Review by Alfonso Cevola.

There are stories that are meant to be true and stories that are intended to stir one’s enthusiasm. In reading Sergio Esposito’s highly engaging Passion on the Vine: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Family in the Heart of Italy, how can you not want to have your very own Neapolitan family? While some of the anecdotes may not be the gospel truth, the book follows in the tradition of the Neapolitan, who are known as the story tellers of Italy. An extra pinch of salt, one more clove of garlic, and what does it matter, when the tales transport you to an Italy that is so full of gusto?

Much more than a memoir or a wine book, this is a rambling jaunt through place and memory from Sergio Esposito, the founder of the Italian Wine Merchant in New York. It reads like an archetypical Southern Italian emigrant’s journey. Sergio, in his short time on earth, has harnessed the energy of a history that is bigger than one family. It is the story of countless Italian families who came from an almost impossible chasm in society to the promise of the New World.

Personality-driven books can sometimes sound like a laundry list of memories that seem important only to the raconteur. But Sergio’s stories take on a transformational tone, no doubt due to the power of the story, but also the skill of his co-author, Justine Van Der Leun. It takes a special artistry to draw his stories out so skillfully.

When he tells you about his mother and his childhood and his Naples, it reads like a story from 100 years ago, but is as fresh as the vegetables from the family garden. I have been absorbing this book for a month or so. It digested well; in fact, it seems that some of his memories and mine have merged.

I, too, wanted my mom to be this sensual life-force from whence all things spring. Sergio’s mother represents all our moms and sisters and aunts, in the sense that the story is bigger than one person. But the way he frames her life, it’s like reading from a book of ancient southern Italian history, which is strong with the cult of the female, from Aphrodite to Diana to the Blessed Virgin Mary. It oozes from the soil of Campania.

At one point, Sergio word-tangos with his fantasy of winemaker Enrico Scavino’s daughter, Enrica. I remember her as a young child. So to hear him (a married man) refer to her with a lusty gleam in his tone put me a little off balance. But then, I remembered we were in the middle of one man’s story of his life, his passion and maybe a little unrequited longing. The beauty of a woman can often bring a man to reveal furtive infatuations. Not a mortal sin, just a human tendency to fall for the ever-present beauty and charms of Italy and her creations.

A master sommelier once told me that he thought there were only about 100 jobs in the wine industry worth having. Sergio has one of them, no doubt, with his freedom to travel for extended periods of time, gathering wine and friends and stories. Storytellers like Sergio are vital, for they go out into the world and do what most of us cannot: have experiences worth telling stories about.

Sergio understands we are dealing with more than mere mortals in the chronicle of Italy and her wine.

After all, wine was created by the gods, so it would only be fitting that modern-day deities redefine the role of the fermented juice. And whether he focuses on an eccentric prince who makes an unlikely white wine near Rome or a cantankerous winemaker in Montalcino who is absolute with regards to his superiority in making Brunello, Sergio delivers the visceral side of an earthbound divinity.

Other modern-day giants, from Bartolo Mascarello to Josko Gravner, are unmasked and left to dazzle us with their light and their inspiration. In that mode, Sergio takes on the respectful mantle of reminiscence in the manner of a younger Burton Anderson or Victor Hazan.

Like another personality in the book, Lou Iacucci, a predecessor from the 1980’s whom he never met, Sergio has helped to place Italian wine among the great wines of the world. His Italian Wine Merchant store in NY is a rocking momentum machine, bringing many of the great Italian wines into the American experience.

And just as Sergio and his family stepped onto this soil with hopes and dreams, so now he ushers many wines and winemakers across the threshold of a dog-eat-dog world of commerce and competition into his cozy little kitchen with warm colors and familiars aromas and a comfort in being Italian and ready for whatever the world has in store.

This book reads like it was written by an older man in his 60s. So how is it this young man, barely 40, has produced such a tome? Beginners luck, or tales well spun from the tradition of his Naples? Either way, he is true to his roots, mixing favola with the tavola and laying out a great spread of Italian joy.

Sergio Esposito, Passion on the Vine: A Memoir of Food, Wine, and Family in the Heart of Italy, Broadway 2008, $16.47, (Hardcover).

