Coronavirus so far not corking Italian wines
Outbreak has delayed some local events, but buzzed-about pours still coming to shelves
When Alessandro Rotolo came to Houston from Italy’s Friuli region at the end of January to present his family’s Schiopetto wines, the coronavirus was a nontopic. Not once did it come up in our conversation, although it had already been killing people in China for more than a month.
The same was true when Salvatore Ferragamo, whose famous fashion family produces Il Borro wines in Tuscany, hosted a dinner at Emmaline the same night. This despite the fact that Ferragamo and his wife did visit a doctor be
tween wine events that day because both were under the weather. In fact, he had to beg off from a scheduled interview with me.
Their diagnosis, fortunately, was travel fatigue. No one thought twice about it, either.
A subsequent lunch with Nicola Chionetti of the Chionetti winery in the Piemonte and a tasting with Paolo Cantele, whose eponymous family winery is in the south of Italy, also focused only on the bottles on the table in front of us. But by the time Siro Pacenti’s son, Giancarlo Pacenti, walked through the door at Doris Metropolitan for a dinner Feb. 25 to showcase a lineup that included the 2015 Siro Pacenti Brunello di Montalcino Vecchie Vigne — critic James Suckling awarded it 100 points and declared it the best wine in the world for 2019 — that had changed dramatically.
Pacenti and his group were detained by U.S. Customs in Los Angeles the previous day because they’d flown in from Milan. He would express modest alarm about was what happening back home but didn’t indicate he feared having his return travel plans disrupted (and hopefully they weren’t). However, were he still in the U.S. today — as is Giovanni Correggio of the Mateo Correggio winery in the Piemonte, who dropped in last week — it’s now unclear what he would do. Among Western nations, none has been more gravely impacted by the contagious virus than Italy, which is now dealing with a total travel lockdown.
Even before the Italian government made the decision to lock down, the Italy-America Chamber of Commerce had called off its annual Taste of Italy event in Houston that would have brought another large influx of vintners to the Post Oak Hilton at the end of March. At least there remains a glimmer of hope it can be rescheduled for sometime in the summer.
“Here everything is crazy, and people are scared,” Roberta Ceretto wrote via email Wednesday. “You do not shake hands or hug. When you go out to buy food people are suspicious if you do not respect the suggested distance of 1.5 meters. Even taking the car is risky. You need a paper signed that you are moving for an emergency, to buy food or medicines, or to go to work.”
It’s important to understand that Ceretto, whose own eponymous family winery is just outside Alba in the Piemonte, wasn’t criticizing her country’s response to the crisis. To the contrary, she said: “Our politicians are goofy, but they are showing they care very much for our people.”
Ceretto splits time between Alba and Milan because her architect husband, Giuseppe’s, firm is based there. Italy’s financial epicenter, Milan was the first major city in the West to dramatically feel the effects of the coronavirus. Today, with the World Health Organization having officially declared a pandemic, it’s certain not to be the last.
Another Ceretto business is Piazza Duomo, the three-star Michelin restaurant in the heart of Alba that ranks among the world’s greatest. It will be closed until further notice.
“Nobody is in the mood of celebrating and at 6 p.m. all activities are shut down,” Ceretto said. “This will pass, but Italy now needs help from the many friends we have outside the country.”
The one obvious small way we can help, of course, is to buy Italian wines. The good news for the moment is that there are no shipping restrictions in place. Douglas Skopp, who owns Dionysus Imports here and has a substantial Italian portfolio, received the following email this week:
“The Government clarified that the limitations introduced do not prohibit travel for proven work reasons, leaving free movement of goods. Personnel conducting means of transport can enter and leave the territories affected by the decree, limited to the needs of delivery or collection of the goods. This means we should be able to go and collect from the restricted areas, but surely some challenges will be faced.”
Skopp is expecting a full container to arrive from Italy in about 60 days. But a container carrying some of his French wines has been delayed because the container itself got gridlocked in China.
Many of my favorite wines from the aforementioned visiting vinters aren’t yet available in Houston — the reason they made the effort to visit was to generate excitement about them — and Ceretto’s iconic single-vintage wines such as the flagship Bricco Rocche rarely make their way to us because production is so limited. (I have, though, seen the Bricco Rocche on the list at Da Marco.)
I’ve put together a list of wines that are on the shelf at Vinology, a huge supporter of boutique Italian vintners, with the Perugian Riccardo Guerrieri being one of the wine-buyers there. And I’ve picked a few others that offer high quality — based on recent tastings — and excellent value in equal parts.
Note that I recently featured Ferragamo’s 2015 Il Borro Toscana, which earned a unanimous recommendation from the Chronicle’s tasting panel with a score of 9.2. A 97point Suckling wine, it sells the $45.49 at Spec’s. In addition, nearly 300 bottles of the aforementioned 2015 Pacenti Brunello Suckling ranked above everything he tasted last year will be in Skopp’s container … whenever it arrives.