A Wine Diary
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Vinarija Ivanovi? - Tamjanika 2005Data:2008-01-31 23:38:11
Description:This is a dry, slightly sparkling wine, with a pleasent, rich, complex aroma. A pleasure to sniff and taste, there’s a fruity note and there’s quite an undefined spicy note, definitely requires another bottle of researching . The producer specifies it as a wine “with characteristic Muscat taste and smell carrying combination of spicy [...]
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This is a dry, slightly sparkling wine, with a pleasent, rich, complex aroma. A pleasure to sniff and taste, there’s a fruity note and there’s quite an undefined spicy note, definitely requires another bottle of researching 
. The producer specifies it as a wine “with characteristic Muscat taste and smell carrying combination of spicy tones of incense, cinnamon, basil and fruit tones of pine apple and strawberry”.
Although it does have the muscaty taste it’s a dry wine, but still does go well with desserts such as nutty cakes. Also goes well with lighter meat dishes and on it’s own.
The Ivanovi? winery is a winery with a long tradition, one of those where the younger generation has embraced it’s ancestry recipes and combined it with modern trends. Some of the details are available online. It is located in the ?upa region in southern Serbia.
Score: 8/10
Price: 500 RSD (?6)
Retailer: Chardak, ?ika Ljubina 7, Belgrade
Technorati Tags: Serbian Wines, Tamjanika
Tags:Serbian Wines# Tamjanika
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Kopaonik RestaurantsData:2008-01-13 12:36:33
Description:Kopaonik is the largest Serbian ski resort. It is a popular place for domestic skiers and is becoming increasingly popular with foreign visitors. Although “Kopaonik” is actually a large mountain, the term usually refers to the area around the “Grand” hotel and the apartment complex “Sun?ani Vrhovi”. The area is small but contains quite a [...]
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Kopaonik is the largest Serbian ski resort. It is a popular place for domestic skiers and is becoming increasingly popular with foreign visitors. Although “Kopaonik” is actually a large mountain, the term usually refers to the area around the “Grand” hotel and the apartment complex “Sun?ani Vrhovi”. The area is small but contains quite a few hotels and private houses. It’s self contained, with shops, banks, a post office, etc. Apart from the restaurants in hotels, there are a few good restaurants around. In this article I’ll write about the restaurants I’ve visited this year, it might help you make the right choice (I didn’t have any tips at all…).
Etno club “Sunce”
This restaurant is located at the end of a quiet cool-de-sac, in the woods, a 5 minute walk from the Grand hotel. It looks very small from the outside, but it’s quite a spacious place. The atmosphere is great, fairly traditional, with two open fire places, a mixture of smaller and larger tables, a nice blend of loudness and privacy. The music wasn’t great, but that’s the easiest thing to change . The food was excellent and so was the service. They offer mainly Serbian dishes, if you’re not sure what to choose from the menu, the waiters will help you with their recommendations, you can trust them. The wine list includes wines from some of the better Serbian cellars, such as Radovanovi? and Aleksandrovi? (Topola). Go for Aleksandrovi?’s red or white Triumph, they are some of the best wines Serbia has to offer. Overall, it’s a great place, I’ll be back.
Food quality 5/5
Atmosphere 5/5
Service: 5/5
Price 3/5 (moderate, but excellent value)
Wine list 3/5 (Radovanovi?, Aleksandrovi?)
Na?a ku?a
This place reminds me of modern pubs-restaurants in Ireland. It has a large bar area in the center, with large tables around, a couple of two seater tables in the corner for some extra privacy and a cosy open fire in the front. Both the interior of the restaurant and the furniture are made of light coloured wood, and there are stripes of small red lights throughout. There’s also a big video beam that mainly shows snow scenes during the day. It is a place frequented by the younger crowd and is open quite late into the nigth (until 3am). They have a small but well-chosen menu (which is also extremely well designed) and it’s obvious they put a lot of effort to make it a bit different from other restaurants in the vicinty. The chef is excellent, and the food is great, so give “Na?a Ku?a” a try if you get tired from the Serbian cousine and are looking for some European tastes. It is one of the more expensive restaurants, with a full dinner for two with a bottle of wine and a dessert producing a bill of around 50 euros. The wine choice is not great, but they do have a few wines apart from the regular choice, we recommend the wines from the Terra Lazarica range.
Food quality 5/5
Atmosphere 4/5 (nice mix of modern and traditional, younger crowd)
Service: 4/5
Price 2/5 (expensive)
Wine list 2/5
Etno ku?a Studenica
If you’re on a lower budget looking for good quality Serbian food you should visit the etno restaurant Studenica. Pick one of the two tables on the far left to avoid looking at the interior of the kitchen and to avoid the local crowd on the right side. The place is clean, the food was great and the waiter was top-notch, but the problem with this place is that it has too much light, it is visited by the local crowd and generally the level of privacy is quite low.
Food quality 4/5
Atmosphere 2/5
Service: 4/5
Price 4/5 (relatively cheap, good value)
Wine list 1/5
Zvrk
This is a very popular restaurant located at the center of ski activities (the “baby slope”, ski lifts Karaman Greben and Pan?i?ev Vrh), just besides the Grand hotel. The restaurant has two levels, the upper one being more packed and colorful, the lower one containing a large center-located open fire place. This fire creates a very tempting smell outside the restaurant, which is the main reason you probably won’t resist getting into it. In general, it’s not a bad place, but there are much better choices around…
Food quality: 2/5
Atmosphere: 4/5
Service: 3/5
Price: 3/5
Wine list: 1/5 (just the very basic Serbian wines)
Technorati Tags: Kopaonik, Serbia, Serbian Cousine, Restaurants Serbia
Tags:Kopaonik# Serbia# Serbian Cousine# Restaurants Serbia
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Planta?e Cabernet Sauvignon 2006Data:2007-12-14 20:00:50
Description:This is another dry red wine from the sunny ?emovsko valley near Podgorica, Montenegro. We’ve covered a few wines from the Planta?e winery in the past and this is probably the poorest of their wines, without much character. Enjoyable only with a meal. The difference in perception of this wine and the Dulka Cabernet we just [...]
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This is another dry red wine from the sunny ?emovsko valley near Podgorica, Montenegro. We’ve covered a few wines from the Planta?e winery in the past and this is probably the poorest of their wines, without much character. Enjoyable only with a meal.
The difference in perception of this wine and the Dulka Cabernet we just covered is quite huge - the wine makers from Fru?ka Gora do seem to know how to add some magic to their wines and add a special touch to it (OK, it costs twice as much, but is well worth it!).
Score: 5/10
Price: 240 RSD (?3)
Retailer: Widely available in Serbia and Montenegro
Technorati Tags: Montenegro, Montenegrin Wine, Podgorica, Cabernet, Cabernet Sauvignon
Tags:Montenegro# Montenegrin Wine# Podgorica# Cabernet# Cabernet Sauvignon
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Dulka Cabernet Sauvignon 2005Data:2007-12-14 19:35:14
Description:Dulka is one of the most famous wine producing families in the town of Sremski Karlovci, near Novi Sad in Vojvodina. They produce wine since 1920 and have won a handful of awards at the Novi Sad agricultural fair throughout the years. Apart from producing wine, this familiy also produces bermet and brandies of highest [...]
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Dulka is one of the most famous wine producing families in the town of Sremski Karlovci, near Novi Sad in Vojvodina. They produce wine since 1920 and have won a handful of awards at the Novi Sad agricultural fair throughout the years. Apart from producing wine, this familiy also produces bermet and brandies of highest qualities.
They have just recently started growing Cabernet Sauvignon, and 2005 is their second vintage. However, this wine is quite rich in both aroma and taste, much richer and deeper than other pure Cabernets around. The color is dark ruby red, the nose rich, so reminiscent of forests and the flavours are those of forest fruit and chocolate. It’s a good wine, can be enjoyed on it’s own.
Score: 8/10
Price: 540 RSD (?6.5)
Retailer: Rodi? MB, Airport City, Belgrade
Technorati Tags: Wine, Serbian Wine, Vojvodina, Sremski Karlovci, Novi Sad, Bermet
Tags:Wine# Serbian Wine# Vojvodina# Sremski Karlovci# Novi Sad# Bermet
WinEco Biserni Chardonnay Barrique 2006Data:2007-11-24 20:02:53
Description:This is another great wine from the WinEco winery (Podrum Radenkovi?) from Southern Serbia. It is a not-very-dry Chardonnay, without a strong nose, but with an exceptional balance of fruity and barrique aromas. It is easy going, with a full taste, definitely one of the wines to accompany your lighter meals. It’s barrique traces make [...]
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This is another great wine from the WinEco winery (Podrum Radenkovi?) from Southern Serbia. It is a not-very-dry Chardonnay, without a strong nose, but with an exceptional balance of fruity and barrique aromas. It is easy going, with a full taste, definitely one of the wines to accompany your lighter meals. It’s barrique traces make it a great complement to slightly smoked fish or cheeses, but it’s also great on it’s own.
In general, Chardonnay is particularly suited for the barrique (oak aged) treatment. Chardonnay Barrique develops a pronounced cognac aroma and becomes a truly full-bodied wine - all hints of fruity flavours become very subdued.
Score 9/10
Price: 800 RSD (?10)
Retailer: Super Vero
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Planta?e Vranac Reserve 1998Data:2007-11-21 22:01:02
Description:This is a premium Montenegrin red wine made from the indigenous Vranac grape. The Reserve is produced from particulary good years, in small quantities, aged in barrels for several years. It is also aged in bottles for one year before being released to the market. This is a dry wine, with a pleasant fruity nose. However, [...]
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This is a premium Montenegrin red wine made from the indigenous Vranac grape. The Reserve is produced from particulary good years, in small quantities, aged in barrels for several years. It is also aged in bottles for one year before being released to the market.
This is a dry wine, with a pleasant fruity nose. However, the impressions are far lower than it’s price. If you want to experience the Vranac variety the Montenegrin way, go for a regular Planta?e Vranac or their Vranac Pro Corde. They are much cheaper and the experience is almost the same.
Wines of the Vranac variety are produced throughout the region, apart from Montenegro, you can find them in Macedonia, Serbia, Croatia and Herzegovina.
Score: 7/10
Price: 15 euro (in Montenegro)
Technorati Tags: Vranac, Montenegro, Montenegrin Wines, Wine
Tags:Vranac# Montenegro# Montenegrin Wines# Wine
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Sim?i? Sivi Pinot 2005Data:2007-11-10 21:06:41
Description:The 2004 vintage of this wine received a bronze medal at the Decanter World Wine Awards last year (2006). I’ve only been able to find the 2005 vintage in Belgrade wine shops. It has an intensive and complex aroma with hints of flowers. Dominant tastes are those of melon and slightly of apricots. However, I [...]
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The 2004 vintage of this wine received a bronze medal at the Decanter World Wine Awards last year (2006). I’ve only been able to find the 2005 vintage in Belgrade wine shops. It has an intensive and complex aroma with hints of flowers. Dominant tastes are those of melon and slightly of apricots. However, I wasn’t impressed, perhaps I expected more due to all the hype. Or perhaps there’s a significant difference in the two vintages.
We should note that this winery has a good reputation. The Simcic Sivi Pinot 1990 was awarded the Cordon d’Excellence; their Chardonnay has won two gold medals at the Ljubljana Wine Fair and the 1994 vintage was declared Champion by the Knights of the Burgerland-Pannonian Order.
Rating: 7/10
Price: 900 RSD (11 euro)
Retailer: Vinodom Belgrade, Bul Mihajla Pupina 10a
Technorati Tags: Slovenian Wines, Slovenia, Balkan Wines
Tags:Slovenian Wines# Slovenia# Balkan Wines
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Skovin Syrah Cabernet 2005Data:2007-11-10 19:59:55
Description:Quite an unusual combination for the Balkans, since Syrah is fairly rare in the region. Skovin is probably trying to follow the world commercial trends with this Syrah Cabernet Sauvignon combination, and it’s not doing a bad job. Syrah brings in the spiciness and the earthy taste, which brings memories of those strong South African [...]
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Quite an unusual combination for the Balkans, since Syrah is fairly rare in the region. Skovin is probably trying to follow the world commercial trends with this Syrah Cabernet Sauvignon combination, and it’s not doing a bad job. Syrah brings in the spiciness and the earthy taste, which brings memories of those strong South African tastes of Syrah wines. Cabernet softeness it a bit, so overall it’s a nice wine, but distinctively dryer than the famous Australian Syraz-Cabernet’s.
Rating: 6/10
Price: 400 RSD (5 euro)
Retailer: Super Vero
Technorati Tags: Macedonian Wine, Skovin, Shiraz, Syrah, Syrah Cabernet
Tags:Macedonian Wine# Skovin# Shiraz# Syrah# Syrah Cabernet
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Tikve? Alexandria RieslingData:2007-11-10 19:36:25
Description:This wine is characterized by a yellow-green colour, a fresh citrusy aroma with hints of honey and a complex flowery aftertaste. It’s a semi-dry riesling, dryer than the Slovenian rieslings (such as Laški Riesling for example), but sweeter than those found in Serbia. It is a nice wine to accompany a lighter meal. This is [...]
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This wine is characterized by a yellow-green colour, a fresh citrusy aroma with hints of honey and a complex flowery aftertaste. It’s a semi-dry riesling, dryer than the Slovenian rieslings (such as Laški Riesling for example), but sweeter than those found in Serbia. It is a nice wine to accompany a lighter meal.
This is one of the wines available in Belgrade restaurants in 0.2l bottles, so if you’re a driver among non-wine drinkers (meaning you can’t order a whole bottle of some fine wine) it’s a good chance you’ll be in a position to try it. Do so.
Rating: 6/10
Price: 250 RSD (3.5 euro)
Technorati Tags: Macedonia Wine, Wine, Tikves
Tags:Macedonia Wine# Wine# Tikves
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Tikve? Winery - MacedoniaData:2007-11-07 19:41:40
Description:Based in Kavadarci, Macedonia, Tikve? is the largest winery not only in Macedonia but also in the whole of south-eastern Europe. The Tikve? region is a part of Macedonia abounding in natural beauty, with a distinctive habitat and climate, important cultural and historical sites, and a very long tradition of grape growing and wine making. The Tikve? [...]
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Based in Kavadarci, Macedonia, Tikve? is the largest winery not only in Macedonia but also in the whole of south-eastern Europe.
The Tikve? region is a part of Macedonia abounding in natural beauty, with a distinctive habitat and climate, important cultural and historical sites, and a very long tradition of grape growing and wine making.
The Tikve? region occupies the central part of the Republic of Macedonia; it is situated about a hundred kilometres south of Skopje, around the middle section of the River Vardar. The sub-Mediterranean climate is prevalent here, characterized by long, hot summers and mild and rainy winters. Spring is shorter and fresher here, and autumn is longer and warmer.
The ratio between produced red and white wines is 50:50. The most widely grown grape varieties are Smederevka (white) and Krato?ija (red).
The range of produced wines depends on the vintage, but the list of wines they produce as quality wines (a step above table wines) could be wrapped up as:
Reds: Krato?ija, T?ga za Jug, Teran, Alexandria, Merlot, Burgundec, Kavadarka, Cabernet Sauvignon, Vranec and Rose
Whites: Belan, Riesling, Traminec, Smederevka, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Temjanika and Alexandria.
For the ?Special Selection? wines Tikve? has chosen the highest quality grapes and turned them into their best wines. In the red wine range these are Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Merlot and Vranec, while in the white wine range these are Chardonnay, Riesling, Temjanika and Traminec. The Special Selection wines come with a distinctive label.
Technorati Tags: Macedonia Wines, Macedonia, Tikves
Tags:Macedonia Wines# Macedonia# Tikves
Imbottigliato all'origine
Delle meraviglie di un'etichettaData:2007-10-28 17:43:00
Description:
"Dopo il dì di Sant' Urbano,
più non gelano tralci e grano"
La prima volta che vidi quest'etichetta rimasi inorridito, anzi, se ricordo bene, la mia prima esclamazione fu qualcosa simile a "ma cos'è quest'orrore
kitsch?"
Poi, come spesso succede con le cose estreme -musica, arte, design, persone- inizi ad esserne incuriosito, poi attratto, poi affascinato per finire ad esserne il primo supporter, cercando di far capire agli
altri, quelli che come te, all'inizio, storcevano la bocca, che questa è arte allo stato puro. Forse, anzi no, sicuramente la più bella etichetta mai vista su una bottiglia di vino.
Grazie, Sant'Urbano, per esserti fatto martirizzare in una vigna nel II secolo.
Grazie, Weingut Knoll, per aver pescato nella tradizione e per aver disegnato un'etichetta così deliziosamente kitsch!
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Vino dei Blogger #11 - Coulée de Serrant 1986Data:2007-10-21 20:37:00
Description:
Probabilmente, anzi, togliamo il probabilmente, la migliore bottiglia di bianco della mia vita. E' che non ce n'è, insomma, i Francesi saranno pure superbi, antipatici, spocchiosi, vanitosi, egocentrici e via così però il vino lo sanno fare, mannaggia. E cosa che più mi fa andare in bestia, è che se non avessimo portato noi (cioè, i nostri avi romani) la vite fin lassù, si starebbero ancora ammazzando di birra, 'sti galli. Invece producono nettari divini, come questa Coulée de Serrant 1986. Un monumento.
Bella scelta per il
Vino dei Blogger #11, vero? Il tema era
"Matrimonio d'amore, il vino del vostro abbinamento del secolo", ospitato da Andrea Gori di Vino da Burde, anche se vorrei cambiare il titolo in "il vino del secolo per il vostro abbinamento", vista la qualità del vino messo in gioco.Che dire che non sia già stato detto della Coulée, gioiellino di Messieu Joly? Contadino, scrittore, imprenditore, papà putativo di tutti i biodinamici, sostenitore del completo rispetto della natura e dei suoi ritmi e, diciamolo, responsabile dei fallimenti di quanti nel tentativo di emulare le sue gesta hanno onestamente preferito conferire all'acetaia il proprio vino.Questo giovanotto di 21 anni è di un'integrità assurda, a partire dal tappo, perfetto sotto tutti i punti di vista. Aperto circa 6 ore prima di berlo, il vino riempe la cucina dei suoi profumi, gli stessi che ritrovo nel bicchiere, una sinfonia di profumi e note terziare veramente ipnotici. C'è di tutto, dalla cera d'api alle note floreali, liquerizia, salsedine e toni fortemente marini per un vino totalizzante. Che riconosceresti tra mille. In bocca ancora più affascinante, con una struttura e una cremosità spettacolare e una mineralità veramente spiccata.
Cosa abbini a un vino del genere? Io proverei un Brodetto di Pesce in Bianco di Portorecanati.
Ci sono delle varianti di questo piatto che richiedono il pomodoro, credo la versione Vastese, ma penso che del rosso sia troppo anche per una Coulée. Questo piatto unisce il gusto del pesce
grasso (triglie, sogliole, merluzzi, cefali, palombo, rospo, pannocchie...) a quello della zafferanella e alle fette di pane abbrustolito. La marinità della Coulée si sposa con quella del piatto mentre la sua acidità compensa il grasso del pesce. L'aromaticità dello zafferano selvatico invece viene esaltata dalla nota floreale del vino, in un connubio che, se non proprio
marcariniano stretto, colpisce i sensi.
