Robert V. Camuto's Blog, page 2
November 9, 2024
A Gaja on Etna
November 9, 2024
A Gaja on Etna
What are Gaja-Graci up to on Etna’s less travelled southern slope?
Gaia Gaja and Alberto Aiello Graci in Idda Carricante vineyards as Etna fumes
One of the wine world’s most interesting pairings began about eight years ago when Angelo Gaja — great engine of Italian wine excellence for the last half century — announced a joint venture to make wine on Sicily’s Mount Etna.
Etna, one of the world’s most active volcanoes, is home to Italy’s hottest wine scene — documented in my book Palmento. Winemakers from across Italy, Europe and the world have flocked here to make Nerello Mascalese reds and Carricante whites.
But what distinguishes IDDA — Gaja’s venture with Etna winemaker Alberto Graci — is its exploration of the volcano’s hot and drier southern slopes to produce mainly white wines. Then there is the Gaja factor of curiosity, bold thinking and investment.
Gaia Gaja and Alberto Aiello Graci in Idda's new winery
This month, in Robert Camuto Meets… I explore IDDA and its first wines up close with Gaia Gaja and Graci. Read the first of the two columns here (free) at winespectator.com
Read more about the wine scene on Sicily and Mount Etna in Palmento : A Sicilian Wine Odyssey
October 5, 2024
Getting deep with Anselme
October 5, 2024
Getting deep with Anselme
Part one of my conversation with grower-champagne pioneer Anselme Selosse
It’s been worse than a bad year in Champagne.
“Dante-esque, horrible, unprecedented in my 50 years!” curses Champagne legend Anselme Selosse from his winery and vineyards in Avize (Côte des Blancs). But he adds, “It’s driven by our stubborn refusal to give up.”
Over the last half-century Selosse has been driven by a stubborn quest to go further into his terroirs.
Anselme Selosse in his vineyard near Avize winery
He’s created a polarizing love-it-or-loathe-it style of deep long-aged champagnes that taste of time and the chalky slopes of his hometown.
He’s an iconoclast who talks about farming in terms of eastern philosophy, who considers himself not a winemaker but a midwife obstetrician and despises the idea of “a brand” (even though he’s created the kind of mythic brand many producers would die for.)
He is a man of many other paradoxes who says “I detest technique but I adore science,” who abandoned Biodynamics as too formulaic and says he has been influenced more by the Mediterranean than his northern France.
Selosse in cellar pointing out chemical formula he has scrawled in chalk. Photo @ Robert Camuto
This month, Robert Camuto Meets… features a pair of conversations with Selosse in his vineyards and winery.
Read Part 1 (free) at winespectator.com
Champagne pioneer Anselme Selosse
September 23, 2024
As-good-as-it-gets Tuscany
September 23, 2024
As-good-as-it-gets Tuscany
Dinner for 1,200 and 100 wines under the cypresses. Can anything else compare?
The Bolgheri DiVino dinner. Photo @ Linda Vukaj / Aicod
Late summer in Italy can resemble a special circle of Dante’s Inferno: too many tourists in tar-melting heat as Italians jam highways to crowd coastal beaches.
But then even in summer, Italians can pull magic out of a hat and create only-in-Italy elegance and spectacle.
Take for example the Bolgheri Appellation’s 30th anniversary “Dinner for a Thousand,” (Actually there were 1,200 guests) staged September 4 along the iconic, cypress-lined road that passes under Bolgheri’s Tuscan medieval castle.
One kilometer of table was tastefully dressed with tablecloths, Ginori tableware and candles. Dishes like perfectly al dente paccheri pasta with wild boar ragù were served with military precision by 140 waitstaff. And 160 sommeliers poured from a list of about 100 wines dating back to 1995 Sassicaia.
So tell me: Is there any better wine dinner in the world ?
Oh, and it all happened outdoors without so much as a tent — and no plan B in case it rained. The storms that threatened the area held off until the next morning’s deluge.
For more read my latest Robert Camuto Meets… at winespectator.com.
