Tag Archives: Pasquale Petrera

Picking a wine for Alice…

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Bringing a wine to the home of Alice Feiring is like bringing owls to Athens or coal to Newcastle.

But when I spied a bottle of 2005 Fatalone Primitivo Riserva yesterday afternoon at Astor Wines, I just couldn’t resist… and I lived to tell my tale!

Ever since I tasted the wines of Pasquale Petrera, I grab them wherever I can (they’re not available in Texas, sadly, but we offer three of his labels on our list at Sotto, where they are among the staff’s favorites).

Hanging in Alice’s kitchen is one of the things I miss most about living in NYC…

And, of course, who can pass up a chance to use New York City’s most famous toilet?

Stay tuned for more New York stories…

Primitivo (two ways): Italian grape name and appellation pronunciation project

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CLICK HERE FOR ALL EPISODES

Since I’ve spent the last week in Apulia, it only seemed appropriate to feature an Apulian grape this week for the Italian Grape Name and Appellation Pronunciation Project. And since we’ve already done Negroamaro, it seemed a propos to feature another one of the most widely planted grapes here, Primitivo. And so, the other day when we went swimming the other day in the Adriatic (at Torre dell’Orso, not far from Lecce), I asked Paolo to pronounce Primitivo for my camera.

Of course, Primitivo is one of the easiest for English-speakers to pronounce. And so I thought it would be fun to spice things up with a dialectal pronunciation.

I’m waiting until after the Radici Wines festival ends to start posting on the wines I’ve tasted, but I’ll give a little preview by revealing that I LOVED the Primitivo by Pasquale Petrera (Fatalone, Gioia del Colle). As it so happens, he uses the dialectal name of the grape on one of the labels of his excellent wines (and I’ll post on my tasting down the road): u Pr’matìv (Il Primitivo, in Italian, the Primitivo [grape]). And so I asked him to take a break from one of the preview tastings and pose for my camera.

Buona visione! And thanks for speaking and drinking Italian grapes!