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La fille Américaine in France, making wine (naturally) in Italy - Pt II
Uncle Emilio’s wife, Serafina, sent Anne Marie a note. “Uncle Emilio isn’t doing so well. After his last fall in the vineyard, he just hasn’t been the same. I guess, after 63 harvests, he’s been very...
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It's a Wonderful Life - with Buttercup, Coconut & Luigi
Baby LuigiWhen I "retired" in April, I didn’t really quit working. But in the last month or so I’ve retroceded a bit more than when I first got into this stage of my life.At first, I thought my friends...
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The Native and Indigenous Italian Grapes Series Round-up
Over the summer I was motivated to produce a mini series on Native and Indigenous Italian Grapes. This is a round-up of those posts, in case one or two slipped past your feed.The seven posts...
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What does it take to be a lover of Italian wine?
Everyone has their idea about what it means to be a lover of Italian wine. Some folks love to go for the rare, the old, the soaring Pegasus wines that are clever and coveted and so very desirable....
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Italian Wine in America - An Array of Abbondanza
Dallas, Texas - 1979 - Il Sorrento Old World Italian CuisineLet’s hop on the Wayback Machine, to 1979, on search of the state of Italian wine in America. Forty years ago. A blink in the eye, in...
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California Dreamin’ - Chardonnay Sidebar 1. - The Fighting Chance
California chardonnay. An odd phrase. Round and chunky in sound, those two words. A little shushy, followed by an ay! Why not? What did I have to lose? I was working on the commercial side, a little...
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Umbria - From the Stalls to the Stars
Assisi - Eremo delle Carceri (St. Francis' Hermitage)As one might be expected to do in the later chapters of life, I’ve been cleaning up my study. Actually, it feels more like prepping a dead man’s...
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Obsession and Intention - A Magnificent Tango
Wine as an obsession seems a bit odd to me these days. As I recede from the shores of the wine trade, the daily activities, the desires, the fears, the needs (are they really?) all seem to look less...
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A brief history of a working father in the wine industry
Regular readers of this blog have known for some time that I am retired from a working life. What many do not know, are the details of a life that arrived to this point. And specifically of a working...
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Finding your guide to natural wine
Assisi 1977The wines of the natural world are something I do not take on lightly as a self-assigned subject of current interest. As I see it, natural wine is not a meme, nor is it trending on Instagram...
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The veil of un-knowingness over Southern Italian wine
Tasting notes are a cinch. How does one tell the tale of Southern Italian wine with a single photograph?You think there haven’t been changes in how the South presents to the West?Compare these two PR...
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From the Archives - Finding Your Wine
Originally posted Nov. 14, 2007Vallee d'Aoste ~ Vigne de TorretteOne day on the highway in Liguria, it hit me. We were driving up and down hills, into one valley and then on to another. All along the...
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My long history with Ruchè
Sometime around the late 1990’s I was working with an Italian importer and one of the owners brought up the subject of alternative red wines from Piedmont. We’d ventured into Barbaresco with La Ca’...
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Erbaluce, where have you been all my life?
There’s nothing more enjoyable and illuminating than to rediscover a wine, a grape or a region as if I’d never had an iota of exposure to them. Such was the case with Erbaluce di Caluso from Piedmont...
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So you think you want to import Italian wine?
While I have, more than once, addressed the challenges of selling one’s Italian wine to America, it seems I haven’t touched enough upon the complexities of importing Italian wine into America. Since I...
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Grignolino and its Indomitable Illuminance on Individuality
“Do you want to know how good a winemaker in the Langhe or Monferrato is? Try their Grignolino. If it’s a good one, chances are their other wines will be as well.” Thus spoke The Maestro, at a recent...
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Carema - “Strong and Likeable as the Sun and the Stone”
Image courtesy of Cantina Produttori Nebbiolo Di Carema Imagine families, perched precariously on the side of a mountain, working the land, generation after generation, tending their vines, to make a...
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Where is the epicenter of the wine world today?
In these moments, social media sites are ablaze with folks making their yearly pilgrimages to wine fairs. A few weeks ago, it was to Germany and Prowein. Right now, the faithful are walking from shrine...
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How tall is your mountain? How important are you? How do you rank?
Life, after years of work and a "career," is an unknown until you get there. Just like life after school, or life after an eventful course of certification. For many of us, we just don’t know what lies...
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The Best Day of My Life
For an Italian wine lover, or for anyone, the idea of having something like the best day ever in this life is a ponderous matter. Not heavy, let’s not go there. But could such a day revolve around...
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