August 27, 2024
A rebel in off-the-beaten Tuscany
August 27, 2024
A rebel in off-the-beaten Tuscany
And more cool places you’ve probably never heard of
“Wine is the closest thing I know to sex,” says Rocco Toscani. “Everybody does it. There are no rules.”
Edginess runs in the family. Rocco’s father is the volcanic photographer Oliviero Toscani who in the 1980s and 1990s pioneered “shockvertising” (ads that were just a tableau of condoms or a photo of a young priest and nun in a passionate embrace) as the creative director of Benetton.
Rocco Toscani in the cellar with examples of his photo portraits from his former career
For the last decade Rocco has run the Toscani farm and winery – the latter started by his dad in the early ‘00s with the help of Angelo Gaia and other pals from nearby Bolgheri. There were lots of father-son battles as Rocco brought his vision and organic farming to the farm and threw out a lot of his father’s ideas.
Today Rocco produces a fun line of wines using a lot of Syrah lightened for great drinkability with the addition of white Greco.
“I am convinced wine has to be a popular thing,” Rocco says. “It’s like music. You don’t make aristocratic music.”
Rocco Toscani in the vineyard
Read about Toscani, his wines, rodeo and racing pigeons in the latest Robert Camuto Meets…
And while you’re at it, check out another great Tuscan discovery in another recent column on Tenuta di Ghizzano.
July 24, 2024
Tuscany’s great summer red
July 24, 2024
Tuscany’s great summer red
Add this to my list of chillable rosso
The terrace of casa Camuto in July: the buzzing of cicadas and the scents of thyme and rosemary, mingling with the smoke of citronella incense to amuse the mosquitoes. Come sunset and dinner time maybe some grilled veggies, a bit of fish, olive oil and tomatoes. Lots and lots and lots of tomatoes.
And to drink?
Most of the time, I reach for red wine — chilled. My personal favorite category is summer reds — lighter red wines that take easily to chilling in a bucket of ice or the fridge.
Edoardo Ventimiglia with wife, Carla, and daughter, Francesca, in their "San Lorenzo" vineyard of Cilegiolo
Over some years I’ve developed a long list from France and Italy — from Sancerre to Cerasuolo, and Chatus to Rossese to Bardolino to Grignolino to Dolcetto to…. The biggest problem I have is keeping the good ones around. Buy, drink, drink, drink, drink, repeat.
Leonardo Bussoletti, a leading Cilegiolo producer in Umbria shows off his varietal tattoo
This year, I’ve added a new category from Tuscany’s Maremma and other parts of central Italy like Umbria’s Narni: Cilegiolo. Traditionally a blending a grape for its cousin Sangiovese, Cilegiolo brings red fruit flavors, soft tannins, deep ruby color, bright acidity and spicy aromas.
The first quality of a summer red is the joy.
The wines should be lithe, light and easy. The second part is that ephemeral je-ne-sais-quoi quality that puts the “it” in complexITy. Great summer reds like all great wines should have enough of “it” to be what I’m calling today “transcendent”.
And in the right hands, Cilegiolo fills that bill. Read more about this great Tuscan summer red and its top producers in my latest Robert Camuto Meets… at winespectator.com.
July 11, 2024
How deep can sake get?
July 11, 2024
How deep can sake get?
On a trip to Kyoto, discovering the secrets of the “water”
Masuda and me in his family brewery founded in 1675
On a trip to Japan, the family and I drank two kinds of sake: good sake and really good (even mind-blowing) sake with local flavor.
We sampled the latter at a Fushimi / Kyoto brewery called Masuda Tokubee Shoten, a pioneer for high-end sake.
The Fushimi locale is prized for sake because of the quality of its ground water that filters through the nearby Monoyama hills and is used in rice plantations. In other words, the water the rice plant absorbs effects the taste of the grain, and ultimately, the sake.
“Rice is important,” says Tokubee Masuda the 14th generation here, “but water is even more important.”
Masuda works in the steps of his father who in the 1960s revived Japan’s traditional lightly strained and fizzy nigori “cloudy” sake that had gone extinct with modern filtering.
He continues to work traditionally on an artisanal scale – while taking things like aging sake to new levels. Years and even decades in the cellar in porcelain casks bring out deep sherry-like flavors and umami unlike anything I’ve ever experienced.
