Archive for November, 2007

I’m nearing the end of a week without wine. I don’t believe in the toxin thing, like so many people do. You know, “I’m not eating any meat or drinking any alcohol for a month. I’m eating only grapefruit and avocado and drinking water imported from the Ganges River to cleanse the toxins from my body.”

I don’t think wine is a toxin, more like a tonic, and with all the old and new evidence that wine is good for your health it’s kind of perverse to abstain in order to feel better, isn’t it? So what am I doing this for? That’s what I’ve been asking myself as I pour another San Pellegrino and bitch at the next child to walk by without his/her chores done.

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Fabio Luca Franzosi and Luciano Gobino with their $16,000 truffle

Every restaurant I went to in the wine country of Italy’s Piemonte region this month was serving truffles, because it was high season for the famous white truffles, or tartufi, of Alba. The season begins in early October and lasts through December, but people kept telling me that the truffle hunting gets better as the weather turns colder, so early November through mid December is apparently prime time.

While black truffles grow in various places in Italy and France and white truffles also grow in eastern Europe, only here do white truffles really show the, shall we say, assertive aroma that makes them precious.

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Pietro Ratti, overlooking Barolo vineyards, says Italians come to the country in the fall to reconnect with their pasts

I’m just back from a business trip to northern Italy. On the return flight I made a lengthy list of potential blog topics. Here’s the first one, which seems appropriate for Thanksgiving week. I was struck that both Italians and Germans I spoke to said they admire the American Thanksgiving holiday because it has a simple agenda of family, feasting and gratitude, not national imperatives or overt religion. In the Piedmont wine region they were in the midst of their own seasonal feasting.

Last week in Piedmont the weather turned sharply cold, icing over small streams and making me wish I had brought gloves. The leaves had mostly fallen from the hazelnut trees but still clinged to a portion of the grapevines carpeting the steep hills of Barolo and Barbaresco.

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An article about Hugh Johnson’s current view on the importance of vintages has stirred a good discussion on Decanter.com. The article by David Higgins is a tease for a Decanter print article due in the January issue.

So if the story, second-hand from an interview with Johnson in the U.K. broadsheet, The Times, is accurate, the erudite author Johnson believes there’s no such thing as a bad vintage anymore. We’ll have to wait for the Decanter article or a look at Johnson’s 2008 Pocket Guide to get his exact point of view.

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You’ve heard that red wine is good for your heart, but what kinds of red wine? Roger Corder, a professor and expert in cardiovascular function, tells you in a new book, “The Red Wine Diet: Drink Wine Every Day and Live a Long and Healthy Life.”

Madiran, Malbec, Cabernet Sauvignon, Barolo and a number of other big reds are best for you, Corder says. The more dark color, the more extracted flavors, the better. Where can I find a Madiran?

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UnReserved has selected a winner in the American port-naming contest. In an uncanny trans-continental mind-meld, the editorial committee at Wine Enthusiast magazine in Elmsford, N.Y, and yours truly in Napa Valley, Calif., chose the same name as their favorite.

The winner of two Riedel port glasses will be revealed in a moment, but first let us summarize the protean efforts of so many who submitted names to help the makers of port-style fortified wines in the U.S. who are now banned by an agreement between the European Union and the United States from calling any of their new ports Port.

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What the national appellations institute of France is about to do with the boundaries of Champagne, to appease Champagne wineries that want to expand production, may well come back to haunt those wineries.

Isn’t this the one wine region in the world that has fought hardest to preserve its regional brand? Isn’t it the one that has fought for decades if not centuries to stop wineries outside the Champagne region from calling their wines Champagne?

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The fastest traveling story about French wine in recent days was the news that Champagne Louis Roederer has scouted vineyard land in England as a way to expand its production. Just embrace for a moment the irony that the French would seek out anything English to improve their gastronomic prowess.

It’s like Taillevent restaurant in Paris scouting Liverpool pubs for new menu items.

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