Back On The Sake Trail

To badly paraphrase an already bad Country-Western tune: "What made Akita famous (almost) made a loser out of me." Or, put another way, I've always liked sake but it hasn't always reciprocated. While living in Akita Prefecture back in the early eighties, I was force fed a lot of it. The area was justly famous for sake and in my capacity of language teacher (have English- will travel) and visiting something like 110 different Junior and Senior High Schools throughout the prefecture, I met a lot of people anxious to show off the local artisan brews, usually with the added impetus of an unlimited 'entertainment' budget provided by the school's principal.

On the plus side, Nihonshu could act as a wonderful social lubricant: the more we drank the more my host's English usually improved- or at least so he imagined- and I am damned sure my Japanese became bloody magnificent during any of those drunken forays in any of Akita's many, many drinking establishments. The downside, however, was that sake hammered me.

And it hammered me good-particularly when served warm, and in Akita,in my mind one of the coldest places on earth, even the best sake is served that way: usually from a small tokkuri made at a local kiln (pottery, as it turned out, became a much safer hobby for me than sake) and poured into a tiny guinomi that dispatched the sake down my waiting maw oh-so-smoothly. The problems started for me when I realized that as a guest in Japan, that little cup in your hand would never, ever be empty and that warm liquid seemed to get absorbed into my chilled interior startlingly fast.

Especially dangerous was when the local sake was consumed as part of Japan's Holy Trinity of alcohol: many beers to start, sake in the middle and whiskey to finish. Three or four nights of this ritual consumption a week definitely took a physical and mental toll, especially when doing battle with my Japanese colleagues who, lacking the enzyme to actually digest alcohol, seemed to have the endless capacity to guzzle copious amounts of alcohol, turn bright red, vomit our late-night ramen or udon on the sidewalk and wake up fresh as daisy.

I struggled to develop countermeasures to this endless sake drinking, but being so deeply a slave to Japan's complex web of obligation and obligatory drinking, I was essentially doomed from the start. I knew I was beat when during a rare two-day visit to a school on the Japan seaside, I spent a very long first evening getting totally polluted with a particular Japanese English teacher only to have to walk into his classroom to teach at 7:00 the next morning. It just sucked that he looked like he had spent the previous evening playing tiddly-winks and turned in at 9:30, while I was staggering, bleary-eyed, in front a classroom full of students still exuding sake from every pore. As much as I loved Akita and the people there, I was sort of grateful when my tenure ended and I could finally confine drinking to my own terms.

During my ensuing decade-plus in Japan I drank very little sake as my blossoming love of grape wine interceded and the smell of even the most delicate junmai-shu would instantly send me reeling back to that helpless feeling of having some equally zonked Japanese drinking buddy cheerfully pouring me onto the last train towards Akita City.

But time heals all wounds and, now 17 years after repatriating ourselves, I am sufficently dried out, very provisionally, and able to crawl back on the horse that threw me and, this past weekend, Anne and I accepted the invitation of some new friends to attend a sake tasting dinner at Hanazen, a very fine, very authentic Japanese restaurant in Orinda.

This is a very sweet little spot and if you don't know it, it's worth finding (www.myhanazen.com). It's run by a young couple: laconic Kenji, the taciturn, very Old School Chef and his lovely, loquacious wife Coco, daughter of one of Japan's best known sake critics, who conducts the tasting while Kenji turns out one lovely plate after another. Our autumnal menu started with a delicate piece of cod tempura stuffed with a few strands of green o-cha soba. This was paired with Kamikokoro, a soft lactic tokubetsu junmai from Okayama. Next came a stunning trio on one lovely plate: a bracingly briny surf clam sauced with a bit of fermented sea cucumber and served in a hollowed out persimmon, a snow ball of silky tofu and crab and an incredibly delicate piece of ocean trout wrapped somehow in a swirl of crisp green apple. This was a thrilling melange of tastes and textures and the sake, Otokoyama Kimoto, was aromatic, fruity and very good, if not a terribly dynamic companion to the dish. More sake came, of course, an Okunomatsu Ginjo to accompany a well-executed saba (mackeral) baked in miso; a very good Kikusui Hiyaoroshi- a seasonal sake paired with an oden that completely restored my faith in this dish, ruined for me by the smell of rancid over-simmered dashi in the typical Japanese convenience store, and a powerful, dry Suijin from Iwate, alongside a small platter of exquisite sashimi and sushi.

This really fun night of sake and food has opened the door for further investigation into the now-expanding world of imported sake. I've refrained from selling it at PRIMA as I would be the only one of my staff other than Peter with any knowledge of it and that knowledge was for many years tempered by my reluctance to get re-involved. My visit to Hanzen is causing me to rethink this, and next year may see Chef Peter and I reinvestigating our Japanese roots and creating our own version of the sake dinner. In the meantime, make the time to visit Hanazen and enjoy for yourself some very fine sake served the way it should be.....with some wonderful food.

The Guys In The White Coats Are Finally Coming For Me

In addition to being a lamely infrequent blogger, I am also a fairly lame worker-outer. (I would use a term like 'exercise enthusiast' except that I am not terribly enthusiastic about it.) I do my 20-30 minutes on the enormous elliptical trainer we inherited from my father-in-law almost every day- I'm proud of that. Besides, not using the damned thing would be a travesty as it dominates our sitting room like a 4000 pound white elephant and its alternative uses (coat rack, clothes line, object d'art) are not very palatable to my wife. So every morning I hop up there, set the controls to 'fat burner' (this thing has a control panel like a jet fighter!) and pump away. I face the television and usually pop in a DVD or videotape from our smallish, random collection and work through each one in maybe four or five sessions.

In fact, I am not particularly a believer in collecting DVDs and tapes that we'll probably never watch a second time. We do have a lot of Japanese cultural stuff and a few of the old Japanese classics because of my wife's work but, beyond those, there is no rhyme or reason to the disks and tapes we have sitting on that shelf: the complete Buffy The Vampire Slayer series, Poirot, my brother-in-law's Deadwood (awesome. frantically peddled my way through that back in July), A Fish Called Wanda and an assortment of other things I have no idea how we obtained. Who the hell is Eddie Izzard and where did we get that awful DVD?

But working out on the elliptical is really boring. Even if whatever video I have on is riveting, my mind tends to wander. In a semi-workout trance one morning I managed to convince myself that the large print over the fireplace is really a one-way mirror and behind it are a group of serious white-coated researchers who view me like a lab rat on a wheel. They monitor my workouts carefully noting the speed and revolutions I accomplish each time. Recently they've taken a great interest in how my workout results vary depending on the stimulus coming from the television.

They noted how poorly I performed as I waded through the entire Ken Burns Civil War video series. It's wonderful stuff for sure but despite the 'Johnny Comes Marching Home' and 'Dixie' soundtrack I merely plodded my way through Fort Sumter, First Manassas, Antietam, Gettysburg and Vicksburg. The pace barely even picked up when Grant took Richmond.

But, those secret researchers discovered, good food movies can really get me going. Babette's Feast, even with its sluggish pace and barely understandable soundtrack, got me to over 1300 revs in 20 minutes. Eat, Drink, Man, Woman, especially during the first twenty minutes when that awesome Sunday lunch is being prepared by Chef Chu led to an impressive 1350+ revs! Tampopo, always a favorite, almost caused me to break the machine I went so fast.

The white-coated folks are not so sure this is a good trend. It's my unhealthy fondness for food and wine that has necessitated my need to be on that thing every morning in the first place, one points out. OK, but I have a few more food movies I may need to put into the rotation. Thank goodness we now have Netflix. No, not Sideways. I saw that 'unmounted' twice and hated it. Who can watch a movie where not one but both protagonists are despicable? I told the researchers to stick to their business and quit suggesting flicks for me to watch.

Late last week I popped in The Concert For George, a DVD of the George Harrison tribute concert Eric Clapton organized at the Royal Albert Hall in late 2002, a year after George died. My first two elliptical sessions comprised the first part of the concert, a full Indian orchestral piece beautifully conducted by Ravi Shankar's daughter Anoushka. The results were, as noted by the guys behind the wall, quite brisk. This is the first music DVD I've watched while working out and the results are quite promising: over 1500 revs in fact. The Western part of the show started this morning with moving renditions of Harrison's "If I Needed Someone," "Give Me Love," "Beware Of Darkness," and "Here Comes The Sun." Damn, during the really beautiful "Give Me Love" (sung by ELO- Willbury alum Jeff Lynne) and Clapton's "If I Needed Someone" and "Beware Of Darkness" I was pumping like mad and the time melted away. The white coats must have been very pleased and will, I am quite sure, nod with pure satisfaction when the ex-Beatles, Tom Petty and other rockers hit the stage over the next few days.

As for the future? I pretty much choose my videos randomly. It could be The Graduate, The Triplets of Belleville again or Seven Samurai if Anne doesn't have it at school.

Whatever it is, I am hoping that those gentle folk with the clipboards approve.

A Recent Obsession

Yes, I know.
Bloggers blog therefore making me the world's sorriest excuse for a blogger.
So sue me. I am over it. Even though I spend most of my waking hours writing wordy, mistake -ridden prose at my job, I hereby resolve to write wordy, mistake-ridden blogs more frequently.

One of my excuses has been that I have nothing to blog about, and even if I did, who'd really want to read it. But I've been told by those that know far more than I that that's a sort of reverse Narcissism and I should just shut up and write.

Besides, I've been puzzling over some wine things these past few days and maybe the act of writing about them may help sort them out.

Over the summer my wife and I traveled to Austria, Italy and Croatia and at the risk of creating the internet's ten trillionth travelogue, now, some ninety days after returning, some of the trip's most salient wine related points are still resonating with me.

But first of all, let me say that if you've never been to Dubrovnik in southern Croatia....go. And go soon. I've been lucky enough to have travelled to many, many places and my first steps into the walled city count as some of my most memorable. Please conspire to have your first view inside the city walls to be after sunset. That was a moment I doubt any of us- my lovely wife and San Ramon neighbors and friends Jim and Marla Simon, will ever forget. The city's sheer medieval glory is stupendous: far more than enough to counteract the effects of the resident's relentless pandering to its vast tourist population and, no matter how tired you are and how you much you resent the fact that there is a charge to do EVERYTHING in Dubrovnik, also make the trek over, around and, literally, through the city's walls and take advantage of one or more of the well-advertised docent-led morning tours. We spent two hours with a guide who was sixteen and living in Dubrovnik when the Serbs started bombing the city in December 1991. You'll never look at the city, or any of the poorly knit confederation of warring states that we grew up calling Yugoslavia the same way again. There are tours about what it was like to be Jewish there, an architect's view and many more. Make the time, even though the temptation to just sit in one of the amazing street-side cafes drinking ice-cold beer and watching an endless parade of fascinating people may prove irresistible. Fortunately we were able to make time for it all.

