Back in the Saddle

I haven't written anything in a long time. It's hard to get started again. I've wanted to, but the longer it gets, the more inertia sets in. Perhaps the best way is simply to write something  - anything. Even just a list of recent wines I've loved. If it's fun, I'll write again another time.

The best red wine I've had in some time? A bottle of Beaujolais, but a special bottle - the 2011 Yvon Métras Moulin-à-Vent. This is not so easy to find here in the US, but whoa, it's worth looking for. Here's my note on the bottle: "Honestly, the finest red wine I've tasted in a while. A perfect bottle. Fragrant with fruit, flowers, stones, leaves. Beautifully expressive on the palate with complex fruit and mineral flavors, a structural firmness under the fruit that smacks of Moulin-à-Vent, texturally perfect, long on the finish - I'm trying to mention everything that's great about this wine which starts to feel silly. It really was just a wonderful bottle with a depth and expression of aroma and flavor that is fantastic." Métras is a cultish producer and that might turn some folks off. It turned me off, to be honest. But this bottle converted me. 

Then there's also this bottle, the 2008 Giuseppe Rinaldi Barbera d'Alba. Another one that is not easy to find here in the US. This bottle kind of blew me away. Pure and fresh, absolutely transparent in feel and the earthy minerality is pungent. The wine is so complex too - the finish is a melange of the herbal, the acidic, and the ripe but not overripe fruit (which itself is a melange of bright red raspberry and deep dark cherry). If you drink it now, save half for ay 2 - way better on day 2. I've not had too many Barberas, and I've had none that I loved except for a bottle a few years back by G. Conterno. This one, I loved, LOVED. Is this is what Barbera grown on great soils by a great wine maker is like?

The 2012 vintage of Tissot Poulsard is here and it's really good. For me, this is the Poulsard to buy and drink with impunity these days, as Overnoy is a unicorn and Ganevat costs $50. This wine needs a good decant to deal with the reduction, but it is absolutely delicious. It comes from very old vines and it has no added sulfur (which should raise alarms more than act as a selling point, in my book, but this one does it beautifully). It will greatly please Poulsard lovers but also I think would be a nice way to introduce a friend to the charms of light and weird red wine - it's accessible like that. Cranberries, blood oranges, hard spices, flowers, harmonious and beautifully textured, this wine packs a lot of interest into a very light frame. It costs about $25.

I'm still not entirely sure where I am with this wine. 2010 Weingut Günther Steinmetz Mülheimer Sonnenlay Pinot Noir Unfiltriert, as it is deftly named, might be an intense wine that offers way more complexity, terroir expression, and overall quality than its $23 price tag suggests is possible. Or it might just be an incredibly delicious and balanced Pinot from Germany. I can't tell yet. But I will tell you that I am vigorously enjoying the act of drinking the wine and further exploring this important question.

I still drink white wine. Way more than red, actually. Here are some recent whites that also wowed me:

2007 Fritz Haag Brauneberger Juffer-Sonnenuhr Riesling Spätlese. You know, I look back at my notes from drinking this wine and it's not as though I loved it on paper. But the thing is, I loved it. I've thought about it a lot since drinking it. Maybe it sounds obvious to you if you drink these wines, but the purity, the delicacy, the impeccable balance...it really got to me and I must have more.

2012 Bernard Ott Grüner Veltliner Am Berg. I think this is a great vintage for this wine. It's subtle and quiet, but absolutely delicious and entirely expressive of place and of Grüner. I like to decant this wine, and then there are clean and cooling aromas of sour cream, lemongrass, and green herbs. Quiet, but arresting. And versatile at the table. And about $18.

I dipped into my small stash of the very fine La Bota de Fino Nº 35, and whoa, is it drinking beautifully. This is a Fino selected from barrels in the Valdespino Inocente solera system. The overtly powerful personality of the wine has been tempered a bit and it now thrives on this amazing harmony of aroma and flavor. Complex, savory,  and shockingly delicious.

Just to see what's what, I opened a bottle of 2008 Gilbert Picq Chablis 1er Cru Vogros. It reminded me that it's possible to drink real Chablis, truly satisfying Chablis, elegant and bantam weight Chablis that really smacks of seashells, iodine, and white flowers, for under $30. I like this wine in every vintage I've tasted. This one drinks very well right now, but takes 90 minutes to get there and seems like it will improve with another few years in the cellar. But whoa, when it got there it was rewarding.

That was kind of fun, writing this. For me, anyway.

An Unknown Wine from Piedmonte

The other evening I was at a friends house as our daughters played together. I accepted a last minute dinner invitation. My friend is from Piedmonte, from a small village called Briona in Valtelinna the Valesia region of the Colline Novaresi. This is the friend who helped me get started making my own pizza (something I continue to attempt, never terribly well).

She made pasta for dinner, a type I'd never seen before, calamari-shaped. When I asked what it was called I believe she actually said "calamari." She tossed them in Sicilian pistachio pesto and topped them with a generous helping of aged Parigiano. This was a very delicious dish, by the way.

While she was cooking she opened a bottle of red wine. The label said Fara - I had never heard of this. My friend told me the story of the wine. Her mother's cousin inherited some money from a distant relative, enough to leave her job as an accountant and to pursue a new life as a wine maker. She bought some vineyard land in her village. This is her fourth or fifth vintage, and my friend said that the previous wines were not so great, but this one, the 2009 Cantina Castaldi Fara, is good.

What a nice story! Many of us have imagined a world in which we leave our daily grind and become wine makers. Of course that's a different kind of daily grind, but why ruin the romance of the idea...

Anyway, we poured the wine and it was quite good - brightly fruited, snappy and refreshing with acidity, not terribly complex but aromatic and very lovely, and showing the structure that I suppose comes with the territory in Piedmonte.

"What grape is she using here," I asked.

"Hmmm, I don't know," my friend said. "She grows Nebbiolo, Barbera, and Uva Rara, maybe also Vespolina, but I don't know what is in here. Maybe it's Nebbiolo."

We chatted about our kids, about their schools, about upcoming travel, about new apartments, and NYC in the winter time. I had my nose in the glass and was trying to figure out what the wine was, but I'm painfully ignorant when it comes to Italian wine. "I think it cannot be Nebbiolo - it's too approachable," I said. "Barbera, maybe with some Nebbiolo in there too?"

My friend just smiled, and told me something about Sicilian pistachios, or maybe it was about how hard it is to get a good contractor for renovating an apartment.

The point is, I realized, it didn't matter. Sure, I was curious, and I'd still like to know. But my friend loves wine because she grew up with it (and Barolo was only for the most special of occasions, she says), and because she likes the taste with her meals. Is it Nebbiolo in this bottle, Barbera, Vespolina...it couldn't have mattered any less to her. What's important to her is the story of her grandfather's brother's daughter - her mother's cousin, and how she had this interesting life change. And my friend takes obvious pleasure in drinking this distant relative's wine. And she chose to share it with me, because she knows I love wine.

There are many ways to enjoy this very fine and fascinating thing that we all love. It's good to experience these different types of enjoyment, especially the ones we don't typically engage in. I cannot tell you the last time that I enjoyed a bottle of wine so much, having so little idea of what was inside.

