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It's after 7 pm here -- 1 pm EDT, 10 am PDT -- and the boaters are coming home to port before their 4-hour dinners that will go on till about 1 am, or later. The weather is gorgeous. The bay almost looks clean, which must explain why so many people swim in it. Not just kids, who'll swim in anything, but senior citizens who must have built up some fierce antibodies over the decades.
People pay a good piece of change to belong to these "beach clubs", where they dive straight into the dirty water and swim around as if they were in "Swept Away." Lesser mortals clamber out onto the rocks (like those at the left) and spread out the best they can.
I tasted some wines last night, which I confess disappointed me. I'd say it was due to my having a wretched cold and a wracking cough, but Ken has no such affliction and his take on them was the same as mine. These wines are young, one still several months from bottling, so we can't rush to judgment. One of them was ungainly with oak and through-the-roof-of-your-mouth tannins, while the other was churning and unfocused still. Time will tell.
The best of the evening was the one we actually drank, the Huet 2001 Brut we bought at the winery last week. We liberated it from its glass prison, all of it. It was utterly clean, elegant and refreshing.
Ciao for now. [cough cough cough cough] Back at you later.
Two years ago I took off for a month in Italy. I knew it was going to be the dream of a lifetime come true. I had no idea that it was going to change the course of my life.
The idea was that we were going to house-sit for an American couple who had to return to the US. We were going to look after a couple of cats and stay in the center of a little village in Abruzzo. That was the idea. The reality was far less than pleasant or reasonable.
First of all, there were five cats. Five. In the intense heat of that summer the house radiated the smell of cat pee -- far worse than the worst New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc you could ever imagine -- from 10 feet away.
Secondly, the couple thoughtfully padlocked their bedroom so no one could use it or the only TV, DVD player, etc., in the house.
Then there was the neighbor who spied on us every day to make sure we didn't, I don't know, sponsor orgies or (worse) open the joint up as a B&B.
We lasted about 10 days.
Fortunately, I phoned a few people I had met via the Internet or at tastings in New York, and we were off to Siena, Verona and Rome. We visited many wineries, met a lot of winemakers and made good friends. And yes, the trip did change my life. Before, I was a wretch who taught in the public schools of New York -- out of desperation after 25 years in advertising. After, I was a wretch who suffered a breakdown because teaching in the public schools of New York was completely antithetical to everything I loved, needed and wanted. For what I loved, needed and wanted was a life in wine. Specifically, Italian wine. My love for Italy has been a constant in a wildly careering life since I was 14 years old.
And so here I am, tasting a few Campanian wines with a critical eye and palate as I sit on a balcony overlooking the Bay of Naples and a tranquil Vesuvius, as I try to decide whether or not to bring the wines to the United States. I've put everything I have into this new initiative (and more) and I'm probably the happiest I've ever been in a life of many extremes, of both misery and joy and deprivation and modest affluence.
Eccomi, rinato di nuovo, alleluja.
Saluti, carissimi.
See the photos and captions on the continuation page for a few scenes and faces of the month that tore my life apart. And of course you can trace my adventures/discoveries in the mondosapore posts from July 25 to August 25, 2006.
And let me tell you this too -- I'm grateful for the day that Ken demanded we leave that smelly-cat house in Abruzzo or none of this would have happened.
Two years ago I visited the family-run winery named Italo Pietrantonj, which I recalled fondly in two posts (here and here.)
I was eager to return to Vittorito, a tiny village in the province of L'Aquila, and not just or mainly with my blogging hat on, because I wanted to assess the wines again. And I wanted to renew acquaintance with a charming, warm family.
Photo above: Sisters Alice and Roberta Pietrantonj
The person who helped arrange the visit was Roberta Pietrantonj, one of two daughters who have taken over the day-to-day operations from their father, Nicola. Roberta handles the business and marketing end of things, while her sister Alice is the agronomo or vineyard manager.
They have their work cut out for them. Their scattered land holdings are all in fairly rugged hill country with soils that are high in clay and limestone; the soil is sharp with stones. The family has about 50 hectares (125 or so acres). The grapes are almost entirely regional varieties like Montepulciano d'Abruzzo -- Italy's other classic red -- as well as Trebbiano (my enthusiasm dampens), Malvasia and Pecorino (a favorite of mine). There are great day/night temperature differences, creating more aromatic fruit and wine. The ever-drier climate has forced the family to use some irrigation in their best vineyards. The total wine production, figured in bottles, totals some 700,000, though much is produced in 5-liter demijohns and "bag-in-box" for both national and European (mainly German) consumption.
