Winemakers to Watch pay tribute to traditional methods

Letizia Pauletto and Enrico Bertoz, Arbe Garbe Wines

Winemakers to Watch pay tribute to traditional methods

Jon Bonné, Chronicle wine editor - January 15, 2012

In many cases, our Winemakers to Watch for 2012 deserve attention for what they don't do. It comes down to a strong streak of traditionalism, a willingness to innovate by eschewing intrusive winemaking and, instead, working smarter.

That includes the use of old-fashioned wooden fermenters and whole Pinot Noir clusters on the Sonoma coast. It means making Chardonnay by barely touching the barrels, and fermenting with indigenous yeast to highlight Lodi's old-vine Zinfandel. It means minimizing additions in the cellar, and innovating the historical practice of blending white wines.

In doing so, our five choices highlight the best of what California offers.
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Winemakers: Enrico Bertoz, Letizia Pauletto

For two people in love with America, Letizia Pauletto and Enrico Bertoz began their wine lives somewhat farther afield: the vineyards of Silvio Jermann, in Italy's northern Friuli region, where they were picking grapes to earn cash while attending the university.

They were already high school sweethearts, living just eight minutes apart in two villages north of Trieste. Bertoz's family had an unusual tie to wine: His father was the local tire dealer, an important man to every vintner with a tractor.

The tedium of harvest was not a kind initiation.

"We swore at the time that we were never going to do that again," Pauletto says.

Bertoz's family also had another tie, to the Nonino family, one of Italy's top grappa makers, who taught him about distillation. And he was familiar with the United States; his aunt lived in Woodhaven, N.Y.

So in 1998, at 24, Bertoz packed his bags for Los Angeles. The Noninos connected him to restaurateur Piero Selvaggio, and Bertoz began working in the wine cellar at Valentino, Selvaggio's restaurant. Pauletto followed a month later, to work as an interpreter and translator.

Valentino's cellar was full of rarities, like an 1892 Brunello from Biondi Santi, but Bertoz was drawn to a flourishy bottle sealed in wax: a 1994 Queen of Spades, the Syrah-based debut from Manfred Krankl's Sine Qua Non. Selvaggio let the young man taste it.

"That's when I think I had an epiphany of American viticulture," Bertoz says. "It was overdone, but I'd never had anything like it before."

Soon he was regularly visiting Sine Qua Non in Ventura, where he worked two harvests and paid close attention to Krankl's unconventional but fastidious winemaking.

Enrico and Letizia are natives of the Friuli region (Friùl)

The couple got married and in 2005 moved to Napa Valley, where Bertoz worked harvest at Joseph Phelps. Eventually he was hired as assistant winemaker at Girard, and then at Flora Springs.

But their Friulian roots still called. Recalling his work with Krankl, Bertoz found some Viognier in Russian River Valley and hauled it back to Napa in a decrepit 1972 El Camino. Then he discovered grapes familiar from their childhoods, Pinot Bianco and Malvasia, in Sonoma's fastidiously farmed Saralee's Vineyard. In 2007, he called owner Saralee Kunde and secured enough for a first vintage. Arbe Garbe - it means "bad weeds" in Friulian dialect - was born.

In Friuli, white wine is a way of life - as is blending, in part to fend off the challenges of ripeness in a cold climate. "The whole project was to make a wine that reminded us of Friuli," Pauletto says. "It would have been hard with a Napa Chardonnay."

Ultimately Viognier was replaced by Pinot Grigio and the Friulian grape Ribolla Gialla. But Arbe Garbe primarily showcases Bertoz's talents as a white-wine innovator. That includes his use of concrete fermentation vessels to enhance texture; soaking Pinot Grigio on its skins (a frequent technique in Friuli); and partially dehydrating Malvasia in a cold room to concentrate flavor (a trick learned from Krankl).

Now the couple live in a tiny pink farmhouse amid a Rutherford vineyard, where Pauletto runs the business and looks after their 5-year-old son. They have found their perfect hybrid of Friulian tradition and California bounty.

"The beauty of being able to do all of what we do here," Bertoz says, "to bring it all together, is priceless."


Ages: Both are 37

Wines with dinner: 2010 Abbazia di Novacella Alto Adige Kerner

Quotes: "Neutral barrels don't lie, so it was a matter of seeing what the fruit would say." (Bertoz) "They put it next to the Santa Margherita." (Pauletto, on selling a Pinot Grigio-based wine to restaurants)
From the notebook

2010 Arbe Garbe Russian River Valley White ($28, 14.3% alcohol): Mostly from Pinot Grigio and Malvasia, with some Ribolla Gialla. A few more months in the bottle have added apricot-like flesh to match the deep saline and snap-pea freshness. Complex and almost electric in intensity.