An Interesting Pairing Featuring Pelaverga

The other night I had dinner with a few friends at a favorite Japanese restaurant. This is a place where diners select almost none of the dishes they will eat - the chef chooses, and it is not a sushi place. It's more of a home cooking situation. Anyway, with the consent of the owner, we bring our own wines (paying corkage fees), and I've found over the years that Sherry, Champagne, Loire Chenin Blanc, and other savory white wines go best with the variety of dishes.

Well on this night, I experienced a pairing that was completely new to me, and I enjoyed it immensely. My friend Mariko Kobayashi, an experienced NYC sommelier, brought the 2009 Castello di Verduno Basadone Pelaverga to the dinner. I'd never had a Pelaverga before. I remember that Jeremy Parzen wrote about it, and apparently it is an unusual wine even in Italy.

When would we drink this wine, I wondered. We had all sorts of other wine at the table, most of it the typical savory white wine we tend to drink with this food. Then, when we were served a lovely sashimi course, Mariko suggested that we try the Pelaverga with the Bonito sashimi. She said that the richness of the fish, and the smoky grilled exterior would pair well with the red wine.

She was right. I would never think of drinking red wine with Bonito (or Tuna or Mackerel), although maybe Poulsard would work. It would have to be a very light bodied red. This Pelaverga was not particularly light in color, but it reminded me of a Loire Valley Pineau D'Aunis with its floral and peppery fragrance and its fresh and energetic palate. It of course elevated the smoky character of the grilled portion of the fish, but I loved also how it brought out the meatiness of the Bonito and still refreshed the palate.

Another reminder to be open minded about pairing wine with food, and to let others guide us from time to time.

Forcing Myself to Drink New Wines

I could probably grow old drinking exactly what's in my cellar now and be perfectly happy. I mean really - Burgundy, the Loire, Sherry, Champagne...what's not to love? It's important also to drink things from time to time that are outside of the comfort zone. I do not do this very often, and I need to do it more. There is no deep thinking behind this - it's just good to experience new things, to explore a bit, to practice being open-minded.

So, I am making a conscious effort to drink wines I don't know. Nothing major, just making an educated guess on wines here and there, nothing expensive. It's funny - I used to do this all the time maybe 5 years ago. Now I've gotten to a point where I feel like I understand what, for me, is the optimal way to spend every wine dollar, and maybe too much so. I never find myself saying anymore "Hmmm, that looks interesting, I'm going to give that a shot." So I'm trying to do this again.

This past month I bought two wines that are new to me and both, I must say, were excellent wines, things I would definitely buy again. I drank an Oregon Pinot Gris and I really liked it. Now, if you've been following this blog for a while, you know that I used to drink a lot of Oregon Pinot. My tastes changed, I stopped buying and drinking the wines. But one day in February I was browsing in a large Manhattan store in which I don't normally shop, and I saw bottles of 2010 Montinore Pinot Gris on sale for just under $11.

I haven't liked a lot of Oregon Pinot Gris, but I remember hearing that Montinore is a good producer, and the back label says the wine is 12.6% alcohol and the wine is made using Demeter certified biodynamic farming methods. I bought one bottle. Honestly, the wine was really good. It was clean and bright tasting, relying on a lean intensity. There is ripe fruit - spiced pear and apple, there is a definite mineral sensation, and the finish is long and pleasingly bitter. This is delicious wine, and not because it resembles an Alsace Pinot Gris - it doesn't. It's an Oregon wine, no mistaking that. And it's a really good one. It didn't hold up well overnight - probably not meant for the cellar, but it is a quality wine, and it would be nice if there were more Oregon wines like this, where the producer doesn't try to do too much in the vineyard or the cellar.

Another new one for me, this time a red wine. It was during the Super Bowl, I think, when my pal poured me a glass of something that looked like rosé. It wasn't rosé though, it was Grignolino d'Asti. Wow, so good - fresh and vibrant and eminently drinkable, red fruit and flowers, and complex too. I'm talking about the 2010 Montalbera Grignolino d'Asti Grignè. When I looked for it at the store I saw that Charlie Woods of Bonhomie Imports brings in this wine, and I wasn't surprised at all. In keeping with his other wines that I know, this is very reasonably priced ($15-18), and it feels old school, and very pure.

I've had a few bottles now and I really like the wine. I like to drink it cool - cellar temperature, as you would a Beaujolais. The floral and spicy characteristics come out best that way. It's great with charcuterie or lentil soup, or most anything really, and it does drink well on its own. I had a bottle with a spread of Middle Eastern food and it was an excellent partner for the chickpeas and spinach, and also the Merguez sausage. This is a very light colored wine, like a Poulsard, and as with good Poulsard, the wine has great structure and sneaky intensity. Supposedly this is what you drink while you wait for your Barolo and Barbaresco to mature. I can see that when I drink this wine, and although I've not had even one other example of Grignolino, I'm not sure that I need to because this one is so very good.

Forcing myself out of the comfort zone...so far so good.

Tidbits

Been busy and not able to write as often, but please don't think that means I've been starving and not drinking anything interesting. Oh no, my friends, I've been a very lucky Brooklynguy lately, in large part due to the generosity of friends. Here are some tidbits, things from the past few weeks that are worth mentioning:

Slope Farms sells pork now. I cannot tell you how excited I am about this. Ken and Linda Jaffe (former Brooklynites who moved to the Catskills) are dedicated to farming healthy cows, and theirs is my absolute favorite beef. I'm not sure of the details on this new pork venture, but I hear they have an elder and respected neighbor who advised them as they set up their farm. This neighbor raises pigs. The Jaffes now sell their neighbor's pork. Look at the marbling on the meat, and the beautiful color. I've tried the chops and a rib roast so far, and WHOA, this is very very good pork.

And on the other end of the food spectrum, processed food, I've discovered what I now believe to be one of the finest canned food products - Heinz baked beans, the kind they sell in England. These are done in tomato sauce, not in that cloying brown sugary sauce that our baked beans swim in. If you see these, try them. Okay, they're canned, but they're actually not that bad for you. And they taste so very good.

Some wine too...

2001 was not a very good vintage in Champagne. Not many vintage wines from that year - it was rainy, especially in the weeks leading up to harvest, there was a lot of rot, and it was a challenge for the grapes to ripen. I know from reading ChampagneGuide.net that this is considered to be one of the most challenging vintages of the past 20 years. So it was fascinating to have the opportunity to try a vintage wine from 2001, Jean Vesselle's Brut Prestige. This wine is all Bouzy, a blend of 70% Pinot Noir and 30% Chardonnay, but it reminded me of a wine I tasted a few years ago by Moutard that is made with the obscure grapes of Champagne, things like Arbanne and Petit Meslier. The wine had overt notes of green herbs and leafy vegetables, and I think it would have benefited from a few grams more of dosage (it was dosed at 3 grams, I believe). But really, it was good wine, well balanced and particularly lovely on the nose. I cannot say that it is what I dream of when I want Champagne, but it was a very good wine, and a reminder that it is possible to enjoy well-made wine from bad vintages.

I had dinner with a few friends and we each brought wine to the restaurant. These were good wines, on paper anyway. We arrived at 7:00, opened everything, and it was clear that nothing was showing very well. After a little while, I don't know how long exactly, but probably an hour or so, all of the sudden everything was fantastic.

