I definitely ain’t in Kansas anymore.

On my way back from Mendoza to Buenos Aires, and feeling somewhat out of my element. I managed to tour and taste at 11 wineries this week, get lost on the wine trail (even with a GPS), and go off-roading in 4×4’s in the mountains on Friday night to have an asado at 2 o’clock in the morning at an elevation of 4,500 meters - almost 15,000 feet. It’s been pretty intense.

In the midst of all of it all I’ve learned a great deal about Mendoza, and about myself - in effect I found exactly what I was looking for, even if I didn’t sleep very much. The diversity of wines here is extraordinary: where they are made, how they are made, the price points and flavor profiles, the characters of those who create all of it. It’s kind of overwhelming; this was definitely just a beginning for me.

There are wineries built with millions of dollars of foreign money that sit on 500 hectares planted with young vines and churning out tankers full of vino, directly next-door to miniscule family-run bodegas where every aspect of production takes place in one room and the plants are more than 80 years old. Bottles of inky dark malbec that cost $100, coat the palate, and fill one with cravings for steak, and those that cost a fraction of that price and brim with personality and organic aromas that one struggles to pinpoint, and that make one want to spend a lifetime getting to know the winemaker, in order to better understand the wine.

Before I can truly compare the kinds of wines that I discovered here, I have to back up a moment and mention Trevallon again, for the perspective that it gave me. Wine is made in many styles the world over, with different degrees of technological assistance. In order to understand these techniques, and the reasons for them, it is wonderful to have as a base a completely organic, natural winemaking experience. There are many in Argentina and the rest of the world who simply don’t believe that good wine can be made without de-stemming, without adding yeasts, and controlling the temperature of fermentation. While I am fascinated by the aspects of both science and art that can be involved in the vinification process, and have a great deal of respect for those who dedicate a life of study to analyzing them, there is something to be said for pure intuition, for those who rear their wine as they would a child, encouraging it to express it’s true personality without changing the character naturally imparted by the grape and the terrain.

I realize as I write this that what I’m talking about, really, is nature versus nurture.

There is an interesting oenological mentality here in Argentina that every winery has to have a laboratory; flavors are identified as scientific compounds and added drop by drop to the wine in order to create the flavor profile that the enologist has in mind. Thus both the art and the science that I mentioned – wine can be made in the image of its creator, and can therefore tell you a great deal about him or her. And as I’ve confirmed even more this week, it can be stunningly beautiful.

What I witnessed in Provence, however, is almost the opposite – Antoine and Eloi (at Trevallon) view their job as winemakers as nothing other than allowing the wine to develop along natural channels, with a full expression of its varietal, climate, and soil. As active as they are in the cellar, and as deeply as they understand their vineyards, theirs is a ‘hands-off’ mentality that shocked some of those who I’ve engaged in dialogue down here. They strive to create an ideal environment in which to let their wine grow, and over which they exercise only minimal control.

There is a great deal to be said for both ideologies, and it is also worth noting here that at the end of the day my understanding of winemaking is limited. I am a student of wine tasting, service, and culture, not of enology; as such, this discourse is not meant to offer any kind of qualitative judgment, but simply to explore the different ways of approaching enology that occur around the world, and even within each individual wine region. More importantly, we all have different palates… the wines that truly make my head spin are often those that would completely turn off most of the wine consumers I know, if not the majority. My tongue is exhausted by hugely extracted wines with high alcohol content; I find it difficult to drink more than one glass, and to pair it with anything other than the traditional ojo de bife. Yet these are the wines that the world is demanding; the wines that garner the big points, and the high prices.

There is certainly a place for everything in this rapidly expanding market, and we are each products of our own experience – just as are the wines I’m talking about. My most diverting professional challenge has always been to get to know the tastes of my friends and clients, and to match them with the appropriate vino. This grows both more challenging and more enlightening as I expand my base of knowledge, and of acquaintances.

