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Welcome to
VOLUME V,
NUMBER 3 of Wine News, the e-Letter from the WineCountry.IT network. (Would you
rather see the e-Letter on your favorite browser? Use
this link. Usa il link seguente se vuoi leggere
le News in italiano).
Monte-Carlo Wine Festival
9, 10, and 11 November 2007
The first Wine Festival organized in the small Mediterranean state of Monaco offers producers the opportunity to showcase their best wines in an exclusive, one-of-a-kind environment.
For buyers, journalists and wine lovers alike, it will be the place to be for tasting the best of premium producers. |
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Sorry for the delay in sending out the e-Letter, but we have been busier than usual around here.
On March 13, WineCountry.IT will be featured at Woodland Market, in Larkspur, California, for the launch of three wines from as many associate producers: the Arneis Langhe DOC by Gagliardi Piero, from Piedmont; Barbera d'Asti DOC Superiore "Vigna del Carlinet" ("Little Charles' Vineyard"), by Poderi Rosso Giovanni, from Piedmont, and Toscana IGT - Occhini (Super Tuscan), by Fattoria La Striscia, from Tuscany.
On March 15 we'll participate with another selection of 10 wines at Vino Italiano, an event dedicated to Italian wines at at San Francisco's Dolce. We also provided the wine selection for a special Valentine week Japanese menu at the Sumika restaurant in Los Altos, California. Check out the interesting pairings.
Last but not least, our next Italian Flavor Forum VII will take place at the Museo Italo-Americano at Fort Mason, in San Francisco. The tentative date is Monday the 14th. We'll keep you posted.
In addition, after a year's silence, I had to write a piece for the WineCountry.IT Selection column. I had to let our readers know about the Sardinian restaurant La Ciccia, which opened in San Francisco in mid 2006 and has carved out a niche for itself. With good reason, as the cuisine is simple, honest and flavorful. Short of flying to Cagliari, this is the best I have tried this side of the ocean.
Let's not forget to point out the new effort that our Rosa D'Ancona has taken upon herself, resuscitating the column 'The Third Circle'. Check out her Sicilian Sunday menu, featuring recipes that can be easily reproduced at home, though, unless you live on the island, the flavors will be inevitably different.
Other articles include an interesting presentation of the 20 best Italian restaurants in Los Angeles, among others. Anyway, I'll stop here and let you enjoy the e-letter.
Enjoy,
Loris Scagliarini, WineCountry.IT President |
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Articles
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Vinitaly 2007 |
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By now, attending the Vinitaly trade show is a must for Italian and international producers and international buyers. This fact finds a confirmation in the number of exhibitors – over 4,300 – who signed up for the 41st annual of the most important wine exhibition in the world, scheduled from March 29, to April 2, 2007 – as well as the high levels of satisfaction expressed by the 95% of participating producers.
Despite the opening of a new Hall (7B), in addition to halls 10 and 11 inaugurated last year, which will further expand the trade show campus from the 84,000 square meters available in 2006, the space is not sufficient to satisfy the demand.
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New Magazine and New Site for the Consorzio Vini di Romagna |
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 As the wines from the eastern part of the Emilia Romagna region have been increasing in value and recognition, in 2006 the Consorzio Vini di Romagna, or Consortium of the Wines from Romagna, restyled its image and logo. Continuing in this direction, in 2007 the consortium revamped its magazine, "Romagna DOC", as well as the group web site.
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Vinitaly Presents a New Approach to B2B |
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The most important international wine exhibition in the world this year inaugurates a new event to increase business contacts between Italian companies and international buyers.
Five thousand wine operators from all over the world will be able to taste the best Italian wines without time or timetable restrictions and always assisted by professional sommeliers.
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Italy: Two Studies on Wine Consumption |
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 One survey, conducted by the Permanent Observatory on young people and alcoholic beverage consumption, was especially focused on the drinking habits among young people.The study found that though Italy does not enforce severe sanctions, at the same time alcoholic drinks are not encouraged, especially among young people. Instead there is the will to seriously understand the effects of alcoholic beverages and inform consumers about the results.