We also spent some time visiting wineries on Croatia's scenic Peljesac (Pel-yeh-zhak) peninsula, Central Dalmatia's most important wine growing region. This is certainly worth the detour if you're staying near Dubrovnik, if for nothing else than to see the ancient towns of Ston and Mali Ston and the impressive 'Great Wall' that connects them. A few hours beyond gets you to the heart of Peljesac wine country and a widely scattered multitude of tiny towns and wineries ranging in size from the miniscule ("Please don't make any noise while you're tasting, you'll wake the baby.") to several larger ones with tourist buses and all. The best-known appellation on the peninsula is certainly Dingac (Ding-gazch). It is here that the local Plavac red manifests its best expression, making wines that remind me somewhat of a mythical blend of Gevrey-Chambertin and Barbaresco....but, unfortunately, not always necessarily as good as that sounds.

In fact, let me refrain from making too many qualitative statements about the Croatian wines I tried- one way or another. Our friends and I bought a mixed case or so of reds and whites from a good merchant who gave us wines that covered the length of the Dalmatian Coast. But we consumed them mainly while sitting on our balcony overlooking the gorgeous Adriatic, usually as the last giant cruise ships left the harbor just a few hundred yards under our noses, not the best circumstance for serious wine evaluation. We could have been drinking battery acid and it would have tasted good and, in fact, there unfortunately were a few wines that did a pretty fair imitation I am sorry to say. And there were several other wines we tried out in wine country that were also, how to put this politely, rustic. But, at their best- and there were several wines that were very, very good- the whites were clean, zingy and loaded with mineral. The Malvasia-based wines tended to be blowzier, even fat, and when I could find a well-made one that was of a current vintage (not as easy as you might expect), the usually inexpensive Grasevina, the Croatian synonym for Welschriesling, was a solid choice for watching the ships and fishing boats leave Dubrovnik at sunset. The reds were even more of a mixed bag even though 90% of them were made from the Plavac grape, a close cousin to Italy's Primitivo and a direct descendant of our own Zinfandel. They could be lean, acidic and unfriendly or ripe, raisin-y and filled with volatile acidity. The best, as I said about Dingac, had a Pinot Noir-like charm while also reminding me of the thoroughly delightful Zweigelt (my current favorite red) of Austria.

But I need to get to the original reason for this post which involves not just Croatia, but the fascinating area just north, where Italy, Austria, Slovenia and Croatia come together, one of the most intriguing areas I've ever visited. My wife and I spent a couple of days in Friuli, Italy, not my first time but hers (and I've been on the wine trail throughout the northeast several times before) but it was a glass of the Vodopivic brother's fascinating Vitovska (an indigenous white grape from near the Slovenian border) at Terroir, a wine bar in San Francisco that features 'natural' anti-avant-garde Luddite wines that rekindled my interest in the region and has me ferreting them out from a variety of sources.

The area makes the best whites in Italy. I think that's a safe statement and I apologize to Alto-Adige, Campania, the Veneto and Piemonte all of which produce wonderful whites. But nowhere in Italy can you find a greater selection of wines that define the state-of-the-art AND are uniformly high quality at the low end too. And even before you get to the envelope-pushing fringe, you have to acknowledge winemakers like Silvio Jermann, the Fellugas, Mario Schiopetto and others for making some of the most exciting wines in Italy. But it's that lunatic fringe, a generation of young iconoclastic winemakers, that have taken their (very long) ancestral legacy and turned it on his head. This is where more than a few winemakers (including the aforementioned Vodopivic wines) have made the antique modern again by fermenting their wines in terra cotta amphorae, much like it was done many centuries ago, as well as reintroducing other techniques that have long been abandoned. Even though wines like Jasko Gravner's Breg and Radikon's Ribolla Gialla are idiosyncratic, to say the least, they are thrilling to drink as you can palpably feel the past bleeding into the future right there in your glass. I've been cautiously buying them over the years and putting them on PRIMA's wine list but it is a rare diner indeed that comes in looking for them or even notes their existence. I'm OK with that because every once in a blue moon I hear the next day (I'm rarely on the floor at night at PRIMA) of a customer- often a domestic winemaker- who experiments with a bottle or two and I find that very gratifying.

I have gone as far as put one of my very favorite whites, a Vitovska from the distinctly out-there Edi Keber, into the high-end wine club I control at PRIMA. The hundred or so members of our Super Consorzio have proved to be enthusiastic consumers of some of my more not-quite-ready-for-prime-time wines and, even though I suspect many of the Super Consorzio newsletters (another excuse for not blogging) wind up in the hamster cage, I am proud to be getting wines like these into the hands of many wine lovers who would never have voluntarily chosen a wine like Vitovska (or even heard of it) for themselves.

In that way our world view increases just that much.

Last Days In Piemonte....the final post

Friday, May 21st

I can’t tell you how good it felt to wake up and not have to face 80-some odd Nebbiolo-based wines this morning for breakfast. With the event over, I was left to my own devices so I checked out of the inn and motored back to La Morra (Santa Maria to be exact) for an 11 AM appointment with Cristina Oddero and her niece Isabella.

With apologies to their young, male enologist, Oddero is a winery of women. The old winery and cellars are immaculate and tastefully splashed with brilliant color in the form of discreet geometric murals on some walls, multi-colored birdhouses dangling from the branches of two deceased birch trees and an ancient dark wooden table in the tasting room livened up by clear molded plastic chairs in zingy orange, yellow and red. It’s such a personal, pretty place that subtly combines the winery’s significant past with a present that’s vibrant and optimistic.

I am afraid that I am taxing Cristina’s (very good) English with my incessant questions but we’re all game and 24 year-old Isabella, winemaker and the daughter of Cristina’s sister, another principal in the winery, is more than willing to help. The estate here is much more spread out than their neighbors up the hill at Montezemolo, and a sampling the wines at Oddero is like taking a tour of the Barolo DOCG’s greatest vineyards. The La Morra estate vineyard runs from the winery up to the top of the hill and the ancient Santa Maria church, hence its name Bricco Chiesa. The rest of the contiguous vineyard flows out from the winery culminating in Bricco San Biaggio, another ziggurat (who thought I’d get to use that word three times in the same document?) capped by its own, much smaller tree. The winery’s other properties include a spot in Barbaresco’s Gallina vineyard in Neive, a two-hectare plot rented from the Church of Alba since the 1990s, Villero, perhaps Castiglione Falletto’s most famous vineyard, Rocche Castiglione, right on the border between Castiglione Falletto and Monforte, a tiny parcel of Bricco Fiasco in Monforte, a postage stamp piece of Brunate situated at the very top of the vineyard, a wonderful spot called Mondoca in Bussi Soprana and the Odderos are one of the few lucky owners of a piece of Serralunga’s famed Rionda, now, once this new legislation is passed, to be called Vignarionda. They also make a zingy white from Chardonnay and Riesling planted in La Morra, a snappy Dolcetto d’Alba and Barberas made from Barolo area vines and a higher toned, quite structured wine from vines near Asti.

In a vintage like 2006, going through the line up of Oddero Baroli is extremely instructive. While the Barolo Classico (the newly approved way to say Barolo Normale) combines the sweetness of La Morra with sterner stuff from Bricco Fiasco, the Falletto wines (Rocche and Villero) are more intense, tannic and vibrant. I didn’t try the Bussia today but the 2004 tre bicchieri winner we have at Prima is big, muscular and briary but, for all that, has nothing on the Vigna Rionda, a classic in 2006 that captures the essence of its great terroir.

The Ladies Oddero took me to lunch right up the hill at the Osteria di Vignaiolo, a totally unassuming but really delicious little place with a lovely outdoor seating area. This was one of those sunny days where the sky was so blue it scorched your eyeballs and everything in sight was in full bloom! I’ve had a lot of great pasta in my day but when you are drinking Bruno Giacosa’s lovely bubbly and a bottle of Oddero’s 2004 Villero Riserva, deep in genial conversation with two well-spoken, lovely women, well, everything just sparkled. I hated for it to end. But then we went off to have a look at Brunate, the top from which we could see just about everything there was to see from Serralunga to La Morra.

Before I took my leave here and headed off to Barbaresco and La Spinetta, I took a few minutes to consider the rise of the woman winemaker in Piemonte. Cristina and Isabella are part of wheel that is spinning (has spun, more accurately) women to the forefront of the business of making wine in the area. Everywhere you look, it seems, there are women changing the face of the craft and men lamenting the fact that no one seems to be having sons any more! These women, while perhaps loath to drastically change tradition in the area, are doing so nonetheless. The list is getting long. Beginning with Chiara Boschis, Cristina Oddero and Maria Theresa Mascarello, the list also includes the Scavino sisters, the Altare sisters, Marina Marcarino at Punset, Bruna Grimaldi, Gaia Gaja, Bruna Giacosa and a new generation of twenty-somethings featuring the likes of Marta Rinaldi and Isabella Oddero. These are women with the power to determine the direction of their families' legacies through these challenging times. Will they make big changes that will enhance Barolo’s commercial appeal or embrace Nebbiolo’s ‘particular’ character and the fact that it is indeed a niche wine, but a very special one? Judging by what I’ve seen so far, the future of the Barolo wine business is in very good hands!

Giorgio Rivetti's La Spinetta Barbaresco operation is located near the back of the appellation. It’s a functional, modern building, quite suited in personality to the ultra-flashy, super intense wines of Rivetti. Ironically, Giorgio was in California the week I was in Piemonte, and his lovely companion Anya, now very pregnant with their second child together, was at Giorgio’s Tuscan complex being interviewed by a German newspaper during my visit. But, have no fear, Giorgio’s ebullient, very funny niece Dr. Manuela Rivetti was on hand, along with enologist Stefano to offer me the winery’s current releases and a complete look at the amazing 2009 and 2008 Barbareschi and Barbera from barrel and tank. Not many people, maybe no one else I can think of in Piemonte, farm for intensity like Rivetti. Every vineyard he farms is closely spaced and yields are far below the norm in Piemonte. They soak up oak better than any other Nebbiolo I’ve tasted. My favorite of the Rivetti line up is the Barbaresco Gallina in Neive. It has a signature floral quality, violets really, that in the several barrels we tasted from, showed in spades. The 2009 is a real beauty and the 2008 not far behind. Starderi and Valeriano are divided into two sets of barrels, one from the lower portion of the vineyards and one from the ‘alta.’ As you might expect, the wines from the higher portion of the vineyards are tighter and more structured and will form the base of the finished wines while the lower portions make richer, fragrant wines that are all about their sex appeal. I like Starderi second and Valeriano third although I know that Giorgio likes them the other way around.

Debuting this year will be a Barbaresco Bordini from Neive. Located between Starderi and Gallina, these twenty-plus year old vines will make a delicious wine priced between the Barbareschi and Rivetti’s superb Nebbiolo.

From one Rivetti winery to the next I went, driving to yet another castle town, Grinzane Cavour, home of Giorgio’s Barolo winery at Campe. Current DOCG laws prohibit wines to be labeled Barbaresco and Barolo to be made under the same roof unless, of course, you were grandfathered in when the laws changed. Hence the Odderos have both their Gallina Barbaresco and all their Baroli in one winery while Rivetti was forced to build a separate cantina just for Campe. Having been here several times already and with both Giorgio and Anya out of town, I went, instead, next door and checked into the wonderful Tenuta Ottocento (800) Bed and Breakfast. Caretakers Matteo and Isabella have a cute little place and, for E70 including a great breakfast, it’s a well-located inexpensive alternative for lodgings in the Barolo area.

