I'm really tired from my return trip yesterday from Italy and yet I am so excited and charged and filled with things that I want to start writing and recording before I begin to forget them. Mostly I took photographs and many mental notes as my daughter and I moved through Italy starting on Milan and winding our way through Florence and Rome and then later the Tuscan countryside; then driving back to Milan ( Bergamo airport for my daughter and Malpensa for me ). We had a blast. It was primarily a great opportunity for me to be with her and acknowledge the great job she has been doing in college and now grad school ; and of course some wineries and as much great wine and food as we could get in as a week goes by very quickly when one is having as great a time as we both were.
The weather was unseasonably wonderful as everyone there told us. It had been raining the week before and here we were everyday waking up to a brisk morning with blue and clear skies with the eventual warming and bright sunshine and lovely fall colors everywhere with incredible scenery old and new and some flowers still in bloom as well as bright red ivy and trees in yellows and reds that looked very much like maples.
I told my wife last night that besides all of this natural beauty and scenery everywhere ( as well as incredible art and both wine and food ) that the two things that impressed me most were : the kindness of every Italian that we spoke to when we needed assistance as well as the highest level of professionalism, commitment and enthusiasm and passion from the four wineries that we visited as well as people like Andrea Fossi ( FOSSI Chianti and Tuscan wines, as well as Puglia ) and Alessandro Furlan ( now both a winemaker and someone who represents some very fine Italian estates like VERBENA, Montalcino and DEGANI, Valpolicella ).
We needed lots of help as we navigated our way through Italy this past week. We had never been to this part of Italy and so everything was new to the both of us. We used every mode of transportation available to us : the train, the bus, the metro and a rented car from Hertz. We did not rent a motorcycle this go-round : what was the matter with us?!? Anyway, each and everyday we ran into complications and I had no problem reaching out for it and often the responses delighted, surprised and even amazed me. All the help we got really did make our stay in Italy all that more enjoyable as well as quite a bit less stressful.
Unfortunately we were on a severe time-crunch and so could only visit four wineries this week : MONTELLORI - owner Allessandro Nieri, sommelier and wine-maker Virgilio ; IL BORRO - Sebastiano Ferragamo and Sara Gherardi ; VERBENA - owners Elena and Luca ; and VALDIPIATTA - Giulio Caporali, owner and Sara the English-speaking, foreign tour guide specialist extraordinaire. In each case you can see my daughter and I met with the principles involved ( owners and winemakers as well as sommeliers and export managers ). They all did a superb job at introducing us to their wineries and practices and their current releases of wines both exported and not. For example at VALDIPIATTA I tried both their red Pinot Nero as well as their intensely flavored and complex dry white that are not available as yet in the United States but both of which I would buy and sell at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits.
I wanted to meet with the principles involved at each winery and this was the highlight for me as well as I believe to some extent my daughter. The fact that owner Salvatore Ferragamo that lives in Florence with his wife, son and two twins was willing to drive forty minutes to IL BORRO and show us around himself with Sara Gherardi was a huge plus for me. Thank you Salvatore. After all, thew last time we met was back at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits on 9/16/03 and though we had a great first visit there this one was really special for me.
The wines of each of these wineries including those of FOSSI were all exceptionally high and they represented a whole spread of old, traditional wine-making to a meeting of the ways between all the new innovations as well as time-honored and blood-sweated traditional/classic methods to produce the highest quality of wines that both grapes, land and weather conditions allowed the grapes to be produced in each year.
I was quite literally swept off of my feet on pretty much every level possible. Bravo to all of you. You have raised and kept the bar of excellence and value very high indeed as I do not believe any of you are asking more than your wines are worth. As a matter of my opinion, I believe for these very, very fine wines indeed that you are offering value and that encourages and pleases this humble palate of mine greatly.
