Friday, September 22, 2006

T.G.I.F ~ Thank God It's Fermenting

Europe is in winemaking mode! Some places better than others, but the cycle continues. Rain in Tuscany and Piedmont.

The picture above is from Quinta Vesuvio high up the Douro Valley in Portugal, where the winemaking is uber-traditional. For more pictures go here .

In San Antonio, for a preview of the New World Wine and Food Festival. November 9 will be doing a wine dinner at Luciano's at the Strand with chef Jesse Perez.

One of his creations below

Oaxaca meets O Solo Mio!
More later....

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

No Regret Wednesday

Wednesdays really seem to be a bit of a mixed bag lately. I don’t know, maybe it’s that lingering heat. Today it got up to 90F. Really tired of this.

Last week or so, I’ve seen a pageant of young Italians working the market. Not exactly a cat walk, but they have been young, the young women of Italy. They are the worker bees. And some of their comments have been interesting. My friend, David, over at Italian Insight, seems to think they are exaggerating when they speak to me of the new poor Italy. I don’t know. I know even some of the folks over there with money are acting like the sky is falling, money is tight. My concern is, if the young people of Italy feel they have no opportunities in the wine field, they will go to on other endeavors. It is happening here. Unless you get your Master Sommelier or Master of Wine, so many of the young here seem to think they will have little trajectory for the career path. I’d like to tell them about a master or two I’ve known in the past. Even if you make it “big”, you still face many of the same problems the rest of us do. It’s the human condition.

Along the way it got me to thinking if I have regrets at this point in the game. Ok, it’s been 30 years now, chopping in the woodshed of the wine trade. I’ve seen colleagues make great success, and I’ve known some of them to die alone in their bathtubs, lying there for days before they were discovered. It can be a crapshoot, there are no guarantees.

Last week with one of the young ones, we opened up the last of my case of 1982 Le Pergole Torte. I have tasted this wine for 20 years and the other night was a fond farewell to a wine that has gone through a stretch of time with me. Since then my son has grown up, my wife has passed on. Friends have departed and family members have been born. Time has ripened us all.

The wine was ready to drink, gone was the youthful power and fire of the earlier years, the assertiveness of the Sangiovese in purezza. The wine was a gentle, pensive, meditation at 24 years. Its life was staring at the sunset now. Delicate, light, still assertive but with a graceful note. A wine I shall never forget. Thank you Signore Manetti, wherever you are.

Well, in thinking about the regrets, I’m going to ask you readers, all 10 of you, about this. Which wines do you regret not tasting? Was it the 1961 Lafite or the 1927 Cockburns Vintage Port? Was it a 1964 Brunello from Costanti or a 1964 Cabernet from Louis Martini? What are your thoughts?
My regrets for wines not tasted yet, I have a few. They are:
*1931 Quinta do Noval Nacional
*1947 Chateau Cheval Blanc
*1951 Beaulieu Vineyards George de Latour Cabernet Sauvignon Reserve
*1951 Penfolds Grange
*1961 Gaja Barbaresco
*1961 Chateau Latour
*I’d love to taste something from the 1800’s from Bordeaux.
*Also would love to taste a really old Tokaji Essencia.
*A vertical of Vega Sicilia Unico from the mid 1950’s to the late 1960’s would be wonderful.
*I’d love to go into that old cellar of Bugari in San Benedetto del Tronto and taste all the Italians down there from the 1930’s and 1940’s. Barolo’s, Vino Nobile’s, Taurasi’s, Aglianico’s, Etna Rosso’s...
*I’d love to taste some of those old Marsala wines that Marco De Bartoli has in his cellar in Sicily, some from the 1800’s, real Sicilian history.


Some blogs lately have been writing about foods they must have before they die.

This is the wine lovers version. Let’s hear from you!

What wines are you absolutely not wanting to miss out on, before the curtain is pulled ?

Sunday, September 17, 2006

My Two Sisters, Nebbiolo & Sangiovese

The waves have pounded the shores this week, they have been felt by our family this week and we have been reminded of the fragility of life and how things can change, forever, in a moment.

