Great Wine Made Simple - Andrea Immer [74]
WINE TASTING
Rhône Wines
All of the Rhône wines I have mentioned here are worth exploring. This tasting will focus on a basic red Côtes du Rhône, in comparison to one of the classic paradigm wines. A Muscat Beaumes-de-Venise dessert wine, for fun, completes the tasting.
France—Wine Headquarters of the World
We’ve covered a lot of ground. This is the book’s longest chapter—emblematic of the enormous influence of France and French wines on the rest of the wine world. Here is a chart to sum it all up.
CHAPTER SEVEN
A Little Italy
“Ahn-drayyy-ah,” the voice said, calling my name across the table in that lilting singsong that makes a simple conversation with an Italian man feel like a serenade. Mesmerized, I put down the pen I’d been using to take tasting notes and looked up.
“Don’t think. Drink.”
At that moment, in those words, I learned the true meaning of wine. In pursuit of “wine knowledge,” my three-month pilgrimage had taken me to every classic wine region of Spain and France. Now it had led me here, to Cantina Vietti, one of the Piedmont region’s great wineries, to the terrace of Luciana and Alfredo Currado’s umpteenth-generation family home—to dinner, of course, because this was Italy. Throughout the meal, I had been scribbling furiously in my notepad, determined to take it all in and somehow convert that collection of notes into expertise.
The entire table (a few generations of family and other hangers-on like me, because that, too, is Italy) stared in silence while I picked up my glass as directed. Then they burst into gales of laughter. It has been more than ten years since that lesson from Alfredo, but I have never forgotten. The real purpose of wine is not about the snobbery, the fancy labels, the big bucks, and status symbols that are supposedly going to make you look and feel sophisticated. Its real purpose is simple: Wine is a lube for life.
Even great winemakers like Alfredo, who pour their heart and soul into making the elite Italian wines, know that when all is said and done, the wine is just an enhancement to living. It is the life part that matters—the occasion, the lover, the meal, whatever. Now, that is real wine knowledge.
And you should keep that in mind as you dive into the world of Italian wines, because it is vast. Many find it intimidating, so I always suggest that people think about learning Italian wines in the same way they’d think about learning to cook. Most people never worry about acquiring the refined culinary skills and knowledge of a great chef. They just live a perfectly tasty life by mastering a few basic techniques (roasting, sautéing, and boiling) that work for most foods. That, mixed with regional and family traditions, defines the stock of home-cooking standards for most of us.
But if you keep an open mind about new foods and tastes, then you are likely to try new things when you eat at restaurants or in friends’ homes. Sometimes a new dish, ingredient, or technique will strike your fancy enough to be added to your repertoire. So you ask the chef for the recipe, watch a cooking show, help out in your friend’s kitchen, or pick up a book to learn the new stuff. When I was working at the Sea Grill, a famous New York City seafood restaurant overlooking the Rockefeller Center skating rink, I became so enamored with the food that whenever I could, I spent time in the kitchen, watching and talking with Ed Brown, the chef. Ultimately, I became fairly accomplished at cooking fish and seafood.
I suggest