As far as my own preferences go, I fell in love with wine in the old world, with the romantic image of rustic wineries and old men speaking local dialect, skeptical of their sons who study business in order to understand the export market. As much as I am a scion of the age of technology, and am awed by some of the architectural feats I witnessed this week in the wineries I visited, the traditionalist in me cringes to see computers monitoring the temperature of fermentation tanks, and bags of acidifiers in the lab. I am confused by thirty million dollar bodegas producing mediocre wine; baffled by the boutique wineries who struggle to find consumers and are forced to sell their wine by the gallon to big producers who have run out of their own juice and slap their own label on somebody else’s year’s worth of hard labor.

But this is what it’s all about - I certainly didn’t give up my life and move to a different hemisphere in order to stick to my status quo. I am here to try new things, and question my own assumptions… as difficult as that is, and as frightening, in fact, it is all worth it. I’m learning even more than I hoped to, and I’m drinking some extraordinary vino.

Me, in a Land Rover in the Andes halfway to Chile in the middle of the night? Not something I ever expected to do in this lifetime – nor something I will ever forget.

October 28th, 2007 | vita, vino | 2 comments

(”If the sea were made of wine, everybody would be a sailor”)

- Taken from the menu at El Sanjuanino, home to some of BA’s best empanadas.

- - - - -

So here I finally am - Buenos Aires, Argentina. It took me a while to get down here, but I wouldn’t give up for anything the experiences I’ve had in the past four months. Now it’s actually time to settle in and go to work.

That’s what I keep telling myself.

To ease myself into it, I’m flying to Mendoza tomorrow to spend the next week doing some serious tasting, and some serious meat-eating. This time I’m staying with my friend Pablo from Viña el Cerno - I’m sure that I’ll be writing all about his family and their wine while I’m there. First some background.

While it is far from being the only wine-producing region in Argentina, the province of Mendoza is definitely the best known - it has the longest history of wine-making, and Mendocino wines make up the vast majority of both the domestic and export markets. Most wine consumers outside of Argentina don’t know that there are vines anywhere other than Mendoza, and that anything besides Malbec is grown there. One of my ultimate goals is to change this - but despite some of the beautiful wines coming from the provinces of Salta, San Juan, La Rioja, and Patagonia (map), just to name a few, Mendoza is the heart and soul of the Argentine wine industry, as well as being at the foot of the tallest peaks in the Andes, and it is there that I must begin. (That and it’s the only place other than BA where I have contacts.)

I’ve always found it interesting that the development of wine making in Mendoza has a great deal in common - chronologically - with that of California. Although the first vines were planted centuries ago by missionaries, it all began in earnest in the late 1800’s with the first major waves of Southern European (primarily Italian) immigration.

(As a total aside, it’s worth noting that Jewish migration here in Argentina also followed similar patterns as that in the United States. Unbeknownst to me before my first trip down here, it started long before the second World War.)

Due to the huge demand for wine here, however, and unlike in the US, the government here has always been quite supportive of the wine industry. The story goes that immigrants from Italy, France, and Spain were sought out as they arrived at the docks of Buenos Aires and offered free passage inland to Mendoza on the brand-new rail system, if they would contribute to the rapidly growing wine trade. While I cannot for the life of me find where I read that on my last trip here and it must therefore go unconfirmed, it is definitely true that from 1885 and the completion of this rail-line through 1907, a series of laws were passed that even exempted grape-growers in Mendoza from paying taxes.

Many varietals were planted, but the ones that seemed to work best were from France: Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Malbec - a grape that was much less known before it exploded across the foothills of the Andes. Now its fame in Argentina has so far eclipsed that of French Malbec, mostly from Cahors, that many consumers have no idea it’s not native to South America. There are producers in Cahors who are labeling their wine by varietal, instead of appellation, in the hopes of riding Mendoza’s coattails. (Using the name of the grape on the label, instead of the place of origin, which is how the wine is usually defined in France.) Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, and Sauvignon Blanc are all made there, as are some truly impressive sparklers.

For more than a century now, the wine industry in Mendoza has continued to grow and flourish (and yes, they now pay taxes). It wasn’t until recently that the fruits of this were exported at all - believe it or not this was mainly due to the simple fact that Argentines were drinking more wine than they were producing. It is also due to this insatiable Argentine appetite for wine that the country developed a certain reputation for bulk wine production.

