The one I keyed on, "Failing to give the Somm a sense of your taste" is rather important. Just allowing the Somm to pair things up without any input from the guest, especially Americans, is risky. Our wines are much different than the Italians.
Oh, you didn't get the memo...everyone is a wine expert. I meet them all the time and write about them.
I dislike it when people just say they want the "best" in some arbitrary category. Best? In what way? What's the best painting or the best song?
I have a huge dislike of wine ratings because they create the idea that there's an objective hierarchy, that a wine rated 92 is in every way superior to one rated 90 when in reality it depends on a person's taste, their mood, the weather, what they're eating, how much they want to spend, etc., etc. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir with you on this, David ... it just gets under the skin. Another way that lazy people try to compensate for a lack of knowledge, curiosity, and the rest of it.
I hope to be able to taste one of your very non-Italian wines one day.
Let's take a simply example in Italy or the States, Primitivo/Zinfandel will always be rated below a SuperTuscan. Always. But have some orecchiette rapini and there's only one logical choice. As an added bonus, the Primitivo will be less expensive.
I'm sure there will come a time where we'll meet up...I do love Rome!
I went to a Chinese colleague’s house for dinner with his family once and they were serving fresh sea bass with a sweet and sour sauce. Delicious, right?
But they knew little about wines, they knew wine was important to me, and so they’d evidently gone to the wine shop and just asked for their most prestigious wine. So they ended up serving that dish with a Brunello di Montalcino! It was an extremely generous and respectful gesture, but what a waste.
I love the connection between Primitivo and Zinfandel (and Crljenak Kaštelanski from Croatia). That’ll be a future newsletter essay for sure.
Such a good article, Eric.... she says as she reads it while swirling a non-descript lunch time glass of Chardonnay.
I'm not a wine expert. But I know what I like.
That said, I'm lucky to know experts in Tuscany - where I try to spend as much time as possible.
They truly do know good wine, and they also know my tastes, so I just follow their lead.
I have spent the last 25 years sharing my beloved Tuscany with very small groups of travelers and am always amused by the self-appointed wine "experts" who are occasionally included in my groups.
Bless their hearts!.... as my darling Mother would say!
And I'm grateful for my Tuscan friends who always handle them with patience and grace.
I think if you know what you like, that's more than halfway toward being an expert!
Most Tuscan wines are so easy to like. I have a personal preference for wines from Piedmont, but if I had to close my eyes and pick wine from some region and hope it would be good, I'd pick a random wine from Tuscany.
Is your mother southern? I'm not a "real" southerner, but I lived in the Florida panhandle for several years and learned to love "Bless their hearts!" I even used the phrase in my April Fool's Day post for the newsletter.
Yes, when it comes down to it, wine is such a personal thing. So, really, if you like a certain wine, it doesn't matter where it was created or what it cost.
I do agree that Tuscan wines are easy to like.
In fact, I've yet to have one that I didn't like! But I do have my definite favorites.... like Monsanto, Istine, Poggerino, Castellare, Volpaia, Casa Emma....
Re my Mother's heritage - Southern? No. She was an absolute Midwesterner.... born and raised in the heart of Iowa. And there was a lot of heart-blessing that occurred here.... and still does!
I completely agree about wines you like, pedigree or not. But there are wines that are more compatible than others with specific foods. I’ll go for compatibility over quality if I have to choose.
I spent a couple of days at Volpaia for a story years ago. Have you ever tried their Vin Santo? Very impressive.
In agreement with you once again, Eric, as to compatibility. I've had the pleasure of watching a few of my travelers' state "I just don't like red wine", followed by certain foods served with certain wines.... and then the magic occurs!
My sister-in-law was one of those people and I'll never forget her face appearing around others at a Casa Emma lunch and wine-tasting as she held up her glass of Chianti Classico Riserva and mouthed, "I love this!"
She's still ordering wines from my friends in Tuscany.
Oh my.... Volpaia. I could live there. It's just up the hill from my beloved second home of Radda. I love their wines. Their Vin Santo? There's a bottle on my shelf as we speak. Just so excellent.
Sad news from my Volpaia friends recently. Gina, the quintessential Italian Mama died at 93 years of age. Up until just a short time ago, she was still dashing across the small piazza from Bar Ucci to to Ristorante La Bottega, helping her two daughters wherever necessary.
Gina was the face of Volpaia for me.
I would love to read your story about that ancient hilltop village.