Matteo recommended the nearby Trattoria nelle Vigne, an interesting five-minute drive through the Campe vineyard. This is the classic Trattoria but in a more modern vein with a young, tattooed staff on the floor, rather than just mom and pop. You just don’t feel as well taken care of, I guess. Left to my own devices, I drank a half a bottle of 2008 Belle Cole Arneis and half of a bottle of 2007 Poderi Colla Nebbiolo. There is no menu here and the antipasti comes rumbling out: Achiuge (Anchovies) in a nutty, miso-like paste, fritters and lardo, a chopped salad of celery, peppers, lettuces, chicken and toma, asparagus draped in a rich fonduta and two ice cream scoops worth of carne cruda. I had a choice of three pastas and chose the ubiquitous Piemonte specialty: ravioli with sage butter, followed by a tasty Coniglio con Peperoni. A lot of food and wine for E51.50! It’s an OK place to eat alone and I am betting this is a fun place for lunch too.

Saturday, May 22nd

Market day in Alba is a lot of fun. The normally placid city becomes a beehive of vegetable, meat and fish stands, acres of clothing, farming tools and everything else under the sun. It’s daunting to visit alone. I had some things I wanted to shop for but was simply overwhelmed by the vast expanses of things to buy, all the people and this dazzling sunlight that turned every reflective surface into laser beams that dazzled my eyes. With terminal brain lock, I staggered around for a few hours and bolted back to La Morra for a welcome solitary lunch at an osteria-wine bar in town.

The two young guys seated next to me look barely old enough to drink but they are geeking out on a bottle of Kante Sauvignon with their lunch. I contented myself with a glass of Almondo Arneis and, when the Langhe Nebbiolo I asked for was gone, the server opened a bottle of 2008 Conterno-Fantino Nebbiolo Ginestrina, a knock out that I doubt we’ll ever see in the United States. I ate some delicious burrata with a reasonably ripe tomato and some spaghetti with zucchini flowers.

After lunch I sauntered over to good friend Marco Marengo’s cantina right across from the La Morra bank. Marco and wife Jenny have been making some really, really stylish wines from plots in Roero (one of the few that get the great Valmaggiore fruit), Brunate and the romantically named Bricco Viole. Marco loves his 2006s, calling them the most 'important' wines he has ever made and, indeed, they seem to have bucked the trend of softer, lusher wines in La Morra, with a Brunate that rocked. His 2006 Bricco Viole is, as always, a delicious, fragrant wine with lots of stuffing. The nicest surprise is the 2008 Nebbiolo Valmaggiore. It’s a real tasty wine with great fruit and a juicy quality that makes it irresistible!

By 4 PM it was time to hit the road and I said good-bye to La Morra and headed east towards Lombardia and Milano. I decided to visit Lago Maggiore, the site of some previous fun (are you reading this Eric and Chris?) but it was crawling with day-tripping tourists and after driving around a bit, I decided instead to point my car to Malpensa, and found the not-so-appropriately named Hotel First, just a few minutes from the airport. The highlight of my stay here was being able to sit outside on their patio and enjoy a late dinner of Tagliatelle Carbonara as the sun went down. The server, who doubled as the hotel’s porter, brought me out a very tired bottle of 2006 Prunotto Arneis but not even that terrible wine could dampen my enthusiasm for this lovely, lovey evening, my last in Piemonte.

No choice, I guess but to go home!

Thanks for reading.

Day 4, Montezemolo's Revenge?

Thursday, May 20th

As for 2006 in Monforte and Serralunga? Here, clearly, is where the vintage shined. These wines, thanks to their more stripped down nature, showed less fat and more classic Nebbiolo character than anything we’d tried all week. The terroir was more evident and so were the flaws, as they could not be hidden by the layers of sweet fruit we saw in, say, La Morra. Serralunga is a patchwork of small growers who traditionally grew for larger producers and, only in the past twenty years, have made wine for themselves. As a result, quality can be a little irregular. Like in Burgundy, just because you have a great piece of earth under you, doesn’t mean you can fashion it into great wine. Still, I would rate the vintage here a solid *** or even ***+ and, if you stick to really good producers with a track record, you will find some wonderful wines for your cellar in 2006. Here were my favorites from the limited amount tasted- and remember, Clerico, G Conterno, Giacosa and several other high profile producers, did not have wines in the tasting.

***+
2006 Gianfranco Alessandria Barolo San Giovanni- where has this been all my life?
2006 Poderi Aldo Conterno Barolo Colonnelo- find a cold dark place and put this in it.
2006 Azelia Barolo San Rocco- very complex, beautifully made
2006 Seghesio Fratelli Barolo Vigneto La Villa- elegant, nuanced and extremely complex
2004 Massolino Barolo Reserva Vignarionda- a blue chip that really shined.

***
2006 Abbona di Abbona Marziano Barolo Pressenda
2006 Poderi Colla Barolo Dardi Le Rose-Bussia- nice old school stuff
2006 Parusso Armando Barolo Bussia- intense and complex
2006 Elio Grasso Barolo Gavarini Chiniera- speaks well for Clericos 06s as well
2006 Podere Rocche dei Manzoni Barolo Big d’ Big- yes, it is Big, and modern too
2006 Guido Porro Barolo Vigna S. Caterina- a perfect calibration wine for this vintage
2006 Guido Porro Barolo Vigna Lazairasco- cooler and darker
2006 Germano Ettore Barolo Prapo- balanced and softer
2006 Pira Luigi Barolo Marenca- tasted his Rionda later, ‘bout a toss up
2004 Germano Ettore Barolo Riserva Lazzarito

Lunch proved to be revival of sorts for me thanks to the tajarin pasta that helped get me back on an even keel, although I did take it a little easier through the walk-around tasting that followed, tasting mainly the 2000s and a few odd balls, of which there were very few. My earlier caveat about the 2000s was not swayed in this room either as they were, as a group, backwards, tight and briary. Keep them away from your corkscrew for the time being. Some highlights were:
2000 Famiglia Anselma Barolo Riserva Adasi- a lighter, approachable wine now
2003 Germano Ettore Barolo Cerretta- I love the 2003s now. Some are really elegant!
2000 Massolino Barolo Riserva Vigna Rionda 10 Anni- the classic 2000. Everything,
2006 Pira Luigi Barolo Vignarionda- a great bookend to the earlier Margheri

After the tasting Thursday, I drove over to Cordero di Montezemolo, one of the older benchmark producers of La Morra, but one that has been off my radar for many years thanks to some dodgy importation arrangements in California. That has changed with their alignment with good friend Enrico Nicoletta and importer Wine Warehouse. It’s good to get to reacquaint myself with this top producer because clearly, at this quality, and, potentially, some very fair pricing, they figure in my plans at PRIMA.

I met with Alfredo Cordero, the young scion of the ancient Cordero-Falletti family. The Fallettis built Castiglione Falletto across the valley from La Morra some 600 years ago and called their home vineyard on the La Morra slope ‘Monfalletto’, or Mountain of the Fallettis. The Corderos are a branch of the now extinct Fallettis and have been making wine here for a very, very long time. Alberto and his sister are taking over for their father and are responsible for putting this important property back on the map. The key to the Monfalletto site is the Gattera hill, a well-known cru in its own right. Shaped like a ziggurat and topped with its distinctive cypress tree, Gattera is one of the best-known landmarks in all of Barolo and, thanks to its sun-baked exposure, one of its best vineyards. (Careful, when looking down from La Morra to mix Gattera with the Oddero’s little pyramid shaped hilltop with its own, much smaller, tree!) In the best years (and Cordero calls them ‘terroir’ years, so recent vintages have been 1998, 1999, 2001 and 2005- not what you’d expect looking at the Spectator vintage chart) he makes a wine called ‘Goretta’ from vines of the sunniest side of the ziggurat and bottles it only in magnums. Sorry to say, he didn’t open one for me! In addition to the Monfalletto, Gattera and Goretta bottlings, Montezemolo makes a wine they call Enrco VI from the Villero vineyard across the valley in Falletto. This has become their flagship wine, as its quality and ability to age are impressive. Though I forgot to ask, I suspect that in future vintages, it will have to be called Villero Vigna Enrico VI. Cordero also makes a damned serious, very ageable Chardonnay and some very delightful sparkling wine that we already sell at PRIMA.

I was a day late to try the old bottles he had opened in the cantina. The 1958, opened for journalists three days before, was, Cordero said, finally faded in the bottle but a 1990 Chardonnay, served to me blind and having been opened for a few days, was fresh, lively and undeniably one of the great Chardonnay-based wines in Piemonte. The 2007 version shows its lively, really exotic flavors off really well….a wine to watch. It probably won’t unseat Aldo Conterno’s Bussia d’Or as my favorite Piemontese white, but I would certainly buy some if Enrico decides to bring any in. But, knowing Enrico, he’ll say that there is already too damned much Chardonnay in America. Can’t argue that point! As for the Nebbiolo, the 2005 Barolo Monfalletto was cool and sleek while the 2006 was more open and complex with a boatload of tannin. For La Morra in 2006, it’s a pretty dense, intense wine. The 2004 Enrico VI was very dark, brooding stuff, powerful with oak, tannin and spice. It’s quite dry now as it settles into a long, long nap. The 1998 Gattera, on the other hand, is the perfect example of a wine that has shed its youthful impetuousness and is growing into itself. It’s not mature by any stretch, nor is it a baby anymore. This is a serious property.

The rather serious (you could say ‘dour’ if we weren’t talking about someone so young) Alberto turned up later in the evening in bright purple, very shiny shoes at the Nebbiolo Prima Sayonara Party held outdoors under ideal conditions at the Castello Barolo. It was a genial all-star cast on hand to share bottles of their wine, endless passed antipasti, a pasta bar and an awesome 1960s cover band with a lead singer that was a dead ringer for George Harrison circa All Things Must Pass! I was too busy eating, drinking and chatting up winemakers, journalists and my colleagues to make any notes, but there were some great wines proffered by the producers including, among a score of other delectables, a fabulous, if still tight, 2001 Produttori Montestefano Riserva Barbaresco brought by Aldo Vaca. Normally I loathe stand-around-and-mingle parties but one couldn’t help but have fun in this company. I took it easy because of the rocky start I had to the day and the fact that I had operated a motor vehicle to get there, but the grappa I had back at the inn with David Ridge was about as satisfying as any I can remember and when I hit the pillow, I got a full six hours sleep which, for me, is a long, long time!

Day 3, Finally Getting Serious In Barolo

Wednesday, May 19th

Before the tasting this morning there was a presentation highlighting the new official geographic demarcations of the Langhe, specifically Barbaresco (completed and in effect from the 2010 vintage) and Barolo (still wrangling, but expected to be in effect in 2011). Basically, a lot of the sub-vineyards and fanciful proprietary sites will be sublimated and the region’s Burgundy-like cru names will be exclusively used. In other words, a wines like Paolo Scavino’s Bric del Fiasc, a Piemontese affectation of the same vineyard Luigi Scavino at Azelia’ calls Bricco Fiasco, essentially the same sites at the top (Bricco) of the designated cru called Fiasco will now each be called only ‘Fiasco.’ Non-official names for specific plots follow the cru name and get the designation ‘Vigna’ beforehand so, if the Scavinos wants to keep that Bric in there, they can write ‘Scavino/Azelia Barolo Fiasco ‘Vigna Bric’ or something like that. It’s to give greater emphasis to the 166 recognized crus of Barolo and 65 of Barbaresco. Of course this is Italy, so there was no overriding control over the process and each individual commune got to devise its own designations. La Morra and Serralunga identified a slew of named vineyards while Monfotrte created relatively fewer and larger designations. The continuing wrangling in Barolo seems to be on the fate of the famed Cannubi cru, a giant vineyard that everybody seems to have a piece of……stay tuned. The new maps, by the way, are available to see at www.langhevini.it.

