Wines of the Wind Surf, with a Shipboard Tasting

An Adriatic cruise beleaguered by rain, however disappointing in many respects, is certainly fine for exploring your vessel’s wines and bars. Diane and I undertook a lot of such investigations during our soggy week aboard the MSY Wind Surf.
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The ship’s basic wine list leaned heavily on young wines, many of them from California or the Pacific Northwest (the company, Windstar, is American-owned). We nevertheless managed to find a few bottles pleasing to our more Europe-oriented palates – a good Fèvre Chablis, for instance, and a really elegant Batasiolo Barolo, as well as a nicely maturing Pouilly Fuissé – so there was no danger of our dying of dehydration.

Wind Surf’s dining rooms were staffed by several wine stewards: Eleonora, the ship’s young senior sommelier; Noel, who served us our first evening on board; and Jaerve, who poured for us our last and talked to us passionately about wine.
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Tom and Jearve

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One particularly grey afternoon Eleonora organized a tasting of some of Wind Surf’s higher-shelf bottles, which my vinous curiosity prompted me to try, even though I have happily abandoned most large-scale tastings.
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Eleonora

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This tasting was a totally different creature. Professional tastings tend to be like marathons; this one was more like a stroll in the park. Professional tastings will confront you with anywhere from 10 to 30 wines, chosen to show an audience of journalists, importers, and buyers the spectrum of a producer, a region, a variety, or a consortium; and meant to be sampled and spat more or less in silence.

Eleonora’s tasting was quite appropriately aimed for those of the ship’s clientele who were interested in wine but not necessarily very knowledgeable about it, and it consisted of only five wines chosen from among the most exotic or most interesting or most expensive of Wind Surf’s stock.
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This audience was exactly the kind of consumer we journalists, back in the day, used to call civilians, and who – we constantly had to remind ourselves – were the people we were writing for, not for each other, as was an ever-present temptation. (I have long believed that the reason so much wine writing becomes so recherché is because writers keep trying to impress each other rather than enlighten a consumer.)

Another major difference between this tasting and the ones I had grown accustomed to: no spitting. You were encouraged not just to taste the wines but to drink them: instead of an austere plate of dry crackers or bread slices, an attractive little tray of snacks accompanied each set of glasses. Very appropriate to the audience and the occasion, I thought, although a bit of a shock to me: What’s sauce for many geese isn’t sauce for every gander.
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The five wines formed a nicely mixed group, well chosen for showing the range available on shipboard: two whites and three reds, Pouilly Fumé and Vouvray, a Supertuscan, a Châteauneuf du Pape, and a Spanish Supertuscan type.
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The Pouilly Fumé, a 2021 Les Deux Cailloux by Fournier Père et Fils, opened the tasting. It smelled quite classically of grass and smoke, with a distinct sub-aroma of wet leaves. Those elements were not as emphatic in the mouth: The wine was smoother and rounder than its nose. A little taste of dried apple came up as it opened in the glass. I found this a pleasant enough wine, even though Sauvignon blanc is probably my least favorite of the French noble varieties.
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The Vouvray, a 2021 by Alban de Saint-Pré, had a fine earthy, chalky nose and showed good body and balance. It tasted a little sweet in the finish – a bit of dried apricot – but, just opened, it was clean and refreshing. Unfortunately, from my point of view, the longer it sat in the glass the sweeter it got, but it was one of the favorite wines for many other tasters. In the Loire, Chenin Blanc yields everything from superb dry dinner wines (such as Savennières) to incredibly age-worthy sweet dessert wines, so this was a fair representative of the breed and a good introduction to it for this audience.
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Then Eleonora moved to red wines, starting with 2016 Lucente, a Supertuscan created on one of Frescobaldi’s Montalcino estates, in what was originally a joint project with Robert Mondavi. This was a wine of deep color and deep aroma, the latter still very grapey – lots of Sangiovese – because of the wine’s youth. The Sangiovese was also evident on the palate, along with other grape flavors (turned out to be Merlot) and plenty of tannin to restrain Sangiovese’s abundant acidity. This was a winemaker’s wine, not a grape farmer’s, and still very young. The blend, by the way, was 60% Merlot and 40% Sangiovese, but the Sangiovese made a fight of it.

