I have been away from my blog for almost two whole weeks. In the meantime, I have traveled far and wide in the United States with much to tell and write about. Lucky for me I seem to move from one Vinitaly to the next. I know I am still stuck on Vinitaly Day 2 on this blog but the Vinitaly US Tour has taken precedence in the last month and I’m really excited for the Chicago and New York legs of the tour. Friends Tom Hyland and Charlie Aurturaola are leading seminars in Chicago and New York, respectively as is Ian Wolff of La Cucina Italiana. We’re going to have some great panels on brand building in NY and restaurant trends in both Chicago and NY. I’m really looking forward to visiting Chicago again for Monday’s event. What a great city with such a hot wine scene. Always much to learn from peers and new and old friends. If you aren’t yet signed up, please check out the information on Vinitalytour.com. If you are at the event, please come and say hello to me. I’ll be the woman in violet.
Happy Easter, Buona Pasqua – Gita Fuori Porta
Today was Easter, a holiday I love actually. I tried to go to hear Gospel music but was thwarted in my attempt by renovations at the church I like to go to. I’m glad the Church is being renovated though, it needs it.
It’s a beautiful historic church in Harlem that I like to go to when I want to hear a sermon. Instead, I made my way to St. John the Divine, another church I am partial to on the West Side. Sometimes when I stand on west 112th street and look west at the rose window on St. John the Divine, I can fantasize that I am having a “gita fuori porta,” a lovely expression for a trip outside of the city, outside of the city walls. The view looks to me like that of a gothic cathedral, like Reims or Rouen.
I love French gothic Cathedrals and have spent many a day looking through them and traveling to see them specifically. To stay with the French theme, a friend and I shared an Easter meal at my local haunt, Picnic. A bistro with delicious but too pricey food. I had a glass of Paul Blanck’s Pinot Blanc. It was bigger and fruitier than I had imagined but delicious nonetheless with lovely acidity and mineral notes. While I stayed in NYC this Easter, these jaunts made me feel like I had been on my own “gita fuori porta.”
Filed under France, Indigeous varieties, Memorable Events, Travel
Happy Passover: Kosher Chianti from Terra di Seta
Today is the first night of Passover and I brought a bottle of Kosher wine to my family gathering. I brought the wine all the way from Italy in fact, it’s the 2009 Chianti Classico Riserva from the Terra di Seta winery. I just met with Daniele and his life wife Maria at Vinitaly. They gave me a bottle of this wine to try at home and I thought I would save it for tonight.
I wrote extensively about them on this blog last year. They are a lovely couple that make a really nice Chianti at Italy’s only all Kosher winery.
Many in the States know other Italian wines but most are made by teams of religious Jews who work in an otherwise none Kosher winery. Today as my family celebrates the Exodus I know my Dad will tell the story of when his two relatives showed up after the Holocaust during the Seder. in 1948 when he opened the door to let in Elijah, he found his long lost relatives standing outside Lillian and Samuel. They were the only ones to escape from Auschwitz. My great grandmother lost 7 sisters and their families during the Holocaust, 80 people. Tonight, as always we remember them and all the others who perished because of their faith. I’m by no means a religious person but this is one holiday I always celebrate and a story I always will remember and pass on. Chag Sameach.
Filed under wines
Vinitaly Day 2: Part 2 – Lombardy & Lugana, Valle d’Aosta & Prie Blanc, Petite Arvine
Vinitaly this year was blessed with incredible weather. It actually felt almost like Summer or certainly the end of Spring. Usually I try to taste whites in the morning and reds in the afternoon. I know I am not alone in this. Areas of the country with big red wines tended to be more crowded in the late hours of the day.
Every year, I start my day in the Lombardy pavilion. It is always in the Palaexpo and is the first building when you get in the door. There are many white wines from the region that I love including of course, all of the Franciacorta wines.
This year, I had a meeting with a producer that makes Lugana. Lugana is a white wine made in the Lake Garda region from the Trebbiano di Lugana grape. While Trebbiano Toscano or other Trebbianos are often dismissed, this Trebbiano is one to remember. I tried three wines made with the Lugana and was quite impressed with all three.
I had done a big Lugana tasting two years ago as well and know that the wine can also age. I think Lugana could be the next big aperitivo wine. It has lots of minerality, great white fruit and floral notes and is relatively contained in terms of its alcoholic content, 12 -12.5%.