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Yogurt: A Booklet From Roberta and Rosa D'Ancona |
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 After centuries of widespread use in various parts of the world, yogurt was believed to cure insomnia and tuberculosis, as well as acting as blood re-generator. In the early 1900s, Russian microbiologist, Ilya Ilych Metchinoff, employed as researcher by the Pasteur Institute in Paris, impressed by the longevity of Bulgarian peasants, first conducted lab tests and researched their lifestyle. The study resulted in a publication entitled "The Prolongation of Life", in which he credited the phenomenon to the daily consumption of yogurt.
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A Special Valentine at Sumika: Romantic Italian Wine Tasting Menu |
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 In December 2006 Sumika poured Italian Prosecco di Valdobbiadene DOC Spumante Extra Dry "Gorio", by Azienda Agricola Malibràn, provided by our Italian Flavor Consortium, to its customers for the holidays. As patrons appreciated the pairing, Ms. Ozawa Kuniko, the previous Silicon Valley high-tech sales and marketing executive who reinvented herself as yakitori maven when she opened Sumika in 2006, decided to go forward with another Italian-Japanese "marriage" of sort, proposing a Romantic Italian Wine Tasting Menu, selecting four wines provided again by our Italian Flavor Consortium, paired with a five-entree, reservation-only dinner throughout Valentine's Day week.
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| The 20 Best L.A. Italian Restaurants – Part One |
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 Imagine your first trip to Italy, the stumbling journey through the airport, the long train ride into Rome, the jet-lagged taxi ride to your hotel. After a quick shower, you realize that the lunch hour is drawing to a close, so you walk a block or two in any direction and settle into a random trattoria; it really doesn't matter which one. The wine is white, sweetish and slightly fizzy — you weren't really given a wine list, it more or less appeared — and the bread is milder, yet more profoundly wheaty, than any bread you remember having tasted. The prosciutto — it's like you've never tasted ham before; what an aroma! |
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 If you want to know why Vincenti may be the single best Italian restaurant in Los Angeles, you could do worse than to try a plate of burrata and prosciutto, a dish that sounds so dull on paper that I almost stopped my daughter from ordering it the last time I had dinner in the restaurant. Burrata is a kind of cream-stuffed mozzarella that was basically unavailable outside Puglia until the El Monte cheesemaker Gioia started making it a few years ago. |
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| Part Three |
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 Valentino has always been one of the most controversial restaurants in Los Angeles, loved by foodies who claim to have eaten the best meals of their lives in the dimly lit dining room and loathed by people who claim that the restaurant is a con job, a stuffy, Amarone-lubricated machine designed to separate fools from their wallets. I have at times fallen into both camps. |
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 Celestino Drago has been the king of pasta in Los Angeles since the day we all stopped eating spaghetti, the duke of carpaccio, the baron of squid-ink risotto. His casual, pan-Italian yet rigorous cooking at his various dining rooms helped define the way Angelenos think about Italian food, and the late all-Sicilian restaurant l'Arancino (the Little Orange), which some critics viewed as his mature statement of purpose, is still one of the most ambitious experiments in regional Italian cooking the city has ever seen. |
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 At Pizzeria Mozza, which strictly speaking may not be Italian, although it could scarcely be interpreted as anything else, Nancy Silverton has half the city arguing over the paradigm of what real pizza might look like, and the other half trying to land a table at the restaurant. Her pizza is airy and burnt and risen around the rim, thin and crisp in the center, neither bready in the traditional Neapolitan manner nor wispy the way you find pizza in the best places in Tuscany, neither Rome-crisp nor Puglia chewy. |
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| Part Six |
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 Evan Kleiman's Angeli Caffè crystallized the affinity of Angelenos for casual Italian cooking — the spaghetti alla checca, roast chicken and minimally garnished pizza that a Sienese teenager might eat for dinner at the trattoria down the block on the nights his mother didn't feel like turning on the stove, but which was essentially unobtainable to those of us on this side of the sea. |
| Part Seven |
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 La Botte is named after a wine barrel, paneled with former wine casks, and is as thick with actual wine bottles as your niece's room may be with Bratz paraphernalia. The wine list is a serious one, the kind where you feel a little like a kid whose ball has been taken away if you lack the bank balance to play around with $156 bottles of Serpico or verticals of Amarone. |
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| Part Eight |
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 Can there be a substance on the planet more delicious than a pizza pie from Casa Bianca (White House) straight out of the oven, a crisp, pliable crust speckled with burnt bits of cornmeal, slightly acid tomato sauce, a gooey mantle of cheese, optimally with nubs of house-made sausage and a handful of deep-fried eggplant sticks scattered over the surface? |
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| Part Nine |
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 For most of its existence, Dominick's was famous as the Hollywood restaurant that never looked open, a weathered, low building, neon permanently unlit, across from the small amusement park that later became the site of the Beverly Center. It was, or at least had a reputation as, the original Rat Pack hangout. |
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Part Ten |
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 Mario's Italian Deli is a happiness explosion, a 45-year-old market as crowded as a Wilshire bus, heroic dives for the Take-a-Number machine, and subs, mammoth subs, stuffed with mortadella (bologna) or spicy sopressata (kind of Italian salami), eggplant parmesan or meatballs, or in my case big wads of garlicky roast pork augmented with fresh mozzarella and roasted red peppers, a sandwich that thrills me to the toes. |
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| Conquering an Italian Nightmare – Part One |
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 It was with some trepidation and just a hint of cynicism that I approached the risotto cooking class at Carluccio's.