In a conversation with an agronomist from Greve, she mentioned how some of the major grapes of Italy were related, at least by their DNA. That led me to thinking about my two sisters, Nebbiolo and Sangiovese.

Nebbiolo was the first born to the family. She was the first great hope of the family. Her way is to do rather than to be. From my very first encounters with her, she was not one that was easy to get to know. Part of it has to do with her mystery. She conceals herself from family members, preferring to work in the background, helping but not taking the bows. Not that she couldn’t. Her talent is that of a renaissance artisan. All the while she presents herself as this delicate and slightly difficult grape-being.

I don’t know where she really came from, she doesn’t appear to look like much of the family. Not that she isn’t, it’s just that she came from the recesses of nature, to appear like this apparition of greatness.

She has aged well but not without the changes many of us have witnessed in the past 40 or so years. She has been many things to many people. She has mothered many a Barbera and a Dolcetto, sheltered a Grignolino and a Freisa, and welcomed a Moscato and an Arneis. Her children and her grandchildren have multiplied and many have prospered. Some have languished and some have strayed, but the tenacity of her nature has safeguarded the nobility and grace of her domain. Misunderstood at times, loved and then not loved, and then taken on new love, my sister Nebbiolo has had an interesting life in that last 60 or so years. But she is not over, in fact her strength and her wisdom is more needed on the scene now than ever before. So we won’t be replanting the vineyards with Merlot or Pinot Noir. Not now. Not ever. She is an original, there is only one place to be found where she will prosper and reach her potential. She is not an easy one to get to know, but hers is greatness at the highest mark on the castle wall.

My second sister, Sangiovese, is another story. She is a bit more fiery and conflicted at this time. Her realm is in a bit of a crisis in these days, partially due to the success of her popularity, no doubt from her youthful energy and her giving nature. But she has been misused and misdirected and now the realm is in need of readjustment.
Not that she isn’t up for the challenge. The energy of sister Sangiovese is one of a great well of endurance. Sangiovese can bear much, trapped in fine French wood and blended in with other creatures not normally akin to her original nature. She might be more at home with Nero d’Avola or Aglianico, but Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon have scaled the walls of her domain. Syrah has made attempts too.

Her children, Colorino and Canaiolo, are as different as night and day, one being mellow and easygoing, the other a tropical storm of emotion and inner conflict. Sometimes they blend well together, but lately they are not seen as much. Sister Sangiovese really needs a strong match to temper her fiery nature, something to hold up to her, to challenge her. Part of Sangiovese’s confusion is to where she resides best for her inner growth. She will be planted in the hillsides at the higher elevations and will thrive, and then she will be moved to the seaside and be challenged to complete her destiny in a new place with new challenges. And then she will be sent out to the arid, almost desert, climes of Tuscany, only to find she has to struggle and be beautiful there too. Sangiovese is the preferred grape of the new ruling class but she is a school girl who wants to run in the fields with her hair loose and her feet unshod.

Sangiovese has one true love, and that is Tuscany. She really only has known that one love and it appears that has been good for Italy. I hope it has been good for her too.

To my two sisters, I salute you and love you and hope your every expression of grace and greatness will be achieved in history.


Friday, September 15, 2006

T.G.I.Q. ~ Thank God It's Querciabella

A slight diversion from my usual TGIF posting. Just a Q. I have Paola Banchi with me, from Querciabella, treading in the "mission fields." Paola is trained as an agronomist. Two of her mentors have been Gianfranco Soldera and Josko Gravner , two of the most iconoclastic vintner-philosophers in Italy. I recently opened up some of these wines with a filmmaker friend. Mamma mia, the end of the world!

Paola is an Italian earth woman, a descendant of those wine goddesses you see on the ancient amphorae in southern Italy. And though her DNA is linked to them, she looks at you from a pair of 6th century B.C. Etruscan eyes. Paola is a recipient of the energy that has passed from the ancients to the moderns.

And like some of us who have been stationed in the colonies as missionaries, Paola has been tasked with leaving her Tuscany and venturing, often, into the world.