Arbe Garbe Wines website

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Renaissance City: Part II

Best New Hotspots in Florence, Italy

From September 2011 By Maria Shollenbarger - 'Travel & Leasure' - September 2011 [Appeared as 'Renaissance City' in T+L Magazine]

Bonan also designed J. K. Place Firenze, the boutique hotel on the Piazza di Santa Maria Novella that, after eight years, continues to evolve. Its cocreator, Ori Kafri, is a sharp 34-year-old entrepreneur with his hands in, among other things, publishing and art galleries. J. K.’s well-connected general manager, Claudio Meli, launched Bravo Concierge service in 2007 so he could finesse clients’ time in Italy beyond their J. K. Place stay. On any given evening one might find a small cross-section of the city’s art, fashion, media, and business worlds commingling in the hotel’s living room and restaurant; on Sundays at lunchtime, the terrace proliferates with friends and families. With its alchemy of ease and style, exclusivity and openness, the hotel has become a Florence institution—one that’s spreading, with an outpost in Capri, a planned opening in Rome in late 2012, and aspirations to launch projects outside of Italy in London, New York City, and Tel Aviv (birthplace of Kafri’s mother and father).

IO Osteria Personale, on the Borgo San Frediano, by contrast, opened just months ago, but it already has the feel of an institution in the making. Owner Matteo Fantini studied and practiced veterinary medicine, but dreamed for years of starting a restaurant. So last December, enlisting 23-year-old chef Nicolò Baretti, he did just that. IO organizes its menu by primary ingredient (meat, fish, vegetables) rather than by course. Fantini, who chats happily with diners for half an hour at a time, draws whimsical art naïf deconstructions of the day’s dishes onto chalkboards above the sparsely elegant table settings. The facile presentation is in winking contrast to the sophistication of the food: whole pigeon embellished with smoked pig’s cheek; delicate warm seafood salad served with minced panzanella and asparagus gelato.

About a mile down the river in San Niccolò there’s a sliver of storefront marked ZEB, outside of which a line forms most days around noon. Inside, Giuseppina and Alberto Navari, mother and son, prepare dishes of simple rustic perfection the way they’ve probably been prepared for a hundred years. It’s the space itself—white, conspicuously designed, equal parts chic diner and fancy urban food emporium—that startles, given that this food is more often paired with scuffed-wood shelving, dusty Chianti flasks, and rickety tables. Instead, customers perch on chrome-and-kidskin stools and point to what they want behind the glass-and-steel counter; and while Alberto pours a nice something from Bolgheri or Montecucco, Giuseppina, with a lambent smile like a benediction, serves up polpettine, lampredotto, and carciofi.

Not that there’s no room in this evolution for tradition of the most established, proto-Florentine sort. Some of the city’s oldest winemaking families—the Frescobaldis and Antinoris, Mazzeis and Ricasolis, Corsinis and Incisa della Rocchettas—collaborated with IMG Artists last year to launch Divino Tuscany, an ultraexclusive annual wine festival. The four-day event saw guests from 17 countries sample prized vintages from 50 of the region’s top producers. There were private concerts, tours, and lavish dinners at family palaces around the city. The weekend culminated in a party hosted by Sting and Trudie Styler at Il Palagio, their estate in Figline Valdarno, 45 minutes outside the city—a hot ticket also attended (and, in a few amusing cases, crashed) by a nice representation of Florentine society.

But if you were to canvass the locals at any of these settings as to the most conspicuously successful manifestation of a putative New Florence, many would point you in the direction of the Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi. Created in 2006, the FPS has in five years hosted a clutch of exhibitions that have earned international praise; last fall’s Bronzino retrospective—the most comprehensive to date of the Mannerist painter’s work—garnered unprecedented attendance and requests from major American and European museums to host it. Here, in the courtyard café of the imposing 15th-century Strozzi family palace that houses the foundation, you’re likely to find James Bradburne, the FSP’s tall, dandy, fiftysomething Anglo-Canadian director, holding an impromptu meeting in a fluent Italian-English mix or simply observing the ebb and flow of visitors though the massive twinned double doors. “This place used to be closed to the public when there wasn’t an exhibition on; there were no plants, no café, no shop,” Bradburne notes. “Now it’s open all the time, and it’s a living building. It gets 25,000 visitors a week. And we aren’t even targeting tourists.”

