mondosapore

New blog name announced!

We've chosen Muddy Boots as our company web site's blog name.  Jeff loves it and May, our designer, loves it.  I do too.

I'll have to give the copywriter a raise.*

Meanwhile, let me thank everyone who submitted a suggestion or two.  And since I'm aware of seeming a cheapskate, I've decided to give that bottle of fine Aglianico di Taurasi to the person who sent in the next best entries, Beth of the Philadelphia Wine School.  Thank you, Beth!

Earlier today Alex of Verona left a comment noting that Muddy Boots in Italian is "Stivaloni Infangati."  I like that version of it too, especially because it sounds kind of dirty, and not just muddy dirty.  But for the title and masthead I think we'll stick with the shorter English version. 

* Me.  Actually, I'm doing this for free.  Well, hardly free.  More like the self-publishing model where you pay to play.  What can I say?  I'm funny that way.

Economy blues: Why we need more wine

For a while we've been reading reports telling us how wine consumption over all and per capita has been growing in the United States.  Here's one from WS dated October 22.  According to this, the US passed Italy in absolute wine consumption in 2007 and could reach France's level within a decade.  Granted, France and Italy each have only about one-fifth of the population of the United States. 

Then again, millions upon millions of foreign visitors fall on those countries every year and guzzle themselves silly on the local product.  Anyway, domestic wine-drinking in France and Italy isn't at anything like the levels of several decades ago. 

Now, for the bad news -- the really bad news for Americans.  A web site called Shadowstats has published charts showing how our economy has really been functioning for the past decade and more.  Short answer: very poorly indeed.  The reason so many people feel like the recent expansion didn't improve their standard of living is that it didn't. In most cases it declined.  For the worst off, it's been declining since 1973.

Thanks to government tampering with the parameters of economic metrics, under both Republican and Democratic administrations, unemployment, inflation and money supply have been drastically undercounted.  GDP, per capita income and the value of the dollar have been dramatically overvalued.  The clear implications of all this: we are much worse off than we were led to believe.  We knew it experientially but the feel-good figures pumped out by the government have been strongly reminiscent of the glowing, patently fraudulent production gains we heard from "Red" China and the Soviet Union for decades.  Click here to see the depressing charts.

I'll draw one snap conclusion from this.  Far from benefiting from the "trickle-down" wealth-creation and largesse of the very rich, the vast majority of us have been transferring our wealth to them at a significant clip.  

Another: if inflation is actually running at about 15-16% a year, which older methodologies would have shown, we're all suffering more than even I had believed.  I'm amazed that people are drinking wine at all, never mind better bottles than they used to.  Either the wine industry (not to mention we doughty bloggers) has done a smashing marketing job -- not likely -- or we are truly developing an American wine culture despite all the pressures on the household purse. 

Download happy_days_are_here_again.mp3

Winetasting group, 2011.

Dwindling of old media

There's a story in today's New York Times that I've been waiting to see for a long time: an influential daily newspaper is ending its print edition and going online.  The newspaper paradigm isn't shifting.  It's fractured beyond repair. 

In this case the paper is the very specifically focused Christian Science Monitor, which has made up in clout what it's lacked in circulation.  The Times story says, "Under the new system, reporters will be expected to file stories to the Web and update them a few times a day, along with writing longer pieces for the weekend magazine."  (Emphasis is mine.)

Excuse me, but does this sound like the HuffPost?  Does it sound like blogging?  Of course it does. 

Now here's a prediction in wine media:  at least one print publication will go 100% online rather soon, just like the Monday-Friday editions of the CSM.  Along the same lines, staffs will shrink and there will be more participation by "expert amateurs." No doubt some of these amateurs will come from today's blogging ranks -- as if they weren't already infiltrating wine print -- and others will truly appear from nowhere.

WE: The next to go?

All of this should vindicate people like Tom Wark, who believes that bloggers shall inherit the world.  Certainly the lines between amateur and professional communicators will blur into meaninglessness.  Out of the ranks of the expert amateurs will rise the next Parker or Robinson.  Or someone radically different from either of them. 