E dopo aver bevuto e mangiato così bene, vi sfido a resistere al declamare l'ode al Brudettu...
El Brudettu
Quant'è bbonu el brudettu purtannaru!
Che gustu sapuritu, marinaru!
E' 'n'arte antiga sempre più deffusa;
Nun ve so di' pe? fallu cusa s'usa.
De l?arte sua, ve giuru, so? un sumaru;
però quannu lu magnu è celu e maru!
Chi lu ?ssaggia lu ?rvô?, nu? lu recusa.
Lu sai? El brudettu è già ?rriâtu in USA.
Vôl dì? che gira ?ttornu al mappamonnu.
Ve pare gne?? Ma ?rmanne chì el segretu
che certamente l?à scuâtu nonnu.
E s?el brudettu dienta vagabonnuè segnu bonu, scì; però sta? quetu:quellu che magni chì te ?rmette al monnu.
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CS in difficoltà? No problem, ci pensa TotòData:2007-10-07 14:57:00
Description:
Non vendi?
Amen, tanto non è questo quello che conta.
Qualità?
Una variabile poi non così tanto importante.
Alla fine sai qual'è il vero problema a Palermo?
Il traffico.
E poi una mano non la si nega a nessuno, no?
Faccio della gratuita provocazione, ma è semplice poi pensare male quando Totò Cuffaro
annuncia l'ennesimo pacchetto di misure anti crisi per 70 Cantine Sociali siciliane in difficoltà.
Ora, che le Cantine Sociali siano un'importantissima realtà in molte zone d'Italia, che producano spesso con
ottimi risultati, che anche in Sicilia stessa ci siano
CS molto valide, non lo si può negare. Però, quando la finiremo con questi contributi di pura sussistenza? Contributi erogati senza essere legati a nessun parametro di qualità, di miglioramento della produzione, di modifiche di organizzazione volte a risparmio e ottimizzazione?
Aiuti con le gambe corte, soluzioni una tantum, in puro stile italico, che ricordano troppo le casse integrazioni "strategiche" e altri aiuti farlocchi, utili al momento ma senza alcuna validità sul lungo periodo.
Noi aiutamo la viticultura del sud in questo modo, senza alcuna visione strategica. In Nuova Zelanda hanno già un piano per rendere tutte la filiera della produzione del vino sostenibile dal punto di vista ecologico entro il 2012. E hanno già raggiunto il 65% del target.
E come disse un altro Totò, ben più famoso: "Ma mi faccia il piacere!"
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Più vini mandi...Data:2007-10-03 11:53:00
Description:
...più premi si vincono (e il viaggio è gratis).
Forte la strategia di marketing del
Wine Masters Challenge, concorso enologico internazionale che si terrà nel 2008 a Estoril, Portogallo.
Considerata la penuria di partecipanti dall'estero (nel 2007 su 43 medaglie d'oro, solo 10 erano straniere) cosa si sono inventati gli organizzatori?
Una raccolta punti su stile piramidale! Se invii 10 vini differenti da mettere in concorso (al costo di 125 ? per vino=1.250 ?) ti viene regalato un viaggio A/R per Estoril da ogni parte del mondo, vitto&alloggio, trasferimenti e divertimenti vari. E se convinci un amico produttore a inviare i campioni a sua volta, guadagni punti. Con 10 punti guadagnati, puoi portare aggratis un amico. E lo stesso lo può fare il produttore che inviti, proprio in stile multi level marketing.
Fino a qui, quasi nulla di sospetto. Se non fosse che, insieme alle gratuità, ti offrono anche un bel posto nel panel di degustazione. A quel punto, paghi, degusti, giudichi. Alla faccia della professionalità tout court. Col leggero sospetto che, più vini mandi, più contributi dai, più si avvicina una medaglietta...
Grazie a Max per la segnalazione!Content:
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Vino dei Blogger #10 - Rocca Barbera '04Data:2007-09-24 08:23:00
Description:
"Generosa Barberabevendola ci pared'essere soli in maresfidanti una bufera"
Incipit Carducciano d'obbligo per il Vino dei Blogger #10, organizzato questo mese da
Via Freud 33.
La Barbera è un vino che fa parte del DNA di ogni Italiano, a prescindere dalla provenienza geografica. E' passata sulla tavola di tutti spesso contenuta in bizzarri recipienti: bottiglioni, fiaschi e fiaschetti; molto volentieri sfusa e versata in una brocca. Allungata con acqua, ferma o frizzante, è stata anche "stuprata" in vari modi, a partire dallo scandalo del vino al metanolo fino ad arrivare a improbabili prodotti supermodernisti che con la Barbera come Dio comanda hanno ben poco a che fare. Come una fenice, è sempre risorta dalle proprie ceneri; generosa com'è, si è sempre accontentata di un ruolo da comprimaria -soprattutto in Langa- occupando particelle di vigneto un po' più sfigate, cedendo i
sorì a Mr. Nebbiolo, salvo poi corrergli in soccorso laddove mostrava i propri limiti, vero monsù Gaja?
Amo questo vino, e lo amo nella sua forma più sincera, quando non vede legno, quando si sente il fruttino fresco, il bel floreale e l'acidità ti spacca la mandibola, facendoti salivare come una fontana. Lo so, sono enoperverso, ma tant'è, ho trovato la Barbera nella sua espressione perfetta in quel di Agazzano (PC) ad Anni Luce dalla culla storica del vitigno, l'Astigiano. L'artefice di questo gioiellino enologico è il Principe
Gianlodovico Gonzaga, il vino è
Rocca Barbera 2004, l'azienda è
Le Torricelle. Un paio di ettari a Barbera e Croatina che, se solo in Italia si fosse un po' più lungimiranti, sarebbe classificato
Gran Cru: un vero e proprio
clos accanto la Rocca di Agazzano, viti vecchissime, terreno povero, esposizione a pieno sud e rese basse di natura.
Completa il tutto la cantina scavata sotto la Rocca che è, per definizione,
LA cantina, come tutti se l'immaginano, e la passione di Ludovico -un vero Principe "contadino", uno che si spacca le mani sul serio sia in vigna che in cantina- per il suo lavoro, nonostante le difficoltà e i problemi di ogni giorno.
Il risultato è questo vino che nel millesimo 2004 si esprime al suo meglio, a partire dal fantastico colore rosso porpora con bellissimi riflessi violacei, che la dice lunga su cosa ci aspetta nel bicchiere. Un naso vinoso, profumato di violetta, di prugna matura al punto giusto, elegante e delicato. In bocca un'acidità che è una goduria vera, un bel corpo pieno e tannini vellutati.
Bevibilità stupenda, apri la bottiglia e in un attimo è già finita.
Prodotta in
2500 bottiglie e 200 magnum, se siete fortunati potete trovarne ancora qualcuna direttamente in cantina. Visita che comunque vi consiglio, anche per provare gli altri prodotti delle Torricelle, il
Milione Rosso e il
Cà del Barigello, rispettivamente Gutturnio Superiore e Riserva e la Barbera
Massaveggia.
Azienda Agricola Le TorricelleStrada Pilastrello, 2/A ~ 29010 Agazzano (PC)
Tel. e Fax 0377 51372
info@letorricelle.it
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Educarli fin da piccoliData:2007-09-14 11:39:00
Description:
L'importante è fargli capire fin da piccoli cosa è giusto e cos'è sbagliato. E quando un nipote, per il tuo 35mo compleanno, ti disegna un biglietto di auguri come quello sopra, vuol dire che si è indiscutibilmente sulla giusta strada.
Che dire? Sono grosse soddisfazioni.
Cresci, Matteo, che molte cantine da visitare e tante bottiglie da stappare ci aspettano!
n.b.: il 46 è un omaggio di Matteo a Vale Rossi :)Content:
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Vignaiolo virtualeData:2007-09-10 18:30:00
Description:
Quest'anno è andata com'è andata, nonostante
i miei buoni propositi, la mia prima vendemmia sarà per un'altra volta.
Nel mondo reale, però. In quello virtuale invece sono già alla seconda vinificazione su
myWineFarm.com. Dopo essermi cimentato con un "buon" Cortese dell'Alto Monferrato da 320 punti, ho fatto quasi il botto con una "OTTIMA" Barbera D'Asti da 362 punti (il sito indica la Barbera al maschile... ahiahi!) prodotta nella sottozona Nizza, nel Cru Vigna Verde esposto a nord-est a 230mt di altezza.
Potatura corta, rese basse, trattamento con verderame (come insegna papà), ho chiamato la famiglia a darmi una mano, ho raccolto in ottobre con luna calante, vinificazione in rosso classica e imbottigliamento in agosto in giornata senza vento.
E voglio proprio vedere se Suckling non mi da almeno 97/100 su WS!
Sapete fare di meglio? Se si, vi invito tutti per una grigliata nella mia cascina Sorito. Suvvìa, è a soli 6 km dal centro abitato più vicino!
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Kelablu e il Vino del GiornoData:2007-09-10 18:10:00
Description:
Ve lo ricorderete ai tempi di Peperosso (ometto link, il nuovo è purtroppo la brutta copia dell'originale) piccante acido corrosivo ma anche curioso innovativo e istruttivo, Massimo Bernardi, col quale condivido il cranio totalmente sprovvisto di peluria varia (ma lui è più bello) è tornato con il suo nuovo progetto,
Kelablu - scuderia GamberoRosso.
Tra le tante belle cose che potrete leggere sul suo blog, ebbene, ci sarò anch'io! Troppo onore per un pigrone come me essere ospitato da cotanto blog in compagnia di un manipolo di amici di vecchia data (non pochi i membri della WBA, per quanto essa possa ancora essere considerata in vita) per animare la rubrica
Il Vino Del Giorno, null'altro che sintetiche note giornaliere su quello che ci capita di bere e di consigliare, senza darci arie e senza usare toni troppo... ingessati. Insomma, Maroni e WS da una parte, noi dall'altra. Il compito è duro ma ce la faremo. Intanto io inizio il 12 Settembre, e mai data poteva essere più adatta....
Stay tuned!
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Vino dei Blogger #7: Tabula Rasa - MolinelliData:2007-06-07 16:43:00
Description:
Avrete capito leggendomi che ho una particolare predisposizione per i vini dei Colli Piacentini.
Perchè le mie radici affondano in quella terra, che non è più Lombardia ma non è ancora Emilia piena, terra di mezzo per eccellenza. Un non luogo geografico, potrei dire, terra di confine da sempre un po' combattuta tra l'essere di "qua" o di "la". E come tutte le terre di confine, foriera di eccellenze in tutti i campi. Nelle persone, nel cibo (Piacenza è l'unica provincia Italiana ad avere tre DOP nei salumi: pancetta, salame e coppa) e nel vino.
Perchè il terroir dei Colli Piacentini non ha nulla da invidiare ad altre zone. Il substrato è bene o male lo stesso che dalle Langhe scende giù verso i colli Tortonesi, attraversa l'Oltrepo', percorre la provincia di Piacenza e si butta verso Parma e Bologna. Terreni di marne argillose e calcaree, del periodo tortioniano e elveziano, fondi marini emersi (e lo si può capire camminando nelle campagne intorno a Castell'Arquato, dove si trovano più conchiglie che a Rimini) dove solo questioni storico-culturali e climatologiche hanno "sviluppato diversamente" la viticultura rispetto a zone più blasonate.
Se a questa predisposizione naturale aggiungiamo anche un attento lavoro sia sui vitigni tradizionali -i due del taglio piacentino in primis e la malvasia- che su quelli meno conosciuti, raggiungiamo punte di eccellenza.
E' il caso del vino in questione, il
Tabula Rasa dell'azienda Agricola Molinelli di Ziano Piacentino, che va oltre all'essere autoctono. E' di fatto l'uva di famiglia. Vitigno riscoperto in maniera casuale nei vigneti di famiglia negli anni '60, è stato fatto analizzare da varie università alla ricerca delle sue origini ampelografiche, senza risultato. Si è quindi provveduto a stilare una nuova scheda, a cura del Prof. Fregoni dell'Università di Piacenza, "brevettando" così una nuova tipologia, l'uva Molinelli, appunto, forse frutto di un incrocio tra Sauvignon e uva americana, e coltivata franca di piede.
Imbottigliato come Vino da Tavola per ovvie ragioni, il vino si presenta con un colore giallo paglierino tendente al dorato, molto acceso e vicino a quello di alcuni Riesling alsaziani. Il naso di prima battuta è un po' monocorde ed eccessivamente piacione, ma con un po' di pazienza esce la complessità del vino fatta di note fumée, di mostarda e di ghiaia bagnata ma non eccessive e austere, anzi, al naso persiste una rotondità sorprendente, quasi da vino con un certo residuo zuccherino. In bocca una sopresa, lama di acidità a tenerlo vivo, sparisce il dolce apparente che si avvertiva al sostituito da una grande sapidità, quasi salina. Finale sauvignoneggiante, forse un po' amaro e non lunghissimo, ma penso di più non si possa proprio chiedere a questo campione anche nel rapporto qualità prezzo. E il 2006, assaggiato dalla botte, è ancora più strutturato e sorprendente. Lasciamolo in cantina qualche anno, e vediamo cosa ne viene fuori.
E se avete tempo, fate un giro in cantina: l'incontro con Ginetto Molinelli, una forza d'uomo con un'energia e una determinazione che hanno in pochi, vale da solo il viaggio!
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Vino dei Blogger #6: Five Roses Leone de CastrisData:2007-05-03 17:02:00
Description:
Iniziamo con due puntualizzazioni (che puzzano di scusa...). La prima è che questo blog potrebbe cambiare... denominazione.
Da Imbottigliato all'Origine a Vino dei Blogger Blog. Per vari motivi (soprattutto di lavoro ma anche di pigrizia, sono io il vero
Vinopigro!) lo aggiorno molto di rado, praticamente solo quando esce il VdB. Chiedo venia, in questo momento trovo più rapido (per il poco tempo che ho) farneticare su un
paio di
forum.
La seconda è che non ho fatto un volo di fantasia nello scegliere il mio rosato. Sono andato sul sicuro degustando per voi quello che è, di fatto, la storia dei rosati Italiani: il Five Roses di Leone de Castris, nel millesimo '05.
Cosa mi ha fatto scegliere questo vino? Prima di tutto la regione di provenienza, la Puglia, culla insieme alla Calabria dei migliori rosè sulla piazza (ok, anche i Cerasuoli abruzzesi non sono male!). In seconda battuta il ruolo che questo vino ha nella tipologia. Prima annata di produzione, il 1943, quando in Italia per la maggior parte della popolazione era difficile bere qualcosa di diverso dall'acqua (si era in piena guerra). Curiosa la storia del nome
anglofono: deriva dalla contrada Cinque Rose, a Salice Salentino, chiamata così perchè ogni de Castris per generazioni aveva avuto cinque figli, appunto cinque rose. Il generale Charles Poletti, che era il responsabile degli approvigionamenti per le forze alleate, sul finire della guerra si innamorò di questo vino, e chiese all'azienda un grosso numero di bottiglie. Ma il nome così "italiano" non andava bene, e lo cambiò in Five Roses. Ecco spiegata l'origine del nome, primo caso di globalizzazione
casus belli. Poi venne anche
Were dreams, now it is just wine, ma questa è un altra storia...
Venendo al vino, finalmente, ci si trova davanti a un buon prodotto. 90% Negroamaro con un saldo di Malvasia Nera, una decina di ore di macerazione pellicolare per ottenere il suo colore caratteristico. Un cerasuolo bellissimo, molto intenso, brillante e accattivante. Al naso la fragola, i lamponi e in generale i piccoli frutti rossi ci danno dentro alla grande, inseguiti da belle nuance di rosa canina. Naso piacevole e complesso, nulla da dire. In bocca il vino ha corpo, i tannini leggeri ma presenti, la bocca si riempie per bene facendo capire che dietro c'è un vitigno importante e molto buon lavoro. Peccato per il finale, che è a mio avviso un po' amaro e non lunghissimo, ma di più non si può pretendere proprio. Diciamo che gli 80 punti se li porta via in scioltezza.
E devo confessare che ho peccato, molto. Dopo averlo assaggiato a 13 gradi, l'ho ficcato in frigo e me lo sono sparato a 7.
Una vera goduria!
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Vinopigro
Fake Amarone (?) della ValpolicellaData:2008-09-23 17:55:42
Description:
Tempo di vendemmie.
Anche per gli amici dell'ICQ e del Corpo Forestale dello Stato.
Il guaio è che i "raccolti" che fanno non ci piacciono (e non piacciono nemmeno a loro).
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Un sommelier di ...CharmeData:2008-09-22 11:27:40
Description:
"Charme Sommelier" è un prestigioso appuntamento AIS dedicato agli aspetti più glamour del mondo del vino e giunto quest'anno alla sua seconda edizione.
I sommelier più fascinosi dell'anno sono Elisa Dilavanzo e Jgor Marini, appartenenti rispettivamente alla delegazione di Rovigo e di Verona.
Sono stati scelti fra i 20 Sommelier finalisti - selezionati alle serate di Roma, Milano e Palermo - che ieri sera si sono sfidati al Relais Duca di Dolle di Bisol, nel cuore delle colline del Prosecco.
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Cork or not cork? Alla ricerca del tappo perfettoData:2008-09-22 07:45:24
Description:
Veniamo subito al punto: il tappo ideale non esiste.
Chi infatti pensava di ovviare ai problemi di cork taste - variamente originati: dal sughero in se', ma anche dal modo in cui la cantina conserva le sue scorte di tappi, dalla loro permanenza nella tramoggia, ecc. - adottando altre chiusure per tutta la sua produzione, s'è dovuto ricredere.
Anche i tappi alternativi hanno i loro problemini.
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Nomination per la Valpolicella, ItalyData:2008-09-19 15:07:17
Description:
La Valpolicella ci riprova.
Per il secondo anno consecutivo, viene proposta nella cinquina finalista dei "territori del vino" aspiranti al prestigioso "Wine Ethusiast Wine Star Awards", insieme a Mendoza (Argentina), Paarl (South Africa), Santa Barbara County (California) e Willamette Valley (Oregon).
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Bento da mangiareData:2008-09-18 16:08:48
Description:
Nessuno può dirlo più dei giapponesi: l'estetica prima di tutto.
Si mangia con gli occhi - e dopo, ma solo dopo, anche con la bocca.
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"Il Veneto difenderà i suoi prodotti di punta", parola di RegioneData:2008-09-17 08:23:57
Description:
Tutelare il Prosecco in Italia e nel mondo.
E' l'obiettivo di uno specifico piano strategico, proposto alla giunta regionale del Veneto dal suo vicepresidente e assessore all'agricoltura Franco Manzato (v.foto), e da questa approvato con l'imprimatur del governatore Giancarlo Galan.
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Vendemmia 2008 in Veneto OccidentaleData:2008-09-16 11:07:32
Description:
Niente facile, in questo 2008.
L'annata in corso ha presentato numerosi problemi, al momento risolti o sotto controllo, ma...non è ancora finita.