I don't know what I expected but I was mentally hatching plans to disguise any Bridget Jones-style moments like forgetting the rather crucial ingredient of rice or, worse, setting fire to the kitchen. |
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| Part Two |
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 It was now time to talk risotto and Valentina was there to impart some of her vast knowledge to us. She explained that it was a case of "eating what you produce".
I love the simplicity of this – risotto rice comes from regions of northern Italy like Lombardy, Veneto and Piedmont, so that's what they tuck into on a daily basis. |
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Part Three |
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 And voila! It was then indeed time for lunch, amongst much discussion of the finer points of making a red wine risotto. Some were creamier, some were redder and some were more al dente but we were all the master chefs of our very own risotto.
And not a hint of sploodge in sight. |
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Historic Record for Italian Wine |
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 For the first time ever, the Italian wine exports to the US reached one billion dollars in value in 2006.
In 1975 Italy surpassed France for the first time as major US importer in quantity, however it had never reached the record value attained last year.
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Super Bowl XLI: Miller Time? Or Maybe it's Merlot Time |
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 Wine is not the traditional beverage that comes to mind when watching the Super Bowl. Custom has it that beer rules the roost, along with sloppy snacks loaded with salt, spices and hot sauce.
Most game day foods work surprisingly well with wine. For a football party, this is not the time to dust off that bottle of vintage Bordeaux or cult California Cab -- it's informal food, and inexpensive wines work very well. Just keep in mind that the bolder (and spicier) the food, the greater the challenge when it comes to your wine pairing. For our beer picks, the rule of thumb is the hotter and spicier the food, the darker the beer.
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Mailed to 5,645 Subscribers |
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WineCountry.IT
Columns
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Italian Native Vines
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Along with olives, viticulture is among the most ancient and widespread agricultural activities in Liguria. In this region the olive groves and the vineyards thrive on the the ridges overlooking the Mediterranean, as well as in the interior, in particular on the terraced hillsides that characterize the the regional viticulture. They are the legacy of tireless efforts by generations of farmers.
- Read More...
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This month we present the Basilico Genovese DOP (Basil from Genoa) from Liguria, and the Cappero di Pantelleria IGP (Capers from Pantelleria Island) from Sicily.
- Read More...
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Our virtual culinary journey restarts from Sicily.
region has been a crossroad of different cultures, and its cuisine has been influenced by cultures such as the Arabic and Greco-Roman.
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WineCountry.IT Selections
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It has been over a year since I last wrote a piece for this infrequent column. Mostly it is because life is very busy and since this is a labor of love, you can believe that the destinations featured in this space are truly outstanding.
A couple of weeks ago I had a business meeting in the city (San Francisco) on Friday afternoon, so my wife jumped at the chance, despite her cold, to go to the only Sardinian restaurant in town, La Ciccia, which we love almost as much as we l
- Read More...
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Monte-Carlo Wine Festival |
Monte-Carlo Wine Festival
9, 10, and 11 November 2007
The first Wine Festival organized in the small Mediterranean state of Monaco offers producers the opportunity to showcase their best wines in an exclusive, one-of-a-kind environment.
For buyers, journalists and wine lovers alike, it will be the place to be for tasting the best of premium producers. |
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From Friday 16, to Sunday 18, March 2007, the 
