On the Wine Trail in Italy

Happy 82nd, Oscar!

Have Italian wines become like cinema? Has oak become what full frontal nudity was in the 1970’s, now hackneyed and dull? Do we look for nuance in wine and film and walk away from a dark room or a disappointed table with similar letdowns?

Last night I went to visit my friend Jay the pizzaiolo, who was halting his guerilla restaurant for a few weeks of renovation. Inside the dining room, people had brought their own wines. I surveyed the tableau – Silver Oak, Kosta Browne, Caymus. I had brought a little Piedirosso, and it felt like I had just landed in America with my little satchel of handmade (and outmoded) clothes, walking onto the stage of my new life. And that is what the original wines from Italy must endure when they, too, come to America, walking the red carpet, without the sponsorship of Muccia or Donatella. Perhaps that is why some of the new, young energy of Italy, those affluent enough to send their children over to visit or to work in Napa or to take classes at Davis, have sussed out the future of the business. We aren’t in La Terra Trema territory anymore. No, Italian wines have morphed into some Avatar of expectation, at least in many minds who reside in the heads of those who sit at the tables across America. And apparently in Italy, too?

I’m not going to go all sans soufre on y’all, but once again I stand on the corner of Any Given Sunday and Bloody Monday, that glorious time between reflection and heading back to the streets, and wonder if I am ever going to get Back to the Future?

Which begs the question, “OK, Alfonso, what do you think they want?” To which I begin by answering, “It’s not what they think they need, but it is what we need to bring back – and those are the real expressions of Italian wine, that even when winemaking was less sophisticated, those old guys ( and gals) were able to coax into the bottle.

My feeling is that it has more to do with the character of the person than the vineyard or the barrel room. The terroir of the human soul. I keep thinking of those people who still have the connection, who aren’t acting, who are living out the drama of their lives but with a realism that has been lost, in the bottle and on film, these last 20 or so years. And that is the crossroads that Italian wine teeters on, seemingly often.

Enough of the Blazing Saddles romp we have been getting, this is a High Noon moment.

How do you know you have lost something precious if you have nothing to compare that loss to? It is that way with so many things in youth. We cannot fathom the loss of a soul mate or a parent, because it hasn’t happened to us. Sure, one can read Lampedusa or Emily Dickinson or Paul Auster, but until the pin pricks your finger and you bleed, you will not know it as intimately. Viscerally.

And again, the director taps me on the shoulder and asks me to pull focus, bring it in for a close up, get to the point.

I do see light in the tunnel. The Piedirosso I brought to the pizzaiolo had been sanded with a rough grade of paper, but it had True Grit. The Primitivo we served in Marfa last week had the rough-and-tumble character of Accattone. You could almost feel the glass shards piecing your poor bare feet as you let a wine slip from the stained cup into your unbrushed teeth. Was it pleasant? It wasn’t pretty from all the make-up. It was a Giant, but it was frank. It was truthful. And that made it a beautiful thing.

What was once the key to the kingdom, getting a great revue and 90+ points or the three glasses from Gambero Rosso, all that has been rendered useless in this Mad Max world, where the rules of economics have been disco-oxygenated so trophy hunters can fill their silos. They can still have their 100 point Walk in the Clouds and drink their $300 cult wines too. When The Eclipse comes (isn’t it already here?), those with mega Euros will have plenty of oaked wines to drink with their canned foie gras in their tax deductible offshore underground shelters cellars. “I’m gonna live forever, baby remember my name.” Oh yeah.

Until then, I will hope for a time when more can take pleasure in the joys of wine and in the simple satisfaction of unadulterated, accessible, drinkable wines. Wines that have Places in the Heart . Wines that we can really, really love. Wines that go with real food. Then maybe it will be time again for a Capra-esque return to that Wonderful Life.

And the winner is….

Photos from Oscar nights of past

A few days ago while I was foraging for lettuces and herbs in my back yard, I heard a familiar cry. At the top of a tall power line the sparrow hawk was hailing me. He was back to raise another brood, teach them to fly and then head back to wherever they go when winter returns. For me it was a hopeful sign that this very long winter might be coming to a close.