The FPS is an Italian experiment in institutional management. Its board of directors represents both the public and private sectors; among them are Florence’s museums superintendent Cristina Acidini and hotelier Rocco Forte. “We have a lot more freedom,” Bradburne says. “The board tends to say ‘yes’ rather than ‘no.’ There’s a level of transparency and immediacy that’s”—he smiles—“not typically Italian.” He says he was given two clear mandates. “One: Bring international-caliber exhibitions to Florence. As it happens, we don’t bring them here, we produce them here. Two: Give the palazzo back to the Florentines.”

“It needed someone as bright as James to make it happen,” says Leonardo Ferragamo one morning at Ferragamo headquarters, in the Palazzo Spini-Feroni. Besides holding various executive positions within his family’s company and chairing Lungarno Hotel, Ferragamo is president of the Associazione Partners Palazzo Strozzi, one of the FPS’s founding entities—and, as such, one of Bradburne’s bosses. “This started five years ago because of our frustration with Florence not doing its best in terms of managing its assets,” he said. “It piqued the pride of certain among us, enough so we finally acted.”

The FPS is also home to the Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina. To run this gallery, Bradburne enlisted Franziska Nori, a former director of Frankfurt’s Museum for Applied Art, who has made CCCS a showcase for topically provocative, intelligent exhibitions that have moved contemporary art from relative obscurity to near the forefront of Florence’s public cultural offerings—significant for a city in a constant struggle to escape from under the shadow of the Renaissance it spawned. “The goal [of FPS] is to be a contemporary institution in a Renaissance city,” Bradburne says. “One doesn’t negate the other. The backdrop is the inspiration.”

It remains a delightfully inescapable backdrop. Across the river, below the brushstroke cypresses surrounding San Miniato, is the 14th-century San Niccolò tower, the southeastern entry to Florence during its golden age. On July 1, after a 40-year closure and a $400,000 restoration effort, it was reopened to the public as part of Mayor Renzi’s improvements program. Stairs lead to its 148-foot summit, where one can gaze over the entire city. The view isn’t terribly dissimilar to the one enjoyed from nearby Piazzale Michelangelo. All the monuments, all the familiar landmarks are spread out below—bathed in the same pellucid sunshine, cradled in the same gentle hills. It’s still the Florence we all know and love, but amazing how a small change of perspective can make it seem just a bit different, somehow new.

Guide to Florence

Stay

Great Value Casa Howard Florence Guest House 18 Via della Scala; 39-06/6992-4555; casahoward.com; doubles from $180.
Il Salviatino 21 Via del Salviatino, Fiesole; 39-055/904-1111; salviatino.com; doubles from $760.
J. K. Place Firenze 7 Piazza di Santa Maria Novella; 39-055/264-5181; jkplace.com; doubles from $490.
Palazzo Vecchietti 4 Via degli Strozzi; 39-055/230-2802, palazzovecchietti.com; doubles from $440.
St. Regis Florence 1 Piazza d’Ognissanti; 877/787-3447 or 39-055/27161; stregisflorence.com; doubles from $1,386.
Villa San Michele This timelessly elegant Fiesole stalwart is more than keeping up with the competition. 4 Via Doccia, Fiesole; 39-055/567-8200; villasanmichele.com; doubles from $1,200.

Eat

Il Santo Bevitore An elevated interpretation of the trattoria, this new two-room restaurant is always packed. 64/66R Via di Santo Spirito; 39-055/211-264; dinner for two $90.
’ino There’s no better place to pop in for an expertly executed panino and a glass of red from a boutique producer. 3R Via dei Georgofili; 39-055/219-208; lunch for two $18.
IO Osteria Personale 167R Borgo San Frediano; 39-055/933-1341; dinner for two $112.
Ora d’Aria On a tiny lane in the shadow of the Uffizi, chef Marco Stabile gathers traditional ingredients and reimagines them in wildly creative ways. 11R Via dei Georgofili; 39-055/200-1699; dinner for two $168.
Zeb 2R Via San Miniato; 39-055/234-2864; lunch for two $53.

Shop

Flair The best spot for Italian design inspiration. 6R Piazza Carlo Goldoni, 39-055/267-0154.
Luisa Via Roma A Florence classic that’s been recently renovated, with Felice Limosani as creative consultant. 19/21R Via Roma; 39-055/906-4116.

See and Do

Cascine Gardens Via delle Cascine; no phone.
Divino Tuscany For more information on next year’s event, to be held in May, visit divinotuscany.com.
Fondazione Palazzo Strozzi/Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina Piazza degli Strozzi; 39-055/277-6461.
Le Murate Piazza della Madonna della Neve; lemurate.comune.fi.it.
San Niccolò Tower Piazza Giuseppe Poggi.