Don't get me wrong, a nice Sommelier is great. However, I tend to do what I do in the supermarket, when in a new place: Go to the wine aisle and stand for a bit and look at what the locals are buying. In the restaurant, look around, look at the diners, pick the locals and see what they are drinking. You rarely go wrong this way. Typically, they will order mid-range, good value, and local, which is just what I want...
I do agree that following what locals do is infinitely better than copying other visitors. But I find I’m a pickier wine drinker than most Italians. When I find a moderately-priced wine I like, I generally buy a case.
In a restaurant, a good trick I like to use if I don’t recognize any of the wines is to find a producer that appears on the wine list in multiple categories. I don’t necessarily think the best wines are made by generalists, but if the restaurant owner likes them enough to buy different products that’s probably a decent tiebreaker when I can’t otherwise decide.
Reading this is the equivalent of a glass of wine after a long day. It satisfies a thirst. I didn’t know you were a sommelier?! How cool! What program did you do if you don’t mind me asking.
That's a great place to start! I'm a hug fan of WSET. I learned more from them than I did from FIS (though to be fair, WSET came first and covered a lot of what FIS later covered).
This is so Italy! Everything from still having corks in wine bottles to having a sommelier, or at least someone that has a knowledge of the wine and menu on the staff.
Out at dinner last night, I ordered a wine they usually have and they were out of it, and the owner said, "I know something you'll like..." It was a Vermentino Sardo in lieu of an Etna Bianco. The substitution would have never occurred to me, but he was right!
Exactly, fortune-telling ! When you swirl a coffee cup to people from our region it`s a clear sign, that you`re offering someone to "read it". I wrote a bit more on this while replying to Franky Be :)
But in general is a very common practice among all of our regions (Armenia, Turkiye ...) and people casually do it, not always out of urge to know the future, but more out of habit. It`s a good way of communicating some inner issues without mentioning any details and sometimes a greta conversation opener. I love to use it in storytelling workshops, it helps me to identify where my team is at and to check their observational skills, storytelling skills and ability to quickly adapt.
I love this kind of detail. Thanks, Ella! Italy doesn’t have that particular quirk but there are plenty of things Italians do, like certain reactions when I hearse drives by or ask for permission to enter someone’s home even if they’ve been invited in and the owner is holding the door open and saying “Welcome!” I admit coffee reading is more colorful than those examples, but they all seem to be remnants of a more superstitious time.
Dear Franky, thanks for the question: read it, means basically interpret the shapes and weave some stories around it, we can call it fotrune telling :)
Officially it`s called tasseography (comes from the French word tasse (cup) and the Greek suffix -graph, which is writing).
Originally this method of "reading the cup" came from China. They "read" the residue of the tea cups. If I`m not mistaken it later, during the Victorian era, became superpopular also in the Great Britain.
During Ottoman era, the tasseographic approach of reading the residue of cups somehow sneaked into coffee-houses and slowly became a very casual thing for the Ottomans. But speaking frankly, it`s understandable why: coffee residue has much more contrast so makes it easier to find shapes and "maps" :)
Though, for some reason this "coffee-cup reading" is mostly associated with Romani people or nomadic lifestyle, in our region and neighboring countries it`s a pertty common thing and many unexpected people can actually know how to do it. There are a few academics that I know are perfect at this, a few famous singers, writers, e.t.c. My grandma used to do it, if she was in the right mood (during economic crisis in country, she used to also make money that way) :)
I dislike the whole wine military industrial complex. Please!
A great one is delicious, but most wines that are considered “good” are far out of my financial range. It’s easy to make a good wine that costs (in Europe, screw the prices in the states) €25 or more. I think what’s hard is to make great wine that cost eight euros.
But I’m definitely a grappa swirler. What’s wrong with that? The starting taste and the finish of even a mid-level grappa are astounding to me.
I am being a little facetious (except about the grappa, ha!),but wine is one of those things that sets the elite apart from the great unwashed. And that’s why people who know nothing about it pretend they do. In a world where probably 80% of the population of the planet couldn’t afford a decent wine, (or probably even a budget one) it’s something to think about.
In my experience, swirling grappa makes you smell the alcohol more. When I manage to keep the glass still, I can more easily appreciate the more subtle aromas. But your comment makes me want to pay more attention to it. So for my next grappa — maybe before bed tonight — I’ll do an informal experiment.
P.S. I’m all about finding good, under-appreciated wines at a decent price point. I couldn’t agree more!
I’ll have to pay more attention with the grappa. I’m absolutely not educated in wines and was probably exaggerating a little bit about the swirling. I do love the smell.