Alfonso Cevola is the Italian Wine Director for the Glazer’s family of companies, based out of Dallas, Texas. Alfonso is a Certified Specialist in Wine and a Special Contributor to the Dallas Morning News, The Well Fed Network and The Sommelier Journal. His wine blog is On the Wine Trail in Italy, posting every Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

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Tuscany will always hold a special place in my heart. If not for the dreamlike quality of the rolling Chianti hills in Spring, then for the fact that it was the place I realized I was probably going to marry the woman who is now my wife, and the place she fell in love with wine (she was already in love with me, thankfully) for the first time.

The red wines of Tuscany can be as frustrating as they are fantastic. Just ask anyone who’s had their share of lousy, watery Chianti at neighborhood Italian restaurants in the United States. Like many, my earliest exposures to Tuscan wine left me with a very distinct taste in my mouth, and it wasn’t pleasant. Tuscan red wines, even the good ones, can be quite dry and tannic in their youth, and if poorly made can really make you feel like you’re drinking liquid leather.

Those who have the patience to age their Brunellos and Vinos Nobile de Montepulciano, or to search out the gems of Chianti, Bolgheri, Sant’Antimo, or Maremma are often rewarded with wines of remarkable character and soul. When they’re good, they’re really frikken good, as my wife, Ruth, would say.

I find the Chianti region to be one of the most difficult in which to ferret out excellent wines. I’m sure I’ll draw some ire for claiming so, but I believe that the region has an unusually high proportion of mediocre wine compared to good, even among the DOCG (Denominazione di Orogine Controllata e Garantita) designated producers. Which means that when I find a great producer of Chianti, I get very excited.

My latest discovery is a winery named La Brancaia.

Perhaps not surprisingly, Brancaia is a relatively new producer in the Chianti Classico region. More surprising might be the fact that the estates owners, including the current winemaker, are Swiss German, and never had any intention of becoming wine producers.

In 1981 Brigitte and Bruno Widmer were on vacation in Tuscany for the first time, and not unlike many before them, fell in love with the landscape, the culture, and of course, the food and wine. On the spot, they decided to purchase a property that they might use as a family vacation destination, five hours by highway from their home in Zurich. With the help of a local real estate agent, they managed to find a few ancient farmhouses for sale, and quickly fell for the charm of the most ancient and most dilapidated of them. The property was perfect in every respect except for one: it came with 21 acres of grapes that the Widmers had no idea what to do with. The Widmers were not about to let a few vines get in the way of their dream, so they bought the property anyway, and set about refurbishing the old farmhouse.

Apparently their neighbors were the ones that talked the Widmers into trying their hands at winemaking and gave them support for the first year or two it took to get their small family operation up and running. Whether it was the neighbor’s help, their own Swiss attention to detail, or the raw quality of the vineyards they happened to have bought, it’s not clear, but their 1983 vintage won first place in a major Chianti Classico blind tasting.

And like so many stories of this kind, that was the first day of the rest of their lives.

Over the next 7 or 8 years, the Widmers threw themselves into the creation of a small, high quality Chianti winery. They purchased another vineyard site, bringing their total vineyard acreage to about 75, and fought through the nearly prehistoric local bureaucracy to get a permit to build a modern winemaking facility. All the while, their small production wines were garnering accolades throughout the country.

In 1992 the Widmers hired consulting winemaker Carlo Ferrini to help them take their operations to the next level of quality. Ferrini, even at that time, was one of Italy’s most celebrated winemakers and consultants, and quickly transformed Brancaia into one of Chianti’s most celebrated wineries. With Ferrini’s help, since 1994 the winery’s flagship wine “Il Blu” has been awarded the Gambero Rosso Tre Bicchieri every single year except one.

Soon after Ferrini began working with the Widmers, their daughter Barbara decided to abandon her budding career as an architect and become more involved with the new family business. After managing sales and event marketing for the winery, she eventually went back to school to train as a winemaker in Switzerland, and after graduating and working at several Swiss wineries, she returned to Brancaia in 1998 to become its full-time winemaker. Barbara, along with her husband Martin Kronenberg who manages operations and sales, has taken over management of the winery, and Ferrini continues to consult.

In 1997, the family purchased another property, this time in southern Tuscany in the Maremma region, from which they make a single wine called Ilatraia.

The wines are all made in the family’s production faculty in Chianti, a three story winery designed to all but eliminate the use of pumps in favor of the gentler forces of gravity on everything from the destemmed, crushed grapes to the fermenting and finished wine. The wines are all aged in French oak barrels, of which roughly 66% are new each year.