By now we have the tasting routine down and my new best friend, the affable Romano, Sommelier-For-Hire and all ‘round good guy, had the pours going into the glasses as soon as we staggered through the door. The theme this day would be Barolo…..Barolo, Barolo, Barolo, all 2006. The line-up highlighted the villages of Grinzane Cavour, La Morra, Verduno and Castiglione Falletto. It turned out to be quite a grab bag with quality in La Morra all over the place. A few were overripe, even prune-y, while others had green streaks a mile long. Unlike classic, terroir-driven vintages like 2001 and 1999, in warmer vintages like 2006 and 2007, the wines can lack definition and verve. Still, there was a lot to love here and having just criticized them, I am also here to sing their praises. The wines are sweet with copious amounts of red currant fruit, a bit of brown herb (that fennel seed again) and broad and persistent tannin. There is ample freshness in most of the wines, but if this is a vintage where you want to taste the dirt in the wine, La Morra probably won’t be your village. Castiglione Falletto was harder to evaluate, as these wines were quite inconsistent, some with the sweetness of La Morra whle others seemed muddled with dry, raspy tannins. Overall, though, I find these to be very good, if not excellent wines in most cases. There are many in the *** category that I will buy myself. Here are the highlights:

***+
2006 Vietti Barolo Brunate- many thought this the wine of the tasting, if not the week
2006 Cordero di Montezemolo Barolo Villero ‘Enrico VI’ iron oxide, red currants, classic!
2004 Mario Gagliasso Barolo Riserva- like cinnamon crisp cereal, exotic and sweet
2004 Cavallotto Barolo Riserva Bricco Boschis Vignolo- just ravishing!

***
2006 Ciabot Berton Barolo Ciabot Berton La Morra- a benchmark for La Morra
2006 Rocche Costamagna Barolo Rocche dell’Annunziata Bricco Franchesco- very promising- the wines from Annunziata did very well as a group.
2006 Mauro Molino Barolo Vigna Gancia- the best I’ve ever tasted from this producer
2006 Eraldo Viberti Barolo Rochetteviino, La Morra- ripe but balanced
2006 Mario Gagliasso Barolo, Rocche dell’Annunziata- I need to search this guy out
2006 Cordero di Montezemolo Barolo Bricco Gattera- knock out!
2006 Gianni Voerzio Barolo La Serra- controversial, too modern but a nice drink
2006 Marengo Mario Barolo Brunate- plump, easy to love
2006 Marcarini Barolo Brunate- yes, I gave it three but be wary of this wine and the La Serra too…they are atypical of the stuff normally produced here. ?
2006 Enzo Boglietti Barolo Case Nere- new to me, classic…my favorite La Morra
2006 Burlotto Barolo Acclivi Verduno- this winery makes the best wine in Verduno.
2006 Alessandria Fratelli Barolo Monvigliero- pretty. La Morra like charm
2006 Cavalotto Barolo Bricco Boschis- huge! Too huge?
2006 Oddero Barolo Rocche di Castiglione, Falletto- another classic wine
2006 Baroli Barolo Villero- a classic from a classic vintage, may be lacking sex appeal?
2006 Oddero Barolo Villero- even better than the Rocche! The Odderos are on a tear!
2004 Ciabot Breton Barolo Riserva- a beauty
2004 Enzo Boglietti Barolo Riserva- exotic fruit, bold tannins
2004 Cascina Ballarin Barolo Riserva Bricco Rocca Riserva Tistot – new to me
2004 Cavallotto Barolo Riserva Bricco Boschis- San Giuseppe- a black hole!

It is at this point that I remind you that there were some wines notable for not participating in this event. Not tasted were favorites from the two Corinos, Fratelli Revello and several others. That’s the only reason I can think of for their not being on the list! ;-)

The disappointments: Renato Ratti made a murky, funky Barolo Marcenasco in 2006. And no matter what the press says about Silvio Grasso, I just don’t get the wines. I scored Grasso’s Ciabot Manzoni a *, in other words, thanks for showing up, now go away. Andrea Oberto, another typically reliable producer, made a hard, woody wine that was really unpleasant to drink.

Some random alcohol fueled thoughts at the end of the tasting:

They say the more you know, the less you know and that seems to definitely be the case here. Few people, save my dozen or so colleagues, can say they’ve tasted more 2006 and 2007 Nebbioli than I will this week. By the time I am finished this week, it will number over 450 wines. For a while it seemed it would be easy to make broad generalizations like, say, the press seems so willing to do- already baptizing 2006 as the next great vintage of the century and 2007 as the next still. The truth is that there are good and bad wines made every vintage and these two are no different. What a tasting of this magnitude has enabled me to do is not only calibrate what the common points are, not only in the broader sense, but also within each of the villages and crus. And, as I tasted along, I could identify certain wines as benchmarks (i.e. showing off all of the attributes and or failings I’ve identified) and plot them on an imaginary graph with points landing either above or below my imagined standards. Those meeting or exceeding those benchmarks get the coveted Rittmaster ***! Still, as I say, for all I now know, I don’t know enough and the proof will come when these wines have weathered their trip across the Atlantic and have had enough bottle age to show their true characters.

With the wines of Monforte and Serralunga still to come, here’s how I would rate these vintages overall, as if such a thing could possibly mean anything.
2007 Roero **+ -sweet, ripe, but all over the place
2006 Roero Riserva ***(-)
2007 Barbaresco ***(-) easy to love but are they too sweet and, ultimately, too simple?
2006 Barolo *** for the vintage
2006 La Morra **+ lots of sweet fruit, some lacking freshness
2006 Castiglione Falletto ***? Jury is still out. Think it’s good. I know Villero was!
2004 Barolo Riserva ***(+) This is a mythical blend of 1998 and 2001!
Added later:
Serralunga *** - no question that this is the sweet spot of the vintage- good structure but not too austere.
Monforte d’Alba *** Same here…..lots of good wines.

After another nice lunch on the castle patio at the Barolo castle, it was time for the day’s second tasting featuring many 2000 vintage wines among others. Some of the highlights for me follow:

2000 Alessandria Fratelli Barolo Monvigliero- very pretty! One of the better showing 2000s.
2009 Alessandria Fratelli Pelaverga….no, Pelaverga is not going to be the Next Big Thing but this fruity, light stuff is sure fun to drink! It’s aVerduno thing.
2000 Enzo Boglietti Barolo Brunate….no, I’ve not seen much of Boglietti in the US, but the wines are sure nice. The 2000 Brunate is very good.
2000 Baroli Barolo Villero from a double magnum….another very good showing 2000, from a big bottle no less. The 1998 from the same cru is showing very well as well. I like 1998.
2000 Ciabot Breton Barolo Ciabot Breton….this Barolo producer doesn’t make big, ‘noble’ wines but they are solid and keep turning up near the top of every tasting in which they appear.
2000 Rocche Costamagna Barolo Bricco Francesco- another winery I don’t know, but with good vines in Rocche dell’Annunziata (a particular strength in La Morra in 2006), the are a property to watch. The 2000 has some real finesse, like a top Burgundy.

The dinner Wednesday was one of the highlights of the trip as it was put on by the Langa In, a group of 19 quality-minded producers in loose association. The names and personalities involved are impressive. Here are 17 of the 19 producers, the ones whose wines I actually tasted at dinner. (Can you believe I am such a wimp that I was only able to have 17 glasses of wine at dinner? Am I losing my touch?

Azelia-Luigi Scavino
Pierro Gatti
Paolo Scavino
Viberti
Domenico Clerico
Andrea Oberto
Conterno-Fantino
Elio Grasso
Pelissero
Parusso
Deltetto
Giovanni Almondo
Pira-Chiara Boschis
La Selvatilo
Malvira
La Caudrina
Matteo Correggia

The dinner was at Malvira’s beautiful Villa Tiboldi estate in Canale. The spot is simply gorgeous and the meal, with the exception of tough Tagliata of Veal, impressive. The Ravioli Bianchi (white Ravioli) filled with braised hen and topped with an egg yolk sauce was one of the best dishes I’ve ever had in Piemonte if not the best damned Ravioli I ever ate. This lively group was stimulating and fun. I sat next to Giorgio Pelissero from Barbaresco and Claudio Conterno, half of the Conterno-Fantino duo, and across from old friend Chiara Boschis, who makes her E. Pira wines as well as having just sold her stake in Borgogno. Their wines were sensational. Highlights included my first taste of Almondo’s 2009 Bricco Cilegiolo Arneis, my favorite in the category for several vintages, the intense, profound 2005 Clerico Barolo Pajana, the deep but still very young 2004 Scavino Rocche dell’Annunziata Riserva, the elegant 2000 Chiara Boschis Cannubi from magnum and three different ice-cold Moscati d’Asti!
My big mistake?
Washing it all down with my second espresso of the day. I rarely drink coffee and I don’t think I’ve ever had two in one day like I did Wednesday. I suffer from insomnia so I know sleeplessness, but I simply wasn’t prepared for a caffeine-jet lag fueled night where I slept not one wink. Finally, with the sun streaming through the windows, I staggered downstairs to the breakfast room and let a few colleagues know I wasn’t going to be on the bus this morning! I slept for three hours, took a shower and drove myself over the Barolo to pick up the pieces. I worked through an abbreviated version of the 76 wines lined up in the Ampelion, the staggeringly good Baroli from Monforte d’Alba and Serralunga, and formally began my day at lunch up in the castle.

Stay tuned!

Breakfast of Champions, Day 2: Death by Nebbiolo

Tuesday, May 18th

Made a note to eat more breakfast this morning. After the pummelling I took yesterday at the hands of all that Nebbiolo, I had to muster all of the ballast I could in order to successfully do battle with an extra early start, and what turned out to be another 85 wines at the Ampelion at 10:00 AM.

The morning started with an excellent lecture on the characteristics of Nebbiolo by Dr. Anna Schneider at the Palazzo Mostre e Congressi in Alba. In the did-you-know category are the facts that the earliest mention of Nebbiolo in Barolo goes back to 1266, though there was no appellation of Barolo as such until the Priest of Barolo made it so in 1869. Nebbiolo is, of course, native to Piemonte with Valle d’Aosta claiming some 26 and Valtellina, in Lombardia some 900 of the roughly 6000 hectares planted. Sardegna’s 26 hectares, a legacy of the Savoys, alas, is not Nebbiolo at all, Schneider claims. It’s Dolcetto! Take that Sardegna.

Another interesting fact is that of the three major clones we know, Rose, Lampia and Michet, only the latter two are suitable for creating newer selections as Rose makes just that, pink, not red, Nebbiolo. But Michet, while an excellent clone, is ravaged by fan leaf virus that both lowers yields (yay!) but also brix (uh, oh). In the seventies and eighties, selections were chosen for their ability to produce high yields but, since 1980, quality has become the foremost criterion.