His goal: “I want to show the world that sake can be this ultra-premium…that it’s not just Romanée-Conti.”
Masuda in his sake aging loft
A speaker plays strains of a Chinese Erhu to jugs of aging sake
To get deeper into sake, check out the latest Robert Camuto Meets… at winespectator.com
June 26, 2024
A feast for the ages
June 26, 2024
A feast for the ages
With Luigi Tecce for his annual June bacchanalia
I’ve been to a lot of Bacchanalias over the last 20 years.
But nothing I experienced before measures up to Luigi Tecce’s version of the June 23 feast of San Giovanni at his remote hilltop vineyard in Paternopoli (pop. about 2,000) about 50 miles due east of Naples.
Tecce (to whom I dedicated 10 pages in “South of Somewhere”) is a seeming contradiction: an artistic dandy, who lives in the middle of the Campania countryside where he labors to produce one of the region’s most beloved cult wines from Aglianico.
Before the feast, Tecce hosted more than 100 people at a local restaurant to try the 20 vintages (2003-2023) of his iconic wine Poliphemo.
Then the group transported about a mile up the road to a field on a hilltop next to his small, unmarked winery and house.
In the evening sun, a military marching band led a procession through his vineyards as preparations were being made for what was to come. A side of beef that looked to be as large as the blackened rib cage of a brontosaurus, was suspended from a tractor’s boom lift over coals the size of logs. Pasta water boiled over wood fires. Milk was heating for the making of fresh ricotta and mozzarella. Tomatoes were cooking in large skillets that could comfortably seat a pair of human adults. A mobile wood-fired pizza oven was heating up. And this is just part of it.
San Giovanni’s feast throughout Europe is in general a kind of summer Carnevale: local, traditional, profane—a bit of a walk on the wilder side. Tecce’s version seemed aesthetically cinematic. And sartorial.
Elegant in a range of outfits and changes of his Borselino hats, Tecce seemed to be everywhere—a Fellini directing the spectacle in his head.
By dark the crowd had swelled to at least 500 persons who poured themselves cups of Tecce’s young Aglianico from 100-liter steel tanks.
After the first of many rounds of wine and food that evening, Tecce directed the crowd to a stage on the other side of the winery. There the musical evening began with a string quartet that played a twisted version of Bach to a piece by Frank Zappa. As the evening went on there was a 96-year-old accordionist, a duo including a hurdy gurdy player and harpist turned traditional Occitaine music into what could pass for dance rave tunes.
And there was more food. At midnight, as fresh rounds of pasta were produced along with fresh mozzarella, a group of bagpipers including a Franciscan monk piped in the glow of a house house-sized bonfire that had been set alight from mounds of straw and wood and farm refuse.
There is something dream-like, transcendent and magic-conjuring about such summer evenings by fire, far away from our modern narratives and cares.
I’ve never been to Burning Man, and likely never will. But to me what was most remarkable is that Tecce did this here—while highlighting the people and the talents in a land that sees far too many people abandon for distant cities with more going on.
We have Tecce and his friends to thank for their generosity and for creating this sense of community in his home terroir. For one night—until past dawn the next day—he made this hilltop in Paternopoli seem like the center of something.
June 10, 2024
Wine after Google
June 11, 2024
Wine after Google
This is what happens when a prominent tech exec meets a Sonoma wine Italo-phile
David Drummond grew up in the 1970s as the African-American kid in a Sicilian-American neighborhood in Monterrey California, and there developed his first taste for the Italian flavors.
Decades later in 2018 after a brilliant career and cashing out for his retirement as Google’s Chief Legal Officer, Drummond bought his dream ranch in Sonoma’s Russian River Valley — 500 acres of land with a 70-acre vineyard planted to Pinot Noir, Zinfandel and Cabernet Sauvignon.
Then things got interesting.
Drummond, who had become a passionate aficionado of northeastern Italian wines, met Sam Bilbro (of Idlewild wines) a grower/producer who is obsessed with northwestern Italy’s Piedmont and propagating its native vines in Northern California.