I'm talking about a bottle of 2000 Vincent Dauvissat Chablis Les Clos that was butterscotch pudding for a while, and then turned into this detailed and focused thing of beauty. Some caramel notes, but also a bunch of freshly picked white honeysuckle. Pungent, long, and intense with a saline edge to the finish, this was a beautiful wine, a very special treat.

And the 1990 Robert Ampeau Volnay Santenots, a wine that began better than the others, but still was a tangled mess. And an hour later it was gorgeous - a complex and beguiling nose that had that vibrant mature-wine-pungency thing. Flowers, musky and gamy, but in the end, very much about stone. And it is the texture that gets you - the wine couldn't be more silky, and this silk surrounds what essentially is a wine about rock. Textbook Volnay, and a truly compelling and lovely wine.

And the 2002 Paul Bara Bouzy Rouge Coteaux Champenois, a wine that was probably the messiest of all when we first opened it, all bramble and pitch black fruit and very disjointed. But later on, I swear this wine was the freshest and most detailed wet stone basket of ripe strawberries, so pure and elegant, light as a feather. And the 1999 Eric Texier Côte-Rôtie, a wine that fooled all of us. It was a red fruit mash at first - I would have guessed a Grenache heavy wine from further south had I tasted it blind. This one took the longest to come around, but when it did it was a classic old school bloody, meaty, black olivey, and very mineral northern Rhône Syrah.

Can I tell you that the next day I learned that our dinner occurred on a flower day...but only after 8:00 PM. Why do these annoying coincidences keep happening with the confounded biodynamic calendar and the way wines taste?

At a restaurant in Boston I drank a bottle of 2007 Didier Dagueneau Blanc Fumé de Pouilly. The wine was beautiful, a perfect mingling of freshness, tension, elegance, and quiet intensity. It was not in any way showy, and was amazing in its perfect harmony, not for any one particular characteristic of aroma or flavor. Wow, I wish I had more experience with Dagueneau's wines. They are awfully expensive now.

I recently drank an Emidio Pepe wine for the first time, the 2001 Montepulciano d'Abruzzo. It had been open for hours before we drank it with dinner. I loved it, really loved it. Such interesting and delicious wine. Jet black fruit, very brawny, but detailed and fresh, with cooling herbal aromas, and a streak of something like tar and leather. It was lovely with the aforementioned Slope Farms pork roast, and I must find a way to drink this iconic (and expensive, and apparently very variable) wine again.

Lastly, look at this nice list of white wines by the glass. This is at the restaurant Herbsainte in New Orleans. I was down there recently for work, and stopped in to have a cocktail before retiring to my hotel room. But before I could order, I overheard the bartender telling another man that there was a buttermilk fried Louisiana frog legs special that evening. Hmmm.

Forget the cocktail - I ordered a glass of El Maetsro Sierra Fino (!) and the frog legs. Well that whole situation was so delicious, that I decided to keep going, and drank a glass of the 2010 Domaine du Closel Savennières La Jalousie with a little plate of Gulf shrimp and grits with okra. Even more delicious! You know, I used to love Closel but I kind of gave up on the wines after not liking anything after 2002 (and after the last of my 2002's showed oxidized). I told friends that I was done with the wines. Well, I have no idea what's really going on with Closel, but honestly, this 2010 was just excellent - fresh, pure, balanced, showing typical wooly and waxy notes and lots of minerality. A reminder to me not to make pronouncements about wine. I just don't have the years of drinking experience to make pronouncements.

When Wine Pairing Goes Wrong - Fiano Edition

A couple years ago I enjoyed a special meal at Convivio, the now-closed restaurant in Tudor City. The inimitable Levi Dalton was of course the chef somelier. When eating or drinking at a master's establishment, I think it's a good idea to simply put yourself in the master's hands - think omakase at a great sushi bar. The master sushi chef knows far better than I about which fish are the freshest and tastiest, and how best to serve them. Why would I select my meal instead of asking them to select for me? Why would I tell Levi Dalton, at his restaurant, what I will drink?

We decided on grilled sardines as one of our first courses. They were pretty much perfect, fresh, smoky, slightly chewy in a tremendously appealing way, and left to shine on their own. Levi served us glasses of a wine I had never heard of with the sardines, a Fiano di Avellino. We ate and drank many great things that night, but one of the most memorable pairings for me was this Fiano with the sardines. And I don't even remember the producer or vintage. What I remember is how the wine introduced and then enhanced the flavors of the fish, clean and pure, smoky, savory, complex, bracing, completely satisfying. Fiano! I needed to have some for my very own.

I emailed Levi and asked what to buy. He replied "You want to be looking for Guido Marsella, Pietracupa, Terredora di Paolo (pretty easy to find), La Molara." I couldn't find any of them, in fact I couldn't find any Fiano at all, except for the ones I'd been warned against. Okay, one night a year ago I went to dinner at Vinegar Hill House and they offered a Fiano that came neither recommended nor warned against, and we drank it. It was good, not memorable, but good.

Anyway, I'd kind of given up on finding Fiano until I saw recently that one or two of the producers Levi recommended are showing up on NYC shelves. Why now? Maybe it was sir Asimov's article, but who knows. I was glad to see them, and bought a few bottles. I opened one the other night with friends and wow, did I ever pair it wrong. Levi would have been aghast, to say the least.

There are Fianos to drink young, but the style that I think is most exciting to people who have tried them are the more serious wines, the wines that do very well with a few years of bottle age. There is a smoky, nutty complexity under the lovely surface of bright citrus, complexity that takes a few years to show itself. I have little experience with these wines, so when I saw the 2006 Guido Marsella Fiano di Avellino, $21, USA Wine Imports, I was pretty excited. Highly recommended producer, a few years of bottle age, very reasonably priced, nice!

And then I butchered the pairing. I had a few friends over one night and one of the things I served was the simple and classic fish en papillote, fish baked in a parchment paper packet with herbs and vegetables. It steams as it bakes and the juices are sealed in the packet. It's lovely to cut the paper open at the table releasing the aromas. I used local blackfish, a sweet-fleshed fish that eats shellfish. In each packet was little bed made of slices of asparagus, chopped garlic scapes, chopped fennel, parsley, and a pat of butter.

The fish was delicious. The wine was delicious. They did not, however, go together at all. The wine was so deep and rich, such intense aromas and flavors of smoke, honey, lentil-type legumes (reminded me of Assyrtiko, actually), and sea salt. One friend said that he was getting bacon on the nose! This wine needed those sardines from Convivio, or something equally powerful, something hearty that could stand up and speak clearly in conversation. This fish preparation was simply too delicate. It would have been better with something like a young Chablis or a Muscadet, perhaps a dry Loire Chenin Blanc. Or a young rosé from Provence. Or anything less intense than this Fiano.

Just goes to show that the food can be delicious, and the wine can be great, and things can still go wrong at the table. Don't worry though - no one was hurt, or even insulted. We all actually learned something.

A Confederacy of Geekery

Two friends came over for dinner the other night. These guys are wine professionals and we enjoy sharing interesting wines with one another, but nothing could have prepared any of us for the degree of geekery that occurred on this evening. I didn't tell them what I'd be serving for dinner, we didn't discuss the wines we'd be bringing, it was just a random thing, but everything we drank was the epitome of geek-wine.