Monday Rerun 9: Tannins = Health

This is a post that has often been searched.  It discusses Roger Corder's book on the role of procyanidin in prolonging men's lives.  I faithfully report some basic info and launch into my usual brilliant analysis. 

There was a useful follow-up post in which I named the wines highest in this substance -- pulled right from Corder's book.  Link here to that article.

England's Greatest Cover-makers

While I was sunning myself in Bryant Park a few hours ago, I was listening to some key songs from the Rolling Stones' second American album, titled "England's Newest Hit Makers."  I want to share some reflections on those songs and -- briefly -- on the way the Stones treated some of their major influences.

In 1963-1964 the Stones were still a fairly new group, and their song-writing prowess was far from its peak in either quality or quantity.  They covered as many songs as they did partly because they had to feed the beast -- the record companies and fans were demanding more and more material.  And, of course, Mick and the lads derived their inspiration from great black blues and R&B musicians who by then were far more appreciated in the UK than in the US. On "Newest Hit Makers" there was almost nothing but covers.

May the force be with you, Brian

At this time the R&B artist they seemed to cover more than any other was Jimmy Reed, whose fluid guitar-playing and gently plain-spoken lyrics were particularly seductive for R&B-crazy British kids.  On this album the Stones covered two fine Reed numbers, "Honest I Do" and "Little by Little."  Their renditions were respectful in the extreme to the originals. "Honest I Do" seems the less successful of the two -- far too respectful, like a school exercise.  The Stones were always better at up-tempo numbers, and their potential shows better in "Little by Little."

I think their covers of Slim Harpo's "King Bee" and Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away"  are more successful, not least because they took these a bit up-tempo.  "King Bee," with its perfect blues metaphors of sexuality, takes on a rhythmic life and urgency that Slim Harpo's original only points toward.  And the power and drive of the Bo Diddley beat in "Not Fade Away" makes Holly's version of Bo's composition sound like a rehearsal in the family rec room. With these songs the Stones evince a playfulness that energizes everything.

Then there's one of my favorite Chuck Berry songs, "Carol."  ("Carol" is right up there with "Nadine" and "Back in the USA" in my book.)

This and the following album, "Rolling Stones Now!", marked the high point of the Stones' covers -- though they always seemed to have a soft spot for the great Solomon Burke. (right)

After that they were a lean mean composing machine.  But the R&B masters who initially inspired them never lost their hold. Their grit and underlying blues rhythms grounded the Rolling Stones in all they recorded.

Which is why the Stones are so listenable today, and why the Beatles are not.

Download 06_little_by_little.m4a

Download 07_im_a_king_bee.m4a

Download 01_not_fade_away.m4a

Download bo_diddley_not_fade_away.mp3

Download 08_carol.m4a

My Daily Wine

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds."  -- Emerson

Emerson.  Big drinker

When I read about the wines that a lot of blogging buddies drink, I feel sick with envy. Expensive, old-vintage, storied wines -- they drink them every day, or so it seems.  My daily wine experience is a tad different, I assure you.

I'm always casting about for reasonably priced and reasonably good wines that won't break the bank. In this I'm a lot more like Dr. Debs ("Good Wine Under $20") than Jeremy Parzen ("Do Bianchi") or Doug Cook ("Able Grape"). Jeremy and Doug seem to drink sensational wines with depressing frequency.

The situation, for me, is a little more complicated than it used to be.  Now that "my" wines are at long last about to land in the US, I feel that looking on the shelves for "good Italian wines under $20" would be an act of betrayal, or sheer stupidity.  I love these wines and expect to buy a good amount of them for household consumption...at cost -- that's the law, and we'll need our samples to be used as samples. 

Plus, you know, one needs a break every now and then.  My break from Italy is usually wine from France.

To my mind France provides some of the best bargains in wine, especially red wine.  The price/quality ratio can be superb.  And though I like the tannic wines of the southwest, the ones we agree on at home are from the Rhone Valley. 

Lately we've been drinking three that range from good to very good.  Two retail for about $12-13 locally, the other for around $10.  Even in somewhat straitened circumstances you can afford them by the case.