I had reached out to many of the wineries that had visited Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits over the years going back to 2002. Many of them responded and asked us to come visit : to call us when we arrived in Italy to organize a visit. However, because every visit takes time and the wineries are spread-out over a pretty big area it was impossible to visit them all ( ISOLE E OLENA, POPPIANO, TERRA BIANCA, LANCIOLA, BUONDONNO, NITTARDI, TENUTA VITANZA, CASTELLARE, CASTELLO DI BOSSI, FATTORIA DEI BARBI, VILLA CALCINAIA, LA GERLA ). I know some of these owners and winemakers better than others and some have been at Cleveland Park now on two or three occasions even and tasted their wines with our customers by chance or on planned in-store wine-tastings. It pains me that I could not come to see you this time : but I thank you for your responses and kind offers to visit. It will have to wait until my next visit.
The only winery that we visited that has not had a winemaker or owner visit Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits was VERBENA. Alessandro Furlan my old friend now of twenty-five years represents them in the U.S. ( we currently sell both the 2007 Rosso di Montepulciano and the 2004 Brunello ) was kind enough to arrange a visit for us. Since Alessandro is such a dear friend I could not miss this opportunity to spend more time with him in Tuscany. That's the way I am - friendships and old bonds mean the world to me as tough decisions always have to be made.
It was a good thing that we visited VERBENA with Alessandro as he interpreted for us beautifully and made the visit all that more special and meaningful as owner Elena and her husband Bruno ( as well as his mother, their daughter and baby ) and the olive oil, the wines and especially the 2004 Reserve Brunello and Vin Santo were pretty incredible.
Of course food was also a big part of all of this and will have to be mentioned and highlighted as I go along.
I would have loved to have seen more of them but I did not want to water-down the experience for either my daughter or me. We did want to visit some of the small towns in Tuscany and so we did make it to Montepulciano, Montalcino, Piensa, Arezzo, Pisa ( just at the train station for 15 minutes unfortunately ) and Fucecchio. There may have been more. But this was a whole lot when you add in Florence, Milan and Rome.
The other thing that was amazing for us was to be able to see both the olives just freshly-picked as well as to taste the olive oils a few hours' old ( VALDIPIATTA where owner Giulio Caporali - his daughter Miriam was in California selling their wines at the time ) and a day-and-half-old at VERBENA ( Elena the owner tasted us on hers as her husband Luca was out picking more olives to make more. Luca said that for them it was a very small harvest this year for the olives.
We got to taste both of these on the same day, Friday the 30th of October, 2009. The VERBENA extra virgin olive oil from around Montalcino was lighter golden and more elegant and both clearer and brighter and more refined. The VALDIPIATTA olive oil was darker green, more opaque and as if more of the olive was left in and not filtered out. Of course it represented an extra virgin olive oil of only a few hours having been pressed and so that have made the difference. I do not know if they used the same olive varieties or not? Sara added some salt to it and that intensified even more the flavors. Both were sublime and my daughter and I were both close to heaven in both cases that day. It was quite the treat to sample brand spanking new extra virgin olive oil as we did and I feel very privileged to have had this experience. So did my daughter who also loved both olive oils.
Of course I have taken many pictures and I hope to download some of them this evening before I return to work tomorrow. I also hope to add more blog outlines here of this wonderful week away from the worries and the cares and the responsibilities of having to buy and to sell wines, manage a fine wine store in our nation's capitol, be a father and a husband, etcetera. This was a wonderful and much valued/appreciated respite from many things and to have been able to have spent such a wonderful week with my daughter ( thank you ma belle et intelligent fille a moi ) in such a wonderful place I give thanks to all my lucky stars as well as my son and wife that let me go and to all the people ( like David Pinzolo of Winebow selections ) in Italy that made this possible. Grazie, merci, gracias, thanks. We could have not done it with all your support and kindness.
Being an artist I found beauty everywhere I looked and tried to capture it with my CANON Power Shot SD790 IS digital ELPH. I also did some quick sketches of many of those that we came into contact with and gave them to them as mu/our thanks for all that they had done and meant to us during this week. Combine this with all of my mental and emotional and personal notes and observations that I will soon record here and you get some idea of the wonderful and enormous labor of love that awaits me.
I, of course have omitted many things here in my fatigue and will try and include them as I go along over the next couple of weeks.
Cheers, TONY
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