I don't aspire to drink geeky wine, and I'm not saying that geeky wine is by definition good wine - that would be absurd. I'm just saying that on this night, with a couple of serious wine lovers, it happened that we drank a lineup of incredibly geeky wine. And I loved it.

We started with the 2010 Ameztoi Getariako Txakoli Rubentis, $22, imported by De Maison Selections. You already know about Txakoli, the refreshing Basque country wine. This is a rosé, though, and there is hardly any rosé Txakoli made. I heard such wonderful things about this wine and bought some of the 2009. Liked it but didn't love it - I just thought it was straight forward fruity wine, not terribly interesting. This wine, however, I loved. Salty and herbal - think rosemary, zesty and fresh, and the effervescent texture is so lovely. There is some fruit but it;s not the main point of the wine. Note to self: find and purchase several bottles of this wine.

Then we drank the 2008 Domaine Gauby Vin de Pays des Côtes Catalanes Les Calcinaires, $27, imported by Weygandt Metzler. What, never heard of this wine? Me neither. It's a white wine from somewhere in the Roussillon; 50% Muscat, 30% Chardonnay, and 20% Macabeu, for you Macabeu fans and I know you're out there. Here are the specs, if you want to know more. I don't feel like we gave this wine enough attention that evening, but I drank the remaining half bottle the next day and it was delicious - quite intense, focused with acidity and minerals, and the texture is just slightly oily. I like that it is only 12.5% alcohol and very easy to drink. I'm not sure that I understand the price, as this is country wine from the Roussillon after all. But maybe this is one of those culty producers with a following and I just don't know about it.

Then it was the 2002 Vodopivec Vitovska Venezia Giulia IGT, price unknown, imported by JK Imports. Maybe you already know and love this wine. The whole orange wine thing (and the whole Italian wine thing, really) kind of passed me by. I know nothing about this wine or about this type of wine, but here's the website. I've had only a few orange wines and this one was head and shoulders the finest one I've had. Brilliantly fresh and pure with mandarin fruit and perfectly harmonious. The wine changed a bit in the glass and got more and more complex. Just fantastic, a real eye-opener for me. And it was absurdly good with fregola, clams, basil, and dried red chili.

With skirt steak we drank the 2004 Els Jelipins Penedès, $72, Jenny & François Selections. This is that Spanish country wine made from very old Sumoll and Garnacha, a natural wine made by a lovely family who use solar power to run their winery and home. I've heard really good things and was excited to drink this bottle. It smelled great when we opened it - earthy red fruit, complex and deep. I decanted it and we got to it about a half hour later. By then, everything had gone wrong. Aldehyde and volatile acidity all the way, the fruit candied and it felt unstructured. This wasn't a flawed bottle and some people might love this wine, but I found little to enjoy.

And lastly, with a slightly aged hard goat cheese, we drank an amazing Amontillado Sherry, the Valdespino Jerez-Xérès-Sherry Amontillado Tio Diego, purchased in Epernay, France for 20-something Euro, not imported. On the Fino-Amontillado continuum, this wine is as close to Fino as possible, while still being an Amontillado. This is what happens when Valdespino Inocente, quite possibly the world's finest Fino, becomes Amontillado, and it is completely delicious. It's butter (from the flor), salt, and roast nuts, and there is just the beginning of that burnished and deep Amontillado character. The finish is so long and combines lactic buttery-ness with salty nuts. Awesome wine.

Geeky enough for you? I hope so, because we'll be back to regularly scheduled mainstream and most likely boring programming tomorrow.

Spaghetti with Meatballs and a Delicious Chianti

Spaghetti with meatballs. For many of us, one of the ultimate comfort foods. Not so much for me, as I haven't eaten this dish with any regularity since my mom made it for us when I was a kid. But maybe that's one of the things that makes it comfort food - it triggers memories of childhood.

My mother is quite good at many things, but she'll be the first to tell you that cooking is not one of them. Her meatballs were tasty, but they would be unrecognizable to any Italian mother or grandmother - they were probably just ground meat, perhaps a little salt. The meatballs that I now love, the kind you'll find at good red sauce joints, these are an entirely different matter. A great meatball should be light in body, texturally smooth, and well seasoned.

I'm sure there are as many recipes for meatballs as there are for pizza and I make no claim to having the best one, or any sort of secret, or anything like that. I have, however, discovered after many attempts, a method for making a pretty darn good meatball. Here's what I'm talking about, and bear with me through the ingredients. I'll explain later:

-1 pound ground turkey, but dark and white meat, not white meat turkey.
-1 quarter cup dried bread crumbs
-A little more than a quarter cup of fresh bread crumbs.
-1 large egg, beaten
-As much finely chopped parsley as you think is right.
-More finely grated Parmesan than you think is reasonable. Keep going. More.
-Salt. a teaspoon, maybe?
-Freshly ground black pepper.
-A bit of dried oregano, if you like.
-A bit of grated nutmeg.
-A little more than a quarter cup of warm water.

I've tried beef, pork, veal, and turkey in various permutations and never had results as good as with ground turkey. But it has to be good turkey, and it has to have a decent amount of dark meat in there. The fresh breadcrumbs are also key - they keep the meatballs light. The Parmesan, honestly, just put a lot in there. It provides umami, texture, and just tastes good. And lastly, the water. I kept getting these meatballs that tasted good but were completely wrong, way too dense, until I read somewhere that you must add warm water right before mixing everything together. Don't over-mix, and use a fork and your hands - gently. The act of shaping the meatballs will be part of the mixing too.

You're going to get about 6 meatballs here if you make them about 2 inches in diameter, a little more maybe. Brown the meatballs on at least two sides in a hot heavy-bottomed pan. Transfer them to a plate, dump out the oil, add a bit more oil, lower the heat, and fry about two tablespoons of finely chopped onion. There is apparently a big debate about whether to use garlic or onion in tomato sauce - Jeremy Parzen wrote about this recently (although I cannot locate the actual post). For me, it's onions, and only a little bit. Add a can of high quality Italian plum tomatoes (I like San Marzano tomatoes, and I like them peeled and whole because I like to crush them by hand, it just feels good). Add salt and bring to a simmer, then add the meatballs and any juices from the plate. Simmer them for 15-20 minutes and then turn them over so the other side will be submerged in the sauce, and simmer for another 20 minutes. They should be cooked through, but you take one out and test it to make sure.

I like to serve these by cutting them in half, as they're easier to eat that way and they look pretty when you shower them with more Parmesan cheese.

The other night a good pal came over for dinner and I told him that among other things, we'd be eating spaghetti with meatballs. He brought a wine that I'd never heard of, the 2006 Castell'in Villa Chianti Classico, Imported by Domaine Select Wine Estates. It should cost something like $25. The wine was immediately attractive to me in that it was very pure and detailed, unadorned with wood or overly extracted fruit. It smelled and tasted like what I know to be Sangiovese from Tuscany. The nose is lovely cherry fruit and also a complex leathery note, and the wine is perfectly balanced, very fresh, and entirely delicious. It is 100% Sangiovese and from what I understand, a traditionally made wine, but in poking around the interweb, I am not able to learn all that much about what they're doing at Castell'in Villa. Please share any of your Castell'in Villa knowledge in the comments.

