More Italian Wines With Gustavo Fernandes ( Of Recife, Brazil ) 2012 The CASTELCOSA Franco Furlan Friuli Chardonnay & Cabernet Franc

To look again at these pictures that I took more than a year ago of Gustavo Fernandes in 2011 I believe - it's been awhile, at Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits ( 3423 Connecticut Avenue N.W. Washington D.C. 20008, Tel : 202-363-4265, www.clevelandparkwines.com , anthony.quinn@clevelandparkwines.com , on Facebook at : Cleveland Park Wines & Spirits, also at : Bralvin, and on the other blogs : chatpoetry.blogspot.com, chatart.blogspot.com, chatbrasil.blogspot.com and more, go to : View Complete Profile and click that on and scroll down to see all my blogs ) when he was working for the Tannic Tongue wine selections, it brings back story within a story, within another story and still within another story and so on. I love it : a touch complicated with many ideas, inspirations, memories, and me still wanting to put into words many stories that deserve attention and that should be told and preserved as so very few ever are.
And being an artist I bring an artist's perspective/ eye/ hand that holds a brush that I will add with colors and paints as I construct my various stories. I was pleasantly surprised to see these yellow-labeled CASTEL COSA / FRANCO FURLAN / wines from Friuli, Italy above. That takes me back to the old Mayflower Wines & Spirits days back in the 1980's when I worked at the Mayflower Wines & Spirits ( at the corner of New Hampshire Avenues and M Street N.W. in the old Arnold and Porter office building, down on the ground floor. That was both a very inspiring, colorful and wonderful - impressionable period of my life when I was just starting my wine career here in the United States. It was also a period when the wine world was still very much a white canvas waiting to be painted on with lots of white space still waiting to be touched. I loved that period, it was a period of dreaming and fewer players and very few, if any large company players : mostly still Mom and Pop ownership of vineyards that still were largely unknown and where their futures were anything but sure and guaranteed. No one wanted to buy them yet and make them into multi-million case productions and multi million dollar ventures.
Anyway, it was back then in the early to mid 1980's that I knew the CASTEL COSA / FRANCO FURLAN / PRA DI PRADIS wines of Friuli and that I met Franco's son , Allesandro Furlan that came to the United States to learn English and learn the business staying with the Downey's and learning the business. What a wonderful time that was! So you can imagine my surprise when Gustavo Fernandes put three or four bottles on our tasting table of these wines that the Mayflower Wines & Spirits used to import here to the United States directly and to sell through their store where I was , at the time, the wine-buyer for California wines that were still in their infancy and just becoming recognized by the world. I had returned from France, living there in the 1970's as my father was a career officer and working at the American Embassy in Paris, France : first as the Consul for Visas, then Passports, and then back again for Visas. It was a great time and I actually started my wine career there with Steven Spurrier when I took his first-ever wine class at the Academie du Vin with instructors Patricia Gallagher and Jon Winroth when I turned 21 ( it was my parent;s gift to me, my mom's idea, thanks Mom ) back in 194-5 was it? Long time ago. Anyway, I will post this now " as is " and finish it later today. In the meantime enjoy these photos and what I have written so far. Cheers, Anthony ( TONY ) Quinn