Tasting Two at the Ampelion.

Some words about the 2007 Barbareschi from Neive: most of the wines all fell within a fairly narrow bandwidth of flavors and ranged from super ripe, almost gooey, to only slightly less so. My favorites have a feminine spice to them. The biggest turn quite tannic, but I didn’t mark that down if they had enough freshness and verve to counter. Many didn’t. Here were my Neive favorites:

***
2007 Rivetti Massimo Barbaresco Froii-chocolate, cinnamon powder
2007 Angelo Negro et al Barbaresco Cascinotta- darker personality
2007 Montiribaldi Barbaresco Palazzina- classic in style- almost got the +
2007 Cascina Saria Barbaresco- new to me but very good
2007 Antichi Podere dei Gallina Barbaresco Vigneto L Ciaciaret- big boy!
2007 Sottimano Barbaresco Cotta- archetype of a success for this vintage
2007 Punset Barbaresco Basarin- some burned wood but excellent quality
2007 Antica Casa Vinicola Scarpa Barbaresco Tettineive- who is this?
2005 Dante Rivetti Barbaresco Riserva Bricco- gonna like these Riservae!
2005 Rivetti Massimo Barbaresco Riserva Serraboella- top notch.

2006 Barolo Vintage

Always nice to warm up with 40+ Barbareschi to prepare for the main event! The 2006 vintage in the Barolo zone was considered a more classically styled one with the volume controls one louder….a lot like 2004, some say. My take on it is that it is like 1998 but les consistent. I identified a consistent nose of raspberry (more pronounced in La Morra as I later found, and less obvious in the more structured wines of Monforte and Serralunga). The fruit is complicated to one degree or another by hints of hot ‘scorched’ earth, something ‘seedy’ like fennel seed- definitely in the brown herb category- and beefy, mouthfilling tannins. I wrote chocolate-mint for more than a few and those often, it seemed to me, had slightly (or not so slightly in more than one case) elevated alcohols. The best were nicely balanced, juicy and restrained. This first set of wines were all from Barolo and Novello. The controversy amongst the tasters surrounded the famed Cannubi vineyard, which more than one critic in the room called ‘ alcoholic and insipid.’ I wasn’t ready to go that far but there were several disappointments from that vaunted site.

As I go through these notes now, I see that I was not very generous with my ratings but I have to say that the vintage is really good- maybe not top to bottom- but very good indeed. 2006 definitely has a prime spot in the Barolo winning streak that now extends from 1995. Here we go:

***+
2006 Burlotto Barolo Vigneto Cannubi- super stylish and elegant

***
2006 Le Ginestre Barolo, Sottocastello, Novello – a benchmark setter
2006 Elvio Cogno Barolo Ravera- woody but otherwise complete
2006 Poderi Einaudi Barolo Coste Grimaldi- top notch
2006 Giacomo Grimaldi Barolo Le Coste- why am I not surprised! This always rocks.
2006 Luciano Sandrone Barolo Cannubi Boschis- quite controversial- the Le Vigne was a disappointment and this was better, although not a mind blower. Distinct animal character in both. Something’s up at this vaunted address.
2006 Gianni Gagliardo Barolo Cannubi- rustic but in a nice way
2006 Poderi Einaudi Barolo Nei Cannubi- nearly got the extra +
2006 Damilano Barolo Cannubi- dramatic, lavishly oaked, why not?
2006 Pira Chiara Boschis Barolo Cannubi- elegant and balanced
2006 Giuseppe Rinaldi Barolo Cannubi San Lorenzo-Ravera- as advertised
2006 Giuseppe Rinaldi Barolo Brunate-Le Coste- indeed, this is spectacular
2006 GD Vajra Barolo Bricco Viole- mineral, Burgundy-like
2006 Baroli Barolo Cerequio- under the radar producer
2004 Virna- Borgogno Barolo Riserva Preda Sarmassa
2004 Borgogno Giacomo Barolo Riserva- elegant, pretty even
2004 Borgogno Giacomo Barolo Riserva Liste- the classic Neb, light but spicy

A very well earned buffet lunch (what’s up with Salad Russe? Who was the knucklehead who first brought mayonnaise to Piemonte?) was had at the courtyard of Barolo castle. But the respite was short lived as the castle dungeon was loaded with evil-minded men and women just waiting to force more Nebbiolo down our throats.

Same format as yesterday with the accent on the 2000 vintage. So here’s what I say about that! The 2000s from blue chip producers like Borgogno, Mascarello, Rinaldi,Cogno and others reveal that, unlike the Barbareschi and Roero wines above, this is not a vintage that will be integrated and perfect ready anytime soon, if ever. Of all the 2000s tasted, it was only Giacomo Brezza’s lovely Sarmassa that showed any degree of the complex marzipan-balsamico I was expecting, and even that wine had a ton of palpable tannin. The wines however did show the hallmarks of each respective property’s personalities though; Mascarello’s elegance, Rinaldi’s punch, the mineral-iodine-spice of Borgogno but the best fruit is still submerged in a sea of tannin and whether or not something more interesting emerges with time, we’ll need to wait and see. The fate that befell the 2000 Roeros is not, however, encouraging. Most of those have passed their prime and are lean and tannic shells of their former selves. Of course, as I mentioned before, 2000 was ten years ago and most of the current winemakers in Roero were still in the early stages of their careers and this was during the prime of the ‘modern’ movement where overoaking and extracting Nebbiolo was the norm. Only a few in Roero handled the challenge of this so-called ‘perfect’ vintage with grace. One would think that the wines made by veteran winemakers working in Barolo’s most established, vaunted terroirs would fare better. I know they did, but to what extent, the jury is still definitely out. In the meantime, keep those ‘perfect’ 2000 Baroli in your cellar under lock and key!

Dinner turned out to be an interesting affair. Meant to highlight the producers of Roero, it was held at the Castello Magliano Alfieri Ristorante Stefano Paganini alla Corte degli Alfieri……sounds like a mouthful and it was. And damned hard to find too. I have to mention, first of all, that I thought it wise to eschew the bus and drive out there with Aussie David directly from a brief rest at the hotel. Let’s the put it this way, the drive home, once I knew the way, was 35 minutes, the drive out, considerably longer! Our unplanned detour, however, took us through most of the best vineyards of Barbaresco and Neive at sunset, so who really cared that we were lost. It was simply too gorgeous to get too tense about it. Piano, piano! We finally turned up at the castello about an hour or so late, just in time, in fact to sit down to dinner having missed the tasting, Hurray for us! Less Nebbiolo to digest. Anyway, as bad as we felt for being late, two other parties turned up even later, one twenty five minutes after us and another a full hour. Having said earlier what a breeze it was to navigate in Italy, you should never believe what I say.

The meal was a curious affair with some interesting wines including Marco Porello Arneis magnums, my introduction to the Negro boys, Fratelli Angelo (two brothers), Lorenzo Negro and the unrelated Negros that make Pace (Pa-che). Of the three, Angelo (literally Negro Angelo e figli di Giovanni Negro) is making the best wines, well-done, sleek versions of Roero that bare searching for. The owner of Deltetto was also there so I had a chance to see Prima favorite Deltetto S. Michele Arneis against a passel of others. It fared beautifully. Amongst the others, my good friend Mario Roagna’s Cascina Val de Prete wines and the 2001 Monchiero Carbone Prunti Roero were the class of the evening. By the way, Stefano Paganini is reputed to be one of the best chefs in the area but I am not sure, based on this meal, that I would make this trip again. I know our good friend Chef Elide at Centro in nearby Prioca is the place to visit should your plans take you towards Canale in Roero. And, as we shall see tomorrow, Villa Teobaldi’s Ravioli Bianchi alone makes that a worthwhile stop.

Thanks to the straight shot home, in bed by midnight again, a survivor of Day Two.

Breakfast of Champions, Day I

Breakfast of Champions

Following are my notes from my recent week-long trip to Italy completed yesterday. It's only Day One. There are six more to go!

Piemonte, May 15-22
Sunday Evening, May 16th

At the risk of violating the copyright for Wheaties (or Kurt Vonnegut’s for that matter), I defy anyone to surpass wines made from the Nebbiolo grape as a preferred way to break fast. In fact, our small group consumed some 350 different versions over four days of tasting, all before lunch! The other 200 or so wines were consumed in formal afternoon tastings at various locations, featuring old vintages, and also at many ad hoc winery visits, extra-curricular lunches, and dinners that followed. Basically, a f**kload of Nebbiolo was consumed, much to the delight of the organizers of Nebbiolo Prima, our hosts for the week.

Nebbiolo Prima is a loose conglomeration of Nebbiolo producers from the Barolo, Barbaresco and Roero zones, loosely (in an Italian sort of way) under the auspices of Albeisa (now presided over by the amiable Enzo Brezza) and the Consorzio di Tutela Barolo, Barbaresco, Alba, Langhe e Roero- headed up by Pietro Ratti) The producers pitch in funds every year to organize a grand week of intensive tastings and ancillary events for invited buyers and journalists, highlighting current vintages from the region and trotting out some older ones in the hopes that we’ll go back to our home countries and spread the word. So here I am! Spreading the word!

I mean, how could I not? Nebbiolo? Prima? Two of my favorite things!

The event began in, and was centered around, the city of Alba, one of Piemonte’s real gems. An opening party was held Sunday evening in the commandeered Piazza Savone, in the center of the city, and featured a grand selection of local whites and sparkling wines, buffet tables groaning with antipasti and a selection of local DOP cheeses, live music and a deadening slide show offered up by the Albeise bottle people, one of the event’s major underwriters. I got to Malpensa rather late, having left London at 2:30, renting a really cool Fiat Punto (150 km/hour on the autostrada, no sweat!) and making my way west with only a very vague idea of where I was going. I arrived just as the party was breaking up (and, unfortunately just as the Albeisa bottle video was starting), had a glass of Favorita, some smoked meats, a few bites of cheese and decided to drag my sleepy ass off to my hotel.

Driving in Italy, by the way, is a lot of fun. I know it gets a bad rap and I wasn’t, mind you, trying to negotiate roundabouts in central Roma with thirty angry Vespas buzzing on my tail, but the roads are clearly marked, for the most part in really good shape, and I found my fellow drivers to be uniformly courteous and polite. The new Italy! With the exception of a few notable bottlenecks, the streets of Alba are wide and clean and the roads in the wine country lots of fun to drive on. Of course that doesn’t mean this wasn’t Italy! One line-painting crew seemed to haunt me wherever I went and consisted of about thirty orange-clad smoking guys watching one of their party run a painting machine that laid down thick white paint over the old, faded road lines. Of course this also meant blocking half the road at a time when they did the crosswalks, creating a sort of two-way slalom effect which, when involving lots of oncoming trucks, made for some true road excitement.