Belleruche is a good basic Cotes-du-Rhone made by M. Chapoutier.  It's a 50/50 Grenache/Syrah, and the 2006 stands at a strong 14%.  A pleasant drink that is harmonious and fragrant when you open the bottle, although it tends to fall apart after an hour or two.  Imported by Terlato. 

Very good value is found in Les Abeilles, a CDR from Jean-Luc Colombo.  The producer's web site informs us that the grapes are "Grenache, Syrah, Mourvedre.  Old vines, minimum 25 years."  Tasty and not too manipulated for a wine that sells for about $10.  Imported by Domaine Select.

Then there's the CDR from the celebrated Eric Guigal.  His base 2004 CDR offers sensational quality for the price ($11.99 at the none too cheap shop across the street).  Excellent fruit, weight, balance and sheer drinkability at 13%. We bought half a case for a birthday dinner party a few nights ago, and it was a big hit.  This is about as close to a no-brainer for an everyday red as you'll find.  Imported by Classic Wine Imports.

Advance web site copy, British version

Fredric Koeppel expressed skepticism (or should I say scepticism) about the first-draft copy for our coming web site, which I posted a week ago.  I was stung when he suggested that it was a parody.  I reread it and saw where he was coming from.  My disquiet was redoubled when I received the sarcastic comment from Gianpaolo Paglia. 

I'm not a fool.  I did not stay the course.  I asked the writer to come up with something completely different, perhaps a bit less rapturous and florid this time. See below to read it.

New blog name. Plus: Typepad Follies

"Crickets chirping."  That was my colleague Jeff's reaction to the suggested names you have sent in for the new Domenico Selections blog.  Translation: Boriiiiing.  For him that's really really polite.

Speaking for myself, there are a few that are promising.  I like a couple that Beth of the Filthadelphia Wine School proposed: Veni Vidi Bibi (very cute if you understand any Latin -- Beth, our American readers' lips move) and Bevo ("I drink").  Maybe we could extend the thought to Beviamo ("We drink," "Let's drink"). 

Tobias of Norway -- no relation to the infamous Tom of Norway, I hope -- came up with an interesting one: Eye on Wine.  I think it's a launching pad to a solution more than the solution itself.

Bella Figura came from one Fred. 

I'm leveraging Alex's idea and would suggest calling it Appunti ("Notes").

I have a couple of my own, which you may or may not find interesting/intriguing/compelling.  Muddy Boots, because that's what we have half the time as we tramp through the vineyards of Italy.  And In the Tank, which I sort of like for its multiple referents -- tasting tank and barrel samples, hence getting the scoop on how it's developing; conveying how crazy we are about our wines (like being "in the tank" for Obama); and describing the effects of too much joyous bibulosity.

Oh, and there's always the tried-and-true if not totally thrilling DS News.  (Eh.)

So, folks, I want to give you all until this coming Wednesday to dream up some new suggestions.  Then we'll have a vote on the final picks, which will be non-binding.  If you want your bottle of an exciting new Taurasi, you'd better be creative but focused.

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Typepad has struck again.  The blogging platform company has undergone vast new improvements in both system externals and internals.  Which means of course that there are bugs. 

Case in point, as Rod Serling used to say: whenever I click on mondosapore.com the newest post I get is dated October 22.  Same with the latest comments.  If I go to a specific page or to an archive, no problems.  A lot of regular visitors stop showing up when you've not posted for a couple of days.  Site traffic is down, and not just because I've been, honestly, too preoccupied to post a lot of substantial articles these days. 

A good antidote to this poison of inaccessibility is to use the URL http://tdh46.typepad.com/mondosapore/

This works fine. 

I must voice a complaint about Typepad's vaunted enhancements in its text editor.  It offers much more complete text formatting capabilities than before.  But it's kludgy -- reminds me of PC computing 15 years ago.  For example, you have to enter your text and then apply the desired formatting.  For example, their new default typeface is Arial.  I've always used Trebuchet and am not about to alter it.  And even bolding and underscoring must be done after you've written the piece, which to me is a tedious added step. Worse yet, you have to use two steps to 1) select another color and 2) bold the colored copy.  Before it was all doable in one.  Some enhancement.