Briefly, this phenomenon of the Italian explorers, Columbus, Vespucci and on, has been reborn in the new age with our young Italian vintners. Now they hop planes, but the effect is the same, to come to the new world. This time they bring the treasures.
New York, Singapore, Vancouver, Denver, Osaka, the world is now open for business with the Italians. A far cry from the early 1960's.

Much has been said about Querciabella, and much more will be written. My friend, David, has written about two of the wines here, the Chianti Classico and the Camertina.

I first met Paola in Verona at Vinitaly over a vegetarian mini-cheeseburger and fries. Not just any meal, it was part of a 17-course meal, prepared by Pierino Penati, all vegetarian, to highlight the wines. Slow Food and Slow Wine. It was quite a scene. The wines were center stage, with the Querciabella and Roederer families sharing the limelight. Lots of famous people, mountain climbers, poets, famous chefs, and the rest of us mere mortals. But a great night.

Months later Paola is in Texas, in time for the whooping owl, which is outside my window early this morning, sending its courting call to its prospective mate. Which hasn't anything to do with this posting other than it is wonderful to hear. Click on the link above to experience it yourself.

A day in the fields, not exactly stomping, but definitely treading in the marketplace. Pictured here with Lance Storer, a young man who has an excellent shop in Dallas.

At dinner with a meal at Stephan Pyles, he himself bringing food from his altar-kitchen. We left the meal decisions to him, and why not? Great food, great wines and great friends, and we're just getting Star-ted!

Camartina 2001

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Heart and Soil

This week I have been immersed in Piedmont. Barolo, Castiglione Falletto, Serralunga, Cuneo, Barbaresco and on. Sorting out some information for the young sales force. This link between humans and the land that makes one wine taste one way and another, over on a hill 2 miles away, taste another way. The Italian wine trail ends today in the Langhe, but starts in the Marche.

15 years ago I landed in a little town, Matelica, to taste the wines of Aldo Cifola from La Monacesca. On that visit we were looking at his new vineyard, Camerte, where his Merlot and Sangiovese vines were newly planted. That will be another story for another day. What happened on that day, and how it leads to Piedmont, is something totally out of the linear way of seeing things. They really have nothing and everything to do with each other.

The inspiration for this came from a photograph I took back then at the estate, of the La Monacesca caretaker and his sons. After a wine tasting, in a little room, with prosciutto he prepared from his happy pigs, they brought out the accordions. Now I’m a sucker for accordions, used to own a couple of them till I donated them to some missionaries in Central America. Maybe it’s the um-pap-pah music of Calabria or the Zydeco of our beloved southwestern Louisiana nearby. If there’s an accordion nearby, count me in. Accordions, the mobile musical terroir machines, for me.

To see this father and his sons, now grown up, let’s back up. The food was raised at his farm: The grapes were made into wine, the prosciutto, the bread and so on. The children were raised here, too. Heart and soil. That’s Italy in a New York second.

This man and his wife took on the stewardship of a land he didn’t even own. They are caretakers. Correction, they are caregivers. From the dirt to the denim, the family was infused with caring, for their vines and their children. The Camerte vineyard, when I first saw it, I wanted to lie right down and die in it. And that’s not a morbid wish, please understand me. I wanted to be a part of what was going on there, on a molecular level!


There are other occurrences. Italy is rampant with them.
In Calabria , in the Veneto .

Three years before that trip to the Marche, I was looking at some newly planted vines in Barbaresco. The area was called Montestefano, and the family there was quite excited about this vineyard that would be ready in a five or so years. Five years! We’ve gone through a mate or two, two cars, two houses, a stereo system, two computer upgrades and 3 cellular phones in that time. And for what? Those vines on those steep hills, patiently working their way up, easing the love from the dirt into the vine, year after year, grape after grape. And what do we understand about that, back in the meeting rooms? What do we need to know about that, how do we convey that sense of connection to our fledgling wine-drinkers back in the U.S.of A.?