In hindsight, I should have brought my annoying tom-tom or found some other GPS device to use. Even though the roads were nicely marked, it’s easy to get lost like I did, going from the opening party to the hotel, theoretically only ten minutes’ drive from the square. Ten minutes it is if you don’t circumnavigate the entire city of Alba first. After stopping first at a gas station and then at a gelateria, I finally found myself on what, in the daylight, proved to be a really beautiful, very windy, road rising through the Diano d’Alba hills to Benevello, one of the highest spots in the Langhe and home to the four-star Albergo Villa d’Amelia. I awoke at dawn to a stunning view from both windows of my corner room. Dominating the north-facing window at daybreak (don’t ask….I sleep terribly on these trips) was Mon Viso, the snowy crag featured at the beginning of every Paramount Pictures movie, and the rest of the Alps. Quite a way to wake up! I took a long walk to the town (if you can call it that) of Benevello, some twenty minutes up the hill and one of the highest points in the area, to see its medieval castello (not much left other than a wall and an intriguing-looking trattoria) and Renaissance-era church. The views from there, however, are unparalleled.

Monday, May 17th

At breakfast (the usual assortment of croissants, smoked meat, cheeses, granola, yogurt, juices and such that you find just about everywhere in Italy) I met the other buyers staying at the inn, including old friend John Downing, an LA retailer, Henry, the wine director at Del Posto in New York, Eric and Mao, he from Donatella in San Francisco and she a retailer in San Jose, Aussie wine importer David Lynch, Joanne Noto, a restaurant buyer from Grand Rapids Michigan, Brad, my doppelganger from Primo Vino (no, not Prima Vini) near Denver and an assortment of other retail and restaurant people numbering around 15. Then it was on the bus and off to Alba’s slick Ampelion, a wine and grape school and research center funded by the government, growers and producers of the area and, as it turned out, our private torture chamber. It was in the large open room at the center of the Ampelion where four Italian sommeliers, four young student assistants and a table laden with 86 open bottles of Nebbiolo awaited our arrival.

The tastings were fairly straightforward and the first day’s lineup started with the 2007 vintage of Roero and gradually segued to the 2007 vintage for the Barbareschi from the villages of Alba, Barbaresco and Treiso with, just for kicks, five 2005 Barbaresco Riservae. With little fanfare, while we sat there dumbfounded, gawking at the list, the Somms began their evil task, filling our five glasses with a seemingly endless succession of Nebbiolo while we swirled, gargled and spit ‘em back, scribbled notes and went on to the next. Every few flights the assistants would whisk away our overflowing spit buckets and replace them with empties. There was a napkin full of grissini, the local breadsticks I love so much, and an endless supply of Aqua Naturale, but nothing else separating us from the onslaught of Nebbiolo we were facing.

The wines were provided by the contributing producers, some 190 of them. Most all of the big names and many of the small ones were present, but I should point out that there were some wineries that declined to participate in the event and hence I did not taste them. Not seeing a particular name in my list of favorites does not imply that I did not like it; it may be that I simply didn’t taste it! But that list is small. On the first day, for instance, the only two names I can think of that weren’t present were Gaja and Rivetti.

Before the tasting, some interesting facts were noted about recent law changes, unique examples, I think, of Italian inmates running the asylum. The producers of the mainly Dolcetto wines in Diano d’Alba and Dogliani have decided, in their wisdom, to eliminate the word Dolcetto from their appellations. Dolcetto, they say, is a grape much maligned for its name, which many interpret to mean sweet. By eliminating it, they say, it will highlight their terroir rather than the grape name. Of course, what this means to me is that Diano and Dogliani will now take their place next to the other geographically-named appellations of the region: Barbaresco, Barolo and Roero, all three of which use Nebbiolo exclusively. What’s a consumer going to think about Diano or Dogliani? I think they are barking up the wrong tree on this one.

Alba has also jumped in to get its own DOC, which appears to be a catch-all term for anything made in the region that doesn’t qualify as one of the better appellations because a) they are using non-traditional grapes like Cabernet, or b) they want to declassify a wine or sell it at a non-DOCG sort of price but want it to have more cachet than, say, Nebbiolo della Langhe. Nothing like keeping it simple, folks.

And here’s the Only-In-Italy rule: Roero, which lobbied hard to get its own name so it would be perceived on a par with Barolo and Barbaresco, was successful in the endeavor only by including a 5% addition of Arneis to the DOCG blend to diversify itself from those two. That was the rule. However, in practice, not one winemaker I asked ever actually added Arneis to his Nebbiolo. I mean, why would they? So, this year, in their wisdom, they eliminated the requirement. Uh, ok.

I made notes for everything I tasted (I used up an entire pen!) and scored them with my usual *-**** star rating. I use (-) or (+) when I think I might have room one way or another and I usually save my **** for wines that completely blow me away, something that just doesn’t happen in a tasting of this sort. In the interest of space, I’ve decided only to mention here the wines I scored *** or higher, as these are solid recommendations that no one, I think, would be unhappy with. In the event something was particularly disappointing, I’ll mention that, too.

But first, some general comments about the first day’s tasting. I won’t write about the specifics of the 2007 vintage here, as there are plenty of other pundits out there who have written of them, and I’d just be copying. It was, by all accounts, though, a very good, if very ripe, one. I found it, in the Roero and Barbaresco, an interesting and confounding one. It certainly scored high for drinkability, as there were few wines that weren’t succulent and delicious; however, unlike Barolo, as I will get to later, as a group these wines lacked a certain Nebbiolo-ness. In other words, they were ripe to the point where the essential seductive characteristics of the Nebbiolo grape becomes masked by a level of concentrated fruit (and elevated alcohol) that leaves one wondering where they would have fit in had the tasting been blind and other grapes been included. Roero, in particular, had a rough go of it. I think the winemaking here is still rather immature and no consensus of style has emerged. If you used too much barrique in 2007, for example, you made a particularly generic sort of red, good to drink but not at all thrilling to the Nebbiolo purist. I am not meaning to tar the entire vintage (so to speak) with one brush, but one has to be a bit careful when purchasing these 2007s if one’s goal is long-term cellaring. There are, as you can see from the notes below, still plenty of nice wines from which to choose.

In tasting these wines I focused on three benchmarks I established for the vintage and put each wine on an imaginary line graph with marks for where it fit in….if a given wine surpassed the average on each count, it got its ***! It ain’t rocket science, but when tasting this many wines, it became very easy. I looked for the following:
-Fruit: sour (Morello) cherry that ran to darker, almost chocolate cherry fruit the riper it got. The best had a touch of austerity with something like fennel seed leaning towards pine resin in there.
-Tannins- on almost all, they spread out at the back of your mouth. The best had nice ripe tannins that seemed to flow naturally from the density of the texture. A leaner wine with a lot of crisp tannin doesn’t bode well in my mind, but there were a few of those.
-Freshness. In a vintage like 2007, fresh acidity could be an issue. My favorites may have been ripe, had a ton of fruit, generous oak and such, but also good freshness. It’s a point in this vintage.

***+
2007 Cascina Morassino Barbaresco Ovello- Wow! Is this ever good!
2007 Ca’ du Rabaja Barbaresco Rabaja- juicy, well-filled, oaky, luscious
2005 Produttori del Barbaresco Riserva Rio Sordo- a complex, classical wine

***
2007 Az Ag Cornarea Roero Rosso- oaky and sweet
2007 Bel Colle Roero Rosso Monvije- powerful but balanced
2007 Negro Angelo e figli di Giovanni Negro Roero Rosso Prachioso- herbal, complex
2007 Fabrizio Battagliano Roero Rosso Sergentin- beautiful
2006 Monchiero Carbone Roero Riserva Printi- complete
2006 Matteo Corregio Roero Riserva Ampsej- balanced and complete
2006 Negro Angelo Roero Riserva Sudisfa
2007 Az ag Molino Barbaresco Teorema- sweet fruit
2007 Orlando Abrigo Barbaresco Valgrande- concentrated, woody
2007 Eredi Lodali Barbaresco La Casa in Collina- Cab-like, curranty
2007 Az Ag Pelissero Barbaresco Ausario- complete, gorgeous
2007 Pertinace Barbaresco Vigneto Nerve- woody, sweet, good drink
2007 Grasso Fratelli Barbaresco Vallegrande- easy to love
2007 Pertinace Barbaresco Marcaini- exuberant and fresh
2007 Sottimano Barbaresco Pajore- linear, complex
2007 Cantina del Pino Barbaresco- perfumed, exotic
2007 Produttori del Barbaresco- powerful, intense, complete
2007 La Spinona Barbaresco La Spinona- Bricco Faset- plumy, oaky
2007 Montiribaldi Barbaresco Sori Montiribaldi- soft but balanced
2007 Marchese di Gresy (Tenute Cisy Asinati) Barbaresco Martinenga- juicy, round
2007 Albino Rocca Barbaresco Vigneto Brich Ronchi- plenty of everything!
2007 Cortese Giuseppe Barbaresco Rabaja- sweet, balanced
2007 Bruno Rocca Barbaresco Rabaja- simply stellar
2005 Piazzo Armando Barbaresco Riserva Nervo Vigna Giaia- blockish, earth, tar
2005 Nada Giuseppe Barbaresco Riserva Casot- juicy and balanced

Do you want to see my disappointments, too? Of course you do. No one wants to see only the good stuff! Here are some names that didn’t perform well for me.

2007 Giovanni Almondo Roero Bric Valdiana (but their Arneis rules!)
2007 Albino Rocca Barbareco……two corked bottles and one that was impossibly lean
2007 Prunotto Barbaresco….earthy, stinky….no.
2007 Rattalino Barbaresco…..how could you like a wine called Rattalino!
2007 Bruno Rocca Barbaresco….first bottle corked, second was weird
2007 Michele Chiarlo Barbaresco Asili….primary, brutal!
2005 Produttori del Barbaresco Barbaresco Riserva Pora ….was it corked?

Shoot…..four pages and still before lunch on Day One!

We took the bus to the Albergo dell’Agenzia at the University of Pollenzo for a much-needed buffet lunch and another tasting, this time with the producers themselves showing up to four wines each, including where possible, wines from vintage 2000, now 10 years old. This tasting was a walk-around with people filtering in and out of the room as the hours progressed.

Noted: the tasting was to highlight the 2000 vintage in Roero at ten years old. The results? Not so good. The wines, taken as a group, were far advanced with fading fruit and still very grippy tannins. Of course, ten years ago, many of the winemakers in this room were barely out of diapers and Roero still seems to me to be a decade behind its older neighbors in terms of track record and confident winemaking. They get a pass. The Barbareschi in the room were better but still not of the character that made me excited about having a cellar full of them. What was up with the Wine Spectator rating that vintage in Piemonte 100 points? Of course, the 2000 Baroli have yet to be tried, but there are some serious questions here.

I didn’t find any wines in the afternoon tasting I would mention here other than several duplicates of the 2007s that I liked from the earlier session. Ca’ de Rabaja is a real find in Barbaresco. I understand that they will be imported into California this summer, and I will be first in line. I also noted that the 1999 Malvira Roero Monbeltrame, the only 1999 in the room, was a lovely testament to what a good vintage that was. Compared with Malvira’s lean, green and bitterly tannic 2000, the 1999 was everything an eleven-year-old wine should be, complex with balsamic, bitter cherry and fading roses. It was the exception that seemed to prove the rule about 2000.