Starting in the past 10 years or so this is all changing, and with it the image the rest of the world has of the wines of Argentina. They have truly stepped up both the quantity and the quality of their vino, and foreign investments are pouring into Mendoza in the forms of capital, personnel, and marketing savvy, among others. That great ad campaign definitely helped - a row of beautiful Bordeaux glasses, each flawlessly superimposed with the landscape of a different region inside the glass - and I hope to continue the process. Spread the gospel, if you will.

First, however, I have to finish finding it. That’s what this week is all about.

(For their unwitting assistance getting my historical facts straight here, many thanks go out to Vines of Mendoza, All About Argentina, Argentine Wines.com, and most of all Argenvino. Also to The Wine Anorak for the map I stole from them. Special personal props to Gavin from Argenvino - apparently he started his blog just to document a research project he was doing while studying abroad, and he isn’t even in the business. Now it’s become a great resource for geeks like me. Plus, he’s from Connecticut. That’s 2 points for Gavin.)

October 21st, 2007 | vino | 3 comments

Once again, this time before I leave definitively, I’m on the East Coast. It’s more of a layover than anything else; Thursday night I get on the 11th plane I’ve taken in the past 2 months - and the most highly anticipated - to travel 10 hours to Buenos Aires. Strange to think that while this is the longest voyage of all, I’ll be just one time zone away - it’s only an hour later in Argentina than in the eastern US.

On Monday I hop a much shorter flight to Mendoza, where I’ll spend a week exhausting my palate and hopefully having a blast, before settling into BA and trying to find a (real?) job. I promise that when I’m in Mendoza I’ll write a post that’s really about wine… it’ll probably even be pretty geeky. But that’s not really what these 3 days are about.

Other than pack and say farewell to my loved ones (for real this time), there is one thing I am going to do in this brief visit home, which I referred to a couple of posts ago: have dinner at Dell’Anima. It just so happens that my last night in the US is the first night of the friends and family soft opening at my dear friends’ new restaurant in the West Village, before they open to the public next week. Just in the nick of time.

In the hope that my pals will take the free press in exchange for me giving up a couple of secrets, let me give you some background here, and explain why this means so much to me.

Three years ago, as most of you know, I worked for a time at Italian Wine Merchants (IWM). Besides being the sole retail outlet of the Mario Batali/Joe Bastianich restaurant empire, and home to some of the primary Italian wine experts in the United States, IWM has been a training ground for many of the most interesting young wine professionals I know. (Not that I’m not biased.) It has spawned several very cool wine shops in Manhattan, and now, with the opening of Dell’Anima, an independent restaurant that if it’s anywhere near as special as I anticipate will be an amazing addition to lower 8th avenue. (It’s between Jane and West 12th streets, just around the corner from the Corner Bistro).

Let’s start with some character development.

First there’s Joey, the only wine professional I know who is both younger than me and (far) more knowledgeable. I’m used to being the young kid on the block - I was 22 when I was working there – Joey comes along, and the guy can’t even drink legally yet! At the time I knew much more about the Italian language than I did about Italian wine… somehow he got the wrong impression off me (that I actually knew what I was talking about) and decided to one up me. If the restaurant doesn’t get in the way too much, he’ll have a Master of Wine degree before the age of 30, and he was writing about vino before he even graduated from college. Not entirely coincidentally, his was the first incoming link to this blog, from his column in Serious Eats. His first restaurant experience was as a sommelier at Babbo. Not a bad start.

Then there’s Katherine: not only talented, but also beautiful. She was the chef/events coordinator at IWM (they host some unbelievable wine-tastings there), before leaving to help open the New York Wine Company (one of the first IWM offshoots), and now, as the consulting chef, Dell’Anima. All this after working in the front of the house at Per Se.

Gabe, the executive chef, has worked at both Le Bernardin - one of the must highly reputed French (seafood) restaurants in town - and at Del Posto, the crown jewel of the aforementioned Batali/Bastianich group and arguably the best Italian place around. As Gabe and I don’t have as much history, I’ll say simply that he’s an amazing chef and an incredibly warm guy, and I’ll let his food speak for itself.