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Then came a 2019 Châteauneuf du Pape from Maison Castel. That is about ten years younger than I like to drink Châteauneuf, but this was a good specimen, more forward and ready than I’d expected. It showed a great earthy, underbrushy nose, and on the palate dark cherry/berry fruit. It finished dark as well, with earthy, black fruit flavors persisting nicely  Despite being so young that it was almost purple, it drank quite pleasantly.
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The final wine was the oldest of the group, a 2012 Campo Eliseo Toro: Toro is the denomination, Campo Eliseo the estate. This was, in effect, a Spanish version of a Supertuscan wine: 100% Tinto de Toro, a variety of Tempranillo (a grape that is in Spain traditionally blended with others in wines like Rioja), and evidently aged long in abundant new oak. The palate was dominated by dark, dried cherry flavors and by forceful acidity and tannins. It’s a wine that needs beef and old cheeses. I thought it should have been showing better for its ten years of aging, but then I am not enamored of what all that wood does to and for a wine.
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This tasting was a very interesting experience for me. I was particularly curious to hear people’s reactions to the individual wines and to hear the questions they asked – some very shrewd, some quite naïve. As a wine journalist, I know how easy it is to get caught up with the shrewd questions and to forget that the naïve ones are just as worthy, and certainly more needing, of attention. Eleonora did a nice job of attending to both, with respect and enthusiasm. This was for Diane and me a very pleasant way to spend a rainy afternoon at sea.

A Preposterous Wine List

I’m sure that everyone reading this post has encountered their share of simply impossible wine lists. The only surprise about them is that they are so numerous: I would have hoped that in these days of much expanded wine consciousness, simple, decent, appropriate wine lists would be everywhere. But no: bad lists are multiplying like Orcs in the Misty Mountains.

Some, of course, are preposterous because of price: We all know the scandal of American restaurant wine markups. Maybe even worse are those impossibly large, multinational lists that would require an hour to read through and would leave casual wine drinkers reeling in confusion and indecision. Maybe this flatters the restaurateur’s ego, but it’s one sure way to convince a lot of restaurant diners that wine just isn’t for them.

There is also the annoying list that never changes, and seems well adapted to the particular restaurant – except for the fact that the wines you would most want with its food are never available, although they are always listed. That really irks me. But of all the ways of screwing up a wine list,  the ones that bother me most are those that make the fundamental, unforgivable mistake of being inappropriate to the menu they are supposed to complement.

I encountered such a list during a recent flight from the city for some fresh air and quiet birding at Cape May, along the Jersey Shore. It jumpstarted this tirade.

One of the additional pleasures of Cape May is its abundance of fresh seafood, always a welcome closing to a day of walking in the fresh air and stalking the wily whimbrel. The biggest and best seafood restaurant in town always has a nice assortment of oysters, clams, and mussels; shrimp, scallops, and lobsters; and whatever fin fish are in season – as well as the rarely encountered snapper soup – good eating on fresh, local seafood simply prepared.
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Oysters, soft-shell crabs, sea scallops

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This establishment does a thriving business all year round, so you would quite reasonably expect it to have a strong white wine list, wouldn’t you? Ha! To borrow an ancient Sid Caesar line, I laugh on your nose.

The guilty party sports an extensive seafood menu, with a mere two steaks and two chicken dishes as its only regular non-seafood items. Nevertheless, its red wine list (mostly California Cabernet) is fully as long as its white list, which is just plain silly. That white wine list, in its entirety, consists of:

• 4 California Sauvignon blancs
• 6 (or is it 8? I’m working from memory) California Chardonnays
• 1 sweet German Riesling
• 1 Cavit Pinot grigio.

That comes to, in fact, just four white wine choices, two of which are not well suited to anything on the menu. Not a Chablis or a white Burgundy or even a simple Muscadet in sight. No Alsace or Rhône whites, no Bordeaux whites.

I won’t even mention the array of Italian white wines that are terrific companions to seafood that not only do not appear on the list but whose very names seem to be totally unknown to the staff. I know because I’ve asked. And the house will not allow you to bring your own bottle. This goes beyond silly and into uncivilized.

This is a lazy list – probably the wines of one distributor, or even of one glib salesperson. This simplifies the restaurateur’s life but does nothing for his clients. It’s not as if a restaurateur had to invest a fortune to create a competent list, especially for a seafood house, where the primary emphasis ought always to be white wines.

Here, for example, is a very concise list from Cull & Pistol, an unpretentious (especially for NYC) seafood restaurant attached to the fish store inside the Chelsea Market:

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Now, that is not a thrilling list, but it is a well chosen one in that it covers the bases. The wines are all appropriate to accompany seafood, and they offer genuine geographic and varietal diversity. A California version of Muscadet, which is a classic companion to shellfish. A Loire Sauvignon blanc, which matches well with all sorts of fin fish. A crisp Spanish Albariño, which will do well with any seafood. A New York State dry Riesling, almost as versatile. An interesting Italian choice, a Sicilian Carricante, which should love lobster and crab. A good Chenin blanc, fine for fin fish. And to top the list, a Premier cru Chablis, which will match well with almost anything on the menu.