We drank a little bit of many wines that evening and there was a solid half bottle left over. The next day I took a sip and it was still delicious, although no different from the previous night. But when another friend and I drank the rest of the bottle on day 4, also with spaghetti and meatballs, the wine developed a nice herbal character that I really liked. It was a fantastic wine, something that I will seek out and buy myself without question. And this is a good thing, because as you know from reading this blog, I just don't drink enough Italian wine. Now I have a good Chianti I can buy.

A Whole New Problem Begins to take Shape

In the past few weeks I had the opportunity to drink 3 old Nebbiolo wines, all courtesy of my old pal Deetrane. These wines were fascinating, and they were incredibly delicious, even if in one case, only for a short window. Friends, I have a whole new problem now. I must have more, I absolutely must.

The first wine was from the 1978 vintage, a Barbaresco Asili. We think the wine was by Ceretto, although the label said Azienda Bricco Asili. My hopes were not high, as the cork was a crumbly dried out mess. We decanted and let it sit for 15 minutes or so, and the wine was not impressive, with acidic red fruit jutting out and a somewhat musty finish. But another half hour in and the wine had harmonized and the aromas were gentle with truffles, spices, and earth. The wine was well balanced and still showed good youthful acidity. But this lovely window lasted for only about 15 minutes, and then the wine unraveled and became a bunch of rather tired component parts. Could be a storage issue, or it could simply be what happens with some old wines. You get a short window, especially if you decant.

The following week we opened a great bottle of wine from one of Barolo's step-children, Gattinara, the 1971 Le Colline Gattinara Monsecco Conte Ravizza Riserva Speciale. (Bad photo, sorry) Deetrane bought a few of these bottles and after drinking one, he was excited to share. Before and as we opened it I harbored suspicions, based on the perfect condition of the bottle and the cork, that this wine had been re-conditioned, perhaps topped up with young wine. Who knows? I loved this wine. We did not decant and the wine was great immediately, with earthy truffle smells that hinted at orange peel and cherry. The nose on these things! Truly intoxicating. The wine built in intensity over the hour it was open, becoming more and more vibrant in its flavors. This was beautiful wine and I want to drink it again, this time with a plate of noodles dressed with butter and white truffles. Actually, I don't care what I eat with it. I just want to drink it again.

And then, on a recent evening in which I was feeling a bit gloomy, Deetrane decided to open a ridiculously special bottle to share, the 1962 Gaja Barbaresco. These iconic bottles sometimes scare me, especially when I am lucky enough that they are opened to share specifically with me. What happens if I don't love it the way I'm supposed to? Nothing to fear here, as this wine was utterly majestic, one of the finest wines that I have ever drunk, and I say that with absolute conviction, like GW Bush in 2003 declaring the end of the war in Iraq on that aircraft carrier. Only I'm right about this - the wine was fantastic.

The color was a very pale rose petal/orange, much lighter than it looks in the photo. Vibrant and energetic on the nose, truffles, roses, spices, orange peel, youthful (!) cherry fruit, and the smells were so well defined and pure. Perfectly balanced and harmonious, it really spread throughout the mouth and nasal cavities, leaving this truffle and rose scent in its wake. It was growing as we finished it too. This was the kind of wine that makes you re-evaluate your own wine cellar.

So now what. I need to start cellaring Nebbiolo now? This could be a problem...

What Makes a Good Vintage?

Thanks to my then girlfriend, now wife BrooklynLady, sometime in 2004 I rediscovered wine. I had no idea, really, of what it was that I liked (and I'm still figuring it out). I mostly bought daily drinking wines, but I also made the occasional purchase of a special bottle, something a bit more expensive. I didn't yet know where to look for meaningful information about wine, but I wanted to spend my money wisely.

One of the things I used was a vintage chart. I still have it, actually.

Think about it - there are so many bottles on the shelves, so many choices on auction sites. How can some one who is serious about getting into wine, and on a limited budget, sort through it all? The vintage chart is such a helpful tool, like a cheat-sheet. Before buying a special bottle I always made sure that the vintage received a high rating on my sheet. And if it got a low score, or if the vintage wasn't listed on the sheet, I would pass.

I know now that this is an absurd way to buy wine - to think about wine, even. But that's only because I now know enough to understand how much I don't know. When you're starting out, a vintage chart helps to make sense of the enormous set of wine choices. Then you learn aphorisms like "good producers make good wine in all vintages," and perhaps you focus more on terroir and producers. And one day you spend $75 on a great producer's villages Burgundy from 2004, and you realize that it might be true that good producers make good wine in all vintages, but there are better ways to spend $75. It's all part of learning about wine. I won't understand the mistakes I'm making now for a few more years.

I think about vintage now when I buy a special bottle of wine, but I think about them according to my own taste and experience. Because I am attracted to wines made in a lean and graceful style, I find that I prefer wines that come from quiet vintages that don't attract attention. For example, I really like the Loire red wines from 2007. This was a typical year with a typical set of problems, and no one declared it to be a blockbuster vintage. 2005, on the other hand - a vintage of the decade. I would bet huge sums of money that I will prefer the 2007's in 15 years, but time will tell.

I don't know a lot, but I'll tell you this: when it comes to "great vintages," it's better to decide for yourself. And who cares if you wind up liking a vintage that the critics deride? You'll enjoy your wine and pay less for it too.

I was reminded of all of this the other night when I had the good fortune to attend an amazing wine dinner at Alto put together by the inimitable Levi Dalton. You may have heard about this, as my pals at Do Bianchi, McDuff's Food and Wine Trail, and Rockss and Fruit were also in attendance and have already written a bit.

We drank Nebbiolo made by Peter Weimer of Cascina Ebreo in Novello. His flagship wine is called Torbido!, although it is made in a place and in a style so that would normally be called Barolo. We drank several vintages of Torbido!, beginning with the first ever vintage of 1997, and including 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, and 2004. We also drank the 2002, although it was released as Limpido!, not Torbido!

Jeremy Parzen of Do Bianchi told me, "Peter Weimer allows the vintage to express itself, he doesn't force the wine to become something it isn't." Drinking these wines, then, was an amazing opportunity to learn something about vintages in Barolo. Which ones would I prefer?

Take another look at the vintage chart. 2000 and 1997 are rated as essentially perfect vintages. Everything, in fact, with the exception of 2002, is supposed to be very good. My experience was a bit different.

I liked most of the wines very much, although there was one that I found essentially undrinkable. That was the 1997. To me, it was a shapeless wine with no focus, and the fruit had an oxidized character. It had no energy, and seemed out of balance to me. I would drink the passable 2002 over the '97 every time. But there were at least two other people at the table who preferred the 1997 to any of the others.

I did like the 2000, the other blockbuster vintage according to my chart. It was not as profound as other wines on the table, but it was balanced and somewhat expressive, and entirely drinkable. I didn't like the 1999 so much at first, as it had a diffuse and overripe character on the nose that was very similar to the 1997. But I came back to it later on and it was truly a lovely wine - good energy, clean ripe fruit, good acidity, and quite harmonious. Jeremy said that it was the most classically styles of the wines, and I think I understand what he meant. My personal favorite was the 1998. I loved the pungent truffley aromas and the fine grained tannins, the intense and yet graceful character of the wine. The 2001 was clearly a beauty, but like the 2004, it was showing only a little bit of itself at this early stage of its life. Who knows what they will become?

