Tag Archives: Friuli

Friulian aquaculture, lunch on the island of Ravaiarina

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The team, from left, clockwise, each a taste-maker in her or his own right: Matthew Turner (head sommlier Michael Mina, San Francisco), Steve Wildy (beverage director, Vetri, Philadelphia), Brent Karlicek (wine merchant, Postino, Phoenix), Shelley Lindgren (wine director, A16, San Francisco), Bobby Stuckey (wine director, Frasca, Boulder), Jamie Garrett (sommelier, Sonnenalp, Vail), Joe Campanale (beverage director, Dell’Anima, New York), Lachlan Mackinnon-Patterson (chef, Frasca, Boulder), Mario Nocifera (director of operations, Frasca, Boulder), and Lara Persello (our handler, Turismo FVG).

This morning we departed from Grado and headed toward the island of Ravaiarina.

The antipasto.

Turbot with its brodetto and white polenta.

A classic of Friulian viticulture.

The island has its own fish farm in the form of a humanmade saltwater lagoon and the chef fishes his catch with a fishing pole as needed, like this orata (Mediterranean sea bass). Ingenious…

The fishery is perfectly attuned to the island’s aquaculture and mariculture.

La Ravaiarina
tel. 0431 845 84576

To reach the island and restaurant, you take a taxi boat from Grado.

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. :-)

Grape porn from around the world (harvest has begun)

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Come on, just admit it… We ALL like to look at a little grape porn now and then, don’t we? Even Alder likes him some grape porn.

It’s that time of year again and bloggers have been posting photos of the harvest as it progresses.

My favorite grape porn photo so far is the one above by Wayne over in Friuli.

In Montalcino they began harvesting Moscadello di Montalcino last week and this week they began to pick the Merlot. The Merlot comes in earlier than the Sangiovese. Alessandro posted the photo above: he and his father use the Merlot to make their Super Tuscan Mazzoni. (See, it’s okay to like Merlot, as long as you label it correctly.) So far, so good: it’s looking like a good harvest in Montalcino.

Over in Napa, Vinogirl author of Vinsanity posted this image of Pinot Gris — yes, the red grape that we’ve been taught to think of us a white grape. (Vinogirl has also been coming up with some sassy titles for her posts.)

From the Greek pornos (prostitute) + graph (writer), pornograph means literally someone who describes or writes about prostitutes.

I would hardly call those little berries prostitutes but they sure can be sexy and I’m not sure why, by they do inspire mimetic desire in me (mimesis means imitation in Greek).

For some vintage grape porn, like the image to the left, check out these beautiful plates from Giorgio Gallesio’s Pomona italiana (completed in 1839).

*****

Didn’t George Harrrison write a song called “I, Mimesis, Mine”? Here’s Elliot Smith’s version.