And you probably know all that follows, but, there’s a Spanish version of grappa called Orujo. It seems to be most common in northern Spain. It’s seldom as good as the grappa I remember from Italy, but I usually just order the local one when I’m in a café. It always seems to make the locals very happy, as it does in Italy when you order a grappa or coretto(sp.?)at a local café.
And pomace brandy’s like grappa seem to be common anywhere where they make wine. So worldwide. Maybe that should be my next project, to track down as many as possible!
Following the first sip, I swirl my espresso cup each successive sip to ensure they include as much of the original cream as possible, as it tends to "stick" to the walls all the way up the inside of the cup. Sheesh, talk about coffee nerd.
All these fake rules people set up sniffing and etiquette, they turn people off from wine. I like this non-nonsense (or maybe optional nonsense) approach
Wow! You are a man of many talents! I learned more in this dispatch than ever in my years of living. Now I have enough information to be dangerous, but not effective! BTW- Love the pic at the end!
wine service here is getting so "fancy" it scares a lot of people off. My dad just finds one he knows and orders it. I'm going to talk to him into asking for help and trying something different.
The first tip is the one that kills me. There is nothing worse than a wine snob. They're more prevelent in the U.S. than in Italy where wine is for the masses instead of the elite. You can tell when customers try to tell the sommelier about the wine instead of asking questions about it. And don't make up fruits and plants when you describe the tastes. No wine has "hints of mushrooms" as one clown said at a winetasting I attended in Denver.
Try being a woman in wine in Italy and you'll realise that wine snobbery isn't limited to the United States. Add the high-level of misogyny and xenophobia here and you've got the perfect wine asshole.
I tend to agree with your list.
The one I keyed on, "Failing to give the Somm a sense of your taste" is rather important. Just allowing the Somm to pair things up without any input from the guest, especially Americans, is risky. Our wines are much different than the Italians.
Oh, you didn't get the memo...everyone is a wine expert. I meet them all the time and write about them.
I dislike it when people just say they want the "best" in some arbitrary category. Best? In what way? What's the best painting or the best song?
I have a huge dislike of wine ratings because they create the idea that there's an objective hierarchy, that a wine rated 92 is in every way superior to one rated 90 when in reality it depends on a person's taste, their mood, the weather, what they're eating, how much they want to spend, etc., etc. I'm sure I'm preaching to the choir with you on this, David ... it just gets under the skin. Another way that lazy people try to compensate for a lack of knowledge, curiosity, and the rest of it.
I hope to be able to taste one of your very non-Italian wines one day.
This is the best comment
Hahahah!
Let's take a simply example in Italy or the States, Primitivo/Zinfandel will always be rated below a SuperTuscan. Always. But have some orecchiette rapini and there's only one logical choice. As an added bonus, the Primitivo will be less expensive.
I'm sure there will come a time where we'll meet up...I do love Rome!
I went to a Chinese colleague’s house for dinner with his family once and they were serving fresh sea bass with a sweet and sour sauce. Delicious, right?
But they knew little about wines, they knew wine was important to me, and so they’d evidently gone to the wine shop and just asked for their most prestigious wine. So they ended up serving that dish with a Brunello di Montalcino! It was an extremely generous and respectful gesture, but what a waste.
I love the connection between Primitivo and Zinfandel (and Crljenak Kaštelanski from Croatia). That’ll be a future newsletter essay for sure.
Hahah. Not only that. Everyone is an expert everything in a certain way, considering expertise doesn't matter any longer
The death of expertise. That's another sad, sad tory.
Indeed!
Such a good article, Eric.... she says as she reads it while swirling a non-descript lunch time glass of Chardonnay.
I'm not a wine expert. But I know what I like.
That said, I'm lucky to know experts in Tuscany - where I try to spend as much time as possible.
They truly do know good wine, and they also know my tastes, so I just follow their lead.
I have spent the last 25 years sharing my beloved Tuscany with very small groups of travelers and am always amused by the self-appointed wine "experts" who are occasionally included in my groups.
Bless their hearts!.... as my darling Mother would say!
And I'm grateful for my Tuscan friends who always handle them with patience and grace.
I think if you know what you like, that's more than halfway toward being an expert!
Most Tuscan wines are so easy to like. I have a personal preference for wines from Piedmont, but if I had to close my eyes and pick wine from some region and hope it would be good, I'd pick a random wine from Tuscany.
Is your mother southern? I'm not a "real" southerner, but I lived in the Florida panhandle for several years and learned to love "Bless their hearts!" I even used the phrase in my April Fool's Day post for the newsletter.
Yes, when it comes down to it, wine is such a personal thing. So, really, if you like a certain wine, it doesn't matter where it was created or what it cost.
