Angelo Gaja has done more to put Piedmont on the map than anyone. He is an ambassador that has promoted these wines and this region for decades. His single-vineyard Barbarescos are extremely hard to find and command prices of over $300.

Gaja bought and renovated the Castello di Barbaresco. It is decorated with art commisioned from countries where the Gaja wines are most popular.

Alessandra Forlani, Gaja import director, showed us around the winery, which is joined to the Barbaresco castle, an incredible building which they have restored into an incredible wine tasting facility and art gallery.  Halfway through the tour, she took me aside and said that Angelo Gaja remembered me from last time, and would join us for the tasting. Turns out that Angelo is an avid cyclist, and rides some of the toughest hills in Piedmont!

Everyone was blown away by our tasting with Gaya. I put him up there with Piero Antinori and the late Robert Mondavi as someone with so much charisma that people who have contact with him are buzzing for days afterwards.

The Gaja operation is ultra-modern. Between the computerized winemaking facility, the use of all new barrique, and the blending of Barbera in the single vineyard Barbarescos (one of the reason Gaja gave back his DOCG status for these wines, although the official line is that he didn’t want them to show up his Barbaresco). We drank 2004 Sori Tildin, Barbaresco, and Sperss. The wines were lovely, and but there was something strange … with the dark extracted fruit and toasty oak finishes they reminded me more of high-end California cabernet than the lighter, elegant characteristics associated with Nebbiolo-based wines. No wonder Wine Advocate gave them 96 and 97 points … the WA loves toasty, extracted wine!

After a quick lunch we headed to Produttori di Barbaresco, just one block away from Gaja in the tiny town of Barbaresco. Aldo Vacca, the director of this cooperative, greeted us and announced that he first had to weigh in some grapes being dropped off by a farmer.

Maru kicked the farmer out of his tractor and jumped in!

The farmer holding Maru's purse while she has her picture taken

Produttori is a very traditional facility. Wine is fermented in cement tanks and aged in large barrels that are reused many times over (no new oak barrique here!) As my friend Jeremy Parzen would say, these wines are about expression of fruit. Or another way to put it: there are three G’s of winemaking: 1. the Grape, 2. the Ground and 3. the Guy [or Gal]. Although every producer gives lip service to prioritizing the first two, Produttori is one that actually does. 

Aldo showing us the cement fermentation tanks. No stainless steel here!

We drank the 2004 Nebbiolo and Barbaresco as well as some of the single vineyard selections (Rabaja and Pora). The Rabaja had a beautifully perfumed nose and flavors of deep cherry and licorice. It is a rich wine but it still reflects Barbaresco elegance. Even the lower end wines were lovely, especially in this great vintage. Produttori wines have some of the best Quality-to-Price (QPR) ratios in the world. Not that I have a lot of respect for the Wine Advocate, but just to illustrate, they gave the Rabaja 95 points, and the other single vineyard bottlings (priced $40-$50), 92-94 points. Compared to Gaja Sori Tilden at $300 a bottle, I know which I’d choose!

This is all a testament to Aldo Vacca, who has been running the facility for over 30 years. There are wine cooperatives all over Europe, but this is arguably the best. The farmers who participate are lucky to have Aldo at the helm, and those of us that drink Produttori are lucky to be able to drink his readily-available reasonably- priced wines.

Next Post: Gattinar and Ghemme

My good friend Maru Davilla decided to join the trip just one week before we left. This is a typical view … it was like this the entire week!

I looked into several bike tour outfitters and settled on Dreamtrips, a small company out of Acqui Terme. Their website leaves a little to be desired, but they are experts in this region, and very flexible about customizing a trip to a client’s needs. There are many “gotchas” that can happen with local bike outfitters, and I’ve run into them all:

• overused or cheap bicyles in need of a tune-up (especially at the end of the season)
• absolutely no personal service on the trip (many just have taxis move the baggage from hotel to hotel)
• poorly translated route sheets full of mistakes (directions must constantly be updated as the Europeans are always reconstructing and redirecting their roads.) 

Lorenzo and Richard singing at the farmhouse. Man, the Italians LOVE karaoke!

By going self-guided, we paid about half as much as a comparable trip with one of the large U.S. companies and guides.  Dreamtrips did a fabulous job: the routes were beautiful and avoided the traffic found on the busier roads. Lorenzo, the owner-manager, met up with us several times on the trip. One night he drove us to the vineyard-farmhouse of a friend where we had a fabulous meal and drank their wines, which were outstanding. We felt guilty paying only 30 euro a person after such a bacchanalian feast!

If you are considering going with a local outfitter, please do your homework! My website www.BikeTourReview.com can be of help.

There was about 2,000 meters of climbing each day, but the fabulous views and the fun long downhills made it all worth it.