Of course I'll bitch but I'm not going to convert to a new platform -- it's way too time-consuming and fraught with peril.  Especially when you've written over 1000 posts.  Still...shit!

Post 1001

Càspita!  This is post 1001. 

I put up #1000 yesterday but I was on a bus or in a Starbucks so I didn't realize I'd passed that milestone.  Wow.  What sticktuitiveness or risible vanity, I'm not sure which.  Both probably.  It's taken a lot out of me at times to write this blog, as in late 2006 and almost all of 2007, annus horribilis # 7 of my life. See, this is what I looked like when I began mondosapore:



Photo: Yours truly & an early fan

The first Wine Bloggers Conference is starting in Napa today, and a lot of the luminaries of the blogging community will be there. Not I, unfortunately, since I'm no luminary but I wish everyone there a wonderful and instructive time. That's it. No more to say. I just want to contemplate the number of hours I've put into mondosapore since 2005. And, like, what an idiot I am not to have got paid for any of it! Well, paid in love, of course. "But your lovin' don't pay my bills."

Download money_thats_what_i_want.mp3

I'm a maverick too

Just like John Maverick McCain, I am sort of a shoot-from-the-hip guy. A bit rash and impetuous and all too ready to shoot off my mouth in some backfiring attempt at humor.

A feature of this personality type is to be a bit sloppy, and rather disorganized. We need handlers, Johnny Mac and me, but I'd like to hope they'd be more astute and even-handed than Steve Schmidt and the rest of those gorillas. Even Sarah Palin, deplorable as she is, has acquitted herself a good deal more coherently than Mr. Fighter-Pilot Hero POW.

What has this brief meditation on personality and persona have to do with wine?

Nothing.

At least my inconsistencies are consistent.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Silver lining from the homefront

My friends and fellow wine-bibbers, we live in dangerous times.  The stock and commodity markets are suffering a nervous breakdown.  Banks are under the terrorist attacks of Fear.  Millions of Americans are afraid of losing their homes, their cars, their health insurance and their self-respect.  Thanks to our free-market healthcare system, many thousands are making the tough choices between buying their necessary medications and paying for food and rent.  Many of these individuals do have a happier option: to self-medicate with a wholesome, delicious and cost-effective painkiller known as wine.  Vino italiano, to be specific.

That's why we began Domenico Selections.  To provide succor to a hurting world.  To bring a few moments of joy and a surcease from pain to the people.  To do our part in "repairing the world."  Bottom line: we're doing God's work here on earth.

Some good news, then, to this noble end:

1. Our first container of wholesome Italian wines arrives in a few days. 

2. The second arrives in a couple of weeks.

3. We made our first sale to a small, thunderless New Jersey retailer!

4. We have meetings and private-audience portfolio tastings scheduled all over the place.

5. The next shipment we'll buy with much cheaper euros.

6. We cashed out before the crash.  We have Capital.

For here is the great paradox -- the conundrum of the great-souled -- that benevolence is only possible through profits.  And, signore e signori, we plan to be most benevolent indeed.

New blog name, I mean it

The other day I casually threw a reference into a post, that we're looking for the name of a new blog to report on our wines, do tasting notes, etc.  In other words, no screeds or rants from me.  More informational and less, er, quirky.  Something Jeff can live with too.   

The name should be short (1-2 words) and relate somehow to wine.  If there's an Italian aspect to it, so much the better.  Certainly that's not a requirement.

So, I beg you for suggestions.  Comment below or send me an email at mondosapore@gmail.com.

Remember: As we go forward, I won't tout my producers or their wines here, although they will come up anecdotally from time to time.  For the real sell and the detailed info, the new Domenico Selections site will contain all that -- and the aforementioned blog, of course.

Aloha and mahalo, fellow ofays.

Monday Rerun 8: A Serious Winemaker

My, was it only last July that I posted my first fake interview?  That I unleashed my demons of satire?  That seems so very long ago...before I became Strappo.

Here's #1.  My favorite part is about the antiquity of the casks and DNA.  Enjoy!