Above: Vittorito. Lunchtime rush
They produce large amounts of excellent olive oil, some it from very rare, localized olive varieties.
Signora Mirella maintains a parklike garden
The Pietrantonjs aren't among my favorite abruzzesi for bulk wines, though. Their 75cl bottles show the very high potential for this less-renowned section of Abruzzo, especially in their various lines of Montepulcianos. Their Cerano (we had the 2004)
Which country would you want to live in?
Americans and other Anglophones tend to idealize both countries. But it's easy to idealize from afar and almost impossible to do so when you're there, particularly when you're there a lot and get to see the country up close, warts and all.
Let' do a brief word association test for the Positives and Negatives of each.
POSITIVES
Italy: sunny, sensuous, sexy, fun-loving, romantic, great food, nice wines, history, culture, fashion, style, beautiful cities, gorgeous palaces, the sea, happiness.
France: sensuous, sexy, fun-loving, romantic, great
food, great wines, history, culture, fashion, style, beautiful cities,
gorgeous palaces, the sea, happiness.
Gee, how odd. The lists are almost identical. We imagine what we want.
Now let's look at some of the negatives we associate with each country. In which you could say we see the ills we are blind to at home.
NEGATIVES
Italy: Corruption, Mafia/Camorra/Berlusconi, garbage, absurd bureaucracy, bribery, laziness, inefficiency, tainted food/faked wine, pizza, spaghetti, military ignominy, trains that no longer run on time. (Just to name a few.)
France: Outlandish fashions, overelaborate food, too-expensive wine, 35-hour work week, disdain for Anglophones, snootiness in general, odd cars, amorality, military ignominy, general pomposity and excessive self-regard.
Interesting, no? The perceived positives are so similar as to be slight variations on a theme. But the negatives are where the real distinctions lie: France is the country of snooty snobs and hoity-toities, Italy the land of loutish criminals and cheats where nothing works well.
You consider such things when you have hypothetical discussions on where you'd like to live, Italy or France. Especially if you can't afford that old estate in Tuscany or that chateau in Aquitaine.
First question:
Everything is so old!
Come to the Loire. The wines in this region are very mild, non-bombastic, unhedonistic and only sometimes fruit bomby. A typical red isn't 13-14-15%. It's 12, 12.5%. (I used to remember when their happiness grade was routinely just 11-11.5%. I see a few palm trees in Amboise, so maybe global warming has played a role of sorts in pumping them up.)
If it's over-extracted and concentrated wines you're tired of, look no further than the Loire. The reds are light in color and flavor and in their "attack" on the palate. The roses are so light they actually look like those "blush" wines of California, except that they tend not to be cloying and rampant with manipulated flavors and smells.
So--in general, boys and girls, don't bitch about those big, overdone, overoaked etc. wines. Head to the store and buy something from the Loire -- from Chinon, Bourgueil, Vouvray, Saumur and other appellations in these here parts. Most of these appellations offer you easy to drink wines at a good price -- admittedly, most of them wines you needn't think about too much.
Pretty good. And cheap even in a resto with outrageous markups.
Still. You won't feel wrecked in the morning and your wallet won't be all that much lighter.
They say travel is broadening. And it is.
This is where I went today:
I liked it far better than Chambord, so much homier.
After lunch we headed down the road from Amboise to the Domaine Francois Chidaine tasting room, La Cave Insolite. They sell a number of wines by other regional producers, but we went there to taste Chidaine's.
It was revealing to taste the difference between the Chenin Blanc from both Montlouis (south back of the Loire) and Vouvray on the other side. The Montlouis wines of this house have a more pronounced minerality -- flintiness, and there is indeed flint in the soil -- while the Vouvrays are softer and less layered and nuanced in my view. In short, Chidaine's Vouvrays seem quite unremarkable, certainly far less distinctive than Huet's. The Montlouis wines strike me as more flavorful and balanced, including the driest sec from 2006.
I mentioned to the young lady in the tasting room that we wanted to visit one other winery before we left tomorrow morning. She looked at my list and enthusiastically pointed to Domaine de Belliviere in Lhomme. We (all six of us) decided to drive up there. After an hour-long ride through some very pretty villages and a lot of forests and farmland, we found ourselves in a desolate little town where nothing was open and the populace seemed to have fled, prompting young Miss Levy to ask, "Is this an Orthodox Jewish town?"