The next day I got on a plane and headed to far West Texas. An hour flight and a three hour drive led me back to Marfa for a wine dinner. The journey in is always a mind cleanse for me. From home base, the hard core urban setting, to the airport, where all of our fears are laid bare as we walk shoeless though filters poised to reveal anomalies in hope of finding evil, so that it might be rooted out. Then to a dusty, rural airport, Midland, home to my dear Uncle Lou and his family, amidst oil wells and childhood homes of world deciders. But the real purge comes in the drive from Midland to Marfa, when the landscape that is revealed sews itself in ones pocket so deeply so as not to ever be lost. There are many people at my final destination that night who are longing- longing for art, longing for love, longing for simple. One night under a universe of lights wont abate that longing, more to serve as a reminder to the city dweller that a larger universe of ideas, of Everything, is still there in spite of our tendency to narrow it down to an explanation that puts each and everyone of us in the middle of a micro-oxygenated universe of our own making.

Nothing you can know that isn’t known.
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown.
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be.
It’s easy.

I have done my 200th wine dinner, again. They are like kites- trying to keep them in the air, making sure the tail doesn’t tangle, hoping the kite doesn’t tear away, and when the kite finally flies and one runs out of string and the kite sails for 30 minutes or so, to reel it in? Or let it go? This night I got the kite up in the air pretty quick, got the room where I thought I wanted to go, like some West Texas preacher testifying about the Revelations of Gaglioppo and Inzolia. The dining room, high ceilinged, like a cathedral, held the dry air. I didn’t need to shout. I started channeling the poets, Lennon, Neruda, Whitman. I had them, the tail was untangled, the wind was blowing steady, calm. And then, just like that, I let all the string out and freed the kite. To the West Texas heavens under a full moon, the last vestiges of winter under those sent whirling back to their private universes.

So we sailed up to the sun
Till we found the sea of green
And we lived beneath the waves
In our yellow submarine

Afterwards, some of the group wanted to pilgrimage out to see the Marfa lights. Having been indoctrinated in those mysteries long ago, but only recently having become a Believer, I was up for it. I have a fantasy of someone putting a bar out there, like those blue bars we used to go to in Italy in the 1990’s. A piano, dark blue lighting, a great selection of single malts and grappas. Then a window to the vast unknown in search of those famous lights. But we stood out there in the high desert, shivering, our lone companion a traffic cone that had been placed over the telescope that is used in warmer nights to seek out the origin of those mysterious lights.

Would you believe in a love at first sight
Yes, I’m certain that it happens all the time
What do you see when you turn out the light
I can’t tell you but I know it’s mine,

When I was putting the wines together on a sheet for the dinner I was searching for a way to start a conversation with the people coming to it. One of my dinner companions remarked that he recently had a dinner for 12 people and they discussed the food and the wines. A salon. Yes, of course, I would love to come back and do something like that. But this night I was imagining these five wines as lines from a Beatles Album, the Yellow Submarine, in an effort to strike a match against the imagination and start a little fire of non linear conversation. Alas, it was probably something that was meant for My Universe, perhaps too much of a stretch. Too non linear. How did one of my teachers tell me, “Al, save the imagination for the drawing tablets.”

Follow her down to a bridge by a fountain
Where rocking horse people eat marshmallow pies
Everyone smiles as you drift past the flowers
That grow so incredibly high

My experiment with wine and song having wilted, I consoled myself under that cold and deep desert night with the happiness that other teachers had cultivated a biodynamic rebellion against those who would have me be a square peg in a square hole in a cubicle somewhere in a square building. Of course, we must report back, head up the elevator and slip into the meeting, hoping that someone in that meeting will be receptive to the accounts from the front lines. As long as I don’t make them too poetic. Or out there.

Out there. Out there. As I was driving back the next day to get back to the city and a tasting of Super Tuscans and Brunello (acclimate, acclimate) I found myself wasting time, putting it off. And as I drove, the radio playing Horst’s “The Planets” made it even more difficult to leave, to return. I stopped one more time at the base, this time the traffic cone had a retiree in a Winnebago for company.

Pulling away from the highway out of Alpine, the junction, one to the Big Bend and the other back to the Big City, I had a visceral reaction. I felt sick to my stomach, maybe it was the huevos rancheros?

As I left the wilderness, returning to the power line that I always came back to, I promised myself to come back here again, for a week or more, to camp, to hike, to clear out the Big City. I really, really love the desert, it is my Tuscany.

One, two, three, four
Can I have a little more?
five, six, seven eight nine ten I love you.

Lyrics by The Beatles

This is such a great time to be on the wine trail. There are many good wines at all levels, from so many places. There are new people coming into the field with their ideas and energy. There is a confluence with the world of food and art and music, along with philosophy, economics. So many areas that touch each other. There is the fun and comedic aspect (my gosh, we laugh so much these days). And while we have some naysayers, those snarky little blue ticks that prey upon the ledges, leeching blood and energy, I reckon it’s all in the game. This week has been a good week for the forces of light and good and love and wine.