The most exigent wine bibber – me, for instance – can find several drinkable bottles here to complement his oysters and crab. Even if I were perverse enough to want a red wine, the modest pair that Cull & Pistol offers will work: a decent Beaujolais, and a New Zealand Pinot noir carry enough acidity to make them compatible with many seafood dishes. And these wines are all being offered at – for NYC – quite reasonable prices: most are $60 a bottle or less. Only the Burgundy tops that: The Chablis costs $84.

As I said, these selections aren’t thrilling, but they work, and they offer nice variety in a short list. Somebody gave some thought to putting this list together. In a wine-conscious town like New York, diners will notice that, and be grateful. I think they would on the Jersey Shore too.

 

In Praise of Wine Co-ops

The above is a title I once thought I would only ever use ironically. Back when I began as a wine journalist, when the Italian wine world was just beginning to awaken from its long slumber, an invitation to taste the produce of a regional cooperative was usually something I would firmly decline. Back then, most co-ops were turning out the least common denominator wine of their region – lots of it, designed to sell cheaply, to supply a supposed mass taste for nondescript plonk.

Well, the Italian wine world has transformed itself completely since then, and now co-ops are striving for quality production, and in most cases achieving it. Now, some of the most interesting tastings a wine maven can attend are those of cooperatives.

To understand how this came about, you need to know a little of the history of the co-op movement in Italy. For centuries, wine in Italy was a largely local affair, with growers – from the smallest sharecropper to the largest baronial estate – making wine mostly for personal and local consumption. A few of the larger growers bottled and commercialized their wine, but the market had nothing of its present-day dimensions. With a very few exceptions, Italian wine was very localized.

When Italy’s feudal sharecropping system, the mezzadria, finally ended (in the middle of the twentieth century!), small farmers fled the land for jobs in the cities, fields stood idle, and vineyards were neglected. A few producers with the resources bought up the land, consolidated the vineyards, and started commercializing their wines. The remaining smallholders, almost none of whom could afford to bottle their own wine, had little choice but to sell it to the big operations, usually – as you can imagine the market pressures – at a price more pleasing to the buyers than the sellers.

Enter the cooperatives. A few had been around for decades, mostly in the relatively few well-known northern appellations, where small growers had been able to merge their efforts and produce enough wine to be of interest to markets or distributors beyond their home region. Some of these are still active and very fine, especially in Alto Adige.

In Piedmont, one of the earliest and most successful cooperatives was Produttori del Barbaresco, which brought together small growers from all over the Barbaresco zone. It benefited from two key factors: a bevy of growers who worked many small but prized vineyards in prestigious parts of an important zone, and – maybe even more significant – enlightened leadership that from the beginning emphasized quality over quantity. Even now, in these days of superstar winemakers and much-hyped single-vineyard wines, the wines of the Produttori, whether basic Barbaresco, or Riserva, or any of the zone’s esteemed crus, stand in the front ranks of Barbaresco – which is to say, in the top echelon of Italian wine production.
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Produttori del Barbaresco can be regarded as the pacesetter, but other co-ops in regions famous and regions scarcely known caught on quickly. Co-ops offer many advantages for their members, far from all of whom are specialized in growing vines or making wine. Many are old farming families who love living on their land and working it. They still practice mixed agriculture. They may have only a few hectares, but some of it will be in grapes, some in wheat or vegetables, some in olive trees. Co-ops help them make a reasonable living, and they may belong to several, one for their grapes, one for their olives, one perhaps for their cheeses. Nobody gets rich, but they can all make a living and continue to enjoy the kind of life their families have followed for who knows how long.

Nowadays you can find cooperatives all through Italy, in zones both famous and not-so. Over half of Italy’s wine production comes from co-ops: I think that there are over 500 of them. Some may be quite specialized, but usually they produce the whole range of their area’s wines, and usually these days at quite a respectable level of quality.

A good example can be found almost anywhere. Tuscany, for instance, which is in all respects a quirky region of hyper-individualists, now hosts several fine co-ops in some of its most important zones. One whose wines I’ve been drinking lately is one of the smallest: Castelli del Grevepesa, in the Chianti Classico region, comprises only 18 growers. Not surprisingly, with most of them located in Panzano, Lamole, and Greve, they work mostly with Sangiovese.