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Dialoghetto sul BrunelloData:2008-09-13 16:14:15
Description:
In un ristorante, tre uomini stanno studiando la carta dei vini...
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Etichette "intelligenti"Data:2008-09-12 10:34:00
Description:
Immaginate di essere in giro per l'Italia - o il mondo. In auto, camper o altro mezzo proprio.
Immaginate di aver visitato qualche azienda interessante, assaggiandone i vini.
Immaginate di aver comprato qualche cartone.
E immaginate che tutto questo avvenga in estate.
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Il linguaggio del vino (e la sua deriva)Data:2008-09-10 20:33:51
Description:
Sandro Sangiorgi è uno dei più preparati e profondi giornalisti del vino.
Lo conosco da anni, è un amico e un maestro.
Magari non saremo sempre totalmente d'accordo su tutto (è inevitabile), ma in questo caso condivido in toto il suo pensiero a proposito di un tema tanto filosofico quanto pratico e attuale: quello del linguaggio del vino.
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Pinot Gris
Free Wine BarrelsData:2011-08-16 17:37:00
Description:Wineries are often looking to dump their old wine barrels. These can make great planters, end tables, etc...
I found the following post
online. It looked to be about five months old at the time of this post, but they may have extra barrels periodically, so you might check with them if you are within driving distance of the vineyards.
Need more drums? Wente Vineyards in Livermore, California has about 60 used wine barrels available that can be made into taiko drums. If interested, call (925) 934-5817.
We think they're free, but you'll have to go pick them up yourself. :)
Posted 5 months ago # Content:
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Free Wine LabelsData:2011-08-16 15:57:00
Description:Wine Labels are a much sought after collectible for wine enthusiasts everywhere. Here is some information on how you can get some free wine labels for your collection.
Custom Wine Labels:
With every purchase of a wine kit,
Grape Stompers will include some custom wine labels. You specify the design and text. Or, you can purchase 30 labels for around $8 if you don't want to purchase the wine kit.
Free Wine Labels:
The best way to get free wine labels is to soak them off the bottles themselves. You can make your own wine label soaker by cutting the top off of a 2-liter soda bottle. Then, fill the wine bottle with water to weigh it down, and set it in the plastic soda bottle. Put warm water in the soda bottle, and let this sit overnight. Hopefully, the label will come off easily. You may need to use an exacto knife to pry stubborn labels loose.
Another way to get wine labels is to contact the wineries directly. Many wineries keep their old excess labels after their bottling run for any particular vintage. You might be able to score some freebies this way.
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In Tough Times, Winemakers Should Work TogetherData:2008-12-18 19:09:00
Description:American winemakers should work closely in collaboration with other New World wine producers on a global basis, opening each other?s markets and uniting against protectionist policies of European Union countries in order to stave off the effects of the global recession.
There is no reason wineries should be working against each other; there is every reason they should be finding ways to work together, especially when it comes to surviving the current economic climate.
Australia should not be seen as the enemy of American producers in international markets; California and Australia have to become more collaborative, not enemies. U.S. winemakers also need to make a more serious effort at exporting. Very few American companies currently export wine because of the stringent international requirements.
American winemakers need to work together rather than separately in negotiating such agreements with the European Union, which has shown a policy of ?divide and conquer? when it comes to trade agreements with New World countries.
If one country gives up the right to use the term ?vintage? because of the EU?s insistence that it is a historical European winemaking term, it will use that to force the same agreement from all the other New World producers.
In this difficult economic period, it seems certain that the world is facing a winegrape oversupply which will make successful exporting programs essential for all of the world?s key wine-producing countries.
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Oregon Pinot Gris Harvest Better Late Than NeverData:2008-10-01 17:39:00
Description:Although the Oregon Pinot Gris Harvest is a little later this year than vineyard managers would like, good weather has ensured that this year's crop should be outstanding. The rule in Oregon has been that the even years (2004, 2006, etc...) are better than the odd years (2005, 2007), and it look as though the grapes will prove that theory right again.
A virtually rain-free summer with warm temperatures has slowly given the vines enough heat units to produce healthy fruit. There has been a lack of extended periods of moisture, or any other destructive types of weather. Last year's harvest was noticeably unfavorable, with several weeks of bad weather in September and October.
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Ponzi Vineyards Hosting July EventData:2008-07-09 19:24:00
Description:One of Oregon's better-known Pinot Gris producers, Ponzi Vineyards, will be hosting a wine event this Sunday, July 13 2008. Between 5:00 and 9:00 PM, Ponzi is offering wine, music and bocci ball --- that oh-so neglected game from our Italiano ancestral roots. The event takes place at Ponzi Vineyards' main estate lawn. There is no need to RSVP, but they ask that you leave any dogs at home, so there aren't any landmines left for the bocci players!
Visit their website,
www.ponziwines.com for more info.
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Pinot Gris - A Wonderful Grape MutationData:2007-10-16 21:07:00
Description:Pinot Gris is a grape varietal that is a mutation of the Pinot Noir grape. The Pinot Gris vine appears similar to the Pinot Noir, but it produces a grape that is coppery gray instead of the dark violet of Pinot Noir. In fact, the only certain method of differentiating the vines is by the fruit that they produce. Researchers have found that the DNA structure of Pinot Gris and Pinot Noir are virtually identical.
The Pinot Gris grape produces a delicious white wine with a rosy platinum color. This wine captures a perfect balance of acidity, fruit flavor and sweetness.
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Local Events WebsiteData:2007-10-02 21:36:00
Description:If you've got a moment, check out
Local Wine Events.
It's a great site that lists wine events for just about any state, country or region. Plus, they send out a Weekly Newsletter called
The Juice which will notify you of upcoming events in your area.Content:
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Oregon Pinot Harvest Delayed by WeatherData:2007-10-01 19:46:00
Description:The Pinot Gris harvest in Oregon's Willamette Valley was set back even further by rain, and even some hail last weekend. On Sunday alone, it rained over an inch in parts of the Willamette Valley. It also hailed in various locations. While any widespread damage to the grapes is unknown at this point, the continued cool, soggy weather can't be good for the grape development at this late stage.
Grapes need to attain a certain sugar level (measured in Brix) to achieve proper ripening and balance.
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Definitive Wine GuideData:2007-09-27 21:56:00
Description:If you need to educate yourself on the finer qualities of our fermented friend, check out this
Wine Guide Video. You will discover all you need to know about foreign wine.
Speaking of "Fermented Friends", don't say I didn't warn you!
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Wine Website For SaleData:2007-09-25 20:40:00
Description:I wanted to let you all know that my
Pinot Gris website (PinotGris.Biz) is up for sale. It is full of great, original wine content written by me. It also currently ranks highly with the major search engines:
#3 overall on Yahoo for Pinot Gris (search)
#4 overall on MSN for Pinot Gris (search)
Page Rank = 1 (Google)
I am asking $250 for the site, perhaps less to someone who just wanted the domain name. If I don't sell right away, I will continue to promote it.
If interested, please reply
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On the Wine Trail in Italy
Twenty Years In: A 2025 RetrospectiveData:2025-12-21 11:15:00
Description:
Twenty years ago this month, I started this blog. Nearly 1,800 posts later, I'm still here. I was contemplating an end the blog at twenty years. But 2025 brought a bevy of posts (and new readers) that were rewarding and widely read. Strange thing, for I really thought wine blogs and wine blogging were heading to the Smithsonian to rest next to the dinosaurs. It seems Substack has renewed the category, albeit in a different format, of sorts. I considered switching over to Substack. They have better analytics and push from the platform, versus the necessary pull from the legacy platform, Blogspot, which even its owners AI representative (i.e. Gemini) claim has become a digital ghost town. Maybe so. Or perhaps it's like a vintage sports car that just needs to be cared for. While it doesn't have the bells and whistles of the newer models, it still can get up and go and eventually get you somewhere. That's where we've been going for the last twenty years on the wine trail in Italy.
2025 was a year of reckoning and remembrance. I wrote on average, a post a week?each one a conversation I needed to have, either with myself or with you. Looking back, they organized themselves into five distinct streams, which I am re-sharing with you below.
This almost year-end piece organizes some of my more notable posts from 2025 into five thematic streams. It's a way to see the full range of what I tackled this year.
I'll be back next week on the official day, the 20th anniversary date, with some thoughts and reflections and possible directions (maybe even some predictions) I plan on taking in 2026. In the meantime, enjoy the encore presentation, and Merry Christmas, y'all.
The Personal Trail: Wine, Life, and Looking
Some essays weren't about wine at all, except that everything's about wine when you've spent forty years in it.
"What Photography Taught Me About Wine Appreciation" (September 7, 2025)
Photography informed my wine journey from the start. Wynn Bullock taught me to be "always looking, with or without a camera"?a philosophy that shaped how I approach both crafts.
"Trebbiano and Chicken - A simple meal which might just save the world" (August 24, 2025)
The world burns, and I went to the kitchen. Sometimes the most radical act is making something simple and good.
"The Stages of a (Wine's) Life" (August 3, 2025)
I sat in my wine closet with the ancients?25% of my collection is 25 years or older. They had things to tell me about aging, about time, about what lasts.
"Love - Wine Appreciation's Secret Sauce" (August 17, 2025)
The wine-writing class kept harping about the sky falling. Meanwhile, actual people in actual shops were still buying wine, still falling in love with it. Turns out that matters more than all the bloviating.
"In Service of Italian Wine" (July 6, 2025)
Forty years in the trade. I survived. Not everyone did. Here's how I dodged those bullets.
"Midnight in the Cellar: Wine, Sleep, and the Slow Burn" (November 9, 2025)
Bucita, 1977. The scent of fermentation woke me at midnight. Sometimes memory works like that?reaching through decades, pulling you back to the cellar.
"The Most Important Meal of the Day" (November 16, 2025)
Marion Nestle doesn't believe in breakfast. My grandfather's Sunday barbecues under the grape arbor?those weren't marketed. They just mattered.
"Well, shut my mouth!" (August 10, 2025)
Lately when I'm out in the world, I keep getting this sense I had as a youngster: stop talking and let the adults talk.
The Industry Reckoning: Calling Out the Bullshit
Some conversations needed to happen out loud, in public, with receipts.
"The Economics of Bullshit: Wine's Junket Folly" (October 26, 2025)
Scroll Instagram?sun-drenched vineyard photos, perfectly plated lunches, #blessed #sponsored (maybe). But here's the unspoken contract: you don't bite the hand that flies you first class.
"Devotion, Direction and Dissent ? The Divergent Mantra of Contemporary Italian Winemakers" (August 31, 2025)
Change in Italian winemaking happens incrementally. But make no mistake?the revolution continues. Why would anyone think it would stop here?
"Has Wine Lost Its Moorings? A Response to Eric Asimov" (October 22, 2025)
Eric laid out prescriptions for an ailing industry. But reading through it, one question kept nagging: Has wine lost its cultural moorings?
"The Great Inversion: How Italian Wine's Future Moved South" (November 2, 2025)
Nobody's saying it out loud: northern Italy is dying faster than the south. For the first time in modern wine history, the center of gravity is shifting.
"Haven't we been here before? A signpost on the wine trail in Italy" (July 27, 2025)
Twenty years of writing. Looking back at the subject matter, I can't help wondering if I've reached the bottom of the barrel. The jury's still out.
"Problem: Wine in Crisis? Remedy: Move forward, like an arrow. Fearlessly." (July 13, 2025)
I've been working on a project in an Italian wine shop. I have good news: people are still buying wine, still discovering, still caring.
"Ten Years After: What I Got Right (and Wrong) About Italian Wine in America" (October 12, 2025)
A decade ago I threw some educated guesses into the wind. Looking back is easier than looking forward, but at least now I have data.
"How Much Do Wine Expert Ratings Matter?" (June 8, 2025)
Making shelf talkers for my local shop, I discovered the relative influence of wine writers has shifted. There are more voices than ever, so the field has been diluted.
"Wine on lists starting @ $100, concert seats @ $1,000, cars that run $100,000, watches for $250,000 ? Excuse me, what planet am I on?" (June 22, 2025)
We all live in a yellow submarine now. Inside the bubble, not all is rosy.
"That ain't Italy, folks ? Tourism in the 21st Century" (June 29, 2025)
A country turns into a cruise ship. The billionaire's Venetian wedding galvanized this concept into a gigantic, sparkling mess.
The Practical Guides: Still Teaching After All These Years
Some posts just needed to explain things clearly, without the noise.
"Your Essential Guide to Italy's DOC and DOCG Wines - 2025 Version" (October 15, 2025)
You're standing in front of a wine list. Barbaresco, Barolo, Brunello?all those B's swimming together. Someone asks what the difference is between DOC and DOCG. Here's the answer.
"What Makes Someone an Italian Wine Expert? (And Why It Doesn't Matter)" (December 14, 2025)
I helped a woman in my Italian market find wine. Walking away, I thought: "She doesn't know she just got advice from someone who spent forty years working with Italian wine." What a ridiculous thing to think.
"Don't Age Wine Longer than 10 Years!" (June 1, 2025)
A longtime colleague launched into a prolonged jeremiad about aging wine. I recorded it (with permission). The jury's still out.
"Prophecy and Perspective on the Blackland Prairie" (October 19, 2025)
Ten years ago I wrote about 5 Italian wine regions to watch. The buffalos are coming back. The crystal ball sits on my desk, a little cloudier, a little wiser.
"Whispers from the Forgotten Frontiers of Italian Wine" (September 21, 2025)
Beneath the surface lies a shadowed realm?wines yet unborn, waiting in the dark. Nowhere is this more evident than in Etna, where thousands of ancient indigenous vines lie dormant.
The Satire & Invention: When You Have to Laugh
Sometimes the only response to absurdity is more absurdity?but deadpan.
"Persona Non Grata" (November 12, 2025)
Retrieved from my spam file ?
[The confidential memo that arrived after I became persona non grata in the wine PR world]
"Spas, Tours, Golden Hour Too - We'll Be Blessed If You Come" (November 18, 2025)
Apparently word hasn't gotten around yet. This arrived in my inbox today.
[Another press junket invitation, lampooned]
"A Hundred Years Wrapped in Etna's Fiery Embrace" (October 5, 2025)
I enlisted my clandestine consigliere, Åï?fonso?an arcane ignis fatuus who whispers tweaks. We traced the 2022 Terre Nere Prephylloxera over a hundred imagined years, guided by Empedocles.
"Is Your Favorite Italian Wine 'Coded?'" (May 18, 2025)
It got me wondering if Italian wine is coded in these days of disruption. Almost anything can be, especially when one trawls the eddies of social media.
"The Bullshit-ification of the Italian Wine and Food Experience in America" (February 23, 2025)
Sometimes you just have to call it what it is.
Italy Beyond the Glass: Travel Philosophy & Cultural Critique
Wine is a way into Italy. But Italy is so much more.
"Kicking the Bucket List Habit ~ Five Ways to Surrender to Italy" (November 30, 2025)
I keep seeing these bucket lists. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. But that's not the Italy that's stayed with me for fifty-some years. Italy reveals itself differently?not when you grasp at it, but when you open your hands.
"Go to Rome, go to Florence, go to Venice, but please don't go here!" (September 14, 2025)
People go to Rome, to Florence, to Venice. But Liguria? Why in Heaven's name would anyone go there? Liguria is one of Italy's best kept secrets.
"The Ugly American Has Come Home" (December 7, 2025)
When I first went to Italy in 1971, I got my introduction to the ugly American. Now the ugly American has come home to roost. There's no escaping their thunderous ubiety.
"Examining Cultural Appropriation in Italian-Inspired Cuisine: A Closer Look" (September 28, 2025)
A local chef opened an Italian-styled restaurant. One dish: Prosciutto e Melone made with Texas cantaloupe, culatello, candied hazelnuts, figs, and basil. The chef noted ironically, "We have a lot more of what people consider traditional Italian," but couldn't skip chicken parmesan.
"Like Nothing Ever Before" (July 20, 2025)
How often have you opened a bottle of wine and thought you'd never tasted anything like it in your lifetime? After thousands of wines a year, when does that special bottle percolate to the top?
The Gift of Memory
Looking back at these posts, I realize they centered around paying attention to wine, to Italy, to the industry, to the absurdity, to what lasts and what doesn't.
Twenty years is a long time to maintain the discourse. But maybe that's the point?it's not about having something new to say every week. It's about showing up, looking closely, and trusting that if you pay attention long enough, the things worth saying will find you. More on this next week.
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What Makes Someone an Italian Wine Expert? (And Why It Doesn't Matter)Data:2025-12-14 11:29:00
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I was in my local Italian market last week, picking up olive oil and pasta. A woman nearby stood staring at the wine section, Brunellos lined up like soldiers. She looked lost. I asked if she needed help. She did?looking for something specific. I found it for her, pointed out a couple alternatives, and moved on.
Walking away, a thought flickered through my mind: "I bet she doesn't know she just got advice from someone who spent forty years working with Italian wine." I laughed at myself and kept walking toward the eggs. What a ridiculous thing to think.
But it raises a question I've been chewing on for years: what actually makes someone an Italian wine expert?
The wine world has become obsessed with this. Certifications, credentials, letters after your name. Everyone's racing to establish themselves as THE authority on Italian wine. Take a course, pass a test, get certified, update your LinkedIn. Oh, and start a Substack, or better yet, a podcast. Don't forget to get on the junket circuit. Congratulations, you're now an expert. Here's the uncomfortable truth: knowing the pH levels of Barbera or memorizing every sub-zone in Piedmont doesn't mean you understand what makes Barbera speak to people's souls. I remember walking into my first Vinitaly in 1984. I arrived imagining (in my wildest dreams!) that I might be one of those experts on Italian wine. Within an hour, I realized I was nowhere close. The room was full of people who had spent lifetimes learning, tasting, living this stuff. They knew the difference between Lampia and Michet (biotypes of Nebbiolo, btw) the way a musician knows scales.
I still see it at tastings today?young and old alike, all vying for their place on the ladder of preeminence. And honestly? I've met plenty of people who thought they were the world's authority on Italian wine. I've never actually met the person who was (Well actually, there was one or two, but they would deny it, vehemently). Because here's what I've learned after four decades: real expertise isn't about knowing every DOCG or being able to recite vintage charts. It's about understanding why a simple Langhe Nebbiolo from an unknown producer can move you more than a 100-point Barolo that everyone's chasing.
Don't get me wrong?knowledge matters. You should know how to pronounce the names. You should understand where wines come from, why a Tuscan wine is different than one from Piedmont. But that's just the foundation. The real stuff?the stuff that actually matters when you're opening a bottle with friends or choosing something for dinner?that comes from somewhere else.
It comes from balance. From perspective. From understanding Italian wine within a larger global context, not just in its own bubble. It comes from staying curious instead of claiming mastery. Because once you think you're an expert at anything, there's always someone or something new to knock you down a peg or two.
The biggest revelation came for me after I retired from the wine trade in 2018. I'd spent decades as an "Italian wine director," translating and communicating the Italian wine message. And then I stepped away from all that. Suddenly, I wasn't invested in being irrefragable anymore. I wasn't proving my expertise. I was just... enjoying wine again.It was liberating. I could walk into a wine shop and not automatically catalog everything I saw. I could order something at a restaurant without mentally rating it or comparing it to every other version I'd tasted. I could just drink the damn wine.