Riding through Alba, where they have the white truffle festival every year

The views in Piemonte are even more beautiful than Tuscany. Each hillside is covered in vineyards growing Barbera, Dolcetto and Nebbiolo, the three main grapes of the region.

Typical lunch stop along  the way. Richard and Anne in the back, Amy Wallen on the left. Her best-selling novel Moonpies and Movie Stars is a very fun romp about a roadtrip from Texas to Hollywoood. Amy’s retelling of the events of each day were hilarious (let’s just say she has a very active imagination

Amy’s partner, Eber Lambert, after a major wipeout on the second day. He was a trooper and still rode strong, never passing up a castle (even if it was a major ride uphill). He is Adam Lambert’s father, and was probably happy to have an entire week where no one talked about his son’s stint on American Idol.

Anne Regier and Robert Takacs are docs from Kansas City. The Annes have known each other since high school, and the two couples have biked through many regions together.

Next post: Winery visits in Barolo and Barbaresco

For anyone that is not familiar with the history, this is the competition in 1976 where ten top French wines were put up in a blind tasting against ten of California’s best. The judges, all French, included luminaries in the wine industry. To everyone’s shock, the California wines came out on top, Chateau Montelena won for the whites, and Stag’s Leap for the red.

Bottle Shock, the movie based on this historical wine event, was chosen for the Sundance Film Festival last year, and will be out on DVD in February.  As a fundraiser for the Museum of Photographic Arts, we organized a restaging of the Judgment with updated vintages of the wines from the original tasting. There were 50 attendees and we began the evening by … screening a clip and having the director talk about the movie. People loved that we served truffled popcorn and champagne in the museum’s theatre! Then, we moved into the art gallery for the actual tasting.

Here’s what we drank. Whites: Grgich Carneros Chardonnay, Montelena Chardonnay, Blain Gagnard Batard Montrachet, Joseph Drouhin Clos de Mouches. Reds: Mouton Rothschild, Leoville Las Cases, Lynch Bages, Heitz Martha’s Vineyard, Stag’s Leap Cask 23, Ridge Monte Bello

To see Spurrier’s original lineup check out: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judgment_of_Paris_(wine)

Just like the original, we staged this single-blind. While we tasted, and voted for our favorites, Maria Hunt, our mistress of ceremonies, did a great job giving us background information about the wines and the Paris tasting. Jeffrey Strauss at Pamplemousse provided dishes that paired wonderfully with the wines. When we tallied up the votes, the results were surprising. For the whites, the Grgich won by a landslide with the Montelena coming in last. 

Wine Geek Factoid: Mike Grgich made the ‘73 Montelena that won the Paris tasting. Mike is a charming guy, and at 85-years old he is still running the show at Grgich Hills Winery, as well as being a shameless flirt. There has been a lot of grumbling in the wine geek community that the movie doesn’t even mention Mike.

For the reds, just like in the original tasting, the Stag’s Leap beat out the great Bordeaux.

Anyway, a fun time was had by all, and I suggest you try this at home. First read the Judgment of Paris by George Taber so you are armed with the facts. Then buy updated vintages of the wines, rent the DVD, invite friends, show the film, drink, vote and tally. If you are interested in doing this as a fundraiser, contact me and I can help you source some bottles. In talking to others who have done this, I was amazed at how often Stag’s Leap wins in these restagings. Cheers!

So there I was, my first night in Rome, mentioning this to my friend James Barron, an ex-pat art-dealer who has lived there from years, and he replied “Actually there’s a new book about it, a collaboration between a Rabbi and a Vatican tour guide. It made the NY Times best-seller list.” That night I googled it and found, The Secrets of The Sistine Chapel: Michelangelo’s Forbidden Messages in the Heart of the Vatican, by Roy Derliner and Rabbi Benjamin Blech. The book argues that Michelangelo, unhappy with the Church and the Pope that commissioned him, drew heavily on Jewish culture and the doctrine of Kabbalah in designing the Sistine Chapel.

So my first point of biz in Rome …

was setting up a tour with Roy Dorliner’s company, Rome for Jews. This wasn’t your Daddy’s Vatican Tour. Although some of their interpretations are over-reaching, the majority of their arguments are sound. Some take-aways:

• Pope Julius II, who commissioned the ceiling, wanted Michelangelo to paint scenes depicting the 12 apostles. Michelangelo railroaded through his entirely different design by taking advantage of the fact that the “Warrior Pope” was off on one of his many empire-building campaigns.
  
  
• When Michelangelo was a teenager, he was taught by the greatest minds of Florence as a member of Lorenzo de Medici’s court. No news there. What’s news to me is that one of his main teachers was Pico della Mirandola, an expert on Judaic texts who had one of the largest Kabbalah collections in the world.
  