Following the typical cooperative pattern, their newly harvested grapes are transferred immediately to the co-op winery where they are fermented, aged, and bottled by the co-op team – a general manager, an agronomist, and an oenologist. From those grapes they make Chianti Classico, Chianti Classico Riserva, and Gran Selezione wines. As a further economic boost for the co-op members, Castelli di Grevepesa also produces grappa and extra-virgin olive oil.
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Lately, I’ve been enjoying a lot of this co-op’s Clemente VII Chianti Classico Riserva 2018, a nicely balanced wine with lots of Sangiovese character and the kind of lively acidity that makes it a fine companion with all sorts of everyday lunches or dinners. And it has the added virtue of being quite inexpensive: It’s usually available for around $20, sometimes even less. To get a good reliable wine at that price, one I can enjoy with everything from hamburgers or steaks to, say, chicken pizzaiola: that makes me a very happy camper. You can see why I’m singing the praises of co-ops.

 

Heartfelt Thoughts on Brandy

Brandy is its own multiverse, many wonderful drinks hiding under one collective noun – and I love most of them. Many people, I think, use “brandy” as a catch-all term to signify no more than some kind of alcoholic drink, just as many country and western tunes warble about “wine” for the simple reason that they can’t work “whisky” into the rhyme scheme.

I suspect some older people may avoid brandy because of unfortunate childhood experiences with cheap blackberry brandy, which in my and Diane’s parental homes was the inevitable nostrum for any stomach ailment or incipient cold. I remember it was even forced on our dog, because the poor springer spaniel was subject to painful cramps. It did relieve his cramps, but he sure didn’t like it. Nor did we children.

I’d guess that for most actual wine drinkers brandy usually means primarily or exclusively Cognac or Armagnac. This is far from a bad pair of choices, but brandy is a much richer field than that. Cognac and Armagnac are collective nouns too, covering distillates from differing zones – Ténarèze or Bas Armagnac, Fins Bois or Grand Champagne Cognacs, just as for instances – and differing ages of blends, as well as single-vintage bottlings. These can make mighty differences, differences I have come to relish.
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I remember, decades back Diane and I metro-ing out to the wilds of the Parisian slaughterhouse district to feast at Au Cochon d’Or and finish the meal with – the real reason we had ventured so far – very old Cognacs: a Borderies and a Grand Fine Champagne. The latter was an 1893, and was so ethereal it almost evaporated on the tongue.

In slightly later days, Diane and I visited the distinguished French Senator Abel Sempé for a tour of his Armagnac distillery and cellar. This included – lucky us! – a taste of his 1875, right from the cask in which it still reposed. Velvet fire, that warmed without burning, and felt weightless on the tongue, making absolutely clear why these drinks are called “spirits.” These are flavors you never forget, and they are what make “brandy” so much a richer trove than casual drinkers suspect.
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I won’t here go into all the pleasures of grappa – I’ve done enough of that in other posts – but I can’t not mention marc. (I guess I’m in a Francophile phase.) Almost every wine region in France has its own marc, distilled either from the pomace of local grapes, like grappa, or from regional wines. These are often very fine, though even in France they can be hard to find outside their home range. Such is the prestige of the two -ac brandies that everything else has become unfashionable. But Diane and I – confirmed spirits lovers as we are – have with just a little hunting enjoyed fine marcs from the Loire, from Champagne, from Hermitage and Châteauneuf du Pape, and especially from Burgundy, where the tradition of distilling and consuming marc seems to be still quite robust. We thank whatever gods may be for such small blessings.
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One final thought: I don’t want to ignore brandies made from fruits other than grapes. Some of those distillates are exquisite. Many respond beautifully to being chilled and served in an icy glass. As with some grappas, that treatment makes their aroma blossom, and also makes them an ideal digestif on a hot summer evening. Best known of the fruit distillates is the Norman and Breton specialty, Calvados (which, despite what I just said, is best served at room temperature). But Alsace in particular produces a wonderful array of fruit brandies – poire, framboise and framboise sauvage, and mirabelle, to name the most widely available ones. In Paris, once, far too many years ago, we acquired a bottle of eau de vie de pomme verte – green apple – that was an amazing summer digestif. Alas, we’ve never seen it since.
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My favorite of the ones we can get is framboise, whose heady raspberry aroma can be intoxicating before you even sip it. Diane’s is mirabelle, a rounder, softer distillate that captures perfectly the essence of the small golden plums that make it.

What more can I say? Brandy really is a multiverse, and this year it has ended many a dismal winter day for me on a much warmer, happier note than I could have ever expected from the grey skies that preceded it. New York may have had very little snow this year, but that didn’t prevent winter from being damp and chilly and depressing – the very kind of weather that propels me to the snifter I use to explore the multiverse.
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Castello di Querceto

Tuscany is filled with superstar wines and winemakers, but it’s also filled – particularly the Chianti Classico zone – with superstars that haven’t yet been acclaimed. I’d nominate Castello di Querceto as one.