I had a good laugh at that one, which was especially good because we called the winery and found out that they too were closed on Saturdays. So here I am back at Clos d'Amboise, stuffing this electronic message in a metaphorical bottle.
Strappo wearing best fake smile for photo, taken almost as we type
What I'm looking at now
Pas mal, eh?
Went to Chambord today. It's big. It's glitzy, in that pre-prefab way. It dwarfs the ordinary mortal. It's big as hell. It's asymmetrical to keep the eye from glazing over from the grandiose monotony of it, this last point no dobut the genius of Leonardo da Vinci who came here to work for the king when things got sticky in It'ly. The guidebook tells us that the great maestro died in King Francis's arms, which I find hard to believe. I'm sure Frankele had a courtier stand in for him.
After we goggled and photographed, we waited around for quite a while as the rest of our party finished up inside. Some of us lounged in the sun and ate and checked our watches.
Understandably, we had precious little time to go to wineries and tasting rooms. Since we are big fans of Huet, we zipped as fast as we could over to Vouvray, toured a small portion of the 1-km-long cellars and tasted a few of the commercially available vintages. (I bet if I had declared my identity as Mr. Mondosapore, they'd have rolled out the red carpet and given us some of that 1959 vintage, for example. But I wanted to be a regular wine tourist. Just like Jancis did recently in Napa. See, we have so much in common!)
Bottom line: we bought enough bottles to get us through the rest of this brief vacation in France. I still like the Le Mont line the best, and I have decided for once and all that I am not your demi-sec kind of guy. Sec and, yes, moelleux, but not the in-between.
These wines age beautifully but I feel no compunction about consuming the Le Mont Sec 2006's now. They're lovely, nuanced, layered, sort of a "Three Faces of Eve" thing in Chenin Blanc. They keep telling you something new and interesting with each sip.
Le Mont moelleux. A honeyed nectar. Could use a bit more acidity for something like perfection.
Tomorrow's plan suits me much better: Skip Chenonceau, hit a few wine chateaux. The kind that matter.
After gathering all kinds of interesting names and addresses to visit, what did I do on my first full day by the Loire? I did what I love best: wandering around the back streets and countryside d'Amboise. I ate a solitary lunch in the sun at a little cafe and took a wine tour with an amusing little Gamay that was the color of many an Italian rosato. Then afterwards another virtual tour with a glass or two of white wine.
The white wine in question was of course a chenin blanc (2006), and the name of the estate was Domaine Vincent Careme, Vouvray, "Le Peu Morier." Vouvray is very close to Amboise. It was recommended to me by a wine merchant named Philippe Croix at his shop Millesime on rue Nationale in Amboise. In my fractured French (which always ended up being Italian) I told him I wanted something to take back to the hotel for the afternoon. Something typical and of this particular area that he would recommend. Something not completely dry, since it was as an aperitif, or really a mid-afternoon tipple.
Although the wine was a tad warmer than ideal, it grew on us as we rolled it round our mouths and savored its limestone minerality and anise notes. Its not-dry, not-semi-sec RS slightly masked the acidity and allowed the spice and herbal notes to come forth. At a local price of 13.50E retail it is clearly meant to be a wine of standing. Its gentle fruit and underlying structure convinced me.
The back label proclaims, in French and English, the use of no pesticides, etc., and that the wine is made naturally. It felt "natural" afterwards -- no baneful effects at all, just a renewed spring in my step.
I'm now sitting on the terrace. But I'm virtual too.
This was the very pleasant Cot (Malbec), Cabernet Franc and Gamay wine we had at dinner last night. Though young it threw quite a sediment -- looked like tea leaves in the glass and I theatened to read Ken's fortune. As in so many instances, this wine from down the road wouldn't turn many heads in New York or Chicago, but it did pair well with the local cuisine. Very drinkable, and low enough in alcohol (12.5%) that you could drink a number of glasses before really feeling the room tilt.
No doubt tonight there will be another virtual wine tour. Then, tomorrow, one or two real ones. But there's one thing I demand on vacation, hich has never been much of a feature of my life (till fairly recently anyway): unstructured time.
Otherwise known as loafing. Dolce far niente. Like when I fell asleep at the hotel's grassy-edged pool this afternoon and woke up beet red. Now it feels like a vacation.
Wine shop in Amboise with a large selection of regional labels:
Millésime
Philippe Croix
54 rue Nationale
37400 Amboise
Tel : +33(4)2.47.23.09.16
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