I have been keeping my hands off the keys because I'm a bundle of nerves. The publishing industry is imploding along with everything else. Being told that I would have to compete with unemployed three-star chefs for a gelato scooping gig, was staggering. And so are helpful friends, Hey Alice, read people's wine future--like tarot reading for winos! People will FLIP for it.
Then there's fretting about a talk I have to deliver in Spain next week. (more on that later). I'm so busy worrying it's difficult to stop pacing to be productive.
Then last night, eating some seared funghi out of anxiety, I was reading this months WS and, well, you know, getting worked up. Laube was saying--if you like GREEN and underipe flavors--you can pick up some bargains in the 1998 vintage.(sounds like my kind of Californian wine---except for those green flavors inside the pickle barrel. Kind of tough.)
Take a bit of mushroom. Wash it down with a 2005 Chateau Peybonhomme Les Tours (Cote de Blaye). And low and behold I see that a reader who works for the Malvira estate in Piemonte wrote to ask why their region was left off of a Spectator map of Piemonte?
When I first moved to Elizabeth Street, my little block between Prince and Spring was left off of the garbage map. I knew how they felt. Invisible.
On a drinking level I know the Malvira wines (or at least I did. But now that I look at their site, I see they're proud of their barriques) and used to like them. God knows if I do now. On a physical level I've been to the Roero region of Piemonte and have drunk lovely Nebbiolos. I've tasted wines made from 100 year old pinot nero vines. I have wanted to find people who work well there--because they have terroir and the nebbiolo she does well. And, let's see, anyone out there in WS land ever hear of Roero?
Unlike the writer who penned the letter, it's no real surprise the Spectator ignores them. After all twenty years ago the then editor of the magazine, in response to my query letter (trying to sell him a story) about eau de vie---asked me what Eau de Vie had to do with his reader.
Of course, eau de vie had plenty to do with the wine drinker and can DO a lot for a wine drinker--especially one who drinks all of that New World nectar they advocate in the magazine. But it reminded me how a no name little area that produces lovely wine gets nowhere without 1) a publicist 2) a powerful magazine or critic behind them.
So pity Roero. The poor Nebbiolo relative of Barolo.
It's tough to be ignored.