The site is quite a historic one. For many centuries in the Middle Ages, it really was a castle, a major fortification guarding key roadways, much fought over in the nearly endless small wars of the period. It was finally razed almost to the ground by the Aragonese at the beginning of the 16th century. Only vestiges of the castle remain, now incorporated into the residence of the owners. More than vestiges remain of the oak (quercia) forest that gave the site its name.
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The owners are the François family, of which Alessandro François is the patriarch. As the name indicates, the family is of French origin, now Tuscan and established at Castello di Querceto since the 19th century. The family has been actively engaged in wine production from its earliest days at the Castello, and it now produces a full range of Tuscan wines, from the most traditional Chianti Classico to a handful of Supertuscans (though, if I am remembering accurately, Alessandro hates that phrase, so maybe I should just refer to them as IGT wines).

I am a long-time fan of his Chianti Classico and Chianti Classico Riserva, which tend to fall into the well-structured, somewhat burly style of Chianti. These are archetypal bistecca Fiorentina wines, with the kind of muscularity and depth of flavor a big piece of beef like bistecca demands. They taste like the kind of wines that Querceto’s high-altitude, hilly, shaggily wooded site leads you to expect.
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The whole line of Querceto’s wines exudes toscanità. There are two Gran Selezione Chiantis, Il Picchio and La Corte, drawn from two distinctive vineyards. In addition, Querceto makes a very traditional Vin Santo, as well as a young and an aged grappa – neither of which I have been lucky enough to taste in recent years but the younger of which I remember very fondly for its heady aroma and warmth.

More of a surprise are some of Querceto’s IGT wines. Those I enjoy most are Cignale, a 90/10 blend of Cabernet sauvignon and Merlot, and the 100% Cabernet Sole di Alessandro. Both are big wines and want – and deserve – aging. Cignale is markedly robust, Sole – surprisingly for a 100% Tuscan Cabernet – the more polished of the two.

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It’s also the more adaptable. Recently we poured a 21-year-old bottle of Sole to accompany a fairly complex dinner, and it shone with every dish. Those ran from a starter of warm cauliflower salad, followed by a subtle braise of veal and oyster mushrooms in a rich, creamy sauce. It concluded simply with toasted hazelnuts, and the Cabernet played up perfectly to them all.

I had expected the wine to stand up well to each, but this performance went beyond that. Clearly, Tuscan acidity had a lot to do with the Cabernet’s ability to interact successfully with so many different flavors. Like the François family, Cabernet has adapted well to life at Castello di Querceto.

 

2011 Brunello: a Chorus Girl or a Star?

When I was a kid, I was the sole Dodgers fan – Brooklyn Dodgers, as they were then – in a large family of Yankee fans. It scarred me for life and gave me a lifelong, unreasoning fondness for underdogs. Besides that, in wines I’ve also often been attracted to vintages that have been overshadowed by harvests more highly reputed or more vigorously hyped immediately before or after them.
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This penchant started way back when the 1966 vintage in Bordeaux and Burgundy was so ballyhooed that the next few vintages of both were barely able to find a market. I was just beginning to learn my way in wine back then, and those ‘66s, especially in Bordeaux, priced themselves clear out of my league – so I bought and drank the much less esteemed 1967s. And I continued to do so, very happily, for many years.

Those ‘67s were lovely wines, no matter which bank of the Gironde or what commune they came from. They were medium-bodied, balanced, and elegant, with wonderful typicity – pitch-perfect fidelity to their soils and grapes. Eventually, I caught up with a few of those much-ballyhooed ‘66s, and they were indeed wonderful wines. But they were wonderful in the way of very special vintages: the particular character of that great harvest dominated every other aspect of the wines.

So the ‘67s were perfect for me at that stage of my wine appreciation: Not only were they pleasurably drinkable and much more adaptable to more dining circumstances, but because of their typicity, they were much more educational. I learned more about the wines of Bordeaux from them than I ever could have from a whole suite of those exceptional ‘66s, and at far less expense.

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And by this commodious vicus of recirculation, I arrive at Brunello 2011. Poor-relation 2011 Brunello is bracketed by two greater vintages, 2010 and 2012. The Brunello Consorzio awarded both those vintages five stars, its highest ranking, while it gave 2011 only four, thereby disproving my private theory that the Consorzio always gave every vintage five stars, and immediately arousing the suspicion of every cynical wine journalist that 2011 must be pretty poor indeed, if even the Consorzio wouldn’t give it five stars.