Insomnia

Bronchitis means sleeplessness. You start to doze off and suddenly you're coughing with so much force your ribs ache.  After a while you get up and surf the Internet (a quaint term by now, "surf").  You get bored with that.  You pour a little something strong to help knock you out.  Which shouldn't be necessary with the dizzy-making antibiotic, the aspirin, the codeine-enhanced cough syrup in a good swig. 

You turn off the lights.  You sit and look out at the city which gleams with light day and night.  The traffic doesn't cease it merely thins out around 3 o'clock.  Merrymakers from the bars on the next avenue start making for their cars in the garages under the apartment buildings and on the cross streets, yelling and hooting and often enough quarreling or getting into a scuffle. After 4 o'clock they've pretty much left the neighborhood for a perilous drive home to the suburbs. 

You finish the glass you've been nursing for a long time, drowsy at last.  You go to bed.  The window's open so you hear the city grow quieter.  You doze a bit, strange fugue state, precise, living images and sounds ooze out of your oldest memories.  You see -- you see -- the quilt you had on your bed when you were three or four years old.  Where did that come from?  Why did it appear now, so many years later? 

You cough and wake up again.  A cool breeze slides in under the wooden blinds.  They click as they touch rhythmically the window frame.  The breeze stops.  Out of your drowse you wake.  You listen for what isn't there.  Sirens, horns, whistles, shouts, laughter.  It's 6 o'clock.  The darkest hour till sunrise. 

Nothing.  The roar of the city is absent.  Nothing.  Not a voice, not a cry.  Not a broken shopping cart squeaking down the avenue.  That background roar, that most basic given of city life, is gone. 

At first light the glass buildings reflect the sunless sunrise at your window.  You hear one car going uptown.  You're in the car with the living and the dead who haunt you always.  You go with them. No one speaks.

Image: Insomnia by Philip MacDonald

Advance copy for our new site

I'm thrilled! 

We hired an experienced wine-business copywriter to do the mission & philosophy portion of the new web site, which is just under development.  I decided not to write it because, frankly, you lack the clarity and perspective to do it yourself -- it's like trying to be objective about your baby.  Can't be done.  Based on this, we gave the writer the go-ahead to do the About Us section, which is even harder to do, I think. 

Let me know what you think!

NAME THE BLOG

One more thing (almost forgot) -- we need to come up with a name for the new blog that will be part of the site.  It will have a lot of tasting notes, producer profiles, etc.  Your suggestions for a name will be most welcome.  If your suggestion makes it to the Top Three, you'll get a bottle of one of our best wines.  When, er, they actually arrive on our fair shores. Email me at mondosapore@gmail.com or leave a comment below.

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The promise of FIOS

So after a long wait we got FIOS installed yesterday.  That's the fibre-optic telephone AND Internet system offered by Verizon.  (The TV part of the package isn't available in this building yet.) 

FIOS offers lightning-fast download and even upload times on ye olde-but-suddenly-new Serious of Tubes which you youngsters know as the Internets.  Like download songs -- legal or bootleg -- at up to 20mb/second!  Like a nanosecond for "Louie Louie" or the whole "Greatest Hit of Trini Lopez"!  Upload video of yourself engaged in self-love at up to 5mb/second! 

It's like a whole new world, people!  The true promise of the Internet has been realized at last!  Your laptop becomes the only media appliance you'll ever need -- especially if it's a Mac Airbook!

Let me begin the earlier paragraph again:

Down with barriques!

I had lunch yesterday with wine-guy-about-town Charles Scicolone, during which I took him to task for something he'd said at a wine-tasting lunch last week:  I don't like aglianicos because they're always so oaky.  They use too many barriques down there.

Charles & tutelary deity

I begged to differ and told him that soon, oh so soon, he'd be able to taste a couple that aren't like that at all.  And of course I called his attention to Eric Asimov's pleasing article on aglianico last month.  (The link is to the blog post, which contains a link to the newspaper article.)  Aglianico is not by nature a big clunky woody wine. Often a big wine, yes, but also, in the right hands, supple and sinewy.  In short, it's a noble grape that is finding various stylistic expressions -- it's an exciting time to explore the aglianicos of Campania and Basilicata.