"Open the bottle. Drink the wine. Cut the crap." I find myself saying this more and more. Yeah, I said it again.
Here's what I want regular wine drinkers to know: don't be intimidated by people who call themselves experts. Trust your own palate. Trust your own experience. If you like a wine, you like it. If you don't, you don't. No certificate or credential changes that.
The best Italian wine knowledge doesn't come from courses or competitions. It comes from curiosity. From trying new things. From asking questions. From paying attention to what you're drinking and why you like it.
Maybe the real experts are the ones who've stopped needing to be experts. The ones who've shed that yoke and discovered they can now actually enjoy Italian wine for what it is: something to share, something to savor, something woven into a meal and a moment, not dissected and scored and ranked. I know plenty of dead Italian wine experts who would rather be here, alive, drinking the most pedestrian bottle of Chianti than have their expertise memorialized in some dusty credential. "Give me life," they whisper.
So give yourself permission to just be an enthusiast. That's where the real joy lives anyway.
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The Ugly American Has Come HomeData:2025-12-07 11:00:00
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When I first went to Italy in 1971, I got my introduction to what people over there were calling the ugly American. Loud, overbearing, disregarding of local cultural norms ("What do you mean, you don't have ice?"), totally unaware that the rest of the world did things differently than we did in the U.S. of A. A few years later I took a train from Mexicali to Mexico City - three days, stopping at every stop. More ugly Americans, unconscious and insensitive to the culture hosting them. Downright rude, and when drunk, dangerous.
Over decades and many trips to Italy, France, Greece, Spain, and Portugal, I witnessed too many times the embarrassing and unconscionable behaviors - the attitudes, the mores, of American tourists. Fortunately, I blended in and took a side view to their ignorant ways.
But now, the Ugly American has come home to roost. There's no escaping their thunderous ubiety in the United States, no security in the homeland from the hordes of somnambulists roaming the countryside and city with their oversized vehicles and their propensity to disregard the law. Just try going through a green light without checking if stragglers are racing through the red. It happens all the time. Turns out the ugly American scaled perfectly - from loud tourist to national ethos.
What does that have to do with the wine trail in Italy?
This year started with fire. The town where I was born, the last home I lived in in California - leveled. And now as the year ends, what a year it has been, living under disruptive and chaotic leadership that seems designed to keep us perpetually off-balance, perpetually at each other's throats.
Over thirty years, I've watched American civil society coarsen in ways that would have seemed unimaginable in 1971. The polarization isn't just political anymore - it's invaded our daily interactions. We can still sit across from someone we fundamentally disagree with and be civil, but there's nothing underneath. No real connection, no meaningful exchange. We've lost some shared understanding that civilization requires restraint, respect for the commons, for each other. As I rapidly approach twenty years of writing on this blog - two decades on the wine trail trying to make sense of what wine means beyond the bottle - I keep coming back to the same question: what is wine for? Not the commercial product, not the points and ratings, but the thing itself. The ritual, the slowing down. Wine as civilizing agent - not because it makes anyone drunk, but because it requires patience. You don't gulp good wine. You don't shout over it. It demands you pay attention, that you acknowledge you're part of something larger than yourself.
Italy taught me this. In the countryside, in the cellars, at tables where strangers become friends over a bottle, wine creates a space where civility isn't just possible - it's inevitable. You can't rush a winemaker. You can't bully terroir. The vine doesn't care about your politics or your schedule. It does what it does, and you either learn patience or you learn nothing.
And now wine itself is under attack from neo-prohibitionists who see it as nothing more than alcohol, a public health menace to be warned against, restricted, taxed into oblivion. They miss entirely what wine has been for millennia - a civilizing force, a bearer of culture, a reason to gather and remember we're human beings, not just consumers or demographics or rival tribes.
Can wine appreciation help heal what's broken in American civil society? I don't know. That might be asking too much of fermented grapes. But the rituals around wine - the attention it demands, the conversation it enables, the patience it requires - these are exactly the virtues we've abandoned in our rush to make everything faster, louder, more extreme. When I'm in Italy now, I see something we've lost. Not some idealized past - Italy has its own problems, its own divisions. But there's still a shared understanding that meals matter, that gathering matters, that taking time with a bottle of wine isn't indulgence, it's civilization. It's the opposite of what I see at home - the inability to slow down enough to see the other person across the table.
Maybe wine can't save us. Maybe nothing can. But after forty years of watching how wine brings people together in Italy - not just Italians, but everyone who shows up willing to learn, to listen, to slow down - I'm not ready to give up on the idea that the rituals we've abandoned might show us a way back.
The ugly American abroad was always embarrassing because they refused to adapt, to respect, to learn. The ugly American at home is tragic because we've forgotten we once knew better. We built a country on the idea that we could disagree without being enemies, that there were standards of behavior that transcended politics, that civilization meant something. Wine won't fix the polarization. It won't make people civil who've decided incivility is a virtue. But for those still looking for a roadmap back, still believing that how we treat each other matters, the wine trail offers something: proof that patience still works, that attention still matters, that sitting down together with something worth savoring can still create the space where we remember how to be human with each other.
It's not much. But it's something. And right now, I'll take it.
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Kicking the Bucket List Habit ~ Five Ways to Surrender to ItalyData:2025-11-30 12:00:00
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I keep seeing these bucket lists. Italy bucket lists. Five things, ten things, twenty things you must do before you die. And they're all the same: the Amalfi Coast, a Tuscan villa with an infinity pool, dinner at some Michelin-starred place in Rome where you need a reservation six months out and a credit card that doesn't flinch. Nothing wrong with any of that, I suppose. But that's not the Italy that's stayed with me for fifty-some years. The Italy that changed me wasn't the one I planned. It was the one I stumbled into when I got lost, when I let go, when I trusted a stranger's gesture instead of a guidebook.
Italy reveals itself differently. Not when you grasp at it, but when you open your hands.
Are you ready for Italy? Or are you only ready for the Italy you've already decided on?
So here are five experiences for your surrender list. Understand this: these aren't things to collect. They're ways to fail by tourist standards?and succeed by Italy's.
1. WANDERING: Surrender Your Need for Destination
Get deliberately lost in a southern hill town. Inland Calabria. Inner Sicily. The hinterlands of Basilicata. Places where tourists don't go because there's "nothing to see."
Turn off your GPS. Don't make a restaurant reservation. Walk.
Follow the smell of wild herbs floating down from the hills. Trust a sound, a stranger's direction, the way light falls on a particular alley. The confusion is the experience, the lostness is the point.
You won't find this at the Spanish Steps. You have to go where the road ends and trust that something will lead you somewhere worth being.
2. DISCOVERING: Surrender Your Fear of Missing Out
Find your morning coffee bar in Venice or Rome. Not the best one. Not the one with reviews. YOUR bar. Go back every morning until the barista knows your order.
Step 100 meters away from San Marco and you'll find the quiet, almost deserted village that makes Venice bearable. The locals tolerate tourists in their typical Venetian manner?which is to say, they live here, we don't. We will leave, they will stay. It will always be their Venice, not ours. As it should be.
I learned this returning to Italy in 2023 after a four-year absence. I found a quirky little wine bar near my hotel, Ozio, specializing in natural wine. I sipped a Sicilian white?Catarratto-Zibibbo, a skin-contact orange?instead of the ubiquitous Spritz. Simple, dry, legitimate?everything the Spritz isn't.
Walk down the road, take a right, then a left. Find something no one knows about except the locals. You won't starve. And you might run into something better than all those pages of recommendations. Use your gut, listen to your heart.
The real Italy exists behind the heavily touristed façade. But you have to be willing to miss the "must-see" to find it.
3. PILGRIMAGING: Surrender Your Hunger for Spectacle
Choose Ercolano over Pompeii. An Umbrian hermitage over Assisi's basilica. A Renaissance-era olive orchard on a Calabrian escarpment where a Scandinavian importer once asked to be left alone for hours, just to sit among trees that have never seen Florence or Venice or the Vatican.
I lived in a trailer outside Assisi in 1977 for three weeks, five dollars a day. A short walk led to what was once a stall where they cooked food?local, healthy, humble. No crowds, no queues, just the simple Italian table. Until the New York Times "discovered" it decades later.
Sacred geography reveals itself in solitude, not in lines. You won't get the photo (or the "selfie") everyone else has. You might not even understand what you experienced until years later. But that's pilgrimage?walking toward something you can't quite name, letting it change you without fanfare.
St. Peter's used to be a place where you could park your car, have a picnic lunch on the steps, take your time. Now it's all restricting and queuing up. "Move on, hurry up, no pictures, people are waiting."
Go where the waiting isn't necessary. Go where silence still exists. Walk up the hill to Parioli and find a Rome for Romans and other wanderers.
4. WORKING: Surrender Your Role as Consumer
Get your hands dirty. Harvest olives. Pick grapes. Help prep a village sagra. Work a fishing boat for a morning.
I arrived in a hilltop town called Bucita in Calabria in 1977, following the smell of wild herbs and figs baked in their leaves floating down from the hills. A storm threatened. The family needed hands in the fields for harvest. Like goats we swarmed the vineyards, competing with the bees for the nectar. The elements dominated everything?sun, rain, lightning, thunder?earth, alive and moving.
Years later, I spent days picking olives in Tuscany?900 pounds over several days, thinking about Italian work songs, dodging wasps. Tedious, physical, real.
Or maybe you end up sitting in someone's home at night, drinking their wine. Below you in the basement, thousands of crushed grapes fermenting. Above, a bare bulb lighting the room. The elders talking into the early hours of the morning. That's where I learned wine?not in books or at fancy tastings, but in rooms like that, with people who made it.
You understand terroir through your body, not your palate. You earn your place at the table differently when you've worked for it. Your muscles ache. Your hands smell like earth or oil or fish. And the meal that follows tastes like nothing you've ever paid for.
5. FOOD AND WINE: Surrender Your Expectations
Find a no-menu trattoria. Or better yet, end up at someone's table where you eat what you're given.
I had one of these experiences in the hilltop town of Cirò in Calabria. L'Aquila d'oro?four tables for maybe eighteen people, a "truck stop" most would drive right by. The wife cooks. The husband and son serve. What followed was three hours, eighteen courses of throw-away food becoming revelation.
Baby goat intestines on oregano branches. Fava bean skins?tough, stringy things normally discarded for the prize inside. Ricotta that was milk in the creature yesterday morning. Not Saveur-magazine perfect. Not pretty. But memorable in ways no Michelin meal has ever been.
"This is the poorest of cuisines," my friend Paolo reminded me. "Made from things nobody in the city hungers for. Wild onions, herbs, parts of animals that get discarded, skins of plants no one would think were edible."
Throw away food. Or throw it down food, which is what we did.
If I served this meal to some friends back home, they might ask, "When are we going to start getting the Italian food?" But others would get it. They would understand they were in the kitchen of a woman from Calabria, tasting something out of this world that comforts and nourishes and is so delicious.
The same goes for wine. Skip the trophy bottles. Order the vino della casa. That house wine in many Italian trattorie is better than most wines you can buy in American supermarkets. Simple, fresh, for the moment. Go straight for it. You'll seldom be disappointed.
Before You Go
These experiences share one requirement: you have to be ready to fail by bucket-list standards.
You might not get the photo. The directions you followed might lead nowhere.The winemaker might be out in the fields. You might sit on that bench for an hour and feel like you wasted time.
But if you're ready for Italy?truly ready?that won't matter.
Italy isn't a checklist. It's not a conquest. It's a country made up of people with feelings and emotions, with a culture that doesn't perform for tourists. Step off the trail everyone else is on.
Get lost. Sit still. Work. Eat what appears. Trust the locals over the algorithm.
Let Italy be Italy. And let it change you in ways you didn't plan.
Going to Italy?that's a good fortune most people never have. Don't waste it on checklists. This is one of the most intimate, beautiful places humans have created. Slow down enough, and it will let you in. That gift is worth more than any bucket list could promise.
Other reading: Italy is ready for you - Are you ready for Italy?
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The Most Important Meal of the DayData:2025-11-16 11:33:37
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| Family outing Old California circa early 1930's - Nonna bottom right |
Marion Nestle doesn't believe in breakfast. At 89, this nutrition expert who's spent decades exposing the food industry says most of the research claiming breakfast is the most important meal was sponsored by cereal companies. Kellogg's and General Mills needed to move boxes. They manufactured urgency. We bought it.
But nobody marketed the meals that actually mattered. My grandfather's brick bar-be-cue in old California. Every Sunday under the grape arbor. Probably the first place wine touched my lips. Those traditions?gathering, sharing a meal, an anonymous bottle or two of wine?they're gone now.
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| Family dinner al fresco - Palermo circa mid 1950's | | | |
We have better everything now. Custom grills, exotic charcoal, grass-fed steaks, wines we can trace to specific hillsides. But something essential slipped away in all this improvement.
I walked into a new restaurant recently. Noise hit first?music, then voices bouncing off hard surfaces designed for Instagram. By evening they'd dimmed the lights and cranked the volume higher. Maybe I'm just over it. But I watched people half-shouting across small tables, trying to connect.
So people stay home. Not from antisocial impulse, but because they need to hear each other again. To see a face when it tells a story. To not be constantly barraged by questions ("How is everything tasting?").
At home you pour what makes sense. Wine's just there, part of it. It's there while you're talking about the world or work or nothing much. You taste it because you're paying attention?wine rewards that. You can't taste it properly while distracted, while your phone lights up with the next crisis.
With meals at home one can breathe with the wine. Conversation happens without someone constantly interrupting you. No one's eyeing your table, trying to upsell you every five minutes.
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| There was nothing like our Mamma's cooking | |
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Pollan's mantra, Nestle's practice. Simple. Real. Not ultra-processed. Not manufactured. Not at 85dB. With music you can hear, maybe even enjoy, rather than some that seek to help the establishment turn the tables quickly.
In Italy, lunch is still an important meal. Businesses close. People sit. Wine flows, moderately. Then back to work. My grandfather's Sunday gatherings had that same understanding. Different place, different wine, same knowledge: an ordinary day can be made to matter. Why can't Tuesday have that attention?
We're in upheaval?political, social, economic. Wine consumption trending down. But maybe wine isn't the problem. Maybe we forgot how to weave it into the fabric of a meal instead of making it the excuse for one.
Holidays approach with their promise of important meals. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Year's. But what if we didn't wait? What if Thursday lunch mattered? What if we stopped relegating lunch to desk salads grabbed standing up?
The most important meal isn't breakfast or dinner or Thanksgiving at two. It's whichever one you show up for. The one you make matter through presence.
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| Southern California - Nonno's bar-be-cue circa 1950's |
My grandfather's backyard. That arbor. Those Sundays. The wine wasn't great, compared to the stuff we pour down our gullets today. But the moments were. Not because everything was perfect?people showed up. They sat. They stayed. They made memories we inherited.
We cannot go back to that California. It fell off the map some time ago, vanished into whatever country the past becomes. But the practice hasn't. Setting a table. Paying attention to what you're eating, who you're with, what's in the glass. Not for Instagram. Not to escape. Just presence.
Food, perhaps wine, certainly time, gratitude not as sentiment but as the act of noticing what stands before you, and in uncertain times not because it repairs the outer chaos but because it reminds us we are still here, still human, still capable of that most ancient and essential act of sitting down and being in each other's presence.
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| Old California circa 1930's- our dad on the right |
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Persona Non GrataData:2025-11-12 10:20:00
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Retrieved from my spam file ?*
Click images to enlarge
* --- Editor's note: No actual consortia were consulted in the writing of this memorandum.
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Midnight in the Cellar: Wine, Sleep, and the Slow BurnData:2025-11-09 11:27:00
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Wine, time and transformation
The scent woke me. Not an alarm, not a voice - just that yeasty, intoxicating pull of fermentation working in the dark. It reached through the window, through my first sleep, drew me from bed the way the aroma of those ripe figs had drawn me when we first arrived in Bucita that September of 1977. Siren calls, both of them. Irresistible. I made my way to the cellar. Cool stone underfoot, a single light carving shadows from the darkness. My cousins were already there, not doing much of anything. Just present. Just attending. We didn't talk much. Didn't need to. The wine was holding court - that gentle gurgle and hiss of wild yeast doing ancient work in wicker-wrapped demijohns that might have held our great-grandparents' wine.
Outside, the stream. Wind whistling through the clay tiles. A light breeze carrying the scent of September hills. Outside, a waft of bergamot. Inside, just the slow burn of transformation.
This was the wakeful hour between sleeps - that pause where nothing productive happens but everything important does. We weren't checking temperatures or consulting charts. We were simply there, breathing the same air as the working wine, letting time notice itself.
Years later, I would learn that humans used to sleep this way: two sleeps with a conscious interval between. That our bodies still want to wake at 3am not because something's wrong, but because something's deeply right - something's remembering. In that Bucita cellar, I was living in that remembered rhythm without knowing its name.
The wine taught me before science did: transformation cannot be rushed. Attention cannot be scheduled. The slow burn asks nothing but presence.
For most of human history, no one slept through the night. At least not the way we think of it now - that continuous eight-hour block we're told is "normal" and worry we're broken when we can't achieve it.
Our ancestors slept in shifts. First sleep, then a wakeful hour or two around midnight, then second sleep until dawn. Historical records from Europe, Africa, Asia describe this pattern as unremarkably as we might describe breakfast. People woke around midnight, tended fires, prayed, made love, visited neighbors, contemplated their dreams. Then returned to sleep.
It wasn't insomnia. It was the rhythm.
The interval between sleeps had a quality. Not dead time but noticed time - the kind of attention that shapes how we experience duration. Without artificial light, those midnight hours felt different. Slower, richer, more permeable. Time you could actually feel passing through you rather than rushing past you.
We lost this rhythm through the steady creep of efficiency. First oil lamps, then gas lighting, then electricity turning night into usable waking time. Factory schedules demanding continuous blocks of rest to maximize continuous blocks of labor. By the early 20th century, eight uninterrupted hours had become the ideal, and anyone who woke in between was failing at sleep.
But the body remembers. That 3am waking isn't malfunction - it's your biology looking for the pause that used to be there.
Emotion changes how we experience time. Not metaphorically. Literally. When we're anxious, our internal clock slows and minutes stretch. When we're engaged and present, time flows. Sometimes it compresses. What's really happening is we stop measuring and start experiencing.
In that Bucita cellar, time felt slow not because it was boring but because it was full. Rich with sensory detail, emotional presence, the kind of attention that creates memory. That's why I can still smell that cellar 48 years later, still feel the cool stone, still hear the gurgle of fermentation and the stream outside.
This is what the slow burn creates: noticed time. Time you're actually present for.
Traditional winemaking built this into its structure. You couldn't rush fermentation, couldn't force aging, couldn't engineer away the waiting. You had to attend. Check on things not because a timer went off but because the smell called you, because you were in relationship with the working wine. The worry, the satisfaction, the anticipation building over months or years - that was the emotional texture that made the wine, and the winemaker, who they were.But like sleep, wine got efficient. Temperature-controlled stainless steel eliminated the need for midnight visits. Cultured yeasts made fermentation predictable. Micro-oxygenation accelerated aging that used to take years. We learned to make technically perfect wine faster, more consistently, with less risk and less attention.
