came to discover Montalcino wines, a lot of people asked me about Bagno Vignoni, a very special Medieval hamlet that lies about 30 minutes south of the hilltop city in Siena province.

That’s a shot of the main square/piazza in Bagno Vignoni — the bath amidst the wines. What piazza, you ask?

Bagno Vignoni is virtually unique among its village peers because instead of a main square, it has a hot springs (thermal) bath in its main public space. It is said that St. Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) frequently bathed there.

In the photo above, you see the bath as it probably looked during the Renaissance (about 200 years after Catherine). It’s no longer open to the public. But there are public baths as well as an upscale hotel where there is a gorgeous private thermal swimming pool and spa. (That’s where my friend the sommelier in the story used to work — his family owned the hotel.)

I’ll be talking a little about Bagno Vignoni at the Montalcino seminar I’m leading next Tuesday at Vinology here in Houston. And we’ll also be looking carefully at three Montalcino subzones. And lastly, I’ll be sharing harvest notes from my trip through central and northern Italy (just got back last night).

And dulcis in fundo, Tracie will definitely be joining us that night and we will all hang out at the bar afterwards and probably order a few pizzas. It’s going to be a great night.

It’s not a cheap date at $50 per person. But the pricing reflects the caliber of the wines. I hope you can join us. Thank you for your support!