It began when I started reading Frances Mayes newest book, Every Day in Tuscany, Seasons of an Italian Life.

I wanted to look at some of her recipes, as I was doing a wine dinner with local Chef, Jim “Sevy” Severson, of Sevy’s fame. We were doing a Tuscan evening, and I thought I’d get a little inspiration from Frances’ latest book.

After several minutes scanning the recipes and a few pages, I realized exactly what I needed to do for the wine dinner. Simply, tell the stories of the people who made the wine. We had people attending who have traveled to Italy, so many times. But the more I go to Italy and stay there, the more I come to realize how little I know. In effect when one of the nasty commenters on local food blogs throws me in the grease for my stand on Italian food in these parts, they are right. But for the wrong reasons. My lament isn’t that Italian food is impossible to find outside of Italy. It’s more that the philosophy is hard to find in the kitchen. My aunt had it, so did my grandmothers. And for sure they used local ingredients. Would they call their food Italian? Would I not call it delicious? And when I go into a place, whether it be Italian or French or Thai, my hope is that there is someone in the kitchen, thinking consciously of what they are doing with their ingredients.

Last night at a local wine bar, where the most amazing array of bottles kept showing up at the bar where we were sitting, a local Doctor, David Ellis, who has a passion for wine and food, stated it so simply. “My best meal ever in this town” he said, “was from Anthony Bombaci at Nana. It was a sea bass, seared in olive oil with salt and pepper.” No more than five ingredients. Oh, yeah, you can find it. Anywhere.

Sevy was proud of his menu; he took me back in the kitchen and showed me the bistecca in preparation. The evening would be an homage to the brightness of Tuscan cooking with wines to match. I was in heaven.

The next day, a package arrived in the mail. One Vintage, a word and picture book about live in a Los Olivos vineyard. Chris Jones has found her own Bramasole in the Central Coast of California, and her sweet little book is a Valentine to all grape growers. Thanks so much, Chris, what a joy.

Meanwhile, people struggle daily, with their realities. More than one restaurant I have been in this past week has had way fewer than needed people in those seats. There is nothing more challenging than to be in a place with good food and wine and have it be empty. And then, there are those places that are so darn busy, three-deep at the bar at 9 o’clock on a Saturday night. Hopeful signs, but still survival of the fittest. No room for mistakes in this economy. Hope, alone, won’t keep the lights burning.

Last night at that busy wine bar, in an arts district with opera and symphony overflow, people didn’t seem to be anxious. Two nights before, though as I walked around the area, the handful of restaurants didn’t have enough people in all of them to fill one of them. Maybe last night people were just ready to get out and charge it on their already overcharged credit cards, in spite of the consequences on Monday. I don’t know. But I do know there is some trepidation.

I was in the mood for a Savennieres. I’m often in the mood for this wine, but last night I realized, once again, why I love that wine. It followed a young Gruner, an aged Puligny-Montrachet Les Pucelles and an even older Mazy-Chambertin. But this wine, the 2004 from Nicholas Joly is the little pillow I love to lay my head on. It was creamy, it had an edge, it was sweet, it was savory. It was minerally, it was salty, it was lively, it was mellow. I ordered a cup of butterscotch pudding to appease my sweet tooth. I have had a week where so many wine and food matches have seemed like they were perfect (all unplanned). Maybe this is the week the palate gods tell me my thoughts about such things are erroneous. After all, the Blue Meanie Blogarazzi think I’m full of crap, maybe the wine gods agree. If that’s the case, so be it. I’ll just hop in my submarine and find another wine tasting, putting on my perennial millennial shirt and hat and facing the next flight – occhi spalanchi sul mondo – eyes wide open on the world.

Note to Italy, to Tuscany and to Montalcino. This is just the beginning. Brace yourself.

From the “I knew it was too good to last” department

After a bit of travel between the East and the West coast, I am finally sleeping in my own bed. I have a favorite pillow which is really ragged. But the best dreams come when it is under my head.

Joey the Weasel, aka Joe Strange Eye and Tony the Bone wanted a “meeting.” It seems they boys back home have been missing their Italian wine guy. They think I have been getting a little too uppity. They wanted to put me back in my place. So I agreed to a time and a place.