My ingrained underdog sympathy quickly kicked in, however, and I tasted a few bottles of 2011, and guess what?  They were pretty good, and considerably less expensive than either 2010 or 2012 – so I bought a few bottles of several different estates, and put them away to let them rest and mature. Now, ten years on, seemed a very good time to see how they’re doing. They should certainly be past their dumb phase, and – if they are as good as I hoped – just starting to display some mature flavors.
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The first bottle I tried was from Ciacci Piccolomini d’Aragona, which is about as aristocratic a name as one can encounter in Montalcino. For many years, the property belonged to descendants of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini – Pope Pius II – a Renaissance pontiff who was, among other things, responsible for creating the harmonious central piazza of the nearby town of Pienza (his birthplace). A few decades ago, the last survivor of the family willed the Montalcino property to its long-time winemaker, in whose family it has been ever since. With that much history in every bottle, I hoped for much from my theoretically lowly 2011.

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Not to prolong suspense, let me just say the results were mixed. The wine was good, maybe even very good, but not brilliant. My hopes were probably unreasonable. The wine showed some very characteristic Brunello features: a good nose of berries and underbrush; an initial rush of almost-bitter dark cherry flavors, younger than I had expected, round, balanced, and smooth in the mouth – but definitely rustic rather than in any way elegant. Sangiovese grosso indeed, I thought as I drank it.
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Mildly disappointed but undeterred, at the following night’s dinner I tried another bottle, this time from Col d’Orcia. This is another historic Montalcino property, now directed by Count Francesco Marone Cinzano, a man I knew to be equally passionately committed to his wines and to preserving the environment. The estate has been completely organic since 2010.

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This 2011 bottle was wonderful from the get-go: bright, fragrant, and fresh, with mixed dark berries on the nose and big, round, black cherry flavors in the mouth; structured beautifully with good acidity and soft tannins, mouth-filling but not at all heavy. This was a classic Brunello, as good as one can hope for, no matter how many stars the vintage was given.
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Now seriously encouraged, I thought to try one more example of 2011, so a few nights later I opened a bottle of Lisini. Lisini is for some Brunello lovers almost a cult wine. Made by a family with five centuries of roots in Montalcino and Chianti, and crafted in the most traditional manner, Lisini’s wines are for many experts the epitome of Brunello, the model of what Montalcino’s wines should be. This, I hoped, would be a real treat.

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Well, it was, but it wasn’t the perfect wine that its most ardent fans would expect.

It started with an intriguing, slightly tarry note in its aroma. A lovely dark cherry palate followed, smooth and round, with soft tannins and a long finish – unquestionably fine drinking. I’d call it a country gentleman of a wine. Italians would probably describe it as rustico-elegante, which is a useful phrase that I wish had a good English equivalent.

Many Brunello fans would argue that that is exactly what Brunello should be, and that is an opinion I respect but do not share. I prefer the greater elegance shown by the Col d’Orcia bottle, which I hope is an opinion that Lisini fans will respect even if they don’t share. When we are judging wines of this caliber, personal preferences loom large – even when we’re dealing with a supposedly “lesser” vintage like 2011. I’m very pleased with the way all three of these wines showed, and I’m glad I’ve got a few more 2011s squirreled away to comfort my (already upon me) old age.
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And a final word to the wise: While not all underdogs reward our support, enough “lesser vintages” do to make it a good policy to try them for yourself. Remember: You only taste with your own mouth – not mine or any other wine writer’s.

Old Stones and Young Wines: A Week in Rome

A week in Rome, of course, is not enough to justify any sort of generalization about its current wine scene, and a person of any intelligence wouldn’t even attempt that. Nevertheless, here I am.
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Generalization #1 : The Roman thirst for young wines is unquenchable.

This has been true for years, probably decades, maybe centuries. It seems to be grandfathered into Roman genes, along with an ability to remain casual about the venerable antiquities they live among. However antique the ambiance, it is next to impossible to find a mature bottle of wine in an authentically Roman restaurant.

There may be a few (probably Michelin-starred) exceptions to this, but I think I’m on safe ground here: young wines – not just whites but also reds – are the rule in Rome. Many of these are very fine wines, though they may be a decade yet from what I would think of as true drinkability. 2021 is fine for Frascati, less so for Jermann’s Vinnae, while 2016 is barely acceptable for a fine red like Faro’s Rosso del Soprano, the oldest red we were able to get our hands on during our most recent visit to Rome.

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Generalization #2: The quality of wine in Roman restaurants is higher now than ever before in my lifetime.

And that’s a good many years of visiting Rome. Diane and I were everywhere impressed by the level of wine being offered at even the simplest local restaurants. And I am not talking great expense here: wine prices in Roman restaurants are astonishingly reasonable, especially to one fresh from the 300%, 400%, and 500% mark-ups of New York eateries. I don’t think we paid over €65 for any bottle all week long – and we were not seeking to economize.
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Generalization #3: The level of wine knowledge among restaurant staff has never been higher or more widespread.