I also spent time on Monday last at the Valle d’Aosta counter. Another big hit from a previous Vinitaly. This year I tasted through some of the whites from the region including great wines from Ottin. I really liked their Petite Arvine, among other wines.
This wine did speak of a place and made me want to yodel, just like the Enoteca blogger mentioned. It was minerally and nicely acidic with great floral notes.
Prie Blanc, another white from the Valle d’Aosta is the grape used to make the well-known wines from Blanche de la Salle et Morgex. The wines from Ermes Pavese really stood out for me this time. I was impressed by the clarity and precision of these wines which was a refreshing change from some of the wines I had tasted. These wines screamed of place and altitude, just what I wanted – a sense of terroir.
Vinitaly Day 2, Part 1: Four Day Schedule Welcomed By Producers
I’ve been told my web posts are too long and I am aware of that. I happened to have a lot to say about Italian wines and how they have weaved in and out of my life. This will be only a 320 word post, not the magnum opus I wrote on Monday.
Word on the street in Verona, at least from producers is that the new four day schedule made the fair more trade oriented, a positive in their eyes. Sunday was crowded and Monday was even busier but Tuesday and Wednesday were very easy to manage. Yes there were problems with using your phone to make appointments.
I did some great tastings with wines from Valle d’Aosta, Puglia and Friuli Venezia Giulia which I will write about in another post. I also spent a long time tasting wines from Calabria this year from a new DOC called Terre di Cosenza DOC.
Organizing yourself during the fair is truly key because there are so many wines you want to try, people to say hello to and an entire area for olive oil, another one for food and still a third for gadgets and machines for wine making called Enolitech. In previous years I had been able to visit a few of those pavilions but this year with the four day schedule, I am sad to say that was not be possible.
Once again, I was thrilled to be able to use the very efficient press office which has been moved back to its’ old area. The technicians in the press room will always be in my heart, they found my blackberry two years ago and tracked me down using Facebook. It made me change my mind about using Facebook in general. Buona giornata!
Filed under Italian regions, italy, wines
Vinitaly Day 1: Old Friends, New Friends & Vivit – Natural Wines Debut At Vinitaly
My Vinitaly over the last four years has always started in the same way, with Susanna Crociani, my dear friend and producer of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. I have written about her wines numerous times so today, all I will say is if you are at Vinitaly, go to pavilion 8, stand B14 and try them for yourself.
Susanna, journalist friends and I have shared an apartment for most of the last four years at Vinitaly. It’s great and very homey. Last year I worked for Vinitaly during the fair so I stayed in a hotel but this year, I’m back in the family fold, discussing wines over the dinner table at our house instead of out on the town.
I wouldn’t say that we are slouching though. Yesterday we shared a pretty amazing bottle over dinner and they always introduce me to some new, exceptional Italian food product. This year we had a cheese feast which I will likely digest by next week 
but wow did I enjoy that. I tried an Italian cheese I had never heard of Monte Veronese stagionato (aged) for example.
Mostly, I learn from them,Giampaolo Giacomelli and his wife Bruna, owners of an enoteca near Sarzana in Liguria, Il Mulino del Cibus, about their winemaker friends and products that they have tried. It is a real education for me besides being very funny.
The first day I always spend in Tuscany, saying hello to old friends and trying their new wines. When I emerge from Tuscany, I try to visit a few regions every day. Yesterday I made it to Vigne Vignaioli Terroir Vinitaly, a new area within Vinitaly that focuses on organic, sustainable and biodynamic wines. There have always been producers who follow the various criteria that are required for each of these “designations” within the fair but there has never been the focus that has come into play this year.
This group of 127 producers showcases a mixture of different regions and with a variety of reasons for using natural winemaking methods.
For those who generally go to Vini Veri and Vin Natur, two exhibitions that take place during the same period of the year as Vinitaly, perhaps this part of the show is not quite the novita’, for others though it allows them an opportunity to explore these wines.
I had the pleasure of speaking at length with two producers, one from Lazio and the other from Trentino who were truly passionate about their work, their approach towards wine and their wine making philosophy. Sadly I also spoke with a producer who told me he had decided to follow biodynamic winemaking because it is a better “marketing” approach.