Behind the scenes (here’s where I’m hoping I don’t get in trouble) we’ve got Augusto, the one member of the crew who has remained at IWM, although he’s certainly moved up in the world. Anybody want to make an investment and start a serious Italian wine collection? Call August. He’s a great guy… and a good guy to know.

So one day Augusto gets a call from his buddy Bobby, who I haven’t yet had the pleasure of meeting. “I found an awesome little space in the West Village, and I want to turn it into an authentic Italian restaurant, one with soul. Do you think you could help me out a little? And do you know anybody who might want to run the show for me?”

August put Bobby in touch with a couple of old friends… enter Joey and Katherine. Thus the birth of Dell’Anima.

(By the way, “Dell’Anima” is Italian for “of the soul.” If you want to see a restaurant where all parties involved have really poured their hearts and souls into it, this is a good place to start. And I haven’t even eaten there yet! No pressure, guys…)

What does any of this have to do with me? Well, for one thing, I like to think that if I weren’t already planning on leaving the country, I would have quit Winebow anyway to be part of this project. (As I AM leaving the country, and soon, none of you need to correct me if I’m wrong.) Joey once told me he wouldn’t be able to afford me; not only is he a master of flattery, but he doesn’t understand quite how special I think the whole thing is. I would have worked for tips just to be part of it.

More important, however, is what this has all made me realize about the opportunities available to my generation, especially in New York, and to those who are willing to follow their dreams. We all started out at around the same time, and at more or less the same spot – early to mid 20’s, with some experience, but not really enough. One thing none of us was lacking, ever, was passion.

Now, three years later, after many new experiences, they’re opening a restaurant which they built from scratch in under 6 months, and I’m moving to Argentina to follow my own dream.

I’m sure that at one time or another you’ve all been told “the world is your oyster…” It’s my friends like Joey, Katherine, Gabe, and Augusto who give me such hope for my own quest, and where it can potentially lead if I stay focused. Who’s to say we can’t someday start our own restaurant empire? What do you say, guys? I’ll sell you my imports at cost.

If the world is an oyster - crack that baby open, and go for the pearl.

October 16th, 2007 | vita | 1 comment

I’m on my way to the land of cowboy boots and newborn babies: Albuquerque, NM. After the soul-searching that was my last post, I’m going to bring this blog back to reality for a moment with one that’s actually more or less about wine. Just for the hell of it, and because I’m here, for once I’m even going to write about American wine. Imagine that.

Several years ago when the world of wine was still new to me and I had enough patience to pay attention (at least a little bit) to the ‘formal’ wine press, I learned something about the wine industry that fascinated me and I’ve often quoted: wine is produced in every state of this American Union. I couldn’t believe it – climactic factors aside (Alaska), the snob in me was skeptical of there being too much interest in oenology in West Virginia, for example. Oklahoma.

With hindsight, I’m sorry to have given in to unfair generalizations… and now that I’ve driven (almost) across country, I confess to feeling even more sheepish. There were prominent billboards advertising local wineries in every state I drove through this August – all 13 of them. The attractions menu on the GPS I was fortunate enough to have with me always had something under ‘wineries.’ Unfortunately I was alone in the car and not about to start taking notes on the interstate… so I don’t have a record of the names of the places I drove past. Perhaps someday I’ll take the time to trace my route on Google Earth and see what I can come up with. For the moment though, just some brief anecdotes.

Most of my friends in the Northeast are familiar enough at this point with the idea of Long Island Wine, and/or Finger Lakes Riesling, that the thought of wine coming from Connecticut as well shouldn’t surprise anyone too much. Ditto New Jersey.

In Pennsylvania I confess I went out of my way to buy pretzels from the Amish but not to taste any wine, and I wasn’t in Maryland long enough to do much of anything.

Anybody who’s had a bottle of wine imported by Kermit Lynch should know about Virginia - Kermit’s motto, written on every back label, is a now-famous Thomas Jefferson quote: “Good wine is a necessity of life.” There are still vines being tended at Monticello today, and there are a few vinos from Virginia that can be found in New York City.