I do agree that Tuscan wines are easy to like.
In fact, I've yet to have one that I didn't like! But I do have my definite favorites.... like Monsanto, Istine, Poggerino, Castellare, Volpaia, Casa Emma....
Re my Mother's heritage - Southern? No. She was an absolute Midwesterner.... born and raised in the heart of Iowa. And there was a lot of heart-blessing that occurred here.... and still does!
Let’s just bless everyone’s heart!! Haha.
I completely agree about wines you like, pedigree or not. But there are wines that are more compatible than others with specific foods. I’ll go for compatibility over quality if I have to choose.
I spent a couple of days at Volpaia for a story years ago. Have you ever tried their Vin Santo? Very impressive.
In agreement with you once again, Eric, as to compatibility. I've had the pleasure of watching a few of my travelers' state "I just don't like red wine", followed by certain foods served with certain wines.... and then the magic occurs!
My sister-in-law was one of those people and I'll never forget her face appearing around others at a Casa Emma lunch and wine-tasting as she held up her glass of Chianti Classico Riserva and mouthed, "I love this!"
She's still ordering wines from my friends in Tuscany.
Oh my.... Volpaia. I could live there. It's just up the hill from my beloved second home of Radda. I love their wines. Their Vin Santo? There's a bottle on my shelf as we speak. Just so excellent.
Sad news from my Volpaia friends recently. Gina, the quintessential Italian Mama died at 93 years of age. Up until just a short time ago, she was still dashing across the small piazza from Bar Ucci to to Ristorante La Bottega, helping her two daughters wherever necessary.
Gina was the face of Volpaia for me.
I would love to read your story about that ancient hilltop village.
Don't get me wrong, a nice Sommelier is great. However, I tend to do what I do in the supermarket, when in a new place: Go to the wine aisle and stand for a bit and look at what the locals are buying. In the restaurant, look around, look at the diners, pick the locals and see what they are drinking. You rarely go wrong this way. Typically, they will order mid-range, good value, and local, which is just what I want...
Excellent Post, as usual! Thank you, Eric!!
I do agree that following what locals do is infinitely better than copying other visitors. But I find I’m a pickier wine drinker than most Italians. When I find a moderately-priced wine I like, I generally buy a case.
In a restaurant, a good trick I like to use if I don’t recognize any of the wines is to find a producer that appears on the wine list in multiple categories. I don’t necessarily think the best wines are made by generalists, but if the restaurant owner likes them enough to buy different products that’s probably a decent tiebreaker when I can’t otherwise decide.
Your taste buds are no doubt much more developed than mine, but I do like the strategy! I will bear this in mind.
Reading this is the equivalent of a glass of wine after a long day. It satisfies a thirst. I didn’t know you were a sommelier?! How cool! What program did you do if you don’t mind me asking.
Thanks! I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I have a Level 2 WSET certificate from London and a FIS (Fondazione Italiana Sommelier) diploma from here in Rome. FIS is where I got the tastevin.
I worked for many years in restaurants -- as a waiter, wine steward, and mostly in the kitchen -- but I never worked in a restaurant as a sommelier.
Are you a sommelier as well?
I am not a sommelier - yet. This year I want to do the first level of WSET.
That's a great place to start! I'm a hug fan of WSET. I learned more from them than I did from FIS (though to be fair, WSET came first and covered a lot of what FIS later covered).
I know many Italians who have done FIS first and then WSET as they wanted a more internationally recognized program.
I’m glad to have had the less nationalistic program first …
Can I ask why?!
Really that’s interesting!
This is so Italy! Everything from still having corks in wine bottles to having a sommelier, or at least someone that has a knowledge of the wine and menu on the staff.
I hope that aspect never changes!
Out at dinner last night, I ordered a wine they usually have and they were out of it, and the owner said, "I know something you'll like..." It was a Vermentino Sardo in lieu of an Etna Bianco. The substitution would have never occurred to me, but he was right!
Swirling a coffee cup means you're asking someone to "read" it.
That's how many from my region will see it 🤭🤭🤭
Yes, what do you mean they would "read it"? You mean to see the future in some way? So interesting.
Exactly, fortune-telling ! When you swirl a coffee cup to people from our region it`s a clear sign, that you`re offering someone to "read it". I wrote a bit more on this while replying to Franky Be :)
But in general is a very common practice among all of our regions (Armenia, Turkiye ...) and people casually do it, not always out of urge to know the future, but more out of habit. It`s a good way of communicating some inner issues without mentioning any details and sometimes a greta conversation opener. I love to use it in storytelling workshops, it helps me to identify where my team is at and to check their observational skills, storytelling skills and ability to quickly adapt.