This was a solid reminder for me that regarding wine vintages, as with most everything else, I'll always be happiest when I do my own thinking.

When All the Wines are Noble, Old, and Glorious (Except for the one that I Brought)

I went out to dinner with my buddy Levi the other night and it turned out that I brought a proverbial knife to a gunfight. It was a "soft" opening for a new Thai restaurant downtown in the old Cru space. Thai food for the western palate. I figured that I'd bring something tasty that would go with the food, we'd have a few glasses and enjoy our meal, nothing terribly fancy. It turned out to be one of those nights where everything you drink is noble, old, and glorious.

As we sat down I took out the wine I brought along, the 2008 Pierre Gonon St Joseph Blanc Les Oliviers, $32, Fruit of the Vines Imports. But that bottle waited in the corner of the table, as a magnum of 1996 Bollinger Grande Année appeared. So that's how it's going to be. I was surprised by how open and utterly drinkable the wine was, as you hear about how acidic and closed down the 1996's can be. Not this one - it was generous and just lovely, very much a wine of finesse. The finish was delicate and intense, with this kernel of floral fragrance that left a great impression. I don't know how long this bottle had been open - perhaps it was shut tight 6 hours prior to me drinking a glass, but in any case, certainly a compelling case for 1996 Bollinger.

Then Levi pulls out a 1996 Francis Cotat Sancerre La Grande Côte, Michael Skurnik Imports. Yes, Francis, not his son François (I think it's his son, anyway). This is a phenomenal wine, and one of the interesting things about it is that honestly, served blind, there would be no way to peg it as Sauvignon Blanc. We agreed that it smelled, tasted, and really felt like Chenin Blanc - an old Montlouis, Levi said. In any case, it is beautifully and energetically aromatic, perfectly balanced, rich with baked apples, and it expanded and changed quite a bit over the course of an hour. A great argument for cellaring high quality Sancerre.

If my night had ended there, I would have had plenty of wine to think about. But Levi works most nights and doesn't himself get to go out to dinner very often. So he couldn't stop himself from bringing along a bottle of old Riesling, the 1976 H. Josef Fries Noviander Honigberg Riesling Auslese, Savio Soares Selections. The first surprise about this wine - it was very fresh and vigorous. The wine is 34 years old. One of the very kind servers appeared with a wine by the same producer, but from the 1992 vintage, "just to compare," he said. That wine was also delicious, and it seemed like a newborn baby in the company of the golden rich 34 year old wine. In the 1976 there was a little petrol hint, but for me the overall sensation of the wine was this slow-creeping herbal honey over rocks. It drank dry, by the way, and I didn't know it was an Auslese until I looked more carefully at the label.

By the way, as I was putting my coat on to leave, the Gonon St Joseph had finally opened up and was a delicious blend of flowers, white fruit, and stones. If you happen to have any of this, seems like it's worth leaving it alone for a few years, at least.

That should be enough, and I should be winding up this post up, but Levi suggested as we were leaving that we go to Babbo, just to drink this wine he had been wanting to drink for 6 months, a wine that no one else sells. And so we did. It is a solera wine from Sardinia, the 1987 Attilio Contini Vernaccia di Oristano Riserva. This is the kind of wine that really makes you wonder about things. Why solera wine, in Sardinia? How does it taste at the same time like Manzanilla sherry and also like the orange bitters and spice of Chinato? Does 1987 refer to the youngest wine in this bottle? Will I ever feel as though I actually know anything about wine? Probably not.

I've never before tasted anything like this wine. I guess it's considered to be a dessert wine, but I cannot imagine drinking it with sweet food. Certain cheeses, maybe, like something hard and salty made of sheep's milk. I would love to drink it again as the focus of an evening, but apparently there really isn't any more of it to be had in these parts.

I often dream about moving with my wife and small kids out of New York to some smaller and more manageable place. This kind of evening, though, reminds me of how amazing it is to be here in that without expecting it, you can experience several different esoteric and beautiful things from all over the world, with friends, in one night.

Now THAT'S Good Wine Writing

I just got the new Art of Eating, issue number 85. I always enjoy this magazine, Edward Behr's journal in which passionate scholars of food and drink discuss in vivid and personal detail the things that they love. This issue is particularly exciting to me, as it features work by two of NYC's hardest working wine professionals, both of whom I now know at least a little bit.

Levi Dalton, my friend and the head sommelier at Alto, in the monthly column entitled "Why This Bottle, Really?" writes about one of his favorite Fianos, the Pietraculpa Fiano di Avellino. In just a couple of paragraphs he provides context for the wine and describes in detail why it is special. Fiano is a wine that I had never heard of until last year at around this time when I went to Convivio for dinner and put myself in Levi's hands, omakase style. With my grilled sardines he served a glass of Fiano (I don't remember which one), but I remember how the smokiness of the wine and its great clarity made my sardines taste impossibly good.

David Lillie, one of the owners of Chambers Street Wines, one of the finest wine stores on the planet, writes a full length article called "The Flavor of Stone" about the wines and producers of Muscadet. It immediately, in my opinion, becomes the best place to begin reading and learning about those wines, the people who make them, and the place where they are grown.

At the end of the article, David briefly discusses a plan in the works that would change the appellation status of some of the finest wines of the region. Top producers such as Marc Ollivier, Pierre Lunea-Papin, André-Michel Brégeon, and others are making great wines that showcase specific terroirs within Muscadet, and often involve lees aging for longer periods than are allowed under the appellation rules. Ollivier's Granite de Clisson is a prominent example. Growers are petitioning for Grand Cru status for these wines, and it will be interesting (and quite possibly very frustrating) to see the results as they unfold. For anyone interested in Muscadet, this is an absolute must-read.

These great pieces remind me of what it is that separates great wine writing from the more common kind of blogging that I do. In reading these pieces, one learns something of the author and a bit about the way they personally experience the wines, their professional take on the flavors and aromas. But these pieces contain more than just tasting notes, opinions, reminiscences, pairing advice, and other bloggerly type work. There is actual fact in here, fact that frames and perhaps forms the most important part of the stories. One comes away smarter after reading, not simply entertained.

Congratulations Levi and David! I hope that you both find ways to continue writing about wine.

Oh, and by the way, The World of Fine Wine now hosts a blog and my friend Peter Liem, another of the world's finest wine writers, will be a regular contributor. Anyone familiar with WOFW knows that four times a year it is an incredible work of science and art. It attracts some of the finest and most learned wine writers in the world, and it is a well deserved honor for Peter, already a regular contributor to the quarterly journal, to write for the blog.

What's in an Old Bottle?

As I was saying in the last post, there was discussion at the table about the contents of the old Vallana Spanna wines we drank. Were these wines made purely of Nebbiolo? Were they reconditioned - re-bottled and perhaps topped up with some newer wine?

It's tempting to say that the answers don't matter - these are old wines that were made before there were controls that dictated what was allowed and what wasn't. There will never be a way to know for sure what's in these bottles. Why not simply drink them and enjoy them?

Well, that's what we did. But I'm not entirely satisfied with that idea because it would cost about $100 to buy one of the bottles we drank, others would be more expensive. I like to know the grapes used to make my $14 rosé - I want to know what was used here too. Maybe I feel entitled because it's expected now with food to be able to ask the provenance of the tiniest grain of salt on the plate. Should that extend to wine? I have this idea that with wine, particularly with expensive wine, I should be able to find out what's in the bottle. Of course it isn't always possible, and with the Vallana Spanna wines, there are questions and few definitive answers.