I’m not talking here just about wine specialists, like L’Angolo Divino or Cul de Sac, but about classic Roman restaurants like Due Ladroni or Matricianella, where well-informed waiters can provide really helpful information about their wines. I can only imagine how useful and reassuring this must be to first-time travelers to Rome, or to Italian wine novices. I know that in my first trips to Rome I would have appreciated having that range of expertise available.
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Generalization #4: The variety of Italian wine available in Rome has never been greater. We’ve come a far cry from the days when asking for something beyond generic rosso elicited only Chianti – no details, no further specification – as an answer. Our choices were everywhere generous.
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So what did we drink? All the wines whose labels appear above, for starters.

Also, several different producers’ Cesanese, all very fine and very appropriate as a match for many Roman dishes. Cesanese is the traditional red grape of Lazio, and it is enjoying a renaissance these days. You could try any being offered: They are all delicious, and even though Cesanese can take aging, it isn’t hurt by being drunk young.

From farther afield, we enjoyed several of Jermann’s lovely Friuli whites, particularly a robust Vinnae (Ribolla gialla) and especially Capo Martino, an imaginative blend of everything from Chardonnay to Picolit.
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From the other end of Italy, from near Etna, we enjoyed a lovely red of very local Sicilian varieties, Palari’s Rosso del Soprano – supposedly its second wine, but in some vintages even better than its Faro. Our wine was a barely seven-year-old, a 2016. This may have been the best red of the trip.
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I say “may,” because a lovely Campanian red, Luigi Tecce’s Satyricon, gives it a run for the money. This is a 100% Aglianico from the Campi Taurasini area in the high hills around Avellino, and despite being very young – 2019 – it was a substantial wine with deep, intense flavors.  I can only imagine what it will be like in ten years.

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The best white? I should say that luscious Capo Martino, but I’m sorely tempted by several almost nameless Frascatis we had with various lunches. Frascati, like Cesanese, is a traditional wine of Rome, and like Cesanese, it is enjoying a real resurgence of quality. Light, aromatic, gently floral and mineral, it refreshes and revives and provides the kind of simple palatal pleasure that for many people lives in memory as the real taste of Rome.

BTW, If you’d like to see some of the things we ate on that week in Rome, take a look at this post on Diane’s blog.

 

Beginning to Appreciate Port

In the past, I’ve not been a big fan of Port. It was a sort of palatal blind spot for me. Often, I could taste nothing in it but sugar. Even the most highly esteemed bottles have often left me cold, since I couldn’t get past the sweetness. In a wine world where Port is an object of devotion, this disability has often earned me much pity – and not a few sneers – from my wine colleagues.

In recent years, however, I’ve found my tolerance – and even my enjoyment – of Port gradually increasing. Why, I’m not sure, but my current theory is that my aging body requires more fructose than I’ve been giving it. Whatever the cause, I’ve begun tentatively enjoying some bottles of a small trove of Ports that over the years I’ve willy-nilly accumulated. I wish I could say it was incredible foresight, but no, it was pure blind luck.

Recently, a small crisis (well, a crisis for a wine nut) pushed me to open a venerable bottle of Port from Croft: 1983 Quinta Da Roeda Vintage Porto. While searching for something completely different in my wine closet, I noticed fresh wine drips in the Port bin. The culprit turned out to be this particular bottle, whose cork had apparently just failed.
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I pulled it out, cleaned it up, and attempted to pull the cork, which promptly crumbled to pieces, thus necessitating decanting and filtering to remove the fine cork bits. That was one dead cork, but the upshot was a good use of a handsome Victorian Port decanter I had bought many years ago, which until now had served exclusively as a decorative object. It always pleases me to see things find their proper use (and that, of course, includes the human palate).
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I didn’t really know what to expect of this wine. The probability was that it was dead, but Port handles exposure to oxygen very well, so there was a remote chance it would still be drinkable. Well, it was – surprisingly fresh, though dominated by mature flavors, in a range that I thought of as maderized, in the very best Madeira sense of the word.

This was intriguing enough that I made up my mind to try a totally sound bottle of Port soon, to see how much more there might be to it than I had experienced. Hence a recent winter evening’s dessert..
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Walnuts and roasted hazelnuts, dried figs and dried apricots, and a bottle of 1994 Churchill’s Late Bottled Vintage Port. For a light dinner before this simple but extremely rich dessert, Diane had prepared a cheese soufflé, which set up our palates perfectly for the range of sweetnesses to follow.

