Tag Archives: Michael Barnes

An orange wine ante litteram

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The Latin expression ante litteram means literally before the letter, in other words, before the written word. I’ve recently had the opportunity to taste what I consider (and others are free to disagree) an “an orange wine ante litteram, id est, an orange wine that was created before the expression or notion of “orange wine” existed: the 1999 Trebbiano d’Abruzzo by Edoardo Valentini. We opened a bottle on Monday at the Orange Wine dinner at Vino Vino in Austin. This wine, made by Valentini himself (as my colleague John Paine pointed out), was fresh and bright, with youthful, powerful tannic structure, nuanced floral notes on the nose, and rich fruit flavor in the mouth. A wine, we agreed, still has many years ahead of it. Truly one of the greatest white wines I’ve ever tasted…

I wasn’t the only one who dug the Valentini and the other wines on Monday night: so did Michael Barnes, social columnist for the Austin American Statesman, who weighed in with this ambrosial post…

Salacious secrets of Italian wine: rocks and manure at 3 pm Texas time

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out and about

Salacious secrets: I forgot to mention in my post earlier today that you’ll be able comment on my answers and ask questions when I chat with Austin American-Statesman columnist Michael Barnes today at at 3 p.m. (Texas time). At shortly before 3 p.m., click here to visit his Out and About blog, register (if not already registered), and please weigh in.

I’ll be fielding all kinds of tough, hard-hitting questions, like why I like my Garganega to taste like rocks and my Nebbiolo to smell like manure.

I’m really looking forward to this new live interview format since I have “such a great face for radio”! ;-)

Do Bianchi live at Austin360.com today

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Above: Sunday evening found me and Tracie B tattered by the rain and mud at the Austin City Limits musical festival but warm and happy at the dinner table of the inimitable Bill Head — Austinite bon vivant and all-around good fellow. Bill made a wonderful ragù alla bolognese and so I brought along a bottle of Lini Lambrusco (in this case, Lambrusco di Sorbara). As restaurateur Danny Meyer likes to say, “if it grows with it, it goes with it.”

If you happen to find yourself near a computer this afternoon at 3 p.m. (Texas time), please check out a live chat that I will be doing today with Austin American-Statesman social columnist Michael Barnes at Out and About (Austin360.com).

Above: We were also joined Sunday night by Austin natural treasure Mary Gordon Spence (to Bill’s left), writer, humorist, and radio personality, who had many wonderful tales to tell of her recent trip to Italy, and University of Texas professor of government David Edwards.

We’ll be chatting about the series of classes on Italian wine I’m teaching every Tuesday at The Austin Wine Merchant beginning this evening.

Tonight’s class is sold out and the others are filling up quickly but there is still some space available. My favorite session is Italian Wine and Civilization (Tuesday, November 10), where we read a passage from Italian literature or history, and then taste a wine in some way pertinent to the text. Did you know that Niccolò Machiavelli was a winemaker, for example?

In other news…

Tracie B and I braved the rain and mud at this year’s Austin City Limits festival on Sunday. We didn’t stay long but did get to catch the B52s’s set, which couldn’t be anything other than super fun, and we also enjoyed super-shiny sisters-and-brother bluegrass/country act Jypsi (below). Jypsi was a little slick for my taste but man can they play!

Just over a year ago, I came to Austin for the second time to visit with Tracie B. Do you remember? Here’s a little post from the archive. We recreated the Austin City Limits photo op this year, except for this time sans mustache! ;-)