Embarrassingly enough, from my recent trip to Rome with the Native Companion I brought back no Roman wine. Nothing from Lazio at all. My baggage limit and my overdraft limit obliged me to narrow my swag down to just three bottles, all purchased from Restaurant Roscioli on the Via dei Giubbonari. The one I was most curious about is the subject of this post: a 2005 Villa Diamante Greco di Tufo.
I have always been completely indifferent to Greco, that's why. This despite tales I've heard from various SF and NYC wine folk of their being blown away by it, in some form or other. An import co. rep who I've no reason to trust* used to insist that he'd tasting a ten year old Greco that had been like manna. On another occasion the wine writer David Lynch** visited the restaurant where I was wine director in LA, shortly after I took the post, and after glancing at my shiny revamped wine list he chose a Benito Ferrara Greco I loathed, a holdover from the previous list.
There was nothing wrong with the Ferrara Greco, actually, except that by the time it reached California it was usually the tail end of the vintage, and oxidation issues were becoming apparent. (In my experience Greco withstands oxidation about as well as a halved avocado.) Maybe D. Lynch was more accustomed to tasting it in NYC or Italy?*** I don't know. If he was disappointed by it, he didn't mention it; nor did I. But it was on the basis of these rumors and intimations of Greco being actually worthwhile that, years later, I brought home from Rome a bottle of cult biodynamic Campanian estate Villa Diamante's version, and cracked it open over a dinner of fritto misto with my friends J, E, C, and D, thinking: maybe this will explain everything.