We compressed the intervals out.
And something strange happened: the faster wine got, the more anxious the wine business became. Will it score well? Will it sell? Is it ready yet? What's the trend? The constant low-grade stress of quarterly thinking, of wines engineered for immediate pleasure because no one wants to wait, of measuring everything in 90-day cycles and shareholder value.
We traded the slow burn of deep engagement for the constant simmer of low-grade stress.
The irony is brutal: efficiency was supposed to free us from the tyranny of time, but instead it just changed the quality of our captivity. The old way was slow but emotionally rich. The new way is fast but feels endless. We're always working, always optimizing, always behind. Time drags even though everything's supposedly faster.
We compressed sleep into one efficient block and wonder why we wake anxious.
We compressed winemaking into predictable timelines and wonder why wine has lost its story.
Same problem. Same loss.
Some winemakers still work the old way. Still visit the cellar when the smell calls them. Still wait for fermentation to finish on its own terms. Still let wine sleep through winters in barrel, waking and resting in its own rhythm. They're not behind the times. They're remembering a different relationship to time itself. This isn't about rejecting technology or romanticizing poverty. That Bucita cellar was hard work, make no mistake. But it was work done in human time, emotional time, noticed time.
The slow burn isn't slower. It just feels different. Richer. More alive.I've spent forty years in the wine business translating the Italian wine message to a country that mostly wanted Chardonnay and Cabernet. I've seen wines score 95 points and disappear in a year. I've seen wines with no scores at all become someone's epiphany, their own golden bottle in the cabinet, their own jasmine and honey moment they'll remember decades later. What survives isn't the efficient wines. It's the ones that held their time.
When researchers remove artificial light and clocks from people's lives - put them in conditions like our ancestors knew - they naturally return to the old rhythm. Two sleeps. The wakeful interval between. The body remembers what the culture has forgotten.
I think about that Bucita cellar often now. How the smell called me. How we just stood there, cousins in the half-dark, breathing with the working wine. How time felt - not fast or slow but present.
The slow burn isn't a technique. It's a relationship with time itself - the kind our ancestors knew in their bones, in their two sleeps and wakeful intervals, in their patient attendance to things that cannot be rushed.
We're not behind the times when we wake at 3am or make wine the long way or wait for figs to ripen in their own season.
We're remembering what time is for.
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The Great Inversion: How Italian Wine's Future Moved SouthData:2025-11-02 10:30:00
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Here's the thing nobody's saying out loud: northern Italy is dying faster than the south. Not literally. Not yet. But the vines are telling a story that contradicts oodles of years of wine history. Barolo is sweating. Chianti is scrambling. Prosecco is looking nervously at the thermometer. Meanwhile, on a volcano in Sicily and in the forgotten hills of Basilicata, indigenous grapes that have spent millennia dealing with heat and drought are suddenly looking like the smartest bet in Italy.
For the first time in modern wine history, the center of gravity is shifting. Not because of fashion or critics or investment. Because of physics. Because southern Italy?the part that was always too hot, too rustic, too other?turns out to be the part that already knows how to survive what's coming.
This isn't about eight random wines from across Italy. It's about eight wines from the south?Sicily, Basilicata, Puglia, Calabria?that show what the next twenty years might look like.
The Counterintuitive Reality
In 2024, climate scientists published projections that should terrify anyone who loves Italian wine: 90% of traditional wine regions in coastal and lowland areas could be at risk by century's end.1 Not "might struggle." At risk of disappearing.
But here's the twist. Northern vineyards?Nebbiolo in Piedmont, Sangiovese in Tuscany, even Chardonnay in Emilia-Romagna?are showing more heat stress than vineyards in Sicily and Basilicata, despite getting more rain.2 Why? Because northern vines evolved for cool, damp conditions. They're planted on steep hillsides with shallow soils designed to shed water. When extreme heat arrives, they have no defense. They're climate refugees on their own land.
Southern indigenous varieties?Aglianico, Nero d'Avola, Carricante, Nerello Mascalese?have been coping with drought and sun for eons. Deep roots. Late ripening. Thick skins. They're not adapting to climate change. They were built for it.3
Winemakers in Emilia-Romagna are already ripping out Chardonnay they planted thirty years ago and replanting indigenous varieties.4 Some experts now predict Chardonnay won't be viable anywhere in Italy within a generation.5 Meanwhile, on Mount Etna and in Vulture, production is expanding.
The wines that will define the next twenty years aren't the ones fighting the future. They're the ones that already live there.
The Evidence: High-altitude volcanic viticulture as the blueprint.
James Suckling named this Italian Wine of the Year for 2025.6 Not as a trend pick?as a model. Made from Nerello Mascalese planted in the 1950s at 600-900 meters on volcanic ash, it captures everything the future demands: late ripening, natural acidity, minerality, freshness despite warmth.
Etna isn't just making great wine. It's showing other regions what survival looks like. Ungrafted vines on porous volcanic soil. Elevation that creates natural cooling. Indigenous varieties that ripen slowly even when the mercury climbs. This isn't innovation?it's validation of what southern Italy knew all along.
The next twenty years will see this model replicated: higher, cooler, volcanic, indigenous. Etna got there first.
Elena Fucci "Titolo" (Aglianico del Vulture, Basilicata)
The Evidence: Southern volcanic terroir competing with the North?and winning.
Aglianico has always been Italy's secret weapon. Planted on the slopes of an extinct volcano in Basilicata, it makes wines with the structure of Barolo, the aging potential of Brunello, and the effortless ability to handle heat.7 Elena Fucci's "Titolo" is single-vineyard, ungrafted, aged in large oak?proof that southern Italy doesn't need to imitate Piedmont. It already has the goods.
Basilicata is positioned to become what Etna was fifteen years ago: the overlooked southern region that suddenly everyone realizes has been making world-class wine all along. Volcanic soils, high altitude (600-800m), late-ripening indigenous grapes. All the climate advantages, none of the hype.
When collectors discover Vulture?and they will8?Elena Fucci will be one of the reasons.
Cantine del Notaio "L'Atto" (Aglianico del Vulture, Basilicata)
The Evidence: Biodynamic viticulture + research = understanding what actually works.
Gerardo Giuratrabocchetti isn't just making wine?he's running experiments. Testing how altitude affects ripening. Studying ancient cave-aging systems carved into volcanic tuff in the 1600?s. Documenting which biodynamic practices actually build resilience in a warming climate.
"L'Atto" is the estate's research-driven single vineyard bottling. It's structured, mineral, built to age for decades. But more importantly, it represents southern Italy doing the unglamorous work of figuring out why these vineyards work?so the knowledge can travel.
If Basilicata emerges as a serious global player, it'll be because producers like Cantine del Notaio did the science.
Maugeri "Carricante" (Etna)
The Evidence: Volcanic whites rivaling the world's great expressions?and just getting started.
While the world fell for Etna Rosso, Carricante was quietly evolving into one of Italy's most compelling white grapes. Electric acidity, volcanic minerality, precision that draws comparisons to Chablis and Mosel Riesling. High-altitude (eastern slopes, 700-900m), cool microclimate, built to age.
Carla Maugeri's family estate is making some of the most profound whites in Italy9?proof that Etna's potential goes far beyond red wine. In twenty years, this could be the white wine sommeliers obsess over. The architecture is already there.
The Evidence: The next generation claiming the volcano?on their own terms.
Benedetto Alessandro represents the third wave.10 He grew up making wine in western Sicily, studied the pioneers (de Grazia, Foti), then convinced his cousins to buy land on Etna's northeastern slopes in 2016. His wines are modern, fruit-forward, precise?intentionally different from the brooding traditional style.
Some will call them too clean. Others will call them the future. What matters: young Sicilian winemakers are taking over Etna, and they're not interested in imitating anyone. That creative tension?between reverence and rebellion?is where the next twenty years will be written.
Tenute Rubino "Torre Testa" (Susumaniello, Puglia)
The Evidence: Rescued indigenous varieties that thrive in drought.
Susumaniello nearly went extinct in the 1990s. The grape's production drops dramatically after a decade?less than a kilogram per plant?which made it economically unviable when Puglia focused on volume. But Luigi Rubino understood something others missed: those few bunches that remain produce wines of extraordinary concentration and elegance.11
The grape is naturally hardy and resistant to extreme climate.11 Bush-trained vines with deep root systems, grown in Salento's arid soils with minimal water, Susumaniello is precisely what climate resilience looks like. Tenute Rubino's "Torre Testa" is their flagship single-vineyard bottling?intense, structured, built for aging?proof that Puglia's forgotten grapes are actually its future.
When the Mediterranean gets too hot for irrigation-dependent varieties, Susumaniello will still be thriving.
Librandi "Duca Sanfelice" (Cirò Riserva, Calabria)
The Evidence: Ancient terroir meeting the future head-on.
Cirò is considered one of the oldest wines in the world?allegedly served to Olympic champions in ancient Greece. The Librandi family brought it to international attention in the 1990?s, proving that Calabria's indigenous Gaglioppo grape, grown on calcareous marl soils near the Ionian Sea, could make world-class wine.12
Gaglioppo has thick skins and thrives in hot, dry conditions.12 Sea breezes moderate the intense summer heat. Many vineyards still use alberello?traditional bush-vine training that's naturally drought-resistant. "Duca Sanfelice" is Librandi's top Cirò Riserva, aged two years before release, made from old alberello vines. It's structured, complex, and built for the long haul.
Calabria faces "harsh climate, persistent drought and high temperatures"12?but Gaglioppo was born for this. While northern Italy scrambles to adapt, Cirò just keeps doing what it's done for ages.
Planeta"Santa Cecilia" (Nero d'Avola, Sicily)
The Evidence: Drought-tolerant indigenous variety as climate solution.
Nero d'Avola is Sicily's most important red grape, and for good reason: it thrives in scorching heat, retains refreshing acidity at high sugar levels, and requires minimal irrigation thanks to deep root systems.13 In a region receiving under 550mm of rain annually, these aren't luxuries?they're survival traits.
Planeta's "Santa Cecilia" comes from the Noto hills in southeastern Sicily, where Nero d'Avola originated. Dry-farmed, grown on sandy soils in extreme heat, this is wine made exactly as the climate crisis would design it. The 2024 InnoNDA research project is exploring how to reduce alcohol levels by up to 4% without sacrificing flavor13?direct response to both consumer and climate pressures.
Nero d'Avola isn't adapting to climate change. Climate change is proving that Nero d'Avola was right all along.
What They Share
Every wine on this list is responding to the same pressure: a world that's getting hotter, drier, more extreme. But they're not responding by adapting?they're responding by being exactly what they've always been. Southern volcanic terroir. Indigenous late-ripening varieties. Drought-resistant root systems. Traditional bush-vine training. These aren't innovations. They're inheritances.
But none of them is pretending the climate isn't changing.
The great irony is that southern Italy?historically dismissed as too hot, too rustic, too far from the action?is suddenly the part of Italy with structural advantages. Volcanic soils retain water. High altitude creates cooling.14 Indigenous varieties already know how to handle stress. These aren't adaptations. They're inherent in the legacy of Southern Italy.
Northern Italy will adapt?it's already happening. But the momentum, the resilience, the built-in advantages? For the first time in modern history, they belong to the south.
Twenty years from now, when someone asks what defined Italian wine in the 2020s and 2030s, will the answer be Super Tuscans or cult Barolos? Or will it be the moment Italy remembered that the grapes that thrived before air conditioning, before irrigation, before chemical interventions? ?the ones that inherently knew how to survive?
The future was always there. It just had to get as hot as a volcano to be noticed.
Notes
1. Van Leeuwen, C., et al. "Climate change impacts and adaptations of wine production." Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, March 26, 2024. Study projects that "about 90% of traditional wine regions in coastal and lowland regions of Spain, Italy, Greece and southern California could be at risk of disappearing by the end of the century because of excessive drought and more frequent heatwaves."
2. Guado al Melo, "Climate change and viticulture: appropriate or irresponsible choices?" The analysis notes: "It may sound absurd, but in recent summers there have been more stress problems in certain parts of the north of Italy than in the center and south, albeit that it has rained even less here." The explanation: northern vines evolved for cool conditions with shallow root systems on steep hillsides designed for drainage, while southern varieties and growers are already adapted to semi-arid conditions.
3. Decanter, "Beating the heat: How Italy's winemakers are responding to climate change," January 19, 2023. - by Aldo Fiorelli. Consultant Antonini: "The most resistant varieties are usually the indigenous ones in specific regions, for example Carricante in Sicily."
4. VinePair, "Italian Winemakers Are Finding Creative Ways to Battle Climate Change," - by Rebecca Van Hughes. January 6, 2022. Expert Bordini notes that "many wine producers in the region he lives in, Emilia-Romagna, began favoring Chardonnay over native varieties like Albana around 30 years ago. Now, however, they are returning to the indigenous varieties."
5. Ibid. Bordini states: "I think soon, it will not be possible to cultivate Chardonnay anywhere in Italy."
6. James Suckling, "Top 100 Wines of Italy 2025." The Tenuta delle Terre Nere Etna Rosso San Lorenzo 2023 was named Italian Wine of the Year with a 98/100 score. Available at jamessuckling.com.
7. Eric Guido, "Getting in on the Ground Floor: Aglianico del Vulture." Vinous, May 2024. Comprehensive report on the region's producers, including Elena Fucci, Basilisco, Grifalco, and Cantine del Notaio.
8. WineNews, "Vulture is 'Città Italiana del Vino' 2026," September 23, 2025. The Vulture region was selected for the prestigious 2026 designation, recognizing its "strategic vision and inter-municipal cooperation" in wine tourism and territorial development.
9. Gambero Rosso, "Italy wine guide 2025: the special awards," October 17, 2024. Maugeri was recognized with a special award: "In just three harvests, the winery of Renato Maugeri and his daughters Carla, Michela, and Paola has established itself as one of the denomination's most significant."
10. Wine Spectator, "The Volcano's Third Wave: What's New in Etna Wine?" February 23, 2024. By Robert Camuto. Feature on Benedetto Alessandro and other young Sicilian winemakers representing Etna's new generation.
11. Vinissimus, "Susumaniello." The grape is described as "vigorous, resistant to extreme climate, excellent for blending." Tenute Rubino's website notes: "Despite its notorious hardiness and resistance to pathogens, for many years Susumaniello was on the verge of falling into oblivion, until Tenute Rubino recovered it, enhancing its versatility and making it the emblem of its production philosophy."
12. Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, "Cirò ? Calabria's flagship wine." Raffaele Librandi, head of the Consortium of Doc Cirò: "In addition to our unique terroir, a great tradition of winemaking is reflected in the quality of our wines." Gaglioppo has thick skins and is genetically linked to Sangiovese. VinoVoss notes that Calabria's "harsh climate, with its persistent drought and high temperatures" has shaped the region's viticulture.
13. Vinerra, "Nero d'Avola: An In-Depth Grape Profile." The grape "retains a lively acidity even at high sugar levels, producing fresh, balanced wines in extreme heat." It excels under dry-farmed conditions thanks to "its deep root system and drought resistance." The 2024 InnoNDA Project is "aiming to reduce alcohol levels by up to 4% without sacrificing flavour or intensity?a direct response to consumer and climate pressures."
14. Gambero Rosso International, - by Donato Notarachille. "Above 1,000 meters: wine moves to higher altitudes to face climate change," October 17, 2024. Winemaker Michele Lorenzetti: "There are areas where high-altitude winemaking has been practiced successfully for a long time, like Valtellina, Valle d'Aosta, and Mount Etna, where excellent wines are made around 1,000 meters."
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The Economics of Bullshit: Wine's Junket FollyData:2025-10-26 10:00:00
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Scroll through Instagram on any given Tuesday and you'll see them: sun-drenched vineyard photos, perfectly plated lunches in Tuscan courtyards, selfies with winemakers, glasses raised against golden-hour light. Don't forget the hashtags ? #blessed #winetasting #sponsored (maybe). The aesthetic is flawless. The credibility? Not so much. But here's what you won't see: the unspoken contract. The implicit understanding that this week in Chianti, these meals, this business-class ticket, comes with an expectation. Not a requirement, mind you. Just an... understanding. You don't bite the hand that flies you first class and puts you up in a restored monastery. That would be ungrateful.
Is this journalism? Marketing? Or something murkier that we've all agreed not to examine too closely?
The Quid Pro Quo No One Mentions
Let's be honest about what's happening here. When a winery or consortium spends thousands of euros bringing writers to their region, they're not funding some noble pursuit of truth. They expect return on investment. And the writers? They know it. They're not stupid?just conveniently flexible about what "editorial independence" means.
The selection process itself tells you everything. You don't get invited back if you wrote that the wines were overpriced or the hospitality was lacking. The system self-selects for the pliable, the positive, the ones who'll post pretty pictures and talk about "hidden gems" and "undiscovered terroirs." It's Darwinian, really. Survival of the most compliant.
Compare this to traditional journalism. The New York Times forbids staff and freelancers from accepting comped travel?a strict ethical policy against even the smallest hint of undue influence. The practical reality, as one editor explained, is that newspapers live in glass houses: you can't run exposés on lobbyist junkets while your wine writer sips Barolo on someone else's dime. Ethics and optics are intertwined when credibility is your currency.
This is access journalism?when reporters become so dependent on their sources that they lose the ability to be critical. Ask the wrong question at a White House press conference and watch your credentials disappear. Wine writers face the same trap. When your livelihood depends on maintaining relationships with the very people you're covering, objectivity isn't just compromised. It's impossible. But hey, the Brunello is fantastic.
The Professional Junket Circuit: Serial Abusers of the System
But the real problem isn't the occasional press trip. It's the professional hangers-on?the serial junket-takers who've built entire careers on free travel. They're living the dream, funded by someone else's marketing budget.
You know them when you see them. Check their Instagram: Tuscany today, Penedès tomorrow, Bordeaux next week, Napa by month's end. They're not wine writers who travel; they're travelers who occasionally mention wine between selfies. The telltale signs are everywhere: more photos of themselves than the wines, captions that could apply to any winery anywhere ("What a magical day!"), and a concerning ratio of exclamation points to actual information.
Here's the math that should alarm every winery owner: If someone is doing twelve or more press trips a year, when exactly are they writing? When are they developing the deep knowledge that makes coverage valuable? The answer: they're not. They're spreading shallow coverage thin, posting a TikTok video (one of 34 million posted daily!) that fades in twenty-four hours, maybe a blog post if you're lucky. But don't worry?they'll definitely tag you.
Yet wineries keep inviting them. Why? Because PR firms need to "fill seats." Because follower counts create an illusion of influence. Because nobody wants to admit they can't measure the return on investment. So let's just keep doing it and hope the algorithm rewards us.
Let's talk about what this actually costs. A week-long press trip to Italy?flights, hotels, meals, ground transportation, winery visits?runs easily three to five thousand dollars per person. Multiply that by eight or ten invitees. What did the winery get? A few social media posts that'll be buried in the algorithm within days? Maybe a blog entry that'll get a hundred views from other wine bloggers? But look?thirty-seven likes! That's basically virality. That money could have hired a sales rep for a month. Could have upgraded the tasting room. Could have paid for a presence at a major trade show where actual buyers congregate. Instead, it funded someone's personal brand. And their next passport renewal.
And that's the perpetual motion machine at work. Each trip makes these "influencers" look more influential, which gets them invited on the next trip, which makes them look even more influential. They're building their brand on your dime. Rinse, repeat, provide minimal value. It's the circle of life, Tuscan villa edition.
The FTC Disclosure Theater
The Federal Trade Commission requires disclosure of "material connections"?which includes free trips. Influencers must use clear language like "#ad" or "#sponsored." Must place it prominently. Must make it "hard to miss."
In practice? You get "#ad" buried seventeen hashtags deep. Or "Thanks to XYZ Winery for hosting!" without clarifying that "hosting" meant five thousand dollars in expenses. Very transparent. Very ethical.
But here's the thing: even perfect disclosure doesn't solve the ethical problem. It just makes it legal. You can disclose a conflict of interest without eliminating it. Readers don't need labeled bias?they need unbiased information. There's a difference. Though apparently not one the FTC cares much about.
When the Influencer Becomes the Brand
We've reached a strange inflection point where people make their living as "wine content creators." Their full-time job is posting about wine. Which raises an uncomfortable question: when wine coverage is your livelihood, who's really the client? The readers, or the wineries paying for your lifestyle?
Trick question. It's neither. It's the algorithm.
The metrics game compounds the problem. Analysis shows more than sixty percent of influencers admit to buying followers, likes, or comments. Fake accounts number in the millions. Yet wineries make decisions based on these numbers, unable to verify what's real and what's manufactured. It's the economics of bullshit?spending real money on fake influence, measuring success in meaningless impressions while actual sales remain a mystery. But the engagement rate looks great in the PowerPoint.
And some of these folks have developed quite the sense of entitlement. I've heard stories?the blogger who demanded a business-class ticket before ever visiting a region, the influencer who refused to post without additional "compensation" beyond the free trip. When did we start treating wine producers like ATMs? Oh right?when someone figured out they'd actually pay.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here's the question nobody wants to answer: Can you accept a five-thousand-dollar trip and still be objective?
Maybe the answer is simpler than we've been admitting. Maybe you can't. Maybe we need to stop pretending there's some magical ethical framework that makes it okay. Either commit to independence?pay your own way, accept the limitations?or admit you're doing PR and market yourself accordingly. Just don't call it journalism while you're working on your tan in someone else's vineyard.
But don't insult us by calling it journalism while posting from a Tuscan villa someone else paid for.
Wine lovers trying to navigate this increasingly murky information landscape deserve to know what's genuine. Which recommendations come from expertise and which from expedience? The trust that took decades to build in wine media is eroding, replaced by cynicism. Wine deserves better than song-and-dance men and Instagram hangers-on. The hardworking farmers and winemakers pouring their lives into bottles deserve advocates who can't be bought. And consumers deserve to know whether they're reading a review or an advertisement.
As they say in carpentry: measure twice, cut once. It's time the wine world cut the bullshit.
© written and photo-synthesized (with inspiration from the ancient Roman mosaics at Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina, Sicily) by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy wine blog + Italian wine blog + Italy W
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On the Wine Trail in Italy
Twenty Years In: A 2025 RetrospectiveData:2025-12-21 11:15:00
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Twenty years ago this month, I started this blog. Nearly 1,800 posts later, I'm still here. I was contemplating an end the blog at twenty years. But 2025 brought a bevy of posts (and new readers) that were rewarding and widely read. Strange thing, for I really thought wine blogs and wine blogging were heading to the Smithsonian to rest next to the dinosaurs. It seems Substack has renewed the category, albeit in a different format, of sorts. I considered switching over to Substack. They have better analytics and push from the platform, versus the necessary pull from the legacy platform, Blogspot, which even its owners AI representative (i.e. Gemini) claim has become a digital ghost town. Maybe so. Or perhaps it's like a vintage sports car that just needs to be cared for. While it doesn't have the bells and whistles of the newer models, it still can get up and go and eventually get you somewhere. That's where we've been going for the last twenty years on the wine trail in Italy.
2025 was a year of reckoning and remembrance. I wrote on average, a post a week?each one a conversation I needed to have, either with myself or with you. Looking back, they organized themselves into five distinct streams, which I am re-sharing with you below.
This almost year-end piece organizes some of my more notable posts from 2025 into five thematic streams. It's a way to see the full range of what I tackled this year.
I'll be back next week on the official day, the 20th anniversary date, with some thoughts and reflections and possible directions (maybe even some predictions) I plan on taking in 2026. In the meantime, enjoy the encore presentation, and Merry Christmas, y'all.
The Personal Trail: Wine, Life, and Looking
Some essays weren't about wine at all, except that everything's about wine when you've spent forty years in it.
"What Photography Taught Me About Wine Appreciation" (September 7, 2025)
Photography informed my wine journey from the start. Wynn Bullock taught me to be "always looking, with or without a camera"?a philosophy that shaped how I approach both crafts.
"Trebbiano and Chicken - A simple meal which might just save the world" (August 24, 2025)
The world burns, and I went to the kitchen. Sometimes the most radical act is making something simple and good.
"The Stages of a (Wine's) Life" (August 3, 2025)
I sat in my wine closet with the ancients?25% of my collection is 25 years or older. They had things to tell me about aging, about time, about what lasts.
"Love - Wine Appreciation's Secret Sauce" (August 17, 2025)
The wine-writing class kept harping about the sky falling. Meanwhile, actual people in actual shops were still buying wine, still falling in love with it. Turns out that matters more than all the bloviating.
"In Service of Italian Wine" (July 6, 2025)
Forty years in the trade. I survived. Not everyone did. Here's how I dodged those bullets.
"Midnight in the Cellar: Wine, Sleep, and the Slow Burn" (November 9, 2025)
Bucita, 1977. The scent of fermentation woke me at midnight. Sometimes memory works like that?reaching through decades, pulling you back to the cellar.
"The Most Important Meal of the Day" (November 16, 2025)
Marion Nestle doesn't believe in breakfast. My grandfather's Sunday barbecues under the grape arbor?those weren't marketed. They just mattered.
"Well, shut my mouth!" (August 10, 2025)
Lately when I'm out in the world, I keep getting this sense I had as a youngster: stop talking and let the adults talk.
The Industry Reckoning: Calling Out the Bullshit
Some conversations needed to happen out loud, in public, with receipts.
"The Economics of Bullshit: Wine's Junket Folly" (October 26, 2025)
Scroll Instagram?sun-drenched vineyard photos, perfectly plated lunches, #blessed #sponsored (maybe). But here's the unspoken contract: you don't bite the hand that flies you first class.
"Devotion, Direction and Dissent ? The Divergent Mantra of Contemporary Italian Winemakers" (August 31, 2025)
Change in Italian winemaking happens incrementally. But make no mistake?the revolution continues. Why would anyone think it would stop here?
"Has Wine Lost Its Moorings? A Response to Eric Asimov" (October 22, 2025)
Eric laid out prescriptions for an ailing industry. But reading through it, one question kept nagging: Has wine lost its cultural moorings?
"The Great Inversion: How Italian Wine's Future Moved South" (November 2, 2025)
Nobody's saying it out loud: northern Italy is dying faster than the south. For the first time in modern wine history, the center of gravity is shifting.
"Haven't we been here before? A signpost on the wine trail in Italy" (July 27, 2025)
Twenty years of writing. Looking back at the subject matter, I can't help wondering if I've reached the bottom of the barrel. The jury's still out.
"Problem: Wine in Crisis? Remedy: Move forward, like an arrow. Fearlessly." (July 13, 2025)
I've been working on a project in an Italian wine shop. I have good news: people are still buying wine, still discovering, still caring.
"Ten Years After: What I Got Right (and Wrong) About Italian Wine in America" (October 12, 2025)
A decade ago I threw some educated guesses into the wind. Looking back is easier than looking forward, but at least now I have data.
"How Much Do Wine Expert Ratings Matter?" (June 8, 2025)
Making shelf talkers for my local shop, I discovered the relative influence of wine writers has shifted. There are more voices than ever, so the field has been diluted.
"Wine on lists starting @ $100, concert seats @ $1,000, cars that run $100,000, watches for $250,000 ? Excuse me, what planet am I on?" (June 22, 2025)
We all live in a yellow submarine now. Inside the bubble, not all is rosy.
"That ain't Italy, folks ? Tourism in the 21st Century" (June 29, 2025)
A country turns into a cruise ship. The billionaire's Venetian wedding galvanized this concept into a gigantic, sparkling mess.
The Practical Guides: Still Teaching After All These Years
Some posts just needed to explain things clearly, without the noise.
"Your Essential Guide to Italy's DOC and DOCG Wines - 2025 Version" (October 15, 2025)
You're standing in front of a wine list. Barbaresco, Barolo, Brunello?all those B's swimming together. Someone asks what the difference is between DOC and DOCG. Here's the answer.
"What Makes Someone an Italian Wine Expert? (And Why It Doesn't Matter)" (December 14, 2025)
I helped a woman in my Italian market find wine. Walking away, I thought: "She doesn't know she just got advice from someone who spent forty years working with Italian wine." What a ridiculous thing to think.
"Don't Age Wine Longer than 10 Years!" (June 1, 2025)
A longtime colleague launched into a prolonged jeremiad about aging wine. I recorded it (with permission). The jury's still out.
"Prophecy and Perspective on the Blackland Prairie" (October 19, 2025)
Ten years ago I wrote about 5 Italian wine regions to watch. The buffalos are coming back. The crystal ball sits on my desk, a little cloudier, a little wiser.
"Whispers from the Forgotten Frontiers of Italian Wine" (September 21, 2025)
Beneath the surface lies a shadowed realm?wines yet unborn, waiting in the dark. Nowhere is this more evident than in Etna, where thousands of ancient indigenous vines lie dormant.
The Satire & Invention: When You Have to Laugh
Sometimes the only response to absurdity is more absurdity?but deadpan.
"Persona Non Grata" (November 12, 2025)
Retrieved from my spam file ?
[The confidential memo that arrived after I became persona non grata in the wine PR world]
"Spas, Tours, Golden Hour Too - We'll Be Blessed If You Come" (November 18, 2025)
Apparently word hasn't gotten around yet. This arrived in my inbox today.
[Another press junket invitation, lampooned]
"A Hundred Years Wrapped in Etna's Fiery Embrace" (October 5, 2025)
I enlisted my clandestine consigliere, Åï?fonso?an arcane ignis fatuus who whispers tweaks. We traced the 2022 Terre Nere Prephylloxera over a hundred imagined years, guided by Empedocles.
"Is Your Favorite Italian Wine 'Coded?'" (May 18, 2025)
It got me wondering if Italian wine is coded in these days of disruption. Almost anything can be, especially when one trawls the eddies of social media.
"The Bullshit-ification of the Italian Wine and Food Experience in America" (February 23, 2025)
Sometimes you just have to call it what it is.
Italy Beyond the Glass: Travel Philosophy & Cultural Critique
Wine is a way into Italy. But Italy is so much more.
"Kicking the Bucket List Habit ~ Five Ways to Surrender to Italy" (November 30, 2025)
I keep seeing these bucket lists. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose. But that's not the Italy that's stayed with me for fifty-some years. Italy reveals itself differently?not when you grasp at it, but when you open your hands.
"Go to Rome, go to Florence, go to Venice, but please don't go here!" (September 14, 2025)
People go to Rome, to Florence, to Venice. But Liguria? Why in Heaven's name would anyone go there? Liguria is one of Italy's best kept secrets.
"The Ugly American Has Come Home" (December 7, 2025)
When I first went to Italy in 1971, I got my introduction to the ugly American. Now the ugly American has come home to roost. There's no escaping their thunderous ubiety.
"Examining Cultural Appropriation in Italian-Inspired Cuisine: A Closer Look" (September 28, 2025)
A local chef opened an Italian-styled restaurant. One dish: Prosciutto e Melone made with Texas cantaloupe, culatello, candied hazelnuts, figs, and basil. The chef noted ironically, "We have a lot more of what people consider traditional Italian," but couldn't skip chicken parmesan.
"Like Nothing Ever Before" (July 20, 2025)
How often have you opened a bottle of wine and thought you'd never tasted anything like it in your lifetime? After thousands of wines a year, when does that special bottle percolate to the top?
The Gift of Memory
Looking back at these posts, I realize they centered around paying attention to wine, to Italy, to the industry, to the absurdity, to what lasts and what doesn't.
Twenty years is a long time to maintain the discourse. But maybe that's the point?it's not about having something new to say every week. It's about showing up, looking closely, and trusting that if you pay attention long enough, the things worth saying will find you. More on this next week.
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What Makes Someone an Italian Wine Expert? (And Why It Doesn't Matter)Data:2025-12-14 11:29:00
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I was in my local Italian market last week, picking up olive oil and pasta. A woman nearby stood staring at the wine section, Brunellos lined up like soldiers. She looked lost. I asked if she needed help. She did?looking for something specific. I found it for her, pointed out a couple alternatives, and moved on.
Walking away, a thought flickered through my mind: "I bet she doesn't know she just got advice from someone who spent forty years working with Italian wine." I laughed at myself and kept walking toward the eggs. What a ridiculous thing to think.
But it raises a question I've been chewing on for years: what actually makes someone an Italian wine expert?
The wine world has become obsessed with this. Certifications, credentials, letters after your name. Everyone's racing to establish themselves as THE authority on Italian wine. Take a course, pass a test, get certified, update your LinkedIn. Oh, and start a Substack, or better yet, a podcast. Don't forget to get on the junket circuit. Congratulations, you're now an expert. Here's the uncomfortable truth: knowing the pH levels of Barbera or memorizing every sub-zone in Piedmont doesn't mean you understand what makes Barbera speak to people's souls. I remember walking into my first Vinitaly in 1984. I arrived imagining (in my wildest dreams!) that I might be one of those experts on Italian wine. Within an hour, I realized I was nowhere close. The room was full of people who had spent lifetimes learning, tasting, living this stuff. They knew the difference between Lampia and Michet (biotypes of Nebbiolo, btw) the way a musician knows scales.
I still see it at tastings today?young and old alike, all vying for their place on the ladder of preeminence. And honestly? I've met plenty of people who thought they were the world's authority on Italian wine. I've never actually met the person who was (Well actually, there was one or two, but they would deny it, vehemently). Because here's what I've learned after four decades: real expertise isn't about knowing every DOCG or being able to recite vintage charts. It's about understanding why a simple Langhe Nebbiolo from an unknown producer can move you more than a 100-point Barolo that everyone's chasing.
Don't get me wrong?knowledge matters. You should know how to pronounce the names. You should understand where wines come from, why a Tuscan wine is different than one from Piedmont. But that's just the foundation. The real stuff?the stuff that actually matters when you're opening a bottle with friends or choosing something for dinner?that comes from somewhere else.
It comes from balance. From perspective. From understanding Italian wine within a larger global context, not just in its own bubble. It comes from staying curious instead of claiming mastery. Because once you think you're an expert at anything, there's always someone or something new to knock you down a peg or two.
The biggest revelation came for me after I retired from the wine trade in 2018. I'd spent decades as an "Italian wine director," translating and communicating the Italian wine message. And then I stepped away from all that. Suddenly, I wasn't invested in being irrefragable anymore. I wasn't proving my expertise. I was just... enjoying wine again.It was liberating. I could walk into a wine shop and not automatically catalog everything I saw. I could order something at a restaurant without mentally rating it or comparing it to every other version I'd tasted. I could just drink the damn wine.
"Open the bottle. Drink the wine. Cut the crap." I find myself saying this more and more. Yeah, I said it again.
Here's what I want regular wine drinkers to know: don't be intimidated by people who call themselves experts. Trust your own palate. Trust your own experience. If you like a wine, you like it. If you don't, you don't. No certificate or credential changes that.
The best Italian wine knowledge doesn't come from courses or competitions. It comes from curiosity. From trying new things. From asking questions. From paying attention to what you're drinking and why you like it.
Maybe the real experts are the ones who've stopped needing to be experts. The ones who've shed that yoke and discovered they can now actually enjoy Italian wine for what it is: something to share, something to savor, something woven into a meal and a moment, not dissected and scored and ranked. I know plenty of dead Italian wine experts who would rather be here, alive, drinking the most pedestrian bottle of Chianti than have their expertise memorialized in some dusty credential. "Give me life," they whisper.
So give yourself permission to just be an enthusiast. That's where the real joy lives anyway.
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The Ugly American Has Come HomeData:2025-12-07 11:00:00
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When I first went to Italy in 1971, I got my introduction to what people over there were calling the ugly American. Loud, overbearing, disregarding of local cultural norms ("What do you mean, you don't have ice?"), totally unaware that the rest of the world did things differently than we did in the U.S. of A. A few years later I took a train from Mexicali to Mexico City - three days, stopping at every stop. More ugly Americans, unconscious and insensitive to the culture hosting them. Downright rude, and when drunk, dangerous.
Over decades and many trips to Italy, France, Greece, Spain, and Portugal, I witnessed too many times the embarrassing and unconscionable behaviors - the attitudes, the mores, of American tourists. Fortunately, I blended in and took a side view to their ignorant ways.
But now, the Ugly American has come home to roost. There's no escaping their thunderous ubiety in the United States, no security in the homeland from the hordes of somnambulists roaming the countryside and city with their oversized vehicles and their propensity to disregard the law. Just try going through a green light without checking if stragglers are racing through the red. It happens all the time. Turns out the ugly American scaled perfectly - from loud tourist to national ethos.
What does that have to do with the wine trail in Italy?
This year started with fire. The town where I was born, the last home I lived in in California - leveled. And now as the year ends, what a year it has been, living under disruptive and chaotic leadership that seems designed to keep us perpetually off-balance, perpetually at each other's throats.
Over thirty years, I've watched American civil society coarsen in ways that would have seemed unimaginable in 1971. The polarization isn't just political anymore - it's invaded our daily interactions. We can still sit across from someone we fundamentally disagree with and be civil, but there's nothing underneath. No real connection, no meaningful exchange. We've lost some shared understanding that civilization requires restraint, respect for the commons, for each other. As I rapidly approach twenty years of writing on this blog - two decades on the wine trail trying to make sense of what wine means beyond the bottle - I keep coming back to the same question: what is wine for? Not the commercial product, not the points and ratings, but the thing itself. The ritual, the slowing down. Wine as civilizing agent - not because it makes anyone drunk, but because it requires patience. You don't gulp good wine. You don't shout over it. It demands you pay attention, that you acknowledge you're part of something larger than yourself.
Italy taught me this. In the countryside, in the cellars, at tables where strangers become friends over a bottle, wine creates a space where civility isn't just possible - it's inevitable. You can't rush a winemaker. You can't bully terroir. The vine doesn't care about your politics or your schedule. It does what it does, and you either learn patience or you learn nothing.
And now wine itself is under attack from neo-prohibitionists who see it as nothing more than alcohol, a public health menace to be warned against, restricted, taxed into oblivion. They miss entirely what wine has been for millennia - a civilizing force, a bearer of culture, a reason to gather and remember we're human beings, not just consumers or demographics or rival tribes.
Can wine appreciation help heal what's broken in American civil society? I don't know. That might be asking too much of fermented grapes. But the rituals around wine - the attention it demands, the conversation it enables, the patience it requires - these are exactly the virtues we've abandoned in our rush to make everything faster, louder, more extreme. When I'm in Italy now, I see something we've lost. Not some idealized past - Italy has its own problems, its own divisions. But there's still a shared understanding that meals matter, that gathering matters, that taking time with a bottle of wine isn't indulgence, it's civilization. It's the opposite of what I see at home - the inability to slow down enough to see the other person across the table.
Maybe wine can't save us. Maybe nothing can. But after forty years of watching how wine brings people together in Italy - not just Italians, but everyone who shows up willing to learn, to listen, to slow down - I'm not ready to give up on the idea that the rituals we've abandoned might show us a way back.
The ugly American abroad was always embarrassing because they refused to adapt, to respect, to learn. The ugly American at home is tragic because we've forgotten we once knew better. We built a country on the idea that we could disagree without being enemies, that there were standards of behavior that transcended politics, that civilization meant something. Wine won't fix the polarization. It won't make people civil who've decided incivility is a virtue. But for those still looking for a roadmap back, still believing that how we treat each other matters, the wine trail offers something: proof that patience still works, that attention still matters, that sitting down together with something worth savoring can still create the space where we remember how to be human with each other.
It's not much. But it's something. And right now, I'll take it.
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Kicking the Bucket List Habit ~ Five Ways to Surrender to ItalyData:2025-11-30 12:00:00
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I keep seeing these bucket lists. Italy bucket lists. Five things, ten things, twenty things you must do before you die. And they're all the same: the Amalfi Coast, a Tuscan villa with an infinity pool, dinner at some Michelin-starred place in Rome where you need a reservation six months out and a credit card that doesn't flinch. Nothing wrong with any of that, I suppose. But that's not the Italy that's stayed with me for fifty-some years. The Italy that changed me wasn't the one I planned. It was the one I stumbled into when I got lost, when I let go, when I trusted a stranger's gesture instead of a guidebook.
Italy reveals itself differently. Not when you grasp at it, but when you open your hands.
Are you ready for Italy? Or are you only ready for the Italy you've already decided on?
So here are five experiences for your surrender list. Understand this: these aren't things to collect. They're ways to fail by tourist standards?and succeed by Italy's.
1. WANDERING: Surrender Your Need for Destination
Get deliberately lost in a southern hill town. Inland Calabria. Inner Sicily. The hinterlands of Basilicata. Places where tourists don't go because there's "nothing to see."
Turn off your GPS. Don't make a restaurant reservation. Walk.
Follow the smell of wild herbs floating down from the hills. Trust a sound, a stranger's direction, the way light falls on a particular alley. The confusion is the experience, the lostness is the point.
You won't find this at the Spanish Steps. You have to go where the road ends and trust that something will lead you somewhere worth being.
2. DISCOVERING: Surrender Your Fear of Missing Out
Find your morning coffee bar in Venice or Rome. Not the best one. Not the one with reviews. YOUR bar. Go back every morning until the barista knows your order.
Step 100 meters away from San Marco and you'll find the quiet, almost deserted village that makes Venice bearable. The locals tolerate tourists in their typical Venetian manner?which is to say, they live here, we don't. We will leave, they will stay. It will always be their Venice, not ours. As it should be.
I learned this returning to Italy in 2023 after a four-year absence. I found a quirky little wine bar near my hotel, Ozio, specializing in natural wine. I sipped a Sicilian white?Catarratto-Zibibbo, a skin-contact orange?instead of the ubiquitous Spritz. Simple, dry, legitimate?everything the Spritz isn't.
Walk down the road, take a right, then a left. Find something no one knows about except the locals. You won't starve. And you might run into something better than all those pages of recommendations. Use your gut, listen to your heart.
The real Italy exists behind the heavily touristed façade. But you have to be willing to miss the "must-see" to find it.
3. PILGRIMAGING: Surrender Your Hunger for Spectacle
Choose Ercolano over Pompeii. An Umbrian hermitage over Assisi's basilica. A Renaissance-era olive orchard on a Calabrian escarpment where a Scandinavian importer once asked to be left alone for hours, just to sit among trees that have never seen Florence or Venice or the Vatican.
I lived in a trailer outside Assisi in 1977 for three weeks, five dollars a day. A short walk led to what was once a stall where they cooked food?local, healthy, humble. No crowds, no queues, just the simple Italian table. Until the New York Times "discovered" it decades later.
Sacred geography reveals itself in solitude, not in lines. You won't get the photo (or the "selfie") everyone else has. You might not even understand what you experienced until years later. But that's pilgrimage?walking toward something you can't quite name, letting it change you without fanfare.
St. Peter's used to be a place where you could park your car, have a picnic lunch on the steps, take your time. Now it's all restricting and queuing up. "Move on, hurry up, no pictures, people are waiting."
Go where the waiting isn't necessary. Go where silence still exists. Walk up the hill to Parioli and find a Rome for Romans and other wanderers.
4. WORKING: Surrender Your Role as Consumer
Get your hands dirty. Harvest olives. Pick grapes. Help prep a village sagra. Work a fishing boat for a morning.
I arrived in a hilltop town called Bucita in Calabria in 1977, following the smell of wild herbs and figs baked in their leaves floating down from the hills. A storm threatened. The family needed hands in the fields for harvest. Like goats we swarmed the vineyards, competing with the bees for the nectar. The elements dominated everything?sun, rain, lightning, thunder?earth, alive and moving.
Years later, I spent days picking olives in Tuscany?900 pounds over several days, thinking about Italian work songs, dodging wasps. Tedious, physical, real.
Or maybe you end up sitting in someone's home at night, drinking their wine. Below you in the basement, thousands of crushed grapes fermenting. Above, a bare bulb lighting the room. The elders talking into the early hours of the morning. That's where I learned wine?not in books or at fancy tastings, but in rooms like that, with people who made it.
You understand terroir through your body, not your palate. You earn your place at the table differently when you've worked for it. Your muscles ache. Your hands smell like earth or oil or fish. And the meal that follows tastes like nothing you've ever paid for.
5. FOOD AND WINE: Surrender Your Expectations
Find a no-menu trattoria. Or better yet, end up at someone's table where you eat what you're given.
I had one of these experiences in the hilltop town of Cirò in Calabria. L'Aquila d'oro?four tables for maybe eighteen people, a "truck stop" most would drive right by. The wife cooks. The husband and son serve. What followed was three hours, eighteen courses of throw-away food becoming revelation.
Baby goat intestines on oregano branches. Fava bean skins?tough, stringy things normally discarded for the prize inside. Ricotta that was milk in the creature yesterday morning. Not Saveur-magazine perfect. Not pretty. But memorable in ways no Michelin meal has ever been.
"This is the poorest of cuisines," my friend Paolo reminded me. "Made from things nobody in the city hungers for. Wild onions, herbs, parts of animals that get discarded, skins of plants no one would think were edible."
Throw away food. Or throw it down food, which is what we did.
If I served this meal to some friends back home, they might ask, "When are we going to start getting the Italian food?" But others would get it. They would understand they were in the kitchen of a woman from Calabria, tasting something out of this world that comforts and nourishes and is so delicious.
The same goes for wine. Skip the trophy bottles. Order the vino della casa. That house wine in many Italian trattorie is better than most wines you can buy in American supermarkets. Simple, fresh, for the moment. Go straight for it. You'll seldom be disappointed.
Before You Go
These experiences share one requirement: you have to be ready to fail by bucket-list standards.
You might not get the photo. The directions you followed might lead nowhere.The winemaker might be out in the fields. You might sit on that bench for an hour and feel like you wasted time.
But if you're ready for Italy?truly ready?that won't matter.
Italy isn't a checklist. It's not a conquest. It's a country made up of people with feelings and emotions, with a culture that doesn't perform for tourists. Step off the trail everyone else is on.
Get lost. Sit still. Work. Eat what appears. Trust the locals over the algorithm.
Let Italy be Italy. And let it change you in ways you didn't plan.
Going to Italy?that's a good fortune most people never have. Don't waste it on checklists. This is one of the most intimate, beautiful places humans have created. Slow down enough, and it will let you in. That gift is worth more than any bucket list could promise.
Other reading: Italy is ready for you - Are you ready for Italy?
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The Most Important Meal of the DayData:2025-11-16 11:33:37
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| Family outing Old California circa early 1930's - Nonna bottom right |
Marion Nestle doesn't believe in breakfast. At 89, this nutrition expert who's spent decades exposing the food industry says most of the research claiming breakfast is the most important meal was sponsored by cereal companies. Kellogg's and General Mills needed to move boxes. They manufactured urgency. We bought it.
But nobody marketed the meals that actually mattered. My grandfather's brick bar-be-cue in old California. Every Sunday under the grape arbor. Probably the first place wine touched my lips. Those traditions?gathering, sharing a meal, an anonymous bottle or two of wine?they're gone now.
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| Family dinner al fresco - Palermo circa mid 1950's | | | |
We have better everything now. Custom grills, exotic charcoal, grass-fed steaks, wines we can trace to specific hillsides. But something essential slipped away in all this improvement.
I walked into a new restaurant recently. Noise hit first?music, then voices bouncing off hard surfaces designed for Instagram. By evening they'd dimmed the lights and cranked the volume higher. Maybe I'm just over it. But I watched people half-shouting across small tables, trying to connect.
So people stay home. Not from antisocial impulse, but because they need to hear each other again. To see a face when it tells a story. To not be constantly barraged by questions ("How is everything tasting?").
At home you pour what makes sense. Wine's just there, part of it. It's there while you're talking about the world or work or nothing much. You taste it because you're paying attention?wine rewards that. You can't taste it properly while distracted, while your phone lights up with the next crisis.
With meals at home one can breathe with the wine. Conversation happens without someone constantly interrupting you. No one's eyeing your table, trying to upsell you every five minutes.
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| There was nothing like our Mamma's cooking | |
Eat food, not too much, mostly plants. Pollan's mantra, Nestle's practice. Simple. Real. Not ultra-processed. Not manufactured. Not at 85dB. With music you can hear, maybe even enjoy, rather than some that seek to help the establishment turn the tables quickly.
In Italy, lunch is still an important meal. Businesses close. People sit. Wine flows, moderately. Then back to work. My grandfather's Sunday gatherings had that same understanding. Different place, different wine, same knowledge: an ordinary day can be made to matter. Why can't Tuesday have that attention?
We're in upheaval?political, social, economic. Wine consumption trending down. But maybe wine isn't the problem. Maybe we forgot how to weave it into the fabric of a meal instead of making it the excuse for one.
Holidays approach with their promise of important meals. Thanksgiving. Christmas. New Year's. But what if we didn't wait? What if Thursday lunch mattered? What if we stopped relegating lunch to desk salads grabbed standing up?
The most important meal isn't breakfast or dinner or Thanksgiving at two. It's whichever one you show up for. The one you make matter through presence.
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| Southern California - Nonno's bar-be-cue circa 1950's |
My grandfather's backyard. That arbor. Those Sundays. The wine wasn't great, compared to the stuff we pour down our gullets today. But the moments were. Not because everything was perfect?people showed up. They sat. They stayed. They made memories we inherited.
We cannot go back to that California. It fell off the map some time ago, vanished into whatever country the past becomes. But the practice hasn't. Setting a table. Paying attention to what you're eating, who you're with, what's in the glass. Not for Instagram. Not to escape. Just presence.
Food, perhaps wine, certainly time, gratitude not as sentiment but as the act of noticing what stands before you, and in uncertain times not because it repairs the outer chaos but because it reminds us we are still here, still human, still capable of that most ancient and essential act of sitting down and being in each other's presence.
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| Old California circa 1930's- our dad on the right |
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Persona Non GrataData:2025-11-12 10:20:00
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Retrieved from my spam file ?*
Click images to enlarge
* --- Editor's note: No actual consortia were consulted in the writing of this memorandum.
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Midnight in the Cellar: Wine, Sleep, and the Slow BurnData:2025-11-09 11:27:00
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Wine, time and transformation
The scent woke me. Not an alarm, not a voice - just that yeasty, intoxicating pull of fermentation working in the dark. It reached through the window, through my first sleep, drew me from bed the way the aroma of those ripe figs had drawn me when we first arrived in Bucita that September of 1977. Siren calls, both of them. Irresistible. I made my way to the cellar. Cool stone underfoot, a single light carving shadows from the darkness. My cousins were already there, not doing much of anything. Just present. Just attending. We didn't talk much. Didn't need to. The wine was holding court - that gentle gurgle and hiss of wild yeast doing ancient work in wicker-wrapped demijohns that might have held our great-grandparents' wine.
Outside, the stream. Wind whistling through the clay tiles. A light breeze carrying the scent of September hills. Outside, a waft of bergamot. Inside, just the slow burn of transformation.
This was the wakeful hour between sleeps - that pause where nothing productive happens but everything important does. We weren't checking temperatures or consulting charts. We were simply there, breathing the same air as the working wine, letting time notice itself.
Years later, I would learn that humans used to sleep this way: two sleeps with a conscious interval between. That our bodies still want to wake at 3am not because something's wrong, but because something's deeply right - something's remembering. In that Bucita cellar, I was living in that remembered rhythm without knowing its name.
The wine taught me before science did: transformation cannot be rushed. Attention cannot be scheduled. The slow burn asks nothing but presence.
For most of human history, no one slept through the night. At least not the way we think of it now - that continuous eight-hour block we're told is "normal" and worry we're broken when we can't achieve it.
Our ancestors slept in shifts. First sleep, then a wakeful hour or two around midnight, then second sleep until dawn. Historical records from Europe, Africa, Asia describe this pattern as unremarkably as we might describe breakfast. People woke around midnight, tended fires, prayed, made love, visited neighbors, contemplated their dreams. Then returned to sleep.
It wasn't insomnia. It was the rhythm.
The interval between sleeps had a quality. Not dead time but noticed time - the kind of attention that shapes how we experience duration. Without artificial light, those midnight hours felt different. Slower, richer, more permeable. Time you could actually feel passing through you rather than rushing past you.
We lost this rhythm through the steady creep of efficiency. First oil lamps, then gas lighting, then electricity turning night into usable waking time. Factory schedules demanding continuous blocks of rest to maximize continuous blocks of labor. By the early 20th century, eight uninterrupted hours had become the ideal, and anyone who woke in between was failing at sleep.
But the body remembers. That 3am waking isn't malfunction - it's your biology looking for the pause that used to be there.
Emotion changes how we experience time. Not metaphorically. Literally. When we're anxious, our internal clock slows and minutes stretch. When we're engaged and present, time flows. Sometimes it compresses. What's really happening is we stop measuring and start experiencing.
In that Bucita cellar, time felt slow not because it was boring but because it was full. Rich with sensory detail, emotional presence, the kind of attention that creates memory. That's why I can still smell that cellar 48 years later, still feel the cool stone, still hear the gurgle of fermentation and the stream outside.
This is what the slow burn creates: noticed time. Time you're actually present for.
Traditional winemaking built this into its structure. You couldn't rush fermentation, couldn't force aging, couldn't engineer away the waiting. You had to attend. Check on things not because a timer went off but because the smell called you, because you were in relationship with the working wine. The worry, the satisfaction, the anticipation building over months or years - that was the emotional texture that made the wine, and the winemaker, who they were.But like sleep, wine got efficient. Temperature-controlled stainless steel eliminated the need for midnight visits. Cultured yeasts made fermentation predictable. Micro-oxygenation accelerated aging that used to take years. We learned to make technically perfect wine faster, more consistently, with less risk and less attention.
We compressed the intervals out.
And something strange happened: the faster wine got, the more anxious the wine business became. Will it score well? Will it sell? Is it ready yet? What's the trend? The constant low-grade stress of quarterly thinking, of wines engineered for immediate pleasure because no one wants to wait, of measuring everything in 90-day cycles and shareholder value.
We traded the slow burn of deep engagement for the constant simmer of low-grade stress.
The irony is brutal: efficiency was supposed to free us from the tyranny of time, but instead it just changed the quality of our captivity. The old way was slow but emotionally rich. The new way is fast but feels endless. We're always working, always optimizing, always behind. Time drags even though everything's supposedly faster.
We compressed sleep into one efficient block and wonder why we wake anxious.
We compressed winemaking into predictable timelines and wonder why wine has lost its story.
Same problem. Same loss.
Some winemakers still work the old way. Still visit the cellar when the smell calls them. Still wait for fermentation to finish on its own terms. Still let wine sleep through winters in barrel, waking and resting in its own rhythm. They're not behind the times. They're remembering a different relationship to time itself. This isn't about rejecting technology or romanticizing poverty. That Bucita cellar was hard work, make no mistake. But it was work done in human time, emotional time, noticed time.
The slow burn isn't slower. It just feels different. Richer. More alive.I've spent forty years in the wine business translating the Italian wine message to a country that mostly wanted Chardonnay and Cabernet. I've seen wines score 95 points and disappear in a year. I've seen wines with no scores at all become someone's epiphany, their own golden bottle in the cabinet, their own jasmine and honey moment they'll remember decades later. What survives isn't the efficient wines. It's the ones that held their time.
When researchers remove artificial light and clocks from people's lives - put them in conditions like our ancestors knew - they naturally return to the old rhythm. Two sleeps. The wakeful interval between. The body remembers what the culture has forgotten.
I think about that Bucita cellar often now. How the smell called me. How we just stood there, cousins in the half-dark, breathing with the working wine. How time felt - not fast or slow but present.
The slow burn isn't a technique. It's a relationship with time itself - the kind our ancestors knew in their bones, in their two sleeps and wakeful intervals, in their patient attendance to things that cannot be rushed.
We're not behind the times when we wake at 3am or make wine the long way or wait for figs to ripen in their own season.
We're remembering what time is for.
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The Great Inversion: How Italian Wine's Future Moved SouthData:2025-11-02 10:30:00
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Here's the thing nobody's saying out loud: northern Italy is dying faster than the south. Not literally. Not yet. But the vines are telling a story that contradicts oodles of years of wine history. Barolo is sweating. Chianti is scrambling. Prosecco is looking nervously at the thermometer. Meanwhile, on a volcano in Sicily and in the forgotten hills of Basilicata, indigenous grapes that have spent millennia dealing with heat and drought are suddenly looking like the smartest bet in Italy.
For the first time in modern wine history, the center of gravity is shifting. Not because of fashion or critics or investment. Because of physics. Because southern Italy?the part that was always too hot, too rustic, too other?turns out to be the part that already knows how to survive what's coming.
This isn't about eight random wines from across Italy. It's about eight wines from the south?Sicily, Basilicata, Puglia, Calabria?that show what the next twenty years might look like.