Brancaia certainly represents a new wave of producers in Chianti, and may be seen by some as “nuvo” or un-traditional (some Tuscan winemakers consider anyone using French oak to be a non-traditionalist). This may be true, but it should not obscure the fact that Brancaia is producing some truly fantastic wines that are true to the soul of the place from which they come, and top examples of what the region is capable of producing in the right hands.

Full disclosure: I received these wines as press samples.

TASTING NOTES:

2005 Brancaia “Ilatraia” Rosso Maremma Toscana IGT, Tuscany
Dark garnet in color, this wine has an incredibly distinctive nose that screams COLA! Followed by softer murmurs of cherry and chocolate. These murmurs turn into songs of such flavors on the palate, as beautiful rich flavors of cola, spices, chocolate and cherry swirl amidst lovely texture and very faint tannins through to a very nice finish. Tasty, tasty, tasty. 60% Cabernet Sauvignon, 30% Sangiovese, 10% Petit Verdot. Score: around 9. Cost: $70 . Where to buy?

2005 Brancaia “Il Blu” Rosso Toscana IGT, Tuscany
Cloudy medium garnet in color, this wine smells of chocolate covered cherries and wet dirt. I don’t know about you, but that tends to make my mouth water. On the palate the wine offers an overwhelming sense of having just been dug up out of the wet ground and plopped in your glass. This damp earth quality quickly plays a low rumble to higher tones of cherries and chocolate that modulate to higher tones of rosehip and herbs on the long finish. Delicious. 50% Sangiovese, 45% Merlot, 5% Cabernet Sauvignon. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $60 .Where to buy?

2005 Brancaia “Tre” Rosso Toscana IGT, Tuscany
Medium ruby in the glass, this wine has an altogether funky nose of farmyard aromas — gamey, horse sweat, and other pungent but not entirely objectionable smells mesh with red fruit. In the mouth, thankfully, the wine centers around more traditional flavors of leather, sandalwood, and cherry, as well as a distinctive, unusual flavor I couldn’t pin down. This wine is beating to it’s own rhythm. Sangiovese with unspecified amounts of Merlot and Cabernet Sauvignon. Score: between 8.5 and 9. Cost: $18. Where to buy?

2004 Brancaia Chianti Classico DOCG, Chianti, Tuscany
Medium garnet in color, this wine has a beautiful nose of floral and cherry aromas that compels multiple inhales before any drinking begins. In the mouth it is rich and full, while holding the earthy dryness one expects from a good Chianti. The primary flavors are of cherry and leather with rich earth undertones that linger on a bed of fine grained tannins into a nice finish. 95% Sangiovese and 5% Merlot. Score: between 9 and 9.5. Cost: $20. Where to buy?

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Wine country means a lot of things in California, a state with winegrowing regions stretching most of its 800 mile length. For most residents of the San Francisco Bay Area, we tend to think of Wine Country as Napa or Sonoma. Increasingly, however, wine country must also include the East Bay. The cities of Berkeley, Oakland, and Alameda are now home to dozens of “Urban” wineries that are producing some of California’s most sought-after wines. Recently united by an organization known as the East Bay Vintners Alliance, this group of 15 winemakers is holding its third annual Urban Wine Experience event on the second weekend of August.

The 15 East Bay Vintners are:

Adams Point
A Donkey And Goat
Andrew Lane Wines
Aubin Cellars
Dashe Cellars
Eno Wines
Irish Monkey
JC Cellars
Lost Canyon Winery
Periscope Cellars
Prospect 772 Wine Company
Rosenblum Cellars
Tayerle
Two Mile Wines
Urbano Cellars

The Urban Wine Experience is like tasting wine in wine country, just without the wine country (and the long drive to get there). Held At the Meadow at Jack London Square in Oakland, this event offers attendees the opportunity to taste over 50 wines from all 15 members of the Alliance. The event will include food from local restaurants and food purveyors, as well as music from the Cajun All Stars.

Attended by more than 600 people for each of the last two years, this event will likely sell out again, so plan accordingly.

The Urban Wine Experience
The Meadow at Jack London Square
Oakland, CA 94607
( map )

Advance tickets are $45 per person and are available for purchase online. Any remaining tickets will be sold at the door for $60 per person.

Attendees are strongly encouraged to take public transportation to the event. The Lake Merritt BART station is very close to Jack London Square, and a free shuttle service will be offered between the station and the event.

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