• Check out the Tree of Knowledge in the garden of Eden (pictured above). Not the Christian version apple tree, but a fig tree, as described in the Talmud (the source of the proverbial fig leaf). In addition, the serpent has a human face, following the Jewish interpretation. (BTW, is it just me, or does this picture make it seem that Michelangelo never saw an actual pair of breasts, female-style? We know the guy saw a disected body or two, but if you think Eve’s mammories look wierd, check out the puppies on Night, in the Medici tombs)
  
• The authors had a convincing enough argument that they were able to get Professor Enrico Bruschini, renowned expert on the Vatican Museums and the Official Art Historian of the American Embassy, to write the introduction to the book. One of the clues that put him over the edge was a figure wearing the cap of shame and circle on his sleeve that the Church imposed on Jews during that time. Michelangelo places him in the inner circle of the elect, as a blessed soul in Heaven, with an angel pointing it out.
  
  
• The piece of paper painted to the left of the prophet Jeremiah’s knee shows the Hebrew letters alef and ayin. As with many of Michelangelo’s hidden visual messages these are invisible to the naked eye 65 feet below, and can only be seen with binoculars. Michelangelo’s own face appears as that of Jeremiah — the tortured lamenter of the Old Testament.

Unfortunately, it’s impossible to ignore the authors’ desire to create a sensation akin to that of the “Da Vinci Code” (which A.O. Scott called “Dan Brown’s primer on how not to write an English sentence”). That part is pretty unappetizing. But anyone with a dog-eared copy of The Agony or Ecstasy in their bookcase knows that there was no love lost between Michelangelo and Pope Julius. And, although Michelangelo was not a participant in the Bonfire of the Vanities (Thank God!), he was a believer in many of Savonarola’s teachings, especially about the need of papal reform, and was unhappy with the Catholic Church under the Warrior Pope. It was not unlike him to place hidden messages in his art works. The Last Judgement is full of them.

For further exploration, there is a very good interview in The American and then there is the good Rabbi’s personal post. Bring a pound of salt for that one. But either way, this enlightening exploration gives the Sistine Chapel a whole new meaning to us non-Christians who love Renaissance art.

Cul de Sac – This has always been my favorite. Why? Walls lined with bottles, outdoor seating, always crowded, perfect location, great array of cheeses and meats, darn good food, too. Along a cute sidestreet close to the Piazza Navona. Piazza di Pasquino, 73

Il Simposio di Constantini – Classy place connected to a very good restaurant. I was sitting at the bar, enjoying a glass of Pinot Nero and the free hors d’oeuvres, and I met a group of ex-pat journalists, which led to two more glasses of wine, which led to …

… a party a couple of nights later, which led to more new friends, which led  … you just gotta love Rome. Close to Castello Angelo.  Piazza Cavour, 16

Enoteca Ferrara –  I can’t totally like this, as it’s the favorite of my ex-hubby, but with 24 wines by the glass and a cruvinet, there is always something interesting to try. Free antipasto served all night. The seating in the front room is kind of cramped in a weird layout and doesn’t lend to a good “da solo” experience, so bring a friend. In a student-y area of Trastevere. Via del Moro, 1/a

Trimani – Great food and atmosphere, and open for both lunch and dinner. Call for reservations, so you don’t get stuck sitting upstairs in Siberia which has next-to-no atmosphere (but good for large parties). Close to the train station. Via Cernaia 37B

313 Cavour One of the largest selections in Rome, and an extensive menu, too. Unlike some Roman wine bars (can you say “Trimani”?), the service is very friendly. But always call beforehand because they are often closed for no apparent reason. (No posted hours). On a traffic-heavy street close to the Coliseum. Via Cavour 313

Roscioli –Incredible cheese and salami case out in the front. Not a lot of food options, but the pasta is truly the best I have ever had in Rome. Great music, great service. Jewish Quarter. Via dei Giubbonari, 21

Il Goccetto – Old, old old school. Lots of Italian wine biz guys hang out here. Some of them look like they’ve been around since the days of Mussolini! The walls are lined with bottles, so go to it and find something great. Little rickety wood tables … place looks like it hasn’t been cleaned in 20 years. But good prices, and what a selection! Via dei Banchi Vecchi 14

Runners Up 

These ones didn’t make the list. If you are only in Rome for a couple of days, these won’t give you the full Roman wine bar experience, but if you are hanging out for awhile, there are still reasons to try these out. 

Enoteca Piccolo – small selection, but other than Cul de Sac and Il Simposio, the only other one with outdoor seating.

‘Gusto– Huge, modern interior. ‘Gusto is a pizzeria, restaurant, grocer AND wine bar. Nothing about this place feels Roman to me.

Casa Bleve – In a 15th Century building off of Piazza Navonna.  Very elegant, but very expensive.

