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Mar

Don’t Cry for Me, Italia

Jacob Gaffney  in General , , , ,

During the Andre Simon food and drink book awards weeks ago, author John Dickie won a special commendation for his epic tribute to Italian food, Delizia. InterWined admits unfamiliarity with this expansive subject, other than the many trips to Italy where vast amount of this food was consumed — normally with a greater attention to the country’s wines. This is not going to change.

For me, wine will probably always come before food.

It may be silly, but I always get grief for the way I am. Take at the playground this weekend, a flush young upstart, wearing his five years of age on his shoulders with the wind licking through his perfectly foppish, flowing blond locks proclaimed to me, in front of a group of similarly attired, similarly maligned group of boys, “you are the stupidest Daddy in the world.”

It could be true. I doubt other daddies at the playground prefer drinking to eating. The roll of their paunches tells me so.

John Dickie is equally entrenched in his devotion of food. In fact, the man nearly cried as he recounted his four or five years he spent writing his book. And it moved me. That’s a long time.

When I looked back at what has made me the way I am, I realized that a bottle of Gabbiano Chianti, with its multi-colored cavalry soldier adorning its bottles (to what army does that soldier fight, by the way?), was one of the first wines to grab my attention more than a decade ago. Sitting on the supermarket shelf in New Orleans, it was too pricey and too complicated for me to consider taking home.

A lot has changed since then, but my love of wine has never shifted and for the first time ever, I tried a bottle of Gabbiano in an effort to bring my stupid ideas full circle. It was not cathartic, unfortunately. So I asked an Italian wine seller, who currently deals only with restaurants, Natura Amore to give me some examples of what they consider the best Italian wines.

For this mission, cost is not an object, and over the course of the next week or two, InterWined.com will bring you reviews of these wines — not to wax for pages on vineyard earth, sun, and people, but to try to discover what it was about Italy that made John Dickie want to cry, with such passion and devotion.

This is, of course, a silly quest. But I wonder what’s going to happen, so have decided to do it anyway.

You can hate me for it, if you like.

It’s OK, I’m kinda stupid.

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