Look at the way the youth of Italy are exposed to the traditions, but even more important, the love for the obligation to share in the caring for the land and the fruits of one’s labors. For the young boys in Matelica, it first started with a baby pig. The young sommelier, for her, it started walking with her grandmother, picking chestnuts in the Langhe. It grew in them, and they grew into it. Not another new Game Boy or another new pair of designer jeans. Not just that. Time, the influence of the daily communion with the earth.

That’s what makes it so difficult to help our wine industry professionals and the clients. I can’t put that on a sheet of paper with a score and a good price. I try. But it seems so much less than the inspiration that I feel when I take an hour and think about it, reflect on it. Question is, as it has been for some time, how do we get folks to slow their world down to take a peek into this wonderful Emerald City of Wine? How do we impart this in a meaningful way, to the person who decides which wines go on the rack at the wine shop, to the neighbor in the new house who wants to know more about Italian wine? And how do we get it to stick?

This ain’t plug and play. This is day by day…really hard work. But it is so rewarding when, at the end of the day, one is drawing a glass of Nebbiolo or Barbera and looking at some incredible site across the hill (even if it is only on this page or in your mind). The neighbor’s house may not be new and improved, and the internet connection might still be dial-up. That’s right. Very, very right.


Sunday, September 10, 2006

Sunday in Italy ~ La Vendemmia Comincia


Harvest is in full swing in Italy. Gianpaolo Paglia from Poggio Argentiera is picking and crushing, and the rest of the country is doing so as well, or are getting close. Some pictures follow. Buon Lavoro tutti!




And then we can enjoy the fruits of their labors!


Friday, September 08, 2006

T.G.I.F. ~ Thank God It's F...

... F i n a l l y starting to come alive again in the business. A short posting today. Mostly pix. But the signs, though mixed, are encouraging.

First, a stack of blue sheets means the trucks are full, and it's been this way, all week !

September has taken what August kick-started right into the end zone.

Wine tasting glasses waiting to go into the dishwasher

The sales people are back and tasting the new wines, the suppliers are crawling all over the market (good thing), and we even have some good old-fashioned college football and Pinot Grigio tailgate party promotions! We're back for more, baby!

Also check out this ad one of our talented "millenials", Julie Tijerina, did for an Italian winery, Illuminati ...Right on stuff ! Hey Wine Rock Star, is this getting closer to your age group and audience? Lemme know, we're listening to you!


Thursday, September 07, 2006

Eugenio Spinozzi ~ Buon Anima

Sept 7, 2006 the Full Corn Moon~
Slated to be the brightest full moon of 2006, and I’ve got a house full of ones from the other side. They let themselves in when I went out to run, but they left calling cards (a dead mockingbird and an “unusual” mushroom). And they messed with the alarm and the hard drive, and the batteries are acting wacky. But these are my friends and family, and I love them, till death does us unite.

In memory of Eugenio Spinozzi, who died one year ago today. He was from Italy, I live in Texas. I was in Sicily, and he died in Texas. He was a dear, dear friend. His sister wrote to me today, “I like to imagine he is on one of his trips to the States and that one of these days he will come back.” She in Italy, imagining he’s in the US, and those of us in The States are thinking about his retirement in Italy. That’s how some of us cope.

I'm making dinner one year later, the buon anima meal. There's a full moon, the brightest of the year. I have Pachino pomodoro sauce from Sicily, oil from Tuscany, cheese from Emilia-Romagna, and pasta and wine from Abruzzo.

The mushroom from the garden, I knew I wasn’t going to touch. The wine, though, found me in the cool room, looking for an old one. A 1985 Illuminati Zanna fell into my arms, though the cork was near term. All the while the water is softening up the pasta, Eugenio is yelling, "don’t overcook it." The house is filled with so many spirits, but all of them enjoying the show, no one helping. Take a photograph, what, you aren’t going to open that bottle? Oh yes, you are! We will breath in the wine, you will open it. OK, OK….

I do really mean a moment of somber reflection, but for some reason these spirits want to have fun. Look, I’m not on the other side, I don’t know what they know, but I am outnumbered. Like the week starting September 9, 2001, when my bedroom was filled with every known and unknown relative, floating, hovering above my bed, for nights and nights, until that terrible Tuesday.

