Thursday, January 07, 2010

The Ring, the King & the Fire

In the course of a few days I have witnessed an almost complete 180° of emotions in the play of events around me. Yesterday was the end of the year, in the wine biz, and one could sense that in this past holiday season, we pressed that squeegee until there was no more to extract. Bone dry. Every last drop. And that’s what we do.

The good news? French wines in December made a huge rebound. Not Bordeaux, but definitely Champagne. And Italian wines? Are we celebrating yet? Yes and no. Yesterday was the Epiphany and in the world in which I revolve around, one of our colleagues brought a Rosca de Reyes, the ring of the king cake. Consider it the Latin equivalent of the Panettone, complete with a little baby Jesus inside for some lucky soul to capture and have good luck.

In these parts, the Italian sensibility is a bit more exotic and removed, so I have gladly latched onto some Latino customs. I am after all putting up scorers of jalapenos. Jalapalooza we called it. The Fire.

I am on fire. After a selling season it is hard to come down. The curtains have closed and the lights are dimming, but I am just getting my groove on. People are coming to think of Italian wine as something in their daily lives.

Flash back a generation ago, when I was just getting my bearings here. I’d go to Italy and come back home and couldn’t even find a decent espresso. Things in Italy haven’t changed that much since then – there still is a consciousness of quality, especially when it comes to food and wine and design. Sure, Italy is evolving and even regressing in some societal ways, but it isn’t difficult to find food and wine to bring one to one’s knees, on a regular basis.

The Epiphany – the tree comes down now – the little angels that my aunt and my mom made, go back into the boxes for another year.

Here, I am finding the pull of the local, the indigenous, that draws me in. My jalapenos are curing and through the cold months they will provide me with warmth and light.

There I was with a mountain of jalapeno’s and a free afternoon. I had to set the mood, so I put on a Nino Rota cd of music he composed for Fellini movies. Why not?

Cutting jalapenos to the sounds of “Suite dal balletto La Strada" or "Via Veneto E I Nobili" it was a Heaven and Hell scenario. I loved the music, but my eyes were tearing up from the pungency of the peppers. Rota also composed music for the film version of Visconti’s “Gattopardo”, Zeffirelli's “Romeo and Juliet” and Coppola’s “Godfather”, so I have grown up with the music of Nino Rota in defining moments of my life.

Odd that the music, which has been running through my head the past few days, has been a sort of a soundtrack for my life too. It has defined some of the ways I see Italy, been my sonic filter to an Italy imagined. In no way does the Italy in my head exist. But then, did Fellini’s Italy really exist? Or di Lampedusa’s? And so it goes, I lived life the past 40 years with an idea of Italy that is not real. So why should Italian winemakers listen to me when I tell them what America wants or needs? I grow Hoja Santa for my local cheese maker and put up fiery hot peppers to eat, peppers which the average Italian stomach cannot digest?

Gold, frankincense and myrrh. Sangiovese, Nebbiolo and Montepulciano. Panettone, Rosca de Reyes and Kings cake. Christmas, Valentine’s day and Mardi Gras. Everything merges into everything.

Yes, it has been a long holiday season. Yesterday was the 37th of December, the end of a long cycle. Happy New Years. Finally.





Saturday, January 02, 2010

When life on the wine trail in Italy just ain’t spicy “enough”

From the "Some like it Hot" department

Happy New Year, y’all. This looks like the last weekend I’m going to have for a while, what with wine judging’s and weddings and wine seminars slated for the upcoming weeks, followed by all kinds of travel.

So this weekend it’s now or never to “put up” our jalapeños. Jalapeños have become a harvest tradition in the last few years; we planted them along with the other indigenous articles on the garden, the Hoja Santa and the Epazote. These are all things foreign to the Italian sensibility, but indispensable to the Auchtochtono Tejano. And after 30 years, I am also one of those.

New pepper sauce finds from Oaxaca. Even with a name like Zaaschila, I bet Dr. Zaia would ban these in Italy

In fact, and most likely owing to my Calabrese and Sicilian roots, I love hot food. I remember my sister Tina and I had contests when we were kids to see how we could eat hotter foods than the other. Years later we transformed that sibling rivalry to the kitchen when we competed to make hot sauces, each one more fiery than the other. I bow to my sister for her ultimate tolerance for things hot, but we in Texas have an ongoing love affair with the hot and spicy foods of México and I am no different.

While it is often hard to find truly authentic Italian food in these parts, the food of México and Tex-Mex are easily found in abundance and in varying degrees of authenticity and regional correctness. I love tamales, especially this time of the year, along with the sopas and tacos found everywhere.


I love that they call this brand "El Guapo" - meaning good looking, troublemaker, boastful and a ladies man, some of which I have been in the various stages of my life.


Today, during a lull at the one of the world’s greatest Italian wine and food stores in America, I walked across the street to a new market, specializing in the foods of MesoAmerica. Along with finding a stash of new hot sauces, for the living collection, I gathered up the fixins for a seasons worth of jalapeños to “put up”. At 3 pounds for a dollar, I splurged and bought 12 pounds of the big juicy peppers, several heads of garlic, some bay leaf and black pepper. The only thing missing was the vinegar. But back across the street I knew I could find any number of wonderful vinegars to complete the canning project. A quick trip to the local (large) grocer for some glass jars, and tomorrow we will be in "Hot Pepper Heaven."

One of my favorite "value" vinegars from Carbonara Scrivia in the Colli Tortonese

Speaking of hot peppers, I often go back to the Marche-Abruzzo border to visit my friends, the Illuminati's. One of our pilgrimages is to go into Ascoli Piceno and beyond for the mushrooms. Acquasanta Terme is a great little town, worth visiting, especially if you ever travel the Via Salaria back towards Rome or on your way towards Umbria from the Marche or Abruzzo. In Acquasanta Terme there are a couple of notable restaurants I have enjoyed over the years, La Casaccia and Tre Lanterne. For the quality and the value of what we eat in these places, one could only wish to find something like that in Dallas or Austin, or New York. Indescribably delicious, wholesome and authentic.

In Acquasanta Terme there is also a little outlet store, RITI, a family owned business that supplies dried porcini mushrooms and a hot sauce that rivals my dear Calabrese ones. I am always asking folks who go to Illuminati to bring me back several bottles, luring them with the promise of a great meal at one of the recommended places. It always works and is a win-win for everyone. And I gets me my Italian hot sauce fix for the pantry.

I don’t know what it is about hot foods – but they make me happy – and during the winter season when it gets dark early I seem to rely on the curative and restorative properties of peppers to bring me back to an equilibrium where I feel light and hope and am ready to run another mile or two. Like I said, win-win.

And that is my 2 cents worth for the day – We’re on to a new pizzeria which is BYOB and hopefully we can stay away from the sinful tiramisu and bruschetta (here spelled correctly and pronounced “broos'ketta”).

Ciao for niao- never half empty - always half full, with more on the way!





Friday, January 01, 2010

Pictures from the Wine Trail in 2009

Looking back at my Best of 2009 on Flickr, go to the Slideshow or click on the individual photos below - these are just a sampling of the images.











Enjoy!
-Alfonso


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