The Counterintuitive Reality
In 2024, climate scientists published projections that should terrify anyone who loves Italian wine: 90% of traditional wine regions in coastal and lowland areas could be at risk by century's end.1 Not "might struggle." At risk of disappearing.
But here's the twist. Northern vineyards?Nebbiolo in Piedmont, Sangiovese in Tuscany, even Chardonnay in Emilia-Romagna?are showing more heat stress than vineyards in Sicily and Basilicata, despite getting more rain.2 Why? Because northern vines evolved for cool, damp conditions. They're planted on steep hillsides with shallow soils designed to shed water. When extreme heat arrives, they have no defense. They're climate refugees on their own land.
Southern indigenous varieties?Aglianico, Nero d'Avola, Carricante, Nerello Mascalese?have been coping with drought and sun for eons. Deep roots. Late ripening. Thick skins. They're not adapting to climate change. They were built for it.3
Winemakers in Emilia-Romagna are already ripping out Chardonnay they planted thirty years ago and replanting indigenous varieties.4 Some experts now predict Chardonnay won't be viable anywhere in Italy within a generation.5 Meanwhile, on Mount Etna and in Vulture, production is expanding.
The wines that will define the next twenty years aren't the ones fighting the future. They're the ones that already live there.
The Evidence: High-altitude volcanic viticulture as the blueprint.
James Suckling named this Italian Wine of the Year for 2025.6 Not as a trend pick?as a model. Made from Nerello Mascalese planted in the 1950s at 600-900 meters on volcanic ash, it captures everything the future demands: late ripening, natural acidity, minerality, freshness despite warmth.
Etna isn't just making great wine. It's showing other regions what survival looks like. Ungrafted vines on porous volcanic soil. Elevation that creates natural cooling. Indigenous varieties that ripen slowly even when the mercury climbs. This isn't innovation?it's validation of what southern Italy knew all along.
The next twenty years will see this model replicated: higher, cooler, volcanic, indigenous. Etna got there first.
Elena Fucci "Titolo" (Aglianico del Vulture, Basilicata)
The Evidence: Southern volcanic terroir competing with the North?and winning.
Aglianico has always been Italy's secret weapon. Planted on the slopes of an extinct volcano in Basilicata, it makes wines with the structure of Barolo, the aging potential of Brunello, and the effortless ability to handle heat.7 Elena Fucci's "Titolo" is single-vineyard, ungrafted, aged in large oak?proof that southern Italy doesn't need to imitate Piedmont. It already has the goods.
Basilicata is positioned to become what Etna was fifteen years ago: the overlooked southern region that suddenly everyone realizes has been making world-class wine all along. Volcanic soils, high altitude (600-800m), late-ripening indigenous grapes. All the climate advantages, none of the hype.
When collectors discover Vulture?and they will8?Elena Fucci will be one of the reasons.
Cantine del Notaio "L'Atto" (Aglianico del Vulture, Basilicata)
The Evidence: Biodynamic viticulture + research = understanding what actually works.
Gerardo Giuratrabocchetti isn't just making wine?he's running experiments. Testing how altitude affects ripening. Studying ancient cave-aging systems carved into volcanic tuff in the 1600?s. Documenting which biodynamic practices actually build resilience in a warming climate.
"L'Atto" is the estate's research-driven single vineyard bottling. It's structured, mineral, built to age for decades. But more importantly, it represents southern Italy doing the unglamorous work of figuring out why these vineyards work?so the knowledge can travel.
If Basilicata emerges as a serious global player, it'll be because producers like Cantine del Notaio did the science.
Maugeri "Carricante" (Etna)
The Evidence: Volcanic whites rivaling the world's great expressions?and just getting started.
While the world fell for Etna Rosso, Carricante was quietly evolving into one of Italy's most compelling white grapes. Electric acidity, volcanic minerality, precision that draws comparisons to Chablis and Mosel Riesling. High-altitude (eastern slopes, 700-900m), cool microclimate, built to age.
Carla Maugeri's family estate is making some of the most profound whites in Italy9?proof that Etna's potential goes far beyond red wine. In twenty years, this could be the white wine sommeliers obsess over. The architecture is already there.
The Evidence: The next generation claiming the volcano?on their own terms.
Benedetto Alessandro represents the third wave.10 He grew up making wine in western Sicily, studied the pioneers (de Grazia, Foti), then convinced his cousins to buy land on Etna's northeastern slopes in 2016. His wines are modern, fruit-forward, precise?intentionally different from the brooding traditional style.
Some will call them too clean. Others will call them the future. What matters: young Sicilian winemakers are taking over Etna, and they're not interested in imitating anyone. That creative tension?between reverence and rebellion?is where the next twenty years will be written.
Tenute Rubino "Torre Testa" (Susumaniello, Puglia)
The Evidence: Rescued indigenous varieties that thrive in drought.
Susumaniello nearly went extinct in the 1990s. The grape's production drops dramatically after a decade?less than a kilogram per plant?which made it economically unviable when Puglia focused on volume. But Luigi Rubino understood something others missed: those few bunches that remain produce wines of extraordinary concentration and elegance.11
The grape is naturally hardy and resistant to extreme climate.11 Bush-trained vines with deep root systems, grown in Salento's arid soils with minimal water, Susumaniello is precisely what climate resilience looks like. Tenute Rubino's "Torre Testa" is their flagship single-vineyard bottling?intense, structured, built for aging?proof that Puglia's forgotten grapes are actually its future.
When the Mediterranean gets too hot for irrigation-dependent varieties, Susumaniello will still be thriving.
Librandi "Duca Sanfelice" (Cirò Riserva, Calabria)
The Evidence: Ancient terroir meeting the future head-on.
Cirò is considered one of the oldest wines in the world?allegedly served to Olympic champions in ancient Greece. The Librandi family brought it to international attention in the 1990?s, proving that Calabria's indigenous Gaglioppo grape, grown on calcareous marl soils near the Ionian Sea, could make world-class wine.12
Gaglioppo has thick skins and thrives in hot, dry conditions.12 Sea breezes moderate the intense summer heat. Many vineyards still use alberello?traditional bush-vine training that's naturally drought-resistant. "Duca Sanfelice" is Librandi's top Cirò Riserva, aged two years before release, made from old alberello vines. It's structured, complex, and built for the long haul.
Calabria faces "harsh climate, persistent drought and high temperatures"12?but Gaglioppo was born for this. While northern Italy scrambles to adapt, Cirò just keeps doing what it's done for ages.
Planeta"Santa Cecilia" (Nero d'Avola, Sicily)
The Evidence: Drought-tolerant indigenous variety as climate solution.
Nero d'Avola is Sicily's most important red grape, and for good reason: it thrives in scorching heat, retains refreshing acidity at high sugar levels, and requires minimal irrigation thanks to deep root systems.13 In a region receiving under 550mm of rain annually, these aren't luxuries?they're survival traits.
Planeta's "Santa Cecilia" comes from the Noto hills in southeastern Sicily, where Nero d'Avola originated. Dry-farmed, grown on sandy soils in extreme heat, this is wine made exactly as the climate crisis would design it. The 2024 InnoNDA research project is exploring how to reduce alcohol levels by up to 4% without sacrificing flavor13?direct response to both consumer and climate pressures.
Nero d'Avola isn't adapting to climate change. Climate change is proving that Nero d'Avola was right all along.
What They Share
Every wine on this list is responding to the same pressure: a world that's getting hotter, drier, more extreme. But they're not responding by adapting?they're responding by being exactly what they've always been. Southern volcanic terroir. Indigenous late-ripening varieties. Drought-resistant root systems. Traditional bush-vine training. These aren't innovations. They're inheritances.
But none of them is pretending the climate isn't changing.
The great irony is that southern Italy?historically dismissed as too hot, too rustic, too far from the action?is suddenly the part of Italy with structural advantages. Volcanic soils retain water. High altitude creates cooling.14 Indigenous varieties already know how to handle stress. These aren't adaptations. They're inherent in the legacy of Southern Italy.
Northern Italy will adapt?it's already happening. But the momentum, the resilience, the built-in advantages? For the first time in modern history, they belong to the south.
Twenty years from now, when someone asks what defined Italian wine in the 2020s and 2030s, will the answer be Super Tuscans or cult Barolos? Or will it be the moment Italy remembered that the grapes that thrived before air conditioning, before irrigation, before chemical interventions? ?the ones that inherently knew how to survive?
The future was always there. It just had to get as hot as a volcano to be noticed.
Notes
1. Van Leeuwen, C., et al. "Climate change impacts and adaptations of wine production." Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, March 26, 2024. Study projects that "about 90% of traditional wine regions in coastal and lowland regions of Spain, Italy, Greece and southern California could be at risk of disappearing by the end of the century because of excessive drought and more frequent heatwaves."
2. Guado al Melo, "Climate change and viticulture: appropriate or irresponsible choices?" The analysis notes: "It may sound absurd, but in recent summers there have been more stress problems in certain parts of the north of Italy than in the center and south, albeit that it has rained even less here." The explanation: northern vines evolved for cool conditions with shallow root systems on steep hillsides designed for drainage, while southern varieties and growers are already adapted to semi-arid conditions.
3. Decanter, "Beating the heat: How Italy's winemakers are responding to climate change," January 19, 2023. - by Aldo Fiorelli. Consultant Antonini: "The most resistant varieties are usually the indigenous ones in specific regions, for example Carricante in Sicily."
4. VinePair, "Italian Winemakers Are Finding Creative Ways to Battle Climate Change," - by Rebecca Van Hughes. January 6, 2022. Expert Bordini notes that "many wine producers in the region he lives in, Emilia-Romagna, began favoring Chardonnay over native varieties like Albana around 30 years ago. Now, however, they are returning to the indigenous varieties."
5. Ibid. Bordini states: "I think soon, it will not be possible to cultivate Chardonnay anywhere in Italy."
6. James Suckling, "Top 100 Wines of Italy 2025." The Tenuta delle Terre Nere Etna Rosso San Lorenzo 2023 was named Italian Wine of the Year with a 98/100 score. Available at jamessuckling.com.
7. Eric Guido, "Getting in on the Ground Floor: Aglianico del Vulture." Vinous, May 2024. Comprehensive report on the region's producers, including Elena Fucci, Basilisco, Grifalco, and Cantine del Notaio.
8. WineNews, "Vulture is 'Città Italiana del Vino' 2026," September 23, 2025. The Vulture region was selected for the prestigious 2026 designation, recognizing its "strategic vision and inter-municipal cooperation" in wine tourism and territorial development.
9. Gambero Rosso, "Italy wine guide 2025: the special awards," October 17, 2024. Maugeri was recognized with a special award: "In just three harvests, the winery of Renato Maugeri and his daughters Carla, Michela, and Paola has established itself as one of the denomination's most significant."
10. Wine Spectator, "The Volcano's Third Wave: What's New in Etna Wine?" February 23, 2024. By Robert Camuto. Feature on Benedetto Alessandro and other young Sicilian winemakers representing Etna's new generation.
11. Vinissimus, "Susumaniello." The grape is described as "vigorous, resistant to extreme climate, excellent for blending." Tenute Rubino's website notes: "Despite its notorious hardiness and resistance to pathogens, for many years Susumaniello was on the verge of falling into oblivion, until Tenute Rubino recovered it, enhancing its versatility and making it the emblem of its production philosophy."
12. Concours Mondial de Bruxelles, "Cirò ? Calabria's flagship wine." Raffaele Librandi, head of the Consortium of Doc Cirò: "In addition to our unique terroir, a great tradition of winemaking is reflected in the quality of our wines." Gaglioppo has thick skins and is genetically linked to Sangiovese. VinoVoss notes that Calabria's "harsh climate, with its persistent drought and high temperatures" has shaped the region's viticulture.
13. Vinerra, "Nero d'Avola: An In-Depth Grape Profile." The grape "retains a lively acidity even at high sugar levels, producing fresh, balanced wines in extreme heat." It excels under dry-farmed conditions thanks to "its deep root system and drought resistance." The 2024 InnoNDA Project is "aiming to reduce alcohol levels by up to 4% without sacrificing flavour or intensity?a direct response to consumer and climate pressures."
14. Gambero Rosso International, - by Donato Notarachille. "Above 1,000 meters: wine moves to higher altitudes to face climate change," October 17, 2024. Winemaker Michele Lorenzetti: "There are areas where high-altitude winemaking has been practiced successfully for a long time, like Valtellina, Valle d'Aosta, and Mount Etna, where excellent wines are made around 1,000 meters."
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The Economics of Bullshit: Wine's Junket FollyData:2025-10-26 10:00:00
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Scroll through Instagram on any given Tuesday and you'll see them: sun-drenched vineyard photos, perfectly plated lunches in Tuscan courtyards, selfies with winemakers, glasses raised against golden-hour light. Don't forget the hashtags ? #blessed #winetasting #sponsored (maybe). The aesthetic is flawless. The credibility? Not so much. But here's what you won't see: the unspoken contract. The implicit understanding that this week in Chianti, these meals, this business-class ticket, comes with an expectation. Not a requirement, mind you. Just an... understanding. You don't bite the hand that flies you first class and puts you up in a restored monastery. That would be ungrateful.
Is this journalism? Marketing? Or something murkier that we've all agreed not to examine too closely?
The Quid Pro Quo No One Mentions
Let's be honest about what's happening here. When a winery or consortium spends thousands of euros bringing writers to their region, they're not funding some noble pursuit of truth. They expect return on investment. And the writers? They know it. They're not stupid?just conveniently flexible about what "editorial independence" means.
The selection process itself tells you everything. You don't get invited back if you wrote that the wines were overpriced or the hospitality was lacking. The system self-selects for the pliable, the positive, the ones who'll post pretty pictures and talk about "hidden gems" and "undiscovered terroirs." It's Darwinian, really. Survival of the most compliant.
Compare this to traditional journalism. The New York Times forbids staff and freelancers from accepting comped travel?a strict ethical policy against even the smallest hint of undue influence. The practical reality, as one editor explained, is that newspapers live in glass houses: you can't run exposés on lobbyist junkets while your wine writer sips Barolo on someone else's dime. Ethics and optics are intertwined when credibility is your currency.
This is access journalism?when reporters become so dependent on their sources that they lose the ability to be critical. Ask the wrong question at a White House press conference and watch your credentials disappear. Wine writers face the same trap. When your livelihood depends on maintaining relationships with the very people you're covering, objectivity isn't just compromised. It's impossible. But hey, the Brunello is fantastic.
The Professional Junket Circuit: Serial Abusers of the System
But the real problem isn't the occasional press trip. It's the professional hangers-on?the serial junket-takers who've built entire careers on free travel. They're living the dream, funded by someone else's marketing budget.
You know them when you see them. Check their Instagram: Tuscany today, Penedès tomorrow, Bordeaux next week, Napa by month's end. They're not wine writers who travel; they're travelers who occasionally mention wine between selfies. The telltale signs are everywhere: more photos of themselves than the wines, captions that could apply to any winery anywhere ("What a magical day!"), and a concerning ratio of exclamation points to actual information.
Here's the math that should alarm every winery owner: If someone is doing twelve or more press trips a year, when exactly are they writing? When are they developing the deep knowledge that makes coverage valuable? The answer: they're not. They're spreading shallow coverage thin, posting a TikTok video (one of 34 million posted daily!) that fades in twenty-four hours, maybe a blog post if you're lucky. But don't worry?they'll definitely tag you.
Yet wineries keep inviting them. Why? Because PR firms need to "fill seats." Because follower counts create an illusion of influence. Because nobody wants to admit they can't measure the return on investment. So let's just keep doing it and hope the algorithm rewards us.
Let's talk about what this actually costs. A week-long press trip to Italy?flights, hotels, meals, ground transportation, winery visits?runs easily three to five thousand dollars per person. Multiply that by eight or ten invitees. What did the winery get? A few social media posts that'll be buried in the algorithm within days? Maybe a blog entry that'll get a hundred views from other wine bloggers? But look?thirty-seven likes! That's basically virality. That money could have hired a sales rep for a month. Could have upgraded the tasting room. Could have paid for a presence at a major trade show where actual buyers congregate. Instead, it funded someone's personal brand. And their next passport renewal.
And that's the perpetual motion machine at work. Each trip makes these "influencers" look more influential, which gets them invited on the next trip, which makes them look even more influential. They're building their brand on your dime. Rinse, repeat, provide minimal value. It's the circle of life, Tuscan villa edition.
The FTC Disclosure Theater
The Federal Trade Commission requires disclosure of "material connections"?which includes free trips. Influencers must use clear language like "#ad" or "#sponsored." Must place it prominently. Must make it "hard to miss."
In practice? You get "#ad" buried seventeen hashtags deep. Or "Thanks to XYZ Winery for hosting!" without clarifying that "hosting" meant five thousand dollars in expenses. Very transparent. Very ethical.
But here's the thing: even perfect disclosure doesn't solve the ethical problem. It just makes it legal. You can disclose a conflict of interest without eliminating it. Readers don't need labeled bias?they need unbiased information. There's a difference. Though apparently not one the FTC cares much about.
When the Influencer Becomes the Brand
We've reached a strange inflection point where people make their living as "wine content creators." Their full-time job is posting about wine. Which raises an uncomfortable question: when wine coverage is your livelihood, who's really the client? The readers, or the wineries paying for your lifestyle?
Trick question. It's neither. It's the algorithm.
The metrics game compounds the problem. Analysis shows more than sixty percent of influencers admit to buying followers, likes, or comments. Fake accounts number in the millions. Yet wineries make decisions based on these numbers, unable to verify what's real and what's manufactured. It's the economics of bullshit?spending real money on fake influence, measuring success in meaningless impressions while actual sales remain a mystery. But the engagement rate looks great in the PowerPoint.
And some of these folks have developed quite the sense of entitlement. I've heard stories?the blogger who demanded a business-class ticket before ever visiting a region, the influencer who refused to post without additional "compensation" beyond the free trip. When did we start treating wine producers like ATMs? Oh right?when someone figured out they'd actually pay.
The Uncomfortable Truth
Here's the question nobody wants to answer: Can you accept a five-thousand-dollar trip and still be objective?
Maybe the answer is simpler than we've been admitting. Maybe you can't. Maybe we need to stop pretending there's some magical ethical framework that makes it okay. Either commit to independence?pay your own way, accept the limitations?or admit you're doing PR and market yourself accordingly. Just don't call it journalism while you're working on your tan in someone else's vineyard.
But don't insult us by calling it journalism while posting from a Tuscan villa someone else paid for.
Wine lovers trying to navigate this increasingly murky information landscape deserve to know what's genuine. Which recommendations come from expertise and which from expedience? The trust that took decades to build in wine media is eroding, replaced by cynicism. Wine deserves better than song-and-dance men and Instagram hangers-on. The hardworking farmers and winemakers pouring their lives into bottles deserve advocates who can't be bought. And consumers deserve to know whether they're reading a review or an advertisement.
As they say in carpentry: measure twice, cut once. It's time the wine world cut the bullshit.
© written and photo-synthesized (with inspiration from the ancient Roman mosaics at Villa Romana del Casale in Piazza Armerina, Sicily) by Alfonso Cevola limited rights reserved On the Wine Trail in Italy wine blog + Italian wine blog + Italy W
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An Obsession with Food
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