For those who don't know, Eugenio brought the wines of Abruzzo, and Illuminati, to America, literally, in his suitcase. A young man, when he started, looking to find himself and his way in the world. For 25 years he traveled endlessly, crisscrossing America with his wines and his stories. He made a million friends and was one of the postwar Italian wine ambassadors who brought the good news from the vineyards. He wasn't perfect, but he gave all he had for the cause. And he is missed.


In the first picture above, we are back in Venice, it’s 1987, and we are going to visit Girolamo Dorigo. He has a few wines, old and new, he wants us to try. A diversion into Venezia, my young son is with us. Eugenio is young, I am young, and the world is ripe like a cantaloupe. And we’re digging in.

The Zanna is ready tonight, it’s 21, it’s legal now. In those days the producers couldn’t use the term Riserva, so they substituted the word Vecchio. Aged. Now it’s really vecchio. The soil in Controguerra, when it rains, picks up the aromas of the deep dark soil, the fig leaves, and the funky barnyard rustic wonderfulness. There’s no animal on the label, the animal is in the bottle. Zanna, the fangs of the wolf, Howl Mountain.


No duxelles, no confit, no fois gras, no wobbly kneed Italian here.

Grab some vines, and let’s roast us some meat.

No cream, no balsamic reduction, no coulis.

Straight, simple, pure. Italian as it was and is meant to be, by God.

Good soul, good memories, good place.

Good Bye Eugenio, Buon Lavoro!








Wednesday, September 06, 2006

WWWW ~ Wagons Without Wheels Wednesday

Six Degrees of Separation
The photograph above is from April of 1972, San Francisco. I was there, behind the camera, my trusty Canon VIT. The scene could be now, Anywhere, USA.

Where am I going with this? Well, I look at those souls in that photograph, and have been thinking about them now for 34 years, wondering what those 6 people represent, symbolically, in these degrees of separation.

Contrast it with the picture Nick Ut took barely two months later of Phan Thi Kim Phuc. Odd that I am noting this, seeing as I wish to mention a blog I just read, from a photographer who was at that place on that day in Vietnam. Accounts have him changing film during the peak moment . The photographer is David Burnett, whose work I have admired for some time. His latest work is Aftermath, New Orleans and Mississippi after Katrina. Please go to his link, look at those images. Take your time, let it sink in.
David & Iris write a “blob”, We're Just Sayin, which I read, enjoy and recommend. It’s very personal and real.

There were two postings especially that I liked, one dealing with women, wine and perception, Subtle Differences , and one about Death and Loss, Four Funerals and No Wedding. I am a fan, of the images, of the words. Thank you both!

Well, I came upon David’s Aftermath and Iris and his blob through a link on William Gibson’s site. So the 6 degrees started with :
1) William Gibson
And moved to:
2) David Burnett
Who was in Vietnam with:
3) Nick Ut
Who were both photographing over there in 1972 while I was in San Francisco photographing those 6 people

But that’s only 3 .

So it got me to thinking about my next 3:

4) New Orleans and the loss we have all had in so many ways. But as I am supposed to bring wine and food into this somehow, the focus, in this moment, is on the loss of a heritage and respect for food and wine that is not only lost in New Orleans but also closer to home. Which brings me to:

5) The Italian wine dinner that has French food names.
Seems I got signed up to do a wine dinner, down the road, with an Italian theme. Sounded good. The Italian place had a good review, and I talked to the manager. He’d email me the menu, and I’d choose the wines. Small detail in the world of really important life and death issues. I know that. So days pass and more days pass, and then an email shows up with the menu and the wines. I was in NY at the time and remember emailing and mentioning it to Alice Feiring, who said something like, “That’s nuts, lucky you.”

Do you ever get one of the spam emails from Russia or Africa that have a stream of words that almost sound like they make sense? Something like, “The missionary said he’d stick it out for five more years but the illness was wiping out the natives. When the boat returns Adolfo will send for his beloved Belinda to restore the country to its former glory…”, stuff like that. Well the menu read like that. In fact, I wrote another friend and asked him if he could recognize anything Italian about this menu. His reply was, "The menu is Nouvelle Cuisine. They’re trying to be sophisticated.” Oh.