I love this kind of detail. Thanks, Ella! Italy doesn’t have that particular quirk but there are plenty of things Italians do, like certain reactions when I hearse drives by or ask for permission to enter someone’s home even if they’ve been invited in and the owner is holding the door open and saying “Welcome!” I admit coffee reading is more colorful than those examples, but they all seem to be remnants of a more superstitious time.
Read it??
Dear Franky, thanks for the question: read it, means basically interpret the shapes and weave some stories around it, we can call it fotrune telling :)
Officially it`s called tasseography (comes from the French word tasse (cup) and the Greek suffix -graph, which is writing).
Originally this method of "reading the cup" came from China. They "read" the residue of the tea cups. If I`m not mistaken it later, during the Victorian era, became superpopular also in the Great Britain.
During Ottoman era, the tasseographic approach of reading the residue of cups somehow sneaked into coffee-houses and slowly became a very casual thing for the Ottomans. But speaking frankly, it`s understandable why: coffee residue has much more contrast so makes it easier to find shapes and "maps" :)
Though, for some reason this "coffee-cup reading" is mostly associated with Romani people or nomadic lifestyle, in our region and neighboring countries it`s a pertty common thing and many unexpected people can actually know how to do it. There are a few academics that I know are perfect at this, a few famous singers, writers, e.t.c. My grandma used to do it, if she was in the right mood (during economic crisis in country, she used to also make money that way) :)
Can you “read” coffee?
I love stories that casually mention the Ottoman Empire.
I dislike the whole wine military industrial complex. Please!
A great one is delicious, but most wines that are considered “good” are far out of my financial range. It’s easy to make a good wine that costs (in Europe, screw the prices in the states) €25 or more. I think what’s hard is to make great wine that cost eight euros.
But I’m definitely a grappa swirler. What’s wrong with that? The starting taste and the finish of even a mid-level grappa are astounding to me.
I am being a little facetious (except about the grappa, ha!),but wine is one of those things that sets the elite apart from the great unwashed. And that’s why people who know nothing about it pretend they do. In a world where probably 80% of the population of the planet couldn’t afford a decent wine, (or probably even a budget one) it’s something to think about.
In my experience, swirling grappa makes you smell the alcohol more. When I manage to keep the glass still, I can more easily appreciate the more subtle aromas. But your comment makes me want to pay more attention to it. So for my next grappa — maybe before bed tonight — I’ll do an informal experiment.
P.S. I’m all about finding good, under-appreciated wines at a decent price point. I couldn’t agree more!
I’ll have to pay more attention with the grappa. I’m absolutely not educated in wines and was probably exaggerating a little bit about the swirling. I do love the smell.
And you probably know all that follows, but, there’s a Spanish version of grappa called Orujo. It seems to be most common in northern Spain. It’s seldom as good as the grappa I remember from Italy, but I usually just order the local one when I’m in a café. It always seems to make the locals very happy, as it does in Italy when you order a grappa or coretto(sp.?)at a local café.
And pomace brandy’s like grappa seem to be common anywhere where they make wine. So worldwide. Maybe that should be my next project, to track down as many as possible!
Following the first sip, I swirl my espresso cup each successive sip to ensure they include as much of the original cream as possible, as it tends to "stick" to the walls all the way up the inside of the cup. Sheesh, talk about coffee nerd.
All these fake rules people set up sniffing and etiquette, they turn people off from wine. I like this non-nonsense (or maybe optional nonsense) approach
Learned a lot here ... you look very happy with all these bottles. I think not pretending to know more than you know is really the biggest error
Wow! You are a man of many talents! I learned more in this dispatch than ever in my years of living. Now I have enough information to be dangerous, but not effective! BTW- Love the pic at the end!
wine service here is getting so "fancy" it scares a lot of people off. My dad just finds one he knows and orders it. I'm going to talk to him into asking for help and trying something different.
The first tip is the one that kills me. There is nothing worse than a wine snob. They're more prevelent in the U.S. than in Italy where wine is for the masses instead of the elite. You can tell when customers try to tell the sommelier about the wine instead of asking questions about it. And don't make up fruits and plants when you describe the tastes. No wine has "hints of mushrooms" as one clown said at a winetasting I attended in Denver.
Try being a woman in wine in Italy and you'll realise that wine snobbery isn't limited to the United States. Add the high-level of misogyny and xenophobia here and you've got the perfect wine asshole.
You are hysterical.....I have friends who swirl and taste, swirl and taste.....and then swirl and taste...
I just drink!!!!🤣