But I did grant that too many of the big commercial wineries in Campania use way too much wood, whether in your legitimate barrel or your clandestine chips-sized portion.  This as you might guess, led to a broader discussion on the infestation-by-barrique that has so distorted Italian reds (and, let's face it, some whites, which are better left alone).  With his long experience Charles recounted a few instances in which he tasted the radical and sudden change in the character of wine from illustrious and deep-pocketed vineyards with the shift to toasty wee oaken barrels.  In retrospect it seemed to have happened all at once and everywhere. 

While this is quite clearly changing -- Charles cited evidence of change at Vinitaly this year, a trend we praised, as in "thank God they've come to their senses" -- it's pretty clear that there are plenty of cuvées américaines coming to our shores. Whether it's blending Merlot in the Chianti or the Valpolicella, too many of the export wines are made on the assumption that the real thing won't sell in America. 

After all, how many times have we heard from Italian wine producers, writers, waiters, etc., "Americans all like..."  Fill in the blank with words like "big," "fat," "sweet," "oaky," etc.  As Scicolone said, They all think we're stupid.

And please don't anyone hand me the old line about doing it to please Parker, etc.  For even while some producers believe they're catering to Parker, Suckling and the rest, a great many others are saying, This is the wine I make.  I hope it sells in America but I can't change its fundamental character.  We're working to make it better.  But we won't turn it into something it isn't.

Monday Rerun 7: Real wines from Big Joe

Joe Dressner knows how to pick 'em.  He has an awesome portfolio of French wines, terroir-driven and all that.  Here are tasting notes -- egad, from me? -- from a pleasant hour or two spent at Chambers Street Wines early in 2007.  It was a very hard period for me personally.  This was a highlight in an otherwise dismal time.

Ironically, the wine that thrilled me the most was one of his rare Italian wines.  But it was from Aosta, the tiny French-speaking region tucked at the juncture of Switzerland and France.

Needless to say, the prices listed at CSW are nearly two years old. 

Is there life after Brunellopoli?

Yes!  There is.  If you have the deep pockets and connections to hire a tiptop PR firm.  And if you can slather the correspondent with copious amounts of wine, food and opportunities to swan about as if he were starring in an Italian version of Brideshead Revisited.* 

I refer of course to the puff piece Morley Safer just delivered on 60 Minutes (click to view entire 12-minute segment), a program known years ago for exposing just such bullshit.  The adoringly profiled subject: those humble grape farmers and people of the land, the charming and down-to-earth Antinoris. 

A simple pied-à-terre for simple folk

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The feminist angle was duly emphasized, as they describe how Piero (an appallingly comic figure in Mondovino) sucked his three daughters into the family business. 

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Piero, a simple contadino

I think my favorite part was when the three sisters were sitting with the chuckling, avuncular Safer and declared their nearly mystical devotion to the land and their preference for the simple life of the farmer.  They even showed the girls picking grapes with nary a stain on their white shirts or cuts on their manicured hands.  Virgil would have swooned. 

I, on the other hand, have heard those lines from real farmers and their less-than-pampered offspring quite often, so I am hardly convinced by this well-choreographed and rehearsed performance. 

Aside from the obligatory beauty shots of the Tuscan countryside (billionaires' edition) and Florence, we got a nice plug for Tignanello, strategically timed for the last part of the segment for easier remembrance. 

In these tough times even for the cash cow that is 60 Minutes, I shouldn't be at all surprised to learn that the Antinoris had paid for all of Morley and the crew's expenses. 

Yes, there is certainly life after Brunellopoli.  And it's a meraviglioso one.

Just seen on the street

On Lex just south of 57th -- Curtis Sliwa and a tiny grey man named...Mike Bloomberg? I was walking fast and don't gawk at famous people on the street (like some idiot tourist) but they were surrounded by a retinue of plainclothes guards dressed to look like civilians from Staten Island, which they are anyway, and a host of aides and flunkies.

Watch! There'll be a news story soon detailing new recruitment and protection programs by the Guardian Angels to forestall the rise in the crime rate, which many experts are predicting with the shitty economic conditiions and the looming Bush Depression.

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry