Tag Archives: Franco Ziliani

Wine Spectator vs. Ziliani: Round Two

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Above: Orazio Gentileschi’s “David and Goliath,” one of my favorites.

“Incredible but true,” writes Franco today at Vino al Vino. “David’s prickling — the criticism in this blog and that of VinoWire, an even smaller blog with the advantage of being written in English — has begun to annoy Goliath Wine Spectator.”

He was referring to Wine Spectator Executive Editor Thomas Matthew’s response to a recent editorial posted at VinoWire. Click here to read Matthew’s remarks.

Tomorrow, I’ll translate and post Franco’s retort.


Caravaggio


Vignon


Buonarotti

Stay tuned…

I soliti ignoti and blogs I’ve been reading lately

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My friend and co-editor of VinoWire, Franco Ziliani, has posted recently on the Wine Spectator‘s Top 100 List (my translation is posted at VinoWire) and James Suckling’s top Piedmont picks (in Italian). Franco points out rightly: it’s simply appalling that Giacomino (Lil’ James) Suckling and the Wine Spectator elide an entire swath of traditionalist wines and even include wines virtually unknown to Italians and their palates. After all, aren’t they the Italians’ wines first and foremost? If you want a list of Nebbiolo not to get me for Christmas, read Suckling’s article (to be published on December 15). His wines are the soliti ignoti, the usual suspects, that appear on his list every year and he arrogantly ignores the wines that have historically defined the region. (See IWG’s post.)

Over at Montalcino Report, winemaker Alessandro Bindocci has published some interesting posts about olive oil made from depitted drupes and “integrated farming.”

Ever the devoted fan, I always love to read Simona Carini’s excellent blog Briciole. And I owe Simona a thanks for the help she’s been giving me with the desserts in a translation I’m doing for Oronzo Editions.

Alice Feiring posted this conflicted take on the California Conundrum.

Tracie B just posted this irresistibly delicious piece on pasta e fagioli (but, then again, I might be a bit biased when it comes to her cooking).

And on a totally unrelated note, I’m in the Marines Too! reminds me that we are a country at war and that world conflicts affect the lives and hearts of the people who live in my hometown.

*****

Even if you don’t understand Italian, watch this clip from Monicelli’s 1958 classic, I soliti ignoti (literally, the usual unknowns or the usual suspects but released in English as Big Deal on Madonna Street). Totò’s performance is brilliant…

Maremma, part 3: drinking from the holy grails

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Ante scriptum: In keeping with a tradition established by Brooklynguy, a wine blogger whom I admire greatly, I feel obliged to make note of the fact that this is my 300th post. I can only echo his typically deadpan understatement, “It has been such a pleasure to write this blog, mostly because of the community of wine people it has given me access to.” Earlier this year, Vino al Vino and Do Bianchi launched a blog born through a virtual transatlantic conversation. Today, My Life Italian and Do Bianchi are driving up to Dallas from Austin to dine with Italian Wine Guy. There are truly remarkable people behind all of these URLs: Neil, Franco, Tracie B, and Alfonso are four people whose lives wouldn’t have intersected with mine if not for blogging, and there are so many others… I am truly thankful for all of them in my life…

*****

Above: Sebastiano Rosa (left) gave me a tour of the storied vineyards where the grapes of his family’s Sassicaia are produced.

My September pilgrimage to the Mecca of Super Tuscia (how’s that for a neologism?) would not have been complete without a visit to the holy grails of Super Tuscandom, Ornellaia and Sassicaia. These wines need no introduction and a click-through to their websites and a Google search will give you plenty of information on their illustrious history and their presence in the market today.

Above: I visited the famed Masseto vineyard, where Ornellaia grows its top Merlot grapes, just days before picking began. While others in the area had already begun to harvest their Merlot, Ornellaia extended hang time to achieve riper fruit and higher sugar levels.

I’ve tasted these wines a number of times over the years and although I am not a fan (nor can I afford to be), they are among the greatest — if not the greatest and most original — expressions of the genre: elegant terroir-driven wines, made with French varieties grown on Tuscan soil, structured and nuanced, long-lived and highly coveted in the market.

My visit to Sassicaia was impressive for how unassuming the facility is. Sebastiano Rosa, whose family owns the legendary estate, is a dude about my age who studied enology at UC Davis. He speaks English like a Californian (like me) and his family’s winery has remained virtually unchanged since the 19th century. There is no vaulted-ceiling entrance or grand tasting room. And aside from the introduction of stainless-steel, the winemaking facility and vinificiation practices are pretty much the same as they have been since the wine was first produced in the 1940s (and first released in 1968). I tasted with Sebastiano and then we drove up to see one of the growing sites. He is one of Italy’s top winemakers and produces one of its most sought-after wines. But he struck me as a mellow guy with whom I’d rather drink a beer and roll a taco…

Above: as Ornellaia’s vineyard manager, Leonardo Raspini oversees some of the most coveted growing sites in the world, producing wines that command top prices on the world wine market.

Ornellaia is the polar opposite: as you drive through manicured estate and arrive at the corporate offices and winery, you are keenly aware that every detail has been scripted to evoke the same opulence and prestige contained in each precious bottle.

Above: the aging room at Ornellaia is a temple of barrique.

If you’re traveling to Bolgheri, I cannot recommend a visit to Ornellaia highly enough. From the winery and vineyard tour to the elegant tasting cottage, this was simply one of the most enjoyable, user-friendly, and informative winery visits you can make. And unlike Sassicaia, the winery is open to the public: you must reserve in advance and they will customize the tasting according to your palate and your price point (Ornellaia possesses an extensive library of older vintages). He’s not always available but if possible, request vineyard manager Leonardo Raspini as your guide. I was blown away by his ability to convey the artistry of state-of-the-art winemaking technology and philosophy and I was thrilled to shake the hand of the guy who grows the grapes for the first Italian wine to be sold in the Place de Bordeaux.

This just in…

Sue me, Summus. The Italian news weekly L’Espresso reports that nearly 50% of Banfi’s 2003 Brunello has been declassified.

Don’t cry for me Montalcino

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In an interview published this week by the Italian Sommelier Association, Ezio Rivella has called the results of the Brunello vote “a disaster.”

“I believe,” said Rivella, “that there is nothing left to do but cry for Brunello and its future!”

Click here to read my translation of an excerpt of the interview by Franco.

Don’t cry for me, Montalcino. The truth is I never left you.

Brunello vote, a different perspective, and some blogs I’ve been reading

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Above: this photo of me and Gianfranco Soldera of Casse Basse appears in this month’s issue of The Tasting Panel Click the image to read my piece, “The Sun Also Rises, a dispatch from Montalcino” (photo by Ben Shapiro). The sun also rises in Montalcino…

My relief to read that Brunello producers had voted to “let Brunello be Brunello” last week was tempered when I read an editorial post authored by my friend and colleague Franco Ziliani, who pointed out — rightly — that among the “overwhelming majority” who voted not to change the appellation, there were also the same producers who, just days earlier, were calling for a more flexible appellation and “tolerance” for grapes other than Sangiovese.

“With this hypocritical vote,” wrote Franco, “I truly fear that Brunello di Montalcino will continue to have problems. A battle has been won, no doubt, but I fear that the war — even if it is an underground guerrilla war — will continue. Good luck, dear Brunello, I believe you will continue to need it desperately!”

Read my translation of his post at VinoWire.

Some other blogs I’ve been reading…

I’ve always been a fan of Eric’s blog and I really admire how he weaves literature and music into his posts. He and I are both fans of the Camilleri novels and our musical tastes are pretty much in tune, as well. I really liked this recent post on novelist Hillerman and Montepulciano d’Abruzzo (I also liked Eric’s excellent notes in the paper of record on his Montepulciano d’Abruzzo tasting).

Susannah is relatively new to the world of Italian wine blogging and I’m glad to see another Italocentric wine blogger jump into the mix. I really like her “Women in Wine” posts. Not enough attention is given to women winemakers in Italy, a country still plagued by chauvinism.

People often ask me why I blog and a lot of folks are curious as to why I do it when it doesn’t pay. Blogging has been one of the most rewarding experiences in my entire life, professionally and personally. As obsessively as I may check my blog stats (although probably considerably less than Strappo), the blog has enriched my life far beyond the immediate narcissistic reward. It is a medium for seeing the world that has transformed my life in truly wondrous ways that I never could have imagined. I really liked this post on wine blogging by Alder, a blogger whom I admire immensely for his work ethic, integrity, and palate. His sound advice should be required reading for any budding wine blogger.

Lastly but not least, proceed with caution: “Priming Stemware = Foreplay” by Benoit over at Anti Yelp.

High Noon in Montalcino

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Italians love westerns. At least, they used to. In the 1960s and 70s, the Italian film industry produced some of the wild west’s most enduring iconography.

A showdown of epic proportions is beginning to take shape in Montalcino, as the Brunello producers association braces for an October 27 “once-and-for-all” vote on whether or not appellation regulations will be changed to allow for the use of grapes other than Sangiovese. See this report that Franco and I published today at VinoWire.

The stakes got higher yesterday when 149 producers signed off on an open letter to separatist agricultural minister Luca Zaia and supporter of “more elastic” regulations informing him that they don’t want to change current legislation. My friend Alessandro Bindocci broke news of the letter over at his blog Montalcino Report.

Zaia recently began blogging, but before you add his feed to your Google reader, be sure to read this post by Italian Wine Guy.

Me? I’m glued to my seat and my keyboard. Stay tuned for high drama from Montalcino…

Donne e buoi dei paesi tuoi (observations on the Brunello debate part II)

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Above: “harvesters” in a photo taken in Langa, date unknown, but I am guessing sometime between the two world wars (images courtesy Fontanafredda).

There’s a saying in Italian, donne e buoi dei paesi tuoi. Literally translated, it means women and oxen from your own village or [choose] women and oxen from your hometown.

Paesi tuoi is also the title of Cesare Pavese’s dark novel set against the rural backdrop of Langa (Piedmont)* in the years that preceded the second world war. The story centers around Berto and Talino, who travel to Talino’s village (paese in Italian) after they are released from prison. Berto falls in love with Talino’s sister Gisella. In a fit of jealous rage, Talino kills Gisella with a pitchfork. Her tragic death is a metaphor for the changing face of rural Italy during the country’s industrialization under fascism. Berto is a factory worker from a big city and his presence in the country seems to unleash an otherwise contained and tolerated depravity. He is repulsed by the atrocity he witnesses and flees. Pavese’s unforgiving realism is one of the greatest examples of 20th-century Italian (and European) narrative.

Renowned Italian enologist Ezio Rivella was born in Asti (in Langa) in 1933 and was 8 years old when Pavese’s novel was published in 1941 (it was translated as The Harvesters in 1961).

As Rivella and winemaker Teobaldo Cappellano sparred during the Brunello debate on Friday, October 6, Rivella repeatedly interrupted his interlocutor, admonishing him: “I knew your grandfather very well, Cappellano. And the wines he made were very different from the wines you make today.” Cappellano is one of Italy’s greatest defenders of traditionalist winemaking and is one of the founders of the Vini Veri or Real Wines movement. (Teobaldo doesn’t have a website, but Dressner did this solid profile in English.)

No one would deny that the traditions of winemaking in Italy have changed dramatically since the second world war and radically since the 1970s. Rivella pointed out that in Teobaldo’s grandfather’s day, Nebbiolo was regularly placed in the solaio or loft to “cook” the wine and accelerate its aging — a practice unimaginable today for those who produce fine wine.

“What is tradition and where does it begin?” asked moderator Dino Cutolo, a professor of agricultural anthropology, citing The Invention of Tradition by EJ Hobsbawm and TO Ranger (1983). In farming communities, tradition is shaped by necessity not by cultural self-awareness, Cutolo noted.

Countering Rivella’s claim that commerce should trump tradition in Brunello, Cappellano pointed out that the DOC system was put into place to protect not the winemakers but rather “the territory.” The spirit of the legislation was that of ensuring that artisanal winemakers would not be swept away by the Goliaths like Rivella’s Banfi. And he argued that “provincialism” in winemaking — viewed as a positive element, in opposition to globalization — is the very element that sets Italian wines apart from those produced elsewhere. “We shouldn’t make wines that everyone likes,” said Cappellano, “we need to make wines enjoyed by those who know the wines.”

As I watched the debate that Friday, I thought of how my friend Alice Feiring dealt with the concept of “tradition” in her excellent book, The Battle for Wine and Love: or How I Saved the World from Parkerization. “When I explored this New World wine vs. Old World another theme kept on coming up,” she writes, “and that was the confusion surrounding the word tradition. There were so many meanings. Who knew? Some … were able to use it as a weapon, as a synonym for poorly made wine, for wine that turned into vinegar. Now, what did traditional wine making mean to me? I wasn’t sure. I needed to find a new way to identify wines I liked. Perhaps I was using the word traditional when I meant ‘authentic.'”

We can debate the nature of tradition and authenticity until we’re blue in the face. But one thing is certain: the authenticity of place will disappear if Brunello appellation regulations are changed to allow for the blending of international grape varieties. The laws were created not to help Goliaths make money, but rather to ensure that the Davids would continue to express the authenticity of place.

Paesi tuoi… in the triangle of [mimetic] desire, industrial Banfi was the Berto, the “other” who upset the balance of rural life in Montalcino. In doing so, introduced the capitalist notion of progress (read greed) that has sullied the landscape of the once pristine Orcia River Valley where Brunello di Montalcino is made.

In other news…

Tracie B. told me not to bother watching the 60 Minutes advertorial devoted to the Antinori family last night. But I did enjoy Strappo’s post-game wrap-up. What happened to CBS hard-hitting journalism? Edward Murrow must be rolling over in his grave.

* Sometimes referred to has “the Langhe” or “the Langhe Hills,” Langa is home to Barolo and Barbaresco and is one of Italy’s greatest enogastronmic destinations.

Don’t Murder the Sangiovese: the Brunello debate, observations and reflections (part I)

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Above: the Brunello debate panel included Banfi’s ex-director enologist Ezio Rivella (seated stage right), moderator Dino Cutolo, wine writer Franco Ziliani, and winemaker Teobaldo Cappellano.

In 1930, at the height of the “happy years” of fascism, the founder of the Italian Futurism movement and the father of the historical avant-garde Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his Manifesto della Cucina Futurista, in which he advocated “The abolition of pastasciutta, an absurd Italian gastronomic religion.” (The term pastasciutta means literally dried pasta.)

Today, it is hard to imagine that one of Europe’s leading intellectuals and one of the 20th century’s most dynamic figures (indeed, he who literally gave new meaning to the word dynamism) would lash out so violently against one of Italy’s greatest contributions to world cuisine and a sine qua non of its identity. Thankfully, neither the Futurists nor the fascists prevailed and today pastasciutta and freedom, however bridled by consumerism, continue to thrive in Western Europe.

As I watched the live streaming of the Brunello debate on Friday, I couldn’t help but think of Marinetti’s calls to abolish pasta and to “murder the moonshine” (uccidiamo il chiaro di luna! or let’s kill the claire de lune, 1909) when I heard one of Italy’s leading enologists, Ezio Rivella, say that “Sangiovese is a ‘lean’ grape with little color” and that the Italian wine industry would be better served by “using international grape varieties” and “making wines more international in style.”

“You don’t win a 100 points from the Wine Spectator,” said Rivella, “using just Sangiovese.”

At a certain point during the debate, moderator Dino Cutolo (professor of anthropology, University of Siena), pointed out that the calls for the abolition of Brunello as 100% Sangiovese were coming “from the right.” He quickly added, “not the political right, but from my right.” But his lapsus linguae wasn’t lost on the crowd and drew a chortle from the gallery, palpable even over the internet.

At the height of the heated exchange, when voices were raised and tempers flared, Rivella leveled his finger at Franco Ziliani: “how can we not change the appellation regulations and allow for the use of Merlot in Brunello, caro Lei, Ziliani?” (borrowing a vocative, dear sir, evocative of another era). In the light of the “enormous capital we have invested, we need to make wines for the international market.”

The bottom line: when Banfi, led by Rivella, came into the picture in the 1970s and launched a new era of industrial winemaking in Montalcino, it tried — politically and viticulturally — to impose a modern imprint and it expanded the appellation’s plantings to international grape varieties. The large, commercial producers of Brunello have lobbied twice unsuccessfully to change appellation regulations (allowing for blending of international grapes) from within the now defunct producers consortium. Their bid failed because within the consortium’s hierarchy, the vote of the smallest producer (think Delaware) carried the same weight as the majors (think California).

I’ll let the reader infer her/his own parallels or analogies from the above.

Tomorrow, Teobaldo and Franco’s response. Stay tuned…

A Higher Authority (Brunello needs one)

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Above: I watched a live “streaming,” as they say in Italian, of the heated Brunello debate today in Siena. That’s moderator and anthropology prof Dino Cutolo (left), Franco (center), and Teobaldo Cappellano, producer of one my favorite Barolos.

Sparks flew and and tempers flared at the Brunello debate today in Siena. Fascist, capitalist pig Ezio Rivella and his crony and brown-noser Vittorio Fiore faced off with the forces of good: Franco Ziliani and Teobaldo Cappellano. I’ll post my observations and thoughts about the debate soon (I have other pressing issues to attend to today) but you can read my cut-and-dry report at VinoWire.

Does it show that I’m pissed?

The arrogance of Rivella was only rivaled by the colorful remarks by Fiore that “it is not as if we need to make Kosher wine. Israelis make Kosher wines but there are Jews who will pay 200 or 300 Euros for those wines. We don’t need to be so stringent in our winemaking,” he said.

I think that Brunello needs a higher authority. Remember the ad below?

Fine Wine’s Franciacorta tasting notes

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Above: my POV when I tasted recently with Franco at Ca’ del Bosco in Franciacorta.

“Tom Stevenson believes that Italy’s grandest sparkling wines are getting better and better,” write the editors of Fine Wine, “a conviction strengthened by a recent tasting shared with Margaret Rand and Franco Ziliani.” My friend and partner in VinoWire, Franco Ziliani joined two of Britain’s top wine writers earlier this year to taste through a wide range of Franciacorta producers.

The editors of the magazine were kind enough to share a PDF of this article, which includes tasting notes from their remarkable tasting. Click here to view.