To West Virginia, I’ve already made my apologies – also to Oklahoma. I guess in all honesty to myself, I must admit that it was pretty stupid of me not to realize that the states that make up our agricultural heart of course grow wine as well, somewhere. Arkansas also goes on that list. Tennessee is green and lush with some beautiful mountain air – no shock there.

Nothing about Texas should ever surprise anybody, and believe it or not New Mexico was the first state other than New York and California whose wine I really knew anything about. There is a growing wine industry in New Mexico, far and away the best known part of which is Gruet, one of the highest-quality producers of American sparkling wine. I’m sure that such a statement will surprise many people - and possibly provoke some debate - but having been to the winery and tasted through their entire line of sparklers, including the Brut NV, Brut Rose NV, Demi-Sec NV, Blanc de Blancs, Blanc de Noirs, Grand Rose, and Grand Reserve wines, I’m willing to stand by it.

On my camping trip in the lovely state of Colorado, I saw beautiful vines growing on the foothills to the Rocky Mountains.

Perhaps when all this is said and done I’ll drive across country again, and actually stop and learn about some of our domestic wines in the process. There’s a lot more out there then most of us realize, and I bet some of it’s pretty good.

At the moment I may be obsessed with the rest of the world, the languages spoken outside of this country, and the long histories and strong traditions of oenology in Europe, but hey - I do know where I come from.

October 10th, 2007 | vino | 1 comment

Sunday night in Brooklyn - I’m on the East Coast for 3 days before I fly to Albuquerque to meet the little munchkin who arrived during harvest. Let’s see if I can’t clear my head here and enlighten you all a bit at the same time – I’ve been working on this post for days now, with very little success. Most if it was written on various airplanes.

This trip was so many different things to me, personal and professional, that it’s been a real struggle to even find a place to start with this one. Those of you who have been following my travels have a pretty good hold on Trévallon and the harvest by this point, and if I was a little vague about the Italy trip it was mostly to save myself from the depths of nostalgia to which I am prone. Not like I really had any success with that one (you should see all the things in my journal that I DON’T post here) but there’s no sense in burdening you with that. Those of you who know me best will inevitably get stuck with it anyway.

Needless to say, the past three weeks have been very special for me – magical, even. Filled to the brim with a heady mixture of work, wine, gastronomic delights, friendship both new and old, and love that is – apparently – timeless; it is hard to say what has affected me most.

One thing I am sure of: I did the right thing, coming to Europe before the big move down south… for each and every one of the reasons that took me there. I’m going to go through them, and what I learned, in list form; at the moment that seems to be the only way I can put my thoughts in any kind of comprehensive order.

- Languages. It is wonderful to have improved my French so much, and confirmed that my Italian is still where it should be, before I spend potentially the next two years speaking Spanish. I’ve still got quite a way to go with French, but I finally feel like I can communicate well, in almost any state of mind, despite the many words that are missing from my vocabulary and some grammatical doubt. As far as Italian goes, well… I still get a huge rush every time somebody thinks I’m from Bologna.

- Vino. I learned a great deal about both viticulture (grape-growing) and viniculture (wine-making). Above all, that there is a vast difference between ‘knowing’ where wine comes from and seeing it, feeling it, tasting it, smelling it… and even hearing it. I will always be pleased to have gotten this experience for the first time in the place where there is, undoubtedly, the strongest tradition. For better or worse, France will always be seen that way in the world of wine. Now I can go absorb Argentina, and put it on top of an even stronger old world base. Here is a list of the wines I drank in Provence, and probably the beginning of an ongoing master wine list. For those of you to whom the names mean nothing, let me just say that many people would pay a good deal to eat and drink with Eloi and Floriane Durrbach… I was basically paid to do so. (And to pick their grapes, of course). That feels pretty damn cool.

- Work. I met a lot of people in the wine industry this trip – in France, those who make it; in Milan, those who sell it; and in Rome, well… those who drink it. (I know that doesn’t really count but I like literary trios a bit too much sometimes.) I also confirmed what I suspected all along – that Europe is not the place for the next phase of my career, despite my comfort level there and the social network already in place. (Not that I think it will take Buenos Aires very long to burrow under my skin.)