Palatium – Specializing in the not-that-great-but-interesting wines of the area (Lazio). This is an excellent place for lunch as it serves very authentic Roman cuisine. Always hopping with locals. By the Spanish Steps.

Hint: At many places you can reserve a table! It’s such a drag to enter a fun, crowded bar and find out there are no available tables. But a little-known secret is that many of these places will take reservations. Numerous times we got dirty looks from people who had been waiting a long time but because we called ahead, we got seated right away.

I got a lot of grief from people that wanted to hear about biking, not drinking! Here goes, while I’m still in Veneto after-glow:

Biking in the Veneto is, along with the Basque coast of Spain, my favorite place for biking in Europe. Why? How’s this for a short list: 1) you ride along bike trails, not roads, so there is no traffic whatsoever, 2) the scenery changes every day as you ride one day through vineyards, the next along seaside resorts (Lake Garda and Lake Caldaro), and then along the river Adige with the dramatic mountains of the Dolomites on either side, 3) it can be easy riding if you stay along the river, or some of the toughest riding in Europe if you decide to be gnarly and ride up into the mountains. 4) Three, count them, three wine regions: Alto Adige (wonderful whites and Lagrein, Pinot Nero), Trentino (Bordeaux blends), and Amarone Country.  

And yes, in reply to those comments on the SL entry, we brought along plenty of Aveeno diaper cream. It really is the best kept secret among bike tourers. Nothing else works like Aveeno after a 75-mile day of riding!

Thanks to First Light Tours out of London. They did a great job outfitting our trip. Loved the bikes, the route sheets were easy to understand, and as we moved our base camp every two days, our bags would miraculously appear at each new hotel. We stayed in four-star lodging the whole way. All this, and for a third of the cost of a guided trip!

Amarone makes me think of this quote by Jerry Garcia. Many of my friends who love wine (especially the Burgheads) don’t love this wine, which is made of partially dried grapes in the Veneto region of Italy. Amarone is one of the richest wines in the world … and it’s fig-like, bittersweet nuttiness reminds some people of Port, which turns off those who like their wines more nuanced. But people who love it, love it with a mad passion.  

There are two schools of winemaking in the Veneto … There are the old-school producers who make a wine that tastes like the Amarones of old. Quintarelli and Bertani are the leaders in this realm. The new, modern-style producers make a wine that’s fruity, oaky, big and bouncy. That includes, Masi, Allegrini, Zenato, and Dal Forno. Our day was a nice hybrid of the two worlds, we started with Quintarelli (considered , along with Dal Forno, the “grand cru” of the region), then off to Bertani, and finally Allegrini.

Silviana Quintarelli greeted us outside her very modest facility. We walked through room after room of huge Slovanian oak barrels, where the wine is aged for years. Orson Welles and his lame “We sell no wine before its time”  (right … for Paul Masson???) could have learned a thing or two from Quintarelli!  For instance, they are JUST releasing the 2001 while most producers are releasing the 2004! We drank:

2000 Quintarelli Valpolicella, made in the Ripassa style. You may know this as “Baby Amarone”. The main thing about Ripassa is that it is much less expensive, but tastes like a lighter easier-to-drink Amarone. To do this, they ferment the grapes it with the lees of the Amarone grapes, and often they also throw some of the dried grapes into the mix, too. I would rather drink this, at 32 euro, than most Amarones on the market.

1998 Quintarelli Amarone.  My tasting note: “like the most delicious Fig Newton I’ve ever had”. This is very special wine. Several years a group of us did a pretty comprehensive tasting of Amarone. We had both the Dal Forno and the Quinterrelli (both wines are over $300 a bottle). Like red and blue states, the crowd was split down the middle. Half liked the syruppy, rich Dal Forno, while the other half of us preferred the figgy, old world nuances of the Quint.

1998 Quintarelli Alzero.  I really don’t understand this wine. Yes, it is delicious. But it is a Bordeaux blend aged in new oak barique. This flies in the face of traditional style winemaking! Maybe this is a statement by the Quintarelli that they don’t want to be labeled and put into a box.  Either way, this wine is just a bambino and will continue to get better, that’s for sure!

So after that, we went on to Bertani. As you can see from the picture below, this was NOT a modest facility!

Bertani, housed at Villa Novare,  is one of the oldest and best wine houses in the Veneto.

We spent the afternoon touring the facility and were lucky enough to see the grapes just starting the drying process as they had recently completed harvest. It takes 3-4 months to get them dried enough so they are ready for fermenting. Bertani is one of the few Amarone houses that still uses handmade mats. They had rooms and rooms of them, with huge industrial fans blowing to keep the moisture out. Really, it must have covered acres, and it takes hundreds of man-hours to hand-place the grape bunches on the mats.  Almost all of the other producers use bins which simply stack on top of each other.