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Renaissance City: Part 1

Best New Hotspots in Florence, Italy

From September 2011 By Maria Shollenbarger - 'Travel and Leasure' - September 2011 [Appeared as 'Renaissance City' in T+L Magazine]

Some 500 years after the Medici left their mark here, a new generation of tastemakers and power brokers is breathing fresh life into Florence, Italy’s old soul. T+L reports on the welcome dose of contemporary culture that’s reinvigorating this Tuscan city.

We may as well start by calling this what it is: a sort of love letter. It’s of course not the first penned to Florence, famously one of the world’s more love-letter-inspiring cities. (For rather more accomplished paeans, please see Forster, Stendhal, Lawrence, Shelley. And you might also check D, for Dante.) Florence’s CV is virtually unmatched among destinations: it is the birthplace of modern poetry and merchant banking, the locus of a robust share of the most important architectural and artistic monuments of postmedieval times. In more recent ones, it has been a temporary home to an equally robust share of American college students, who come to immerse themselves in, and perhaps be irrevocably changed by, Italy’s cultural endowments and profligate, heart-constricting beauty. I was one of them; maybe you were, too. But whether you first see it at 18 or at 68, Florence tends to imprint itself on you in a series of visual mnemonics: the sedate, rosy curve of the Duomo; the sylvan fairness of Botticelli’s Primavera; the cypresses like black-ink brushstrokes on the hills near San Miniato—single components which, to paraphrase Walt Whitman (who, sadly for him, never laid eyes on this city), contain numinous multitudes.

Definitely lovable. But is it livable? Or, more precisely: living? Alas, that is a more complex discourse. Milan is virtually defined by its relentlessly contemporary fashion industry. Rome is kept current by maintaining, after two-odd millennia, its status as a political seat. Even gloriously moribund Venice has conspired to focus the attention of the 21st century’s great and good on itself for a few months each year, with twinned Biennales of art and architecture and a film festival.

But with mass tourism generally doing more damage than service to both its resources and reputation, and citizens feeling disenfranchised by a city they perceive to be managed more for visitors’ benefit than their own, Florence has run the risk of becoming a hostage of its own patrimony—a hermetically sealed monument to, well, its many monuments. Città d’arte, yes—and not much else.

Change is in the air here, though. After reaching a collective sense of essere stufi (being fed up), citizens from across the spectrum are waking up to the potential of a Florence that’s more than simply the sum of its beautiful parts. They come from private and public sectors: civil servants, businesspeople, and members of the founding families, along with artists, hoteliers, and curators. All have a stake in moving the city forward along social, civic, commercial, and cultural lines, with an aim of helping Florence recapture the title of contemporary hub, some six centuries after first holding it.

Foremost among these agents of change is Matteo Renzi, Florence’s charismatic 36-year-old mayor, who took office in 2009. It’s hard to think of another European politician who enjoys such uniform approval across such a broad demographic and partisan swath. (The enthusiasm with which he’s name-checked at both working-class bars around Piazza Savonarola and dinner tables presided over by scions with 900-year-old titles recalls the fairy-dusted cachet Obama possessed in his “Yes We Can” days.) “We’ve been a bit asleep to our own potential,” Renzi says when we meet one afternoon in late April in his magnificently frescoed office in the Palazzo Vecchio. “And also to one important imperative: you can’t organize a city like a museum. We have to create every opportunity for citizens to be engaged with and proud of [Florence,]. As for the tourists, you have to give them more, and better, reasons to come back.”

Renzi’s wide-ranging plan for improvements reflects his commitment to both groups. To wit: Via Tornabuoni and the Santo Spirito and Pitti piazzas became pedestrian zones in June, creating veins of calm in some of the city’s most congested sections. Millions of euros are being allocated to the rejuvenation of the Arno riverbanks and, next year, to the Cascine gardens at the western edge of the city. Museum programs and hours are being revised, with some institutions granting free admission on select days to residents and most remaining open until 11 p.m. once a month. This commenced last spring at the Palazzo Vecchio, with the nighttime circumnavigation of its walls, known as the camminamento di ronda, an instant hit (one that, Renzi notes, earned the city almost $17,000 in the three days prior to our meeting alone). And after an almost 20-year delay, the Firenze Card launched in March; it costs $70, is valid for three days, and covers 33 of the city’s most important museums. (By the end of this month, Gucci will add another to the city’s roster when it inaugurates a museum celebrating the history of its illustrious brand, in the Piazza della Signoria.)