Like in anything else, you find people who make decisions based solely on money, others who make them based on a more deeply held conviction about something in addition to a desire to make money. Don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against making money, love to make more of it, but I did find it the opposite of what I would have expected in this part of the fair. Perhaps that is just my naivete or as I prefer to think of it, the hopeful side of my indole (nature) coming out.
The first producer that I spent the most time with was Claudio Menicocci from Azienda Agricola Menicocci Cristina from Faleri near Viterbo (Lazio). His property also has ruins from 313 AD.
He has been focused on “natural” winemaking for many years. He was the fifth producer in Lazio to follow biodynamics, he said. I tried two of his wines which were made without using sulfites, Stafilo and Rhesan. Stafilo is made with the Trebbiano grape while Rhesan is a blend of Sangiovese and Montepulciano. Claudio has more certifications than I have every seen, including the right to call his products vegan. One thing he said really resonated with me. “Wine is a food,” un alimento.
What a simple yet profound statement. When one thinks of the food they eat, of course we don’t want there to be chemicals, pesticides and the like in it. We think about vegetables and fruits and animals and how they grow, are cultivated and mature. Why should we not think the same of wine? We all know it’s a living product that changes over time.
“I don’t want my wines to be the same year after year that’s why I don’t put the year on the wine. I put the bottling date which is more a reflection of a particular time period,” he said. This too was simple yet profound as an idea. A bottling date is the same for all but if I buy a wine in May and someone else buys that same wine in December of that year, it will be a slightly different.
The second producer I met was equally as fascinating but I’ll write about him another day. I hope to go each day during the fair to try a couple of these wines.
Tomorrow, March 27, there are a number of interesting conferences on natural wines with the first French female Master of Wine, Isabel Legeron. Famed French producer Nicolas Joly will also give a talk on natural wines. Additionally, there will be a seminar on Demeter, a certified trademark for biodynamic wines. Lastly, Jonathan Nossiter, director of the film Mondovino will show parts of a new film he is working on during a talk with Giovanni Bietti, a sommelier and musician.
I was very lucky to be able to taste these wines with my dear friends Teresa and Filippo, two knowledgeable sommeliers who always bring light to my life.
Pre-Vinitaly: OperaWine, Verona, Setting Up
Verona, March, Vinitaly. Early, early, early. This year the fair seems to be particularly early and I’m here early too. Every year I come to Vinitaly in a different capacity. This year, I’m here to see my clients, my friends, as a writer and an explorer of all of the novita’ and there are many.
This odd photo above was taken yesterday during the set up day when producers get a few hours to prepare their stands before the big day arrives…today, March 25, the official opening of Vinitaly. It promises to be a complete whirlwind with lots of official seminars and tastings taking place. The dates have changed and there is one less day to get everything done. Sunday is the official start to the four-day fair. The trade seems happy with the change. The tassisti (taxi drivers) in the city less so but let’s see how it works out.
The set up was amazing. It’s hard to believe how much work goes into setting up this fair with its 15+ pavilions, 4200 wine producers, institutions, restaurants, olive oil and food producers.
As I always, I want to do and taste everything but you have to plan your day at Vinitaly otherwise, the days get away from you. One thing I like to do when I am at Vinitaly during the fair is take a walk in Verona, have a spritz at one of the local bars in Piazza delle Erbe and soak in the scene. This beautiful piazza was the center of city life and the site of the Roman forum during Roman times. It still plays that same role today.
Saturday was the Opera Wine event with the 100 Top Italian Wines chosen by the Wine Spectator. The event took place in an amazing building, Palazzo della Ragione, built between 1193-1196. That’s right, 800+ years old. It is without a doubt the most beautiful location I have ever been in for a tasting.
It was a lovely evening where I got to taste with my friend from our Milan journalist days, Eric Sylvers. We not only used to have the same financial journalist career (he still does) but we also went to the same graduate school, SAIS and a few years ago, I discovered we share a passion for wine. He and other journalists from Milan were doing a video of their tasting for an Italian paper. I will post the link when the send it to me. In the meantime, check out Eric’s blog, FoodieinItaly. I’m always starving and missing Italy when I read his posts. Nice to see you guys!
Filed under Italian Art, Italian regions, Italian wineries, italy, Memorable Events, Travel, Veneto, Wine Industry, wines