So I imagine if the missionaries who established themselves in that area in 1718 have only just succeeded in converting the population, I shouldn’t be too impatient. Yeah, they didn’t want me to choose the wines, they already did that too. OK, I get it.

Maybe I should just catch a plane back to LA or NY instead of going to this wine dinner. Anybody got any ideas? It is part of my day job, so I imagine I could just take it as an assignment, like David Burnett would. Would you, David? Alice, I think I know what you would advise. Anyone else, David A., Regina, Mom?

Which leads me to:

6) The French wine hater.
Just when I thought it was safe to go home and get out for the weekend, I went to my favorite refuge, Mr Wok. Not like it sounds folks, this is serious stuff. Peking Duck (special order 24 hours in advance), BYOB, and some great folks, Amanda and Jack and his dad. Anyway, I love these folks! So we’re in for a Friday night meal with a bottle of Texas wine, a Grenache/Syrah Rose from buddy Kim McPherson , who just happens to be going to do a stint at the New World Wine and Food Festival in that town where the Italian Nouvelle Cuisine dinner is slated. So, see, it all connects. But I digress. Back to the French wine hater.

There’s this ol’ boy I’ve seen a time or two in Mr. Wok, and I said hello, in my idiot-friendly way. They had wine, we had wine. Come to find out he’s from the east coast (like the manager of that Eyetalian restaurant down river from here, the one who has gone all wobbly and nouvelle on us). Anyway, this ol’ boy launches in about how he hates French wine. Anyone who has read this far knows I’m all about Italian, but really more importantly I think wine, made well from anywhere, is something to behold. Even from Texas, yes, I am here to tell you!

Now I'm just in a surreal enough of a mood (channelling the energy of one of those 6 people in the photo above?) to ask him why.

Why? I ask him. Come to find out he doesn’t like those French politicians. Then comes my Bucky Fuller story. I heard him tell it to me when I was a student back there in California, when I was younger and he was breathing. Bucky said this, and I relayed it to the French wine-hater person. “You take a spaceship and load up all the politicians and take them on a round trip around the sun, no one back on earth skips a beat. You take that same spaceship and take all the farmers on that same trip and guess what, we all starve in 6 months!” Bucky said it. I wasn’t 6 feet from him when he did.

And I told the dude that, and he looked kind of strange at me and said, “I’ve got a magnum of Australian Shiraz I got on closeout for $3.33, want to try it?” That was right after he told me his prized possession was a 1967 Chateau Citran and that his favorite wine was from Tuscany, especially the Barolo.

The wheels have fallen off the wagon. And we are careening like way out of control, full circle.

What a ride. A real E-ticket.

And tomorrow we get the full moon.

It doesn't get any better than this.

Sunday, September 03, 2006

The Reach of the Grape

I was looking at the previous posting and the picture of my family, before I was born and wondering: What did they eat, what songs did they sing, what were their dreams? New immigrants with such high hopes for their America. What would they make of our America now, 70 years later?

My grandfather in his backyard with his brick bar-b-que and his grape arbor, lots of good times, always with the wine flowing, probably the first place wine touched my lips. Those grapes, their reach, always somewhere, on the wine trail, in those early California days.

It isn’t the same for me and my son. Those traditions of gathering and sharing a meal and a flask of wine are now changed, it seems, forever. Now we roll out the custom grill and fire up some exotic hardwood charcoal and throw on a couple of grass fed or organic steaks. The wine is better, the food is healthier, but it just isn’t the same, is it?