Since I know so little about this sort of thing, I'll share with you what a few knowledgeable people had to say.

Before going to the dinner I told Peter about it and showed him the list of wines we would drink, hoping that he would help me to build some context for what I would experience. Peter made sure to explain that he is an agnostic on this issue, that for him it is purely a sensory experience that forms his opinion. One of the things he said was this:

That's a fantastic Vallana lineup. Back in Portland we did a number of dinners like that, when the wines were first unearthed by the Rare Wine Company about ten years ago. They were very affordable back then (comparatively speaking), but unfortunately now they've been "discovered". The '58s are incredibly youthful, as is '61 Campi Raudii. Anyway, they're all great. Hope you enjoy them. Just between you and me (sorry Peter - ed.), you should open a Taurasi or other aglianico tonight, and then tell me if you don't find those same aromas in the Vallanas! I've long thought that those old Vallanas aren't 100% nebbiolo (or spanna), although it doesn't bother me one bit. I like to think that they were bulking it up with aglianico, and 50 years later we're discovering how noble aglianico can really be.

Levi agreed that the wines are likely not to be pure Nebbiolo, and as Peter said, this doesn't bother him a bit.

If these wines were represented the way Burgundy wines are represented, as pure Pinot from one specific vineyard, that would be problematic. But they're not represented that way. The techniques used to make these wines are not those used to make traditional Barolo and Nebbiolo wines - I think these Spanna were made using dried grapes for example. so should we dismiss them? No, they're intensely expressive wines and I think they taste very much of Piedmonte, they have a cut that I recognize as Piedmontese.

I asked Levi if he thinks that Aglianico was added to the Vallana Spanna wines we drank. He said it is possible, but that he doubts it.

That's pretty far to go, from Campania to Piedmonte. The roads were unpaved, there is no river to use for sending the grapes. Why use Aglianico if they had local grapes that would work the same way, like Vespolina, Bornarda, and Uva Rara? The grapes are similar - Nebbiolo and Aglianico, and people don't have the reference point to say "wow, that tastes like Uva Rara" when it might well be Uva Rara, not Aglianico. Also, Vallana was using chestnut to age the wines and that has a taste that people might identify as Aglianico - chestnut is cheaper than oak and it was used to age wine back then in Campania too. Look - we drink this and say "this doesn't really taste like Nebbiolo, it tastes like Aglianico. But there are other questions too. To what extent is this stuff made from dried grapes? Also there is the old wine sweetness, the still intact sugar that you can taste from the chaptalization. There's a lot going on here.

I talked with Jeremy Parzen, who wrote a fun and informative post in 2007 that provides lots of context for Vallana Spanna. Jeremy has had several opportunities to drink Vallana Spanna and I asked him what he thinks might be in these bottles.

Remember that in the 1950's and 60's it was rare to have a very good vintage. Two great vintages in a row - forget it. It was so cold, they had trouble getting enough alcohol in the wines because the grapes rarely developed enough sugar. Now it's easy - it's much warmer, there are many more good vintages today than in the past. A wine maker recently told me that global warming has made him rich. Anyway, that was a time when you needed to be able to sell a lot of wine to people who were going to put it on the table and open it. If the vintage was bad, you better get creative and figure out how to sell wine or else you might lose your clients. Aglianico from the south was riper and could help raise alcohol levels. I have no doubt that Aglianico regularly made it into Nebbiolo wines during those times.

I asked Jeremy how this would have actually worked. What about the bad roads, the costs of transporting grapes if other grapes were available locally that might have helped - Bornarda, Vespolina, Uva Rara.

It's true, the roads were bad, but Italy had a very well developed canal system, the vestiges of which can still be seen today. Almost all of Italy was navigable by canal in those days. It would have been possible to get the grapes to Piedmonte that way. And if the vintage was bad, Bornarda, Vespolina, and Uva Rara wouldn't have been much help if they also came from a thin vintage. I don't taste Aglianico in those wines, I taste Nebbiolo. but 1955 and 1958 were very good vintages and maybe they didn't need to bulk up the wines. I agree, though, that the wines clearly have been reconditioned. They are just so fresh - more so than Giacomo Conterno wines that I've had from those same years, for example.

I asked Jeremy if he feels that Vallana Spanna are wines that express terroir, or are they wines of blending and conditioning.

My concept of terroir includes people and tradition - it's not just place. These are distinct wines that taste like Nebbiolo from east Piedmonte - a little lighter and not quite as tannic as Langhe wines. In the 1950's and 60's, east Piedmont and Lombardy were where fine Nebbiolo came from. It wasn't until the early 70's that Barolo and Barbaresco emerged as the place for the finest Nebbiolo and the single vineyard as terroir idea only began there at that same time. Personally, I think that the greatest Barolo and Barbaresco are not single vineyard wines, but that's another story. In the 50's and 60's, people making Spanna traditionally blended their wines - they had to in order to make a living. They weren't making wines so that some one could age them for decades. They needed to sell wine, good wine, to their clients. Some say that Syrah might have made it into Spanna at times. I wouldn't doubt it. Part of the terroir concept regarding Spanna involves blending and perhaps grapes from far away. Still, though, these wines to me taste like Nebbiolo from east Piedmonte.

I've heard similar stories about Burgundy too, by the way. That Syrah was used to fortify the wines at times. It goes to show that the sensibility that real wines should be purely of one place and that demands an exactitude with regard to blending - this is a purely modern phenomenon. In the good old days, it was far less clear than now what was in the bottle.

Dinner at Alto and Old Vallana Spanna

Even if like me, you are an ignoramus when it comes to Italian wine, if some one asked you to name the places where the finest wines made of Nebbiolo come from, you would say Barolo and Barbaresco. But it wasn't always this way. As Jeremy Parzen, a scholar of many things, including Italian wine, can tell you, Barolo and Barbaresco emerged in the 1970's as the places where the finest Nebbiolo wines were grown. Many great wines were and continue to be made in other parts of Piedmonte.

Antonio Vallana is one of the producers who made fine Nebbiolo wines in the '50s and '60s. His family's wines were brought to the US about a decade ago and have since been discovered by the Italian wine loving community. I drank one of them two years ago at a dinner in Portland the first time I met Peter Liem. Re-reading what I wrote about the wine, it seems as though I liked it.

Not too long ago my pal Levi Dalton invited me to a dinner hosted by Chris Cannon, one of the owners of the restaurant Alto. Levi is the head Sommelier at Alto and he organizes truly ridiculous wine dinners from time to time. To be invited at all is a rare treat, and in an absurdly generous gesture, I was the guest of Chris Cannon and the restaurant. It began like this - Levi asked me if I knew Vallana Spanna.

I said that I drank one once, but that I didn't know the wines. Levi found this to be amusing and perhaps a little hard to believe.

But then he said "No really, you're okay Brooklynguy. Want to come to a Vallana Spanna dinner?"

