n.d.p. in abruzzo: 50 years of emidio pepe

So much has been written about Abruzzese winemaker Emidio Pepe's majestic montepulciani and the ethereal delicacy of his equally ageless trebbiani that I despair of the possibility of saying anything new. The wines are landmarks for the region, towering above everything else like the gnarled Apennine peaks through which one passes on the long car ride from Rome Fiumicino to Torano Nuovo.

Still, it remains for me to thank the Pepe family for inviting me to the latter town last November for the estate's 50th anniversary celebrations.

Rather than exhaust a reader with tasting notes of the dozens of vintages we sampled, I thought I'd just relay my own experiences with the estate's wines, in the hopes that by doing so I'll communicate something about their unique place within the pantheons of Italian wine, Abruzzese wine, and, nowadays, natural wine.

mmmeh : mmmozza, 75003

It should be fairly clear to most first-worlders by now that an appreciation for proper D.O.P. mozzarella is not, in itself, a sign of any particular gastronomic cultivation. Liking real mozzarella just means a person is alive, has a pulse, etc. The various forms the cheese takes - from bufala to burrata to bocconcini and beyond - are all basically risk-free crowd-pleaser components, beloved by everyone, as long as the product itself is fresh.

This is not to say that the success of restaurants like Roman mozzarella bar chain Obikà, and its spiritual descendent, my old workplace, Los Angeles' more baroque and refined Osteria Mozza, was in any way preordained or obvious. (Obikà was a pioneer; Osteria Mozza is now a certified Michelin-starred masterpiece.) This is to say that Mmmozza, the tiny sandwich-shop-slash-Italian-épicerie that opened last year on rue de Bretagne, ought to have decent commercial potential, despite its cubbyhole size and mmmoronic unoriginal name. After all, the whole quartier is more or less defined by its repertoire of minor indulgences (c.f. the menu at nearby wine bar Glou; all the trinket-rich, middle-market fashion boutiques; the "Panier des Gourmands by Franprix" mini-market...)

Alas ! After a few random visits this past summer I'm unable to avoid the conclusion that the Mmmozza the establishment is just too damn Parisian, by which I mean that its opening hours, service, and inconsistent product evince precisely zero ambition, bordering at times on actual laziness. Which is a shame, because it's one of the few épiceries of its type to have cottoned onto the natural wine thing.

n.d.p. in london: 40 maltby street

I'm routinely very critical of the London wine scene on this blog, despite not knowing it half as well as I'd like to. In my ignorance, just about every wine establishment I encounter over there makes me cagey in some way, whether through bald commercialism (Terroirs) or preciousness (Duck Soup) or overwhelming fusty pomposity (Berry Bros. & Rudd) or total irrelevance (Oddbins). It perturbs me that hugely accredited wine writers writing for England's best newspapers speak of wine as though it were purchaseable exclusively in supermarkets. And the nation's draconian import taxes seem to ensure that even the more discriminating British consumers are merely choosing between entry-level and mid-range wines, just horribly distorted in price.

All this is why on my last trip to London I was stunned to discover a truly winning wine bar, easily better than anything in Paris, perhaps on earth: 40 Maltby Street. Located at the eponymous address in the Maltby Street sort-of-market, it's open just three days a week, takes no reservations, and alongside a soulful and inventive market menu it serves the boldly natural French, Italian, and Slovenian wines of the import company with which the restaurant shares ownership, Gergovie Wines. (That the import company is named after a mountain in Auvergne tells you something about its laudable priorities vis à vis non-marquee regions.)

loire road trip, pt. VII: quedubon homecoming, 75019

Tensions began to run high on that last day of our Loire adventure. Due to my ill-timed encounter with Bertrand Jousset and his excellent range of Loire whites, we'd left freezing subterranean natural wine tasting La Dive Bouteille somewhat later than intended, thereby imperiling our chances of making it to what was meant to be the architectural highlight of our trip, and the unqualified highlight of C's trip: the 16th-century Château de Chambord, near Blois.*

Happily, traffic was relatively light in the middle of nowhere in the Loire that day, so we made the trip in record time - only to be informed by the comically brainless ticket-taker that most of the entire château was off-limits for viewing that day, either on account of renovation or on account of a period film that was being shot on the ground floor. (Both were occurring without any kind of website forewarning.) C was justifiably livid. It was a little as if J and I had been informed, upon entry to La Dive earlier that day, that, due to some filming, no winemakers were in fact to be present, just the wines and the vicious chill.

I discovered that châteaux are actually horribly uncomfortable, at least in wintertime. The Château de Chambord in particular is so monstrously large that I presume the French government, after purchasing it in 1930, immediately thought, "Merde, how the hell are we going to fill this huge empty château?" On each (accessible) level there was a great central hall of nothing, at one corner of which sputtered a sad fire, around which were gathered whichever tourists or film crew happened to be on that floor. They might have been burning relics to keep warm, it would not have been unreasonable. Anyway we left the grand majestic Shiteau and I suspect the memory of the general desolation of the place was what made all three of us so game for a homecoming dinner, at J's suggestion, at 19ème natural wine bistro Quedubon, home of probably the warmest welcome in all of Paris.