I was remembering some of my favorite wine moments in the past. Many of them had nothing to do with fine wine as we know it today. An ancient memory has me looking in the refrigerator of my dad’s spec house in the desert, the one next to Sinatra’s home near Thunderbird C.C. He drove a Thunderbird. Odd, I thought, at the time, because in the fridge was a bottle of Thunderbird. It was a Thunderbird world! It was summer in the desert and hot, and the water tasted antiseptic and chlorinated. In contrast, the "T-bird" was citric and spritzy, refreshing on that hot summer day, not quite as cool as those starlets swimming in the Chairman of the Board's pool. But a glimpse, a peak, over the fence into adulthood, and wine. I still remember that encounter. What's the word?

There was a hike on a trail I once took up to Tuolumne Meadows in the Upper Yosemite Valley. I hauled in a couple of bottles of Almaden Mountain wines, one red and one rosé. In those days 750ml bottles were available. At 8,000+ elevation, a little went a long way. But over the course of a few nights with friends, the soft, fruity, almost innocent naturalness of the wine has never left my memories. Not a great wine, but a great memory of an experience which wine played a part in.

I once brought home a bottle of 1975 Souverain Cellars Petite Sirah. Bill Bonetti, later to become famous for his role in the branding of the Sonoma-Cutrer wines, was the winemaker at the time. I remember pouring it in a glass beaker that was better suited to beer or water. But the aroma of the wine in that glass was so intriguing and so delicately perfumed that, to this day, I still look for it in other wines, what that wine gave me that night. It was a marker, something I will never forget.

One day one of my colleagues, with the authority to do so, decided to open a magnum of 1911 Lafite. It was a low fill, and we couldn’t sell it for much anyway. So he hauled off to Sonny Bryans BBQ, when Sonny was still alive and on the line, and gathered some brisket and ribs for the lunch back at the office.
The Lafite was interesting. It was 75+ years old, same age as the U.S. president at the time, without the benefit of lighting and secret service. It was brown and losing its fruit in the glass. But the elusiveness of the fruit made it precious. Here was a wine that was dying, and we were allowed to sip its last drops, breath its last perfume before it said adieu. Wonderful moment.

I was in Galveston once upon a time, working in a building on the Strand. Someone in our office decided we should open and try a bottle of the 1964 Giacomo Conterno Monfortino. At the time, the wine was young, not quite 20 years old. As we initially tasted it, the person who opened the wine decided we should go to lunch and come back to try the wine. Two hours later we returned to a wine that had opened all its petals and was waiting to show us its flower. Inside the glass I sensed a deep red rose and a pink one, too. There was also a bittersweet chocolate and a reduced, almost balsamic, intensity. It was thick and juicy and wonderful, and I’ll never see wine again quite like that.

Last year in Portugal we came upon a 1945 Dows Vintage Port. I have been very fortunate to taste a lot of great wine and a serious amount of Port going back into that beginning of that last century. But to be in Villa Nova di Gaia in the house of the producer tasting a wine that only came down the Douro once in the last 60 years, that was memorable. To taste the wine in the place where it spent its youth and all of its life is to give a sense of place to a wine that relies so much on that place. It is like being part of the wine in the glass when one has that kind of experience. The wine was still young and hopeful, having been born only a few years after the gathering of my family mentioned in the beginning of this memoir. Wine made before I was born by people who no longer are alive.


That is as close as I will get to being with my family on that autumn day in 1939, celebrating my oldest sister's 1st birthday, with my mom and dad and grandmas and grandpa and aunts and uncles and cousins.

Friday, September 01, 2006

T.G.F.F. ~ Thank God For Females

At a recent family gathering, there were 3 male and 13 female members of the family.

At the recent Texas Sommelier Conference, 40% of the attendees were women.

In a NY restaurant, there are 19 women and 3 men.

In the picture above, of my family before I was born, there are more females than males.

I come from a female dominated culture.

My mom, grandmothers, sisters, aunts, cousins and nieces have been a source that has made me feel like something I belonged to. I wish my son could feel that, but sadly, times have changed.

So today, I just want to thank those who are still here, those who have been here and passed on, and those coming up in my world who represent that female side of the family I love. That sense of be-longing.

Cent'anni!

5 Blog day Links
The Wine Life
Vivi's Wine Journal
Alice e il vino
Alice Feiring - In Vino Veritas
Genevelyn Steele Swallows
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