After lunch, three of us, including the aforementioned Henry and David visited the famed cellars of Giuseppe Rinaldi in Barolo. While Beppe was in town doing something or other, we were shown around by his lovely school teacher wife and their daughter Marta, the heir apparent to the Rinaldi winemaking throne. Marta, 25, is fresh out of enology school and ready to go! Her Christmas present to her white wine-loving mom was to make a Riesling-based sparkling wine, the results of which are sitting in a riddling rack in the downstairs cellar. Mom has pronounced the wine ‘pretty good.’ The Rinaldi own 6.5 hectares split (not all evenly) among the Le Coste vineyard right across the street from the winery, the Ravera cru, a spot in Cannubi-San Lorenzo (the very top of Cannubi) and 2 ha in the Barolo part of Brunate. They are split into two cuvees: the winery’s signature Brunate-Le Coste and the Cannubi San Lorenzo-Ravera. We tasted from a 2007 cask of the latter that was simply ravishing. I didn’t want to spit. A 2007 Le Coste was really, really pretty and a sample of the 2007 Brunate was as close to Grand Cru Burgundy as you’ll ever get from Nebbiolo. Marta also opened for us a 1998 Brunate-Le Coste at my request. 1998 has become one of my favorite vintages of late and I wanted to see how the always late-blooming, traditionally-made Rinaldi was doing at 12 since I don’t have any myself. Mom called it a ‘rude’ vintage in the sense that it had big, angry tannins and acidity when young. And you know what? It still does. Dense still, the nose has barely begun to show the classic cardamom and spice characters I associate with this property, and the tannins and acidity are still very palpable. If you have any, put it away! Really nice was a 2008 Nebbiolo that had been bottled in April. Sweet fruit, svelte tannins and a lovely Burgundian character. The 2006 Brunate-Le Coste was sweet with cardamom and cinnamon, while the 2006 Cannubi-Ravera was a powerhouse.

Also tasted from the barrel: 2009 Barbera and 2008 Brunate.


I’ll have more to say about Marta and the rise of the young woman winemaker in Piemonte later, but it’s interesting to note that there are no stylistic or winemaking changes planned at this iconic traditional winemaking property despite the arrival of this well-trained, obviously very bright winemaking force. We can all take solace in that! And for more on Marta, check her out on YouTube searching for Le Rinaldi in Campo.

We were dropped back into Alba following the tasting only to be loaded on the bus for a barbecue out in the country featuring a score of Dolcetto winemakers and a load of meat. Dolcetto, the claim goes, is the perfect wine for barbecue, being fruit-driven with nice tannins and enough acidity to tame the fattiest beast. Still, much to the chagrin of the winemakers trying to create a constituency for the grape, for the money, even after (or maybe particularly after) drinking two dozen alongside grilled chicken, lamb, sausages and a magnificent hunk of Piemontese beef, I would rather drink Cotes du Rhone, Spanish Monastrell, Garnacha or Tinto de Toro-based reds, Aussie GSM or even American Zin at the backyard meat-a-thon. This is not to say there weren’t some fun wines amongst the two dozen, however, with favorites coming from Bruna Grimaldi, G D Vajra, Francesco Boschis and Punset.

Back on the bus and in bed by midnight. Total body count for the day? 133.

The Boss Goes Shopping.......

......or 'Water, Water Everywhere, But........'

Dinner preparations were well under way when my wife and I had a hankering for a nice glass of something cold, crisp and white to help with the carrot dicing, shallot sweating and pork pounding. The trip to the cellar out in the garage, however, proved fruitless (so to speak). It wasn’t for lack of wine, mind you, that's for sure. We’ve got a cellar full of wine, even white wine. But I found nothing to drink! A decades-old bottle of Marcassin or Rochioli Chardonnay as an aperitivo seemed excessive, even for me. After a fair bit of scrounging, we made do with a bottle of Prosecco left over from some party or other: its label was all gunky from sitting in the ice water too long but it tasted just fine.

What's a wine merchant doing with no wine? Could I be fined or something? Should I be admitting this to the world in a blog? I resolved to do a little wine shopping when I got to work the next day.

Two cases, I figured, would be enough to tide us over for the next couple of weeks or so. With our eclectic cooking preferences, particular tastes and diminished personal economy (not good!) in mind, I dragged a couple of empty wine boxes out to the shop floor and really began to pick and choose. Of course this is a process I am more than familiar with. I do it with your money all the time. But it has been quite some time since I looked at the shelves with an eye towards actually procuring wine for myself. I knew I was in good hands. After all, I had purchased every single bottle in the wine store beforehand. I wasn't going to be a matter of not finding stuff I liked.

The first half-case was, of course, Italian. Two bottles each of Fiano di Avellino from Campania and Arneis from Piemonte and a bottle each of Aspirinio d’Aversa (an oddball grape from Campania, great with Pizza Bianco) and a fascinating Biancolella from Ischia. Those will pair nicely with those salads that pass as dinner when the weather gets warm, the grilled fish of which I resolve to eat more and even a game hen, quail or chicken dish.

The remaining six holes in case one I filled with pairs of a Cotes du Rhone Blanc, an Apremont from the Savoie region of France and a nervy, perfect-for-clams Spanish white. An awesome case of white……under $160 and not one oak tree harmed.

In the second case I decided to up the ante a bit. I have a bunch of white Burgundy at home (I confess to having purchased about three cases of it this spring- a function of a bunch of deals that came my way all at once) but no New World Chardonnay that isn’t at least twelve years old. The old Mondavi Reserves, Paul Hobbs, Flowers and, believe it or not, Vichon have long since seen their best days. I popped in three pairs of guilty pleasures: Shafer Red Shoulder, Patz & Hall Alder and Hamilton-Russell from South Africa. The better to pair with those frozen Japanese scallops from Trader Joe's and that miso-glazed Chilean Sea Bass dish I want to master. (I know, I'm going to hell for buying sea bass) I grabbed two bottles of the Henri Bourgeois Mont Damnes Sancerre too. I am not really a huge fan of Sauvignon Blanc but I do love this one, and I love beets, goat cheese and all those fresh spring greens and herbs that marry so well with the grape so I know I’ll be glad I have it. I also tossed in two bottles of the Saint Peray Blanc from PRIMA's last Super Consorzio. So exotic! I’ll come up with something really off the wall to pair with it. The last two spaces I occupied with the Vieux Telegraph Chateauneuf du Pape Blanc. Yummy. Expensive but I know it'll take a pedestrian meal and make it great. That was a hell of a second case. More than I wanted to spend but Anne will never know.

Oh crap! I forgot sparkling wine…..looks like a third box is called for.

Anne won’t be angry when she sees all the bubbly I brought home for her. She claims that there are only two times you should drink sparkling wine: When times are good or when they are bad. Two bottles each of a Rose made from Prosecco and Cabernet Franc from the Veneto and a Rose Cremant de Bourgogne, two bottles of Bernard Ledru Champagne (in case of a real goddamn-it-I-need-Champagne-right-now emergency), two Ca del Bosco Franciacorta and the rest Prosecco.

A bubbly box to be proud of. And not too expensive.

These three boxes should get us through the spring in good shape, don’t you think?

And here's hoping you decide you let me do some shopping for you too!

My Critical Mass

So, like, I woke up the other day with this large critical mass on my face and I'm not quite sure what to do about it.

I am getting a lot of advice about it, none, mind you, from medical professionals. Virtually all recommend immediate removal of said mass.....a mass massectomy. "Use a razor," said a friend, "and do it fast." Another acquaintance was even slightly more direct. "Get that thing off your face.....immediately!" was her sagacious, considered advice. The head of my umpiring association thought I was a street person when I saw him at a training last Sunday. (Hey, he gave me a buck.) But once he recognized me, he cautioned me that my mask wasn't going to fit anymore. And I might scare the kids. Other reactions have been less restrained.

My wife, though, is being quite diplomatic. But the fact that she hasn't come near me since this thing appeared on my face is, I am afraid, starting to influence my opinion about the mass' future. The fact that she tried to shoot me with a silver bullet has also served to reinforce the message, even through my thick skull.

(Good thing she missed)

To others, my critical mass is a great source of amusement. My staff at work is collecting names that our customers or suppliers call me. The Smith Brothers cough drop guys, ZZ Top, Santa Claus or Rasputin are sort of played and show little imagination. But as the mass has grown in dimension, more creative names have been bandied about: Trotsky and Frederick Douglas being my two current favorites. Frederick Douglas!? He was cool, even though I am afraid the similarities between us end at unruly facial hair. There was also 'Some Call Me Tim' from the Holy Grail movie, the dude in the Lord of the Rings and R. Crumb's Mr. Natural. Sweet!

The other day I walked into the Walnut Creek Yacht Club and my good friend Ellen yelled across the dining room "Dostoevsky is in the house!"

That shows good beard knowledge.

I've also been called Marx (Karl not Groucho), Solzhenitsin and Robert E. Lee.

And my sister sent me a beard limerick by Edward Lear involving bird nests.

Yeah, yeah. Cute. Like the time she bought me a pair of the largest, ugliest, most gaudy earrings she could find at Woolworth and sent me a single one in the mail to celebrate my getting my ear pierced.

She's subtle like that.

Slowly, because I am not as quick on the uptake as I used to be, I am getting the impression that maybe, just maybe, having a critical mass on my face doesn't look that good and my friends are just trying to break it to me gently. They say, subtlety,that my mass appears ill behaved and unruly; like my face has staged a rebellion and run off to hide in a cave in the mountains. (Yeah, I've gotten both Castro- the current non-smoking really, really old one- and Bin Laden references, so don't even try- and Mao couldn't even grow a beard)

I suppose I should be flattered that people are talking about it all. I mean no one usually mentions my appearance at all other to say I look tired, old and depressed. Now they go out of their way to tell me I look really tired, really old and really depressed.....and really very hairy. And that I should shave. Now.

And, most of all, they ask why, as in "Why did you let that thing take over your face like an alien starfish?"

No reason, really.

It just sort of moved in when I wasn't looking and has gradually insinuated itself into my life.

Having a critical mass on your face isn't much different than not, really. I sure don't waste a lot of time shaving in the morning, that's for sure. But that's certainly not the reason I tolerate it. It hasn't given me enough extra time to hit the rowing machine or walk the dogs. Nor, clearly, is vanity the motivation. I don't look 'better' with it. It doesn't hide a turkey neck, sagging jowls or scar from a knife fight. It's the same old face....only with a giant gray thing attached to it. I used to think my beard (back when it was black) made me look a little more intelligent. Now it just makes me look insane.

OK, maybe even tomorrow, it will be time to serve the eviction notice. Order must be restored and my critical mass, at least partially, removed.

Seems sort of bittersweet. Like a roommate you really, really hated but will miss once he's gone.

Puerto Vallarta II

It's sad to have to think about leaving. There's a leaden ball in the pit of my stomach when I think about returning to the grind of work, one that I think even surpasses the usual end of vacation blues: I know I am going to get my ass kicked. Why fight it?

Turns out that this place, Garza Blanca Preserve, is really slated to become condos and a very nice lady offered us this place for keeps, for a mere $1.1 million (fractional purchase available)! Wish Anne had brought the check book.