The LBV – Port drinker’s shorthand, I have learned – surprised me. Yes, it was sweet, as I had expected, but most of that sweetness lurked behind an intriguing veil of maderized, mature wine flavors. It was in no way cloying (as I had feared), but it was intensely rich – and very easy on the palate, despite its high (20˚) alcohol. (It is a fortified wine, after all.)
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It loved the hazelnuts (as did I) and tolerated the walnuts and dried fruits. The concentrated sweetness of the fruits competed too much with the Port’s own sweetness to make a fully comfortable match, at least for my palate, but the pairing was illuminating. For me, the Port showed its best on its own, without any other palatal distraction.

So the moral of the story is this: I will never be a big Port fan, but Port is definitely not the straight sugar cocktail it so long seemed to me to be. I don’t think that Port producers have changed very much, so it must be that my palate has evolved as I’ve gotten older. I’ll give one cheer for that.

Do I – Do You – Drink Too Much?

Hello everybody: I’m back, having been roused from my long winter’s nap by a farrago of essentially prohibitionist propaganda.

The august New York Times, in a recent, wonderfully alarmist article, warned the nation of the deadly dangers of consuming even tiny amounts of alcohol. The ominous headlines say it all:

Even a Little Alcohol Can Harm Your Health

Recent research makes it clear that any amount of drinking can be detrimental.

Got that? Any amount. If it doesn’t outright cause your death, at very least it will mutate your DNA, with all the perils that implies for yourself and your progeny.

Hogwash, I say. I take such manifestoes with a whole shakerful of salt. By the lights of that medical research, I should years ago have died of kidney disease and/or cirrhosis, if not heart disease and an utterly destroyed digestive system.

And, logically, the same must be true of most of my colleagues in wine journalism, not just in the US but everywhere around the world. If a small amount of alcohol is dangerous, the prodigious amounts we all professionally process must be mortal many times over.

© HA! Humoristes Associés, 1980

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Yet here we are, vocal and still imbibing. I’m 84, and I thoroughly enjoy my wine with dinner every night, as I have for the past 60 years, and most nights a small brandy afterwards. How is it possible I survive such a lethal regimen? Is there even a remote chance that alcohol could, for the human system, be preservative rather than deadly?

© HA! Humoristes Associés, 1980

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I don’t know, and I really don’t care. I have nothing to do with alcohol anyway: I never touch the stuff. I drink wine, of which alcohol is but one – and far from the largest – component.

That’s more than a verbal quibble. That’s a whole difference in outlook, a whole different approach to the question. Ask different questions and you get different answers. Can drinking wine at dinner improve people’s digestion, mood, and outlook? We all know it can. Does being happier and more content improve one’s life and support one’s general health? That is the very essence of a rhetorical question.

To my mind, leaving such considerations out of the so-called investigation invalidates all of its conclusions. Our lives are not monothematic or one-dimensional, and any medical advice that acts as if a single component can be isolated from the whole rest of the corpus – pun intended – of our lives, or as if everyone’s metabolism acted and reacted the same way, is to my way of thinking just plain stupid. And I am, frankly, getting tired of having to point this out. Surely medical practitioners know the good effects of happiness?

Back in the days when philosophers (the only doctors of the day) talked about things that mattered to people, Thomas Aquinas considered the question of what was the right amount to drink and what was drinking too much. By all the available evidence, Aquinas enjoyed his meals, and it’s sure he didn’t wash them down with Pepsi, so we may take it that he knew whereof he spoke. After much consideration of pros and cons, he concluded that one could drink usque ad hilaritatem – up to the point of merriment, or joyfulness.
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© HA! Humoristes Associés, 1980

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I couldn’t agree more. They knew something about drinking, those old masters. Merriment and joyfulness will prolong more lives than abstinence, or any amount of medicine.

By the way, if you’re interested in a totally different-from-the-medical-spoilsports’ take on the cultural role of drinking, I recommend you take a look at Edward Slingerland’s Drunk: How We Sipped, Danced, and Stumbled Our Way to Civilization. As he asserts,

The sheer popularity, persistence, and importance of intoxicants throughout human history begs explanation…. My central argument is that getting drunk, high, or otherwise cognitively altered must have, over evolutionary times, helped individuals to survive and flourish, and cultures to endure and expand.

The whole book is entertaining and illuminating – much like a good glass of wine.

 

Christmas 2022

For this holiday season, I’m wishing all my readers

a very merry Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or Yule
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and also

a happy, healthy, peaceful, and prosperous New Year.
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Now, Ubriaco will be taking a small mid-winter break. You’ll find me here again soon, with a fresh supply of red wine, white wine, and purple prose, in 2023.