Dialogue with a winemaker

"In spite of the occasional profanity and less-occasional rant (which, come to think of it, may be what a blog is), I find yours interesting, amusing, and very well said and refreshingly well spelled."

Jim
"Rant, yeah well, if you are looking for a reasoned argument, you're talking to the wrong guy. "

"I think that you (what I know) and your blog (what I've read) are very reasonable indeed. It's just forcefully said.
Let's put it this way: We all know there will be R. Parkers and a long list of others who will sell us tripe (fig.) because we're ready to buy. That ain't changing. And what you say about him and about that whole misguided way of reducing the universe-to-be-discovered by elevating a few crappy nadas (100 points!) is so true. What you say against that reduction is interesting, but the light really comes on when you argue for a richer, more positive view - your view.
I certainly intended no affront by using the "r" word."

Jim
"I try to do a little of that in the Nutmeg piece and the 2006 Burgundy preview, but seriously no one cares. However, there is a lot of pent-up anger toward R.P. , yet few, very few people are in a position to criticize him. I am the only person I know able and willing to say that he doesn't know what he's doing. I spent hours researching, looking for one piece of criticism published about Parker. I found nothing. "

"Interesting. I assumed there was a whole world of winemakers who truly didn't care what R.P. said. I generally believe monoliths point the way to their own demise, but I guess that's not true here. I'll keep reading."

Jim
"The point is that there are many winemakers who disagree with him, but no one willing to publicly criticize him. The people who make, import, distribute and retail wine are not in a position to bite the hand that feeds them. And Monoliths may point the way to their own demise, yet men like this can do much damage. There are now two or three generations of winemakers and wine drinkers laboring under the hegemony of Parker. How many generations does it take to lose a tradition? How fast does a culture die? "

Casimiro Maule

I had dinner last week with Casimiro Maule, who must, by all accounts be considered one of the great winemakers of the world. The man has just completed 37 vintages at Nino Negri, and received a mind boggling 10 consecutive Tre Bicchieri from the Gambero Rosso. For those of you who do not know the Gambero Rosso, they provide the most consistent and object wine criticism in the business. Born of the Slow Food Movement, these people appreciate good wine and are able to understand it within it's historical, regional context. Not like that advertising slut of Shanken's, who will open her pages for just any old body, but I digress.
Casimiro is the wine maker at Nino Negri in the Valtalina in Lombardy Italy, just inland from Piedmonte. The entire Valtalina produces a whopping 3,000,000 bottles or just 250,000 cases. To get an idea of how low the yields are and how land intensive the wine is, the Sfursat 5 Stella requires the fruit of three vines to produce one bottle. Or put another way, each vine yields only one third of a bottle worth of fruit.The talk of yields always gets me a little excited, its like the foreplay to the consummating act.
The wines had all of the concentration you would expect from such low yields, and all the depth you would expect reflected from such harsh terroir. What makes Casimiro a great winemaker however, is his seemingly paradoxical ability to produce wine so supple and approachable in it's youth, yet possessed of an agelessness. To produce a wine so pleasurable when young yet capable of great maturation, puts you on a short list of winemakers. Angelo Gaja is on that list, Michele Rolland is not.
Of course the man didn't speak a word of English. He sat there in humble dignity, slightly embarrassed, I think, to be the center of so much attention.These whirlwind tours of the states, with a cadre of handlers, must be tough for a man used to the quiet life in the country. Still, he weathered the 20 drunken Americans with the air of a Diplomat ,and seemed genuinely touched when people, myself included, asked to have our photos taken with him.