Yes, yes I do. This wasn't some ordinary dinner - there were some heavy hitters at the table. I'm talking about Eric Asimov, Jaime Wolff, Chris Cannon, John Slover, and Michael Wheeler, to name a few. What an opportunity - to sit down with these and a few others who know so much about wine, and to drink a load of old Vallana Spanna together. Here are the wines the Levi poured:

Antonio Vallana e Figlio, Spanna del Piemonte 1958
Antonio Vallana e Figlio, Cantina Campi Raudii, Catuli Ara 1958
Antonio Vallana e Figlio, Cantina Campi Raudii, Gattinariae 1958
Antonio Vallana e Figlio, Campi Raudii et Catuli Ara, Riserva Catulus 1961
Antonio Vallana e Figlio, Cantina Castello di Montalbano, Camino 1964
Antonio Vallana e Figlio, Cantina Castello di Montalbano 1968
Antonio Vallana e Figlio, Cantina Cinque Castelli 1967

We drank other things too, but these old Nebbiolos (Spanna is another name for Nebbiolo) were the point of the dinner. Levi wanted to understand these wines better, and he figured this would be a good way to do it.

I took a few notes and I'll share some thoughts on the wines, but honestly I was more interested in focusing on the wines and talking with my neighbors than on keeping tasting notes.

We drank the wines in several flights and the flight that I liked the best was the one with the wines from 1964, 1967, and 1968. These wines truly fascinated me - I could have spent the whole dinner with only them and walked away happy, if still a little confused. Levi opened the wines hours before hand, by the way. And still, poured from the bottle, the wines changed a lot in the glass. The 1964 (supposedly a great vintage) and the 1967 (a good vintage) both showed this amazing bouillon cube savory character on the nose. At first this dominated the nose, but the wines grew a bit in the glass, became more detailed. The '64 was an amazing wine - vibrant and fresh on the palate, fruit and spice, savory and herbal, mature and regal, gentle and perfectly balanced. The '67 was excellent too, and I thought it was of the same cut as the '64, although not as perfect of a wine. The '68 was more overtly brawny, and although it was delicious, I didn't find it to be as compelling as the other two.

The 1961 Riserva Catulus was also excellent, but very different from the wines that preceded it. It felt as though some of the grapes had been dried before pressing, perhaps in the style of an Amarone. The trio of wines from 1958 were all interesting and it felt like history in a glass. But I must say, these wines felt remarkably young and fresh considering that they are over 50 years old. There was talk at the table about whether or not these wines had been reconditioned, and the consensus was yes, they had.

There were other interesting questions about the wines - were they in fact made of pure Nebbiolo? If not, what else was in these wines? This has gone on long enough already, so I'll save that discussion for the next post. And I will leave you with this, two of the best things I have eaten in a while, both from this dinner:

Terrine di Coda di Bue e Fegato Grasso, or country-style oxtail and foie gras terrine, pear mostarda, and pickled chanterelles. Utterly ridiculous with old Nebbiolo.

Sformato di Mandorle con Lumache, or robiola and almond sformato (like a flan), braised snail ragu, topped with shredded almonds and black truffles. Again, with old Nebbiolo, this was a sort of hedonism that one isn't often able to indulge in.

Thank you again Levi and Alto for this fantastic evening!

A discussion of the specific contents of the bottles up next...

Levi Dalton Roasts a Pig

Well, the chef at Alto did, anyway. Levi just organized the whole thing. And lucky for me, he invited me.

Levi, enjoying a thoughtful moment, or perhaps reaching down to tie his shoe.

Levi is a top shelf wine guy, truly Grand Cru. He is an extremely bright guy with a vast wealth of wine knowledge, and he's relaxed and easy going about it. Sharing a glass with him is a great way to learn about wine, as he is so good as describing in such an accessible manner what he likes and doesn't like about a wine. Plus, he has a razor sharp wit and is simply fun to be around. If this guy invited me to a three hour tasting of Boone's Farm wines, I would go.

Photo courtesy of Levi D.

So I was excited for Levi's pig roast the other night. The event was hosted by Alto restaurant and was in part a showcase for the Piedmontese wines of Silvia Altare. Many NYC sommeliers and other wine people showed up, some from as far away as Philly. Many wines were shared. I was incredibly lucky to spot, and then basically attach myself to this guy:

SF Joe: the little white lights are the constant smart thoughts buzzing out of his head.

SF Joe, as he's known on the wine bulletin boards, is a brilliant and dedicated aficionado of the Loire Valley wines (among others). He was hanging out with a guy named Kirk, another NYC wine guy with a legendary cellar and a generous soul. So my night began with a glass of Kirk's 2002 Nicolas Joly Savennières Clos de la Coulée de Serrant. Nicolas Joly is a controversial figure, as probably the greatest living champion of the biodynamic movement in wine grape farming. And this is a controversial wine. Very expensive, and yet subject to what is apparently is a particularly high degree of bottle variation. Also, there are many who feel that this wine is plagued by problems with oxidation. I have no opinions on these matters, as I've had the wine too few times to understand it. But I will say that this bottle we had was very, very good. Attractive, balanced, absolutely pure, just lovely wine. Made me want to drink it again, although I don't know if I'm ready to plunk down my own $85 yet. I have enough problems with bottle variation already.

Then SF Joe broke out two absolute gems from the fantastic 1989 vintage in the Loire, wines that are pretty rare to come across today. First it was the 1989 Domaine de la Pépière Muscadet Clos des Briords, a direct refutation of the crazy talk coming from some guy on the left coast about how there's no reason to age Muscadet. This wine was a beautiful thing. No fireworks, nothing fancy, just pure, mellow, perfectly poised, deeply aromatic, and utterly delicious. If it were a house, it would be one of those weathered red-cedar shingle houses on the New England coast.

Then it was the 1989 François Cotat Sancerre Les Monts Damnés. This wine always has a certain richness to it, but at over 20 years old and from a ripe year like '89, this one was infused with honey. It was full and lush but very nicely structured, and like the Muscadet, strikingly pure. I enjoyed how the wine changed from front to back, how the initial taste was so honeyed and floral, and then the finish was more delicate and stony. I decided that it would be with this wine that I needed to indulge in the roast pig.

This photo is terrible, not enough light, but it gives a sense of what was going on with the pig. The chef completely de-boned it and then stuffed it with itself - loin, leg, sausage, and so on. Which by the way, is exactly how I would like to die. Seasoned with rosemary, sea salt, and who knows what else, the pig was ridiculously good. Large portions were served and everyone would say things like "my goodness, there's no way I'm going to be able to eat all that," before slipping into a pig-devouring silence that lingered a little while after the plate was clean.

I loved the way the old Sancerre worked with the pig. I know, it was supposed to be about Silvia Altare's wines, and those were very good too (my favorite was a delicious white Langhe wine made from Pinot Noir). But there was something about the way the floral honey and the rosemary in the Sancerre mingled with the piggy-ness of the pig...

And then, just when I thought it was safe to hang up my glass and head home, Kirk rooted around underneath one of the tables and emerged with a bottle of 1998 Giacomo Conterno Barolo Cascina Francia. This is one of those iconic wines that I have very few chances to drink, and it's not easy for me to describe how good it is because I have little context for the wine. But it is one of those wines that just knocks you out immediately, the nose is so gorgeously deep with roses and herbs and tar, impossibly detailed, delicate, and energetic.

What an evening - thanks again for your generosity Levi, Kirk, and SF Joe.