Ceiling fresco – Casòn Hirschprunn, Margreid, Südtirol

Because of the encounters I have had in the last month and with all the rush to award guarantees of origin to the decadent and irrelevant Italian appellation system, I have zigged, zagged and ran scatter-shooting across this April month. Not that it hasn’t been a romp. Jump on [...]

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from the “when the going gets weird, the weird turn DOCG” dept…

I can barely keep up with it. Can you imagine the Italian government and the overworked apparatchiks at the Gazzetta Ufficiale della Repubblica Italiana trying to make sense of a law that in 18 months will be meaningless? Monday April 25, it seems, was [...]

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From the “Let my people go” dept…

It is that time of the year, when they roll out Charlton Heston and the 10 Commandments epic. Kind of an American ritual, to sit around the TV and watch the pageant of Moses and Ramses and all the comings and goings of 3,000 years ago. I have come [...]

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From the “Let my people go” dept…

It is that time of the year, when they roll out Charlton Heston and the 10 Commandments epic. Kind of an American ritual, to sit around the TV and watch the pageant of Moses and Ramses and all the comings and goings of 3,000 years ago. So in commemoration [...]

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from the “bringing Vinitaly to flyover country” dept.

Seven days in Italy. Seven wines. So it was my friend Paul diCarlo at Jimmy’s in Dallas asked me to put together a tasting for his little back room, his “circolo del vino” for 57 of his closest friends and clients. “Show me what we missed.” I [...]

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