Then there is Le Murate, a 15th-century former monastery on the Via Ghibellina, which through public grants has reopened as an arts space comprising galleries, a café, and administrative offices. The brainchild of town alderman for culture Giuliano da Empoli, Le Murate’s public areas go by the acronym SUC, for Spazi Urbani Contemporanei; the idea is for it to serve as a social nexus for emerging artists and those who are interested in them—Italian and international, local and tourist alike.

Away from the Palazzo Vecchio and the official ministrations of civil servants, hoteliers and restaurateurs have tapped into a sense of the city’s elevated potential. Though most have strictly local roots, one notable opening by an American hotel group constitutes a major vote of confidence. The St. Regis Florence made its debut in May on the site of the old Grand Hotel Firenze, in the Piazza d’Ognissanti. Some of its 100 rooms and suites fly (in perfectly tasteful fashion) the Medici-inspired flag of opulent silks and velvets in royal-ecclesiastical shades; others are rendered in a gorgeous muted palette. St. Regis is a hotel brand on a roll, and much strategy goes into the selection of its locations. Its arrival here, now, is a direct result of what St. Regis brass is actually calling Florence’s “second Renaissance.”

At Il Salviatino, just up the hill toward Fiesole, the traditional hospitality model is turned neatly on its head by a staff of Service Ambassadors—driver, butler, waiter, guide, and concierge rolled into a single, nattily-dressed individual. They’ve been met with mixed reviews, as has the hotel’s erratic décor: at times admirably tasteful (as in the beautiful double-height, wood-paneled library), at others less so (hanging old-master reproductions from metal chains, parallel to the ceiling in the restaurant, defies explanation). Thank goodness the terrace, with its white sofas and views of the villa’s gardens, is a delight.

Back in town, just off the Piazza della Repubblica, is a discreet jewel, Palazzo Vecchietti: more residence than hotel, tailor-made for the creative classes seeking low-key live-work space and privacy. There’s no lounge or bar, but all rooms have stocked kitchens and working and sitting areas; and all are prettily modern—the handiwork of local designer Michele Bonan, whose imprimatur of artfully contained flamboyance is instantly recognizable.

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Hidden Havens: Valle Acquasanta

 

[This article is borrowed from the Uncommon travel in authentic Italy: Exploring Le Marche, Italy's unsung gem blog]

Hidden Havens: Valle Acquasanta (see link for more images)

Duncan Campbell - August 2, 2010

With sharp ridges, steep hills, and repetitive undulations being a feature of this area, finding a flat trail is unusual. But that's essentially what the path to the Acquasanta waterfalls and gorge is, with just a few rises and falls at either end of it. Better still, in these hot days of summer, the majority of it is through the cool of the forest, with tall beeches providing shade and respite from the beating sun.

Wildflowers appear in colourful clusters, the trees range heavenward in their impressive strength and grandeur, and - in the latter half of the walk - waterfalls roll down rock walls and scree banks, offering refreshment and cooling stations, not to mention the beauty spell that cascades seem to cast on our human sensibilities.

The main destination for most walkers are the waterfalls towards the end of the trail, and they're well worth the effort - streams fall down the steep hills in veils in one spot, and gush down in a singular channel in another. But beyond them lies the gorge itself, which - due to its narrowness and height - has been used in the past as a natural cantina, the sun barely (if ever) reaching in to warm its stones. You can reach the gorge through a tunnel cut into the rock, and then - if you're drawn on - clamber up the river's rocky bed into the narrowing gorge, which twists and turns to its sheer-sloped beginnings. You'll need shoes for wading, and a strong constitution - the water is very, very cold.

With all this wonderful water around, it's no wonder that an aqueduct has been built here, and for much of the way you'll follow its course, the raised concrete blocks and flagstones making for easy walking. Every now and then you can see into its channel, the cool, clear water running invitingly below, happily wending its way down to the town of Bolognola. Its quite an engineering feat, cutting through sheer rock walls in places, and disappearing under steep forested slopes in others. But it's had its impact on the landscape, particularly at its source and down in the valley below, and one wonders how it would be if left to its own (natural) devices. That said, it's a wonderful hike, and is good for the whole family, although at around 3-4 hours round trip, might be a bit long for the young ones.

Directions: Just behind the church in the main (middle) section of Bolognola, there's a brown signpost for the Cascata di Acquasanta - follow this road, keeping left and go through the small borgo to the end of the road, where there's a small parking lot. The trail is obvious just beyond the parking lot, heading down into the forest.

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