In fact, it looks like the entire Puerto Vallarta area, if not all of Mexico is on sale. Mexican architects are good! Really good. There are more than a few Japanese flourishes (like the full-autopilot toilets in the lobby!) to this place: the lines are clean, the materials good and little has been left out. And, it seems, every condo and villa from one end of town to the other, most of these ambitious projects having been started around the same time; when it appeared Mexico's tourist boom would be insatiable, are of similar quality.....giant balconies overlooking a now very clean ocean (saw whales and dolphins from our seats in the restaurant yesterday morning), comfy, sturdy, hammocks, great kitchens, local wood furnishings, and did I mention the views?

And prices, as we have been told or read at least twenty times, have never been lower! Now, Anne, why didn't you bring the checkbook again? I suppose lusting after a permanent place where you are vacationing is as natural as feeling the blues about leaving. If we had bought something everywhere we'd thought we'd like to live, we'd have a dozen houses! And we can't even afford the one we have.

Enough real estate envy.

There are a few more things worth reporting about the trip. They, inevitably, revolve around food, as it seems we spend most of our time careening from one meal to the next, I am happy to report that our lunch at the traditional restaurant at Vallarta's beautiful Botanical Gardens was one of the best meals we had. The views of the wide expanse of local flora from the second floor terrace that runs around the perimeter of the the giant visitor's center are impressive. The food is also deeplyflavored and very good and in the jungle humidity, ice cold cerveza has never tasted better. There is good (if good means regular as opposed to opulent) bus service that cost us all of $2 each so, along with the zoo, I'd sure make sure it was on your itinerary for Puerto Vallarta.

After the outstanding day at the gardens, our confidence in the buses was high enough to think it would be easy to navigate to Marina Vallarta, north of El Centro, from our spot seven and half kilometers south of town making a simple change.

That's not how it worked out.

In fact, if on every vacation, you have to sacrifice one segment to the Trip Gods for their amusement, this would be it. We were planning on visiting a (from now and forever more unnamed) restaurant co-owned by a fellow Bay Area restaurant person and recommended to us by a colleague. We had sent them an e-mail saying that we'd pop by for dinner at maybe 7:30 or so and we thought we'd leave an hour to wander aruound the marina area. We got the bus to El Centro without any difficulties but hopped on another bus indicated to us by some guy standing around near the bus stop, as he appeared to be in the know, even though nowhere on the windshield was chalked our intended destination. It was now dark and the jarring trip over El Centro's cobblestones was reassuring enough and we recognized the road that runs out towards the airport, so all was well. It was after we got to Wal-Mart (and yes, there's a Costco AND a Sam's Club, all located within a few blocks of each other) and the pack of gringos on the bus rolled off that the lights of the town turned into barely lit warrens of cobbled alleys, scary looking warehouses and row upon row of apartment blocks . We kept going and going and going, gradually relieving ourselves of all of the other passengers on the bus until it was only us. The driver looked back, raised his hands in a 'hey, I only drive this thing' gesture. We told him that we headed to the marina and he laughed right in our faces. He told us to sit and we sputtered our way around a few more corners, an impossible intersection where our single lane split a double lane of oncoming traffic like the middle prong of a fork (I thought I was seeing things) and found ourselves at the bus yard in who-knows-where. A guy there stuck us on another bus and, before you know it, (well, it was really a half hour later), we were delivered to the marina, and subsequently followed our bus adventure up with what was perhaps one of the worst meals ever!

We weren't even hungry. We had made the trip because we felt obliged to visit this Bay Area colleague only to find that he had wandered off an hour or so before we got there, (no one knew where). We ordered two glasses of Roederer Estate Brut that tasted like apple cider (storage, my friends, storage) and a perfectly reasonable arugula salad. Things, however, went downhill from there. I ordered a light sounding Farfalle Pasta with Pesto and Shrimp (OK, here's a tip, the shrimp here are wonderful. They have the texture and taste of lobster and we've been ordering them at every meal) with mushy pasta and bland pesto that was dilute with pasta cooking water. And the globs of chalky, as yet unincorporated pesto made the dish laughably bad. Anne had Spaghetti Vongole but the giant clams, several of which were unopened, had the consistency and appeal of snot and were completely inedible. Anne, wisely, stuck to Pellegrino water but I had a glass of Mexican Semillon-Chardonnay which managed to be both tasteless and bitter at the same time. Anne had a coffee, we skipped dessert and grabbed a cab home! We gave the cabbie $200 pesos for a $160 fare just because we were soooooo glad to have that evening end. The extra-ironic thing about this whole meal that we didn't want in the first place and took us two hours to get to, is that, other than the fabulous dinner we had here in our hotel that was worth every peso, our foray to the marina was the most expensive to date!

I know I am in the business and, and, as such, should always refrain criticizing other restaurants. Noted. But really.........

Yesterday the sun came out in earnest and we ducked in and out of shops in El Centro for a few hours, had a lovely lunch (keep the cold Cerveza coming, baby!) one the second floor terrace of a local dive and spent the early evening hours floating in the infinity pool (gotta get me an infinity pool!), the hot tub and the ocean. Dinner consisted of some more ice cold Cerveza and leftover Shrimp Quesadilla from the Botanical Garden lunch out on the terrace.

And suddenly its go-home day. Poor Anne. She has the cold I came with and we didn't even get to buy a condo.

See you all back at the ranch.

A funny thing happened.......

The plans were all made. A nice early flight on Delta got Anne and me in to JFK in the mid-Wednesday afternoon. We'd found a great hotel on the Lower East Side. ....super cool looking, great rate (I love you hotels.com) Dinner plans Wednesday night at the Macao with good friends Ira and Susan. Sister Jody was coming in from the 'burbs Thursday for fun and games (the Tim Burton exhibit at MOMA?), drinks at 10 Bells, dinner at Lupa (I was even leaning on Bastianich wine importer Stefano to arrange a Mario-Joe hookup). Then it was Amtrak down to Philly to meet Anne's brother Mike and his family, as well as a hard fought-for rezzo at Mark Vetri's Osteria. Particularly excited about that one. Vetri's cookbook has become one of my very favorites and this was to be dinner at the shrine itself! After two nights in Philly, Anne was to go home and I was to fly to West Palm Beach to spend a few precious days with ailing dad and step-mom Leila.
Uh, none of that happened.
I was sitting at my desk late Tuesday morning and an email popped up from Delta letting me know that they had pre-emptively cancelled our flight because of the big snowstorm bearing down on the East Coast. I was rebooked on another flight that landed at JFK at 11:30 PM. Well, that sucked. Gone was the chance to settle in at the hotel before dinner, gone was dinner. I imagined slogging to the city after midnight in the snow and cold. Well, that's OK. We still had my sister, MOMA and Mario. That's when the next email from Delta arrived. All those on that flight that arrived JFK at 11:30 raise your hand. Surprise! It may snow so we're canceling that one too.
Now, I'm getting pissed.
Since when doesn't it snow in New York in February? And there they were fucking up our min-vacation before one flake even had fallen!
I called Delta and a very nice lady named Ruby and I spoke. No, she said, they weren't prepared to just refund the whole deal and no, I told Ruby, I was no longer interested in going since half my trip was already being sacrificed to the Snow Gods. In fact, though, in the back of my mind, I was hatching a very good win-win alternative.
Yes, I was willing to postpone the opportunity to slog through 18-degree Manhattan without boots with the bad cold I had if Delta could find somewhere a little bit warmer to put us instead.
An hour of wrangling with Ruby and here we are.
Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Sorry Mario. Next time.
Anne was last here in 1975 and I've never been here. Terrific fun! Hotels.com again came through for us big time, finding us the Garza Blanca Preserve and Resort, about 8 kilometers south of town. Apparently that was once one of the area's swankiest places but had fallen on hard times a decade or so ago. New money and a very ambitious renovation plan has turned it into something special. Only opened again in late January, we scored a $450 room for $183 and were upgraded into a one-bedroom suite with an enormous balcony, a hammock we can't get out of and a view that goes on forever. Because the place is so new (we may be the first people to stay in this room) it gives off this vaguely eerie never-been-touched vibe, like the Bluth's model home in Arrested Development. But I'm uselessly carping.
It's an amazing property with maybe 40 rooms open and another 18 or 20 under (very loud) construction. The pool is magnificent; one of those infinity pools where, if you lay your chin on the surface of the water, it looks like you're in the middle of the ocean. It helps that, for the first two nights, we were the only people here! A few more souls appear to have checked in over the past day or so.
The restaurant Blanca Blue will probably become one of the best in Puerto Vallarta. The food is creative and well prepared and the wine list, prepared by a young lady named Rosa who announced that she is on her way out to work on the supply side, is very interesting. Rosa recommended a Merlot-based blend she called 'salty' from a micro-producer called Gabriel from Adobe Guadalupe. It was more savory than salty but I definitely see where she was coming from. It was powerful but supple with elegant, nicely ripened flavors of raspberry, blueberry and tar lifted on the back end by a lot of tannin and a squeeze of lemony acidity. Unique. And, alas, maybe one of the last I'll be able to afford this trip.....$950 pesos (roughly $95 US), much of it, I suspect, in taxes. This is not a wine lover's paradise. Food highlights included buttery prawn pancakes, killer 'chips and dip' made with snapper 'chips' and a Tuna Au Poivre that rocked.
But we're in Mexico and you're not.
And eating very well.
The first night we discovered Guacamole at a beachfront dive in El Centro. Yeah, we've all had Guacamole, but prepared table side with the young woman server reading us the history of the treat from a cheat sheet she had created, it was a lot more fun! And really, really good: the flavors fresh and vivid. Anne promised to have at least an avocado a day during our stay and I see no reason to argue. It's all that good cholesterol, you see.
Last night we ate at the very highly recommended El Arrayan, a few blocks from the beach in El Centro. This was probably the best meal all trip for me. The concept here is to show authentic regional Mexian cooking and do it well. The fried crickets from Oaxaca aside, every dish sounded great, looked great and if the sampling of what we managed is any indication, tastes great too! I was reminded again about the 'salty' wine when we a Pacifico on ice with about a quarter cup of lime juice and a healthy dollop of salt too, including on the mug's rim. Interesting. Anyway, El Arrayan is very well priced, colorful, friendly and, obviously, very popular. The local expats have named it Best Mexican Food in Vallarta five years in a row.
By the way, if you're ever in Puerto Vallarta, visit the zoo. Normally I find them sad places with bunches of unhappy animals trapped in filthy, cramped cages.
And Puerto Vallarta's is a lot like that too.
But the animals are so cool, very sociable (if you like sociable zebras) and really accessible. For $50 pesos you can buy a bag of goodies (carrots, peanuts, 'nuggets' and corn) to feed to the avaricious zebras, hilarious warthogs, world's ugliest dog (Mexican hairless....not really that ugly....there are those (Frank) that say my Mikey is uglier), giraffe (creepy tongues, I am sorry), camel, various monkeys, goats and asses. I've never had so much fun at a zoo. The only animals you can't go right up and touch are those that would just as soon kill you as be pet by you.
OK. I am for that.
But that doesn't mean that the zoo's three baby tigers aren't there to play with you, just under careful supervision!

Today, if we can stir ourselves beyond the infinity pool and Alfredo's tender breakfast ministrations at Blanc Blue, we may try the Botanical Garden.
Stay tuned!
Coming Up......Part II