They were just coming out of team meetings, so I waited for them, making my rounds. The place where I work has many buildings and a slew of different type folks. It’s always fun to just take a stroll around the buildings, see who is there, talk to them. And what they tell me, the things people will say. The wind up is, one can get a real sense of where a company, an industry, a trend is going, by getting a sampling of the thoughts of the folk who live there. Message received.

When I found them, Joey and Tony were huddled over a computer screen like it was a fire pit at SXSW. On further examination, neither had brought their reading glasses. They were both blind as bats.

Tony has this pizza place in the burbs he is working on and he wanted to let me know our Italian section was about to be invaded by the Southern Hemisphere. Tony likes easy money. I pretty well let him know that those pictures I took of him in 1981 were still in the safe deposit box, but that didn’t have to be a forever kind of thing. “Leave the Malbecs, take the Chianti,” were my parting words. Message received.

Strange Eye, that was a different story. He’s just spread thin, lots of business, things are booming. “Ace, the Italian wine business is out of control. It’s like the 1980’s. I just wish I was 20 years younger and 40 pounds lighter.” We kibitzed, got a few things on paper. It’s always good to talk to the guys on the street. You know, the schlubs who make things happen on the ground level? No corner office prognosticating with them, just the facts, Ma’am. Back to work boys.

As I was heading out the building, a young manger approaches me. “We’ve got to talk. That fancy new pizza place in the burbs (what is it with pizza places and the burbs?) is driving me nuts. I go in there, spend money, drop my card and the owner chumps me off. I need your help. What can we do to turn him around?” The young manager is intense, he stands upright, a good sign for someone who will be in the game for at least ten more years. We can use these kinds of folks at the battles edge. “What are you doing? Let’s go there right now and talk to him,” I suggest. “Scheduling conflict. No can do.” Hell, I’ll go there myself.

I get back to my office, drop my gear and grab “Louie”. Louie is old school. He wears a trench coat. On cold days he has a crumpled fedora that he pulls out, like some kind of show-and-tell at wise guy school. He looks like a punch-drunk hit man. Fancies himself a ladies man. But he knows the game. “Louie, come with me, I need to go talk to a guy who’s got that old time saloon above his wood burning pizzeria.

20 minutes later we walk into the place. The owner comes up to us.” Is everything OK? You guys look serious.” The owner is a sweet guy, but far from a pushover. But he’s always shot straight with me. The server escorted Louie to our table and I chatted with the owner. “Ah Vito, I’ve just missed eating your wood burning pizza. A week in New York, a week in Napa, you know, I long to drink my wines with your food.”

As I join my partner, I notice they put him at the table facing the door. Two things you never want to do in the restaurant business, put a Sicilian with his back to the door and put a Jew with his back to an oven. After musical chairs we got down to business.

755 words in, I know too damn long again. If you’re still reading, you want the end. The rest have gone on to Twitterland. So here goes. The pitch.

Thirty minutes into the meal, after we’ve slammed down a couple of ice cold Patron Silvers and were heading past the better part of a bottle of red, Vito comes up to me. Vito and I are neighbors, we hear the same sirens at night, we’ve pitched our tents in the same vale. “How’s the food, Ace, you like my menu?” I could feel Louie itching to answer, his finger on the trigger. But I took the shot. “Vito, everything is lovely, but I‘d love to see more of my babies on that menu. I’m not the type to ask you what it’s going to take. I’m just telling you I don’t want to walk out of her today and not solve this problem. So, what’s it going to take?”

Louie couldn’t resist. We were being convivial, so I guess he figured a little Catskill humor would play in this saloon, which was once a speakeasy. “Vito, I think what Ace is saying is take my wines, please.” Yeah, Lou, I am. But in a subtler more Sicilian style.

Vito excuses himself to tend to a problem in the oven. Lou eyes him warily. Minutes later, a duo of espressos and a platter of honey laced focaccia appear. And then Vito returns. “I was going to give you my list, but then I remember who you are and I didn’t want you to take it the wrong way. You’re not an errand boy sent by a grocery clerk to collect a bill. I just need two things.” And he came close to me and whispered them in my ear.
Message received.

On the way back to the office, I made a call and by the time I got back to my desk, the problem was solved. It was neat. It was clean. It was legal. I could tell you what it was, but I imagine the occasional competitor reading this post and I’m not about to give them my 30 years of experience wrapped up in the coda. Let’s just say respect is the key ingredient in that pie, laced with just the right amount of follow-up.

And that’s what the real world is all about, not the lavish wine dinners in San Francisco or the vertical tastings in the Upper East Side. The nitty gritty saloon brawl battles that help keep my world safe for Italian wine. Bona Notte y’all.