In the last four years, the pair have regrafted about 50 acres to more than 40 varieties with an emphasis on Northern Italy and Alpine France. From Friuli’s white Ribolla Gialla and Tocai Friulano to Piedmont varieties from Nebbiolo to Grignolino and Freisa to California’s first known Timorasso.
The first wines for Drummond’s Comunità label are out. To me this is more than a passing geeky interest, but a win-win-wine on both sides of the Atlantic.
Before Prohibition, California had a much more varied and interesting winescape than recent decades with their focus on Cabernet Sauvignon and a handful of other French blockbuster grapes. Much of that legacy was Italian and included what are considered niche grapes today.
Restoring that diversity is good for California wine country and consumers. Having these grapes planted and turned into wines in California will contribute to their deserved renown and gives a boost to Italian wine culture.
Read about Drummond-Bilbro’s project in the latest Robert Camuto Meets… at winespectator.com.
While you’re at it, read about the Anarchist-turned-winemaker Bruno De Conciliis who has rocked Southern Italy winemaker over nearly 30 years from his home in Cilento.
Former Google exec David Drummond (left) and grower-producer Sam Bilbro (right) in a Nebbiolo patch at Drummond's Las Cimas vineyard in Sonoma's Russian River Valley. photo @ Comunità
April 25, 2024
Why Vino Keeps on Truckin’ to Russia
April 25, 2024
Why Vino Keeps on Truckin’ to Russia
European “sanctions” allow a big loophole for wine
My recent Robert Camuto Meets….column at winespectator.com amplifies a situation that’s remained relatively hush-hush: the flow of wine to Russia despite 2022 European sanctions on luxury goods.
Italy leads the way in Europe, and Prosecco leads the way in Italy. And it’s all perfectly legal.
Russian wine importer Anatoly Karneev (Here at last week's Vinitaly wine fair in Verona) features in my latest Robert Camuto Meets column.... Photo @ Robert Camuto
The main reason for this flow of wine is the way the sanctions were written — coming into effect above a 300-euro-per-unit threshold. Meaning that for a wine to be barred from export it must cost more than about $320 a bottle!
The idea was to somehow hit the Russian middle class by making them feel the pain of Putin’s invasion in Ukraine.
But Holy Sassicaia! 300 Euros is a ridiculously big number for wine. I get it for, say, men’s suits. For most Italians even the threshold is a fraction of that. More like 25 Euros.
So the flow goes on because it’s legal — and there are no moral considerations like: What in the hell do Russians have to toast right now? More bombings?
Of course wine is not something that can be used for military purposes, but then neither are designer evening clutches. So why ban those?
This is how the world turns friends — and wine like oil always finds its way to a market.
Read about it here.
April 22, 2024
The Dark Side of the Rose
April 21, 2024
The Dark Side of the Rose
How I’m learning to love rosé again
Long ago, while living in the South of France and watching fellow denizens quaf anonymous pale pink wine like it was some kind of sports drink, I burned out on the whole category of Provence rosé.
To be fair there are some good — even great — rosés coming from Provence. But they tend to get overshadowed by the anonymous stuff.
I want wine of any color to hold up to a meal with some mouth-filling savoriness, no matter what season it is. And ideally, I want wine to express some local character. I want some "there" there.
Like me, chef Nicolas Durif of L’Hysope in western France likes "red rosé" at the Rosés de Terroirs tasting in Nice. Photo @ Robert Camuto
So I was cheered earlier this year with an invitation with the cheeky title “Rosé Rebellion on the French Riviera?” It was for a tasting and lunch organized by the three-year-old Rosés de Terroirs association at the appropriately named Les Agitateurs restaurant in Nice.
There I met like-minded wine lovers and a wild range of wines from France and Italy — ranging from salmon to deep cherry.
“I am a fan of red rosé — not white rosé,” said burly, bearded, acclaimed chef Nicolas Durif of L’Hysope in western France, who likes to age rosé at least five years for the vermouth-like spicy notes that emerge with time. “We serve the light rosés to the clients who like water.”
I was at home.
For a deeper dive, do read the latest Robert Camuto Meets…. at winespectator.com