In Western Europe there is a long history of both enology and wine exportation; there are countless qualified young Frenchmen and Italians who were literally raised on a vineyard, or in a cantina. Plus with the exchange rate as it currently stands… it seems almost impossible for a young American to start a career there. Even one with swagger, language skills, and New York sales experience. (If I may say so myself). I have to believe it possible to go back there, with some money and a professional base already in place, and take it to the next level… but there are too few new wines to source, and too little interest in hiring an American, who has to be sponsored for a visa. Two weeks in Argentina left me feeling exactly the opposite – highly qualified, desirable in the work force, and, frankly, quite wealthy with American dollars. Plus I’ve only begun to find the really good wine down there, and almost none of it is exported any farther than Brazil. So South America here I come! But not without reopening some European doors… doors which for me seem to swing on their hinges and never really shut. Which brings me to the next and last item on this list.

- Love. Of all kinds. Outside of the New York area and certain parts of the western US, many of the people closest to my heart are in Europe. I’ve got friends there who I’ve known since before college – and somehow remained closer to than most of my school friends - as well as the woman who stole my heart 5 years ago and still refuses to give it back in its entirety. Not to mention the new friends - you know who you are. While New York isn’t exactly CLOSE to them, Argentina is significantly farther… you could have tied me to a chair in NYC and I still would have found a way to get to Europe before I move for real.

Maybe that’s overly melodramatic, as my sister often accuses me of being, but it paints a pretty clear picture.

So here I am back at home base, with just enough time to hug my family and do a couple of loads of laundry before I re-pack for Albuquerque, this time hopefully with just a carry-on. I just can’t wait to kiss that baby. Then I’m back for another few days to pack one last time, and eat at Dell’Anima (coming soon…) before the longest flight of all, on the night of October 18th. I promise at least one more post before then… in the meantime, I hope this explained some things. It certainly felt good for me to write it.

October 7th, 2007 | vita, vino | No comments

So I’ve made it to Italy, the next chapter. Unfortunately it is to be a short one - there is a baby to meet in Abuquerque next week!

While this part of my journey is not really wine-inspired, I can’t help but give it its due here as, in effect, it is Italy that inspired the wine.

I know it is somewhat cliche’ for my generation of Americans, but it truly was my junior year abroad - in Bologna - that caused my passion for wine (and, frankly, for all the finer things in life) to flourish. Thanks to the presence of a couple of similarly interested American pals, and to a brilliant pair of southern Italian blue eyes belonging to one of the most naturally gifted chefs I know, an interest that began out of a simple desire to eat as well (and cheaply) as possible while on a student budget grew exponentially into an obsession with food and wine that quickly became my primary pursuit in life.

I returned home with my new passion and a fluency in Italian, began to seek work in restaurants with real wine lists, and eventually ended up at Italian Wine Merchants, which you could make a strong case for being the best Italian wine store outside of Italy. This all, in turn, led to my tenure at Winebow… I suppose you could say the rest is history.

I was drawn back here twice in quick succession after my year in Bologna (those eyes again), but until yesterday it had been three and a half years since I’d been here. It was during that time that I truly learned about wine… needless to say, this is an exciting return. Of course, given the wines I drank in the past two weeks (there will be a list forthcoming), I have to confess I’m at least as excited about the Mozzarella di Bufala as I am the wine I’ve had so far.

What can I say, I’ve been a little distracted.

So I’m in Milan for the moment, eating and strolling and generally relaxing after 2 weeks of harvest. Thursday morning I head to Bologna, where I will spend the afternoon eating what in my humble(?) opinion is the best pizza and gelato on the planet. And yes, I HAVE been to Naples. Then I’m off to Rome for a couple of days to see some dear friends (and keep eating) before one last night in Paris (Saturday), and then NYC (Sunday).

I know this is kind of a weak post, but I couldn’t bear to keep you in total suspense, and right now it’s the best I can do. I imagine next time I post I’ll be on my home turf (briefly), but in the case that you just can’t bear the thought of not hearing from me until then, I will be posting photos regularly. The harvest pics are already up.

Salute!

October 2nd, 2007 | vita | 2 comments