A Mushroom Show in Mesagne's Castle

Part of The Ongoing Mushroom and Wine Pairing Experiment



The town of Mesange, in Puglia, celebrated its plethora of local mushroom varietals--both poisonous and edible--by covering long tables (set up in the basement of its beautiful castle) with the brilliant and sometimes creepy fungi. It was truly amazing to be able to see all of the different varieties and to know that they all grow naturally in the surrounding area (A friend went specifically to train herself to be better at identifying mushrooms when she goes out hunting). The mushrooms were labeled:

Edible
Edible but Without Value
Suspect
Toxic
Deadly

The mushrooms spewing black goo didn't require the "Mortale" sign card beneath them: No way I was pairing them with a Chianti!



I was pleasantly surprised the next day, when walking down the street, to come across a stand of mushrooms being sold out of someone's front door that was almost as impressive as those at the castle. I quickly bought around 2 lbs for 4 euro and rushed home to show my girlfriend Kristin. "They're blue," she exclaimed!

When I returned home later that evening, Kristin surprised me with homemade sagne (a twirly pasta from Lecce) with a mixture of the mushrooms with a white-wine cream sauce.



We tested out a local novello wine made from Negroamaro and Malvasia. The wine is sfuso wine, and we bought 3 liters for 4 euro. It is very good everyday drinking wine. It tastes so fresh, so fruity, and so grapey that I think it will be a good wine to test against umami. But last night, we simply enjoyed it. Tonight, we will pair it with homemade mushroom mezzalune (literally, half-moons), which are similar to ravioli. In particular, I will be looking for any lessening of aromas and enhancement of unwanted flavor textures. Talk to you soon--- Read More!

The Ongoing Mushroom and Wine Pairing Experiment

It's mushroom season in Puglia, and I feel like I'm in somekinda medieval fairy tale about witches because of all the colorful and daunting fungi I see. Serious: very Grimm-brothers. I walk down the street and come across large tables covered with mushrooms of all shapes and sizes that the locals have foraged and are selling at 7-8 euro a kilo (around 10 dollars for 2.3lbs). It is a taste of the ancient traditions in this part of the world. Since many of the local mushrooms are poisonous, those who pick them must be trained (I assume) by their parents to know which are edible. And lucky me, I get to go mushroom crazy.



After polishing off a few homemade arancini (deep-fried risotto balls that I made with wild mushrooms) for lunch, I thought about the difficulties of pairing mushrooms with wine. Since there are hundreds of mushrooms, there are hundreds of flavors to match, but there is another difficulty: When cooked, mushrooms release umami, which are known to reduce wine aromas and heighten wine textures, such as acidity, tannins, and bitterness. It strikes me as strange that one of my favorite foods, one which I pair with wine regularly, is one of the top ten most difficult foods to pair wine with. Further, I want to test the ability to prepare mushrooms with wine-based sauces.

So, during these next few weeks I will experiment with different mushrooms, recipes, and wines, including novello wines (similar to Beaujolais), Sangiovese, Barbera, Primitivo/Zinfandel, and possibly a Barolo. I might consider a Pinot Noir or two since so many people rave about their ability to compliment mushrooms, but I will mostly stick to Italian wines. If you want to share any of your own mushroom and wine pairing experiences, please feel free. Salute! Read More!

Photos of this Summer's Vineyards, Puglia, Italy

Now that the season for grape growing is over, I thought I'd offer some photos to take you back to those ripe months of August and September. Today is the first day of the Salone del Vino Novello, a five day celebration of Puglia's new wines. I cannot wait to try these refreshing wines and to talk with winemakers about the harvest. Read More!

Fall Vineyard Slideshow from Puglia

Fall has overtaken Puglia, and though the leaves on the olive trees are not changing colors, the vineyards have erupted. The leaves turn orange and their veins are surrounded by a rich blood-red.



As this year's harvest drew to an end, I began to collect the opinions of local winemakers in regards to quantity and quality. Over the next couple weeks, as I sample more novello wines (literally new wines) and discuss the results of the harvest, I will put together a 2009 Puglia Harvest Report to offer an objective perspective on the 2009 growing season.



Since Puglia is one of the largest growing regions in the world (if Puglia were a country, it would be the 7th largest wine-producing country in the world) the report covers a significant land area and will account for it in three ways:

1) First-hand accounts from winemakers
2) Barrel tastings
3) Eye-witness experience (you don't think I was interviewing winemakers and bicycling through vineyards daily with my eyes closed)

So check back for updates.

Having grown up in New England, I would love to hear the fall foliage in your area. How's fall treating you? Read More!

My Sister Finished the NYC Marathon

If you're not at work then it's time to break out the Prosecco (or, if you're boss is chill, you might want to make the suggestion): Ashley "Little Sister" Bamman has completed the marathon in 4 hours, 37 minutes. Thank yous to everyone who helped donate to the cause. Salute! Read More!

A Good Martini In Italy? Forget It.

As I grow more familiar with Italian culture, many of the facets of Italian life that I once thought impossible have turned out to be true. When I visited my first bar in Rome and saw that very few of the people in it had drinks, I assumed it was a quiet night. Then I saw the same scene again and again; streets filled with people but nearly void of beverages.


Later, I went to a friend's for a delicious, simple dinner of homemade pizza, and his friends were going on a beer run. Yes, I thought to myself, I've found a crew that likes to drink. They were taking orders and I said that I'd like two 66cl beers. "Just for yourself," was their exclamation. I said yep, and when they returned they had four beers total, and six people shared the two beers that I didn't drink--all by myself.

What finally proved to me that Italians do not drink was a little cocktail research. I was writing an article for EuropeUpClose travel guide about pre-dinner drinks in Italy, but all I could think of were wines, white vermouth, campari and soda, and the Negroni. I did my research and discovered that Italy has barely invented a single cocktail. This makes their wines even more important, but doesn't do much for you if you're from the mixology sector of the drinking world.


Now, the Negroni is one of my favorite cocktails, whether touted by members of elite art movements or not, but it's never going to replace the martini, and let me tell you folks, you're more likely to find fresh-squeezed banana juice than a well-made martini in Italy. The last one I ordered was 50% white vermouth, and served with two straws, a lemon slice, and one big ice cube. After reading one of the most touching and beautiful posts I ever read, written by Italian Wine Guy, I got an inkling that I wasn't the only person shocked by bad martinis in Italy.

So, as it stands, I'm glad to have found a Scottish drinking buddy for Friday nights. I'm equally glad that Italians have put some much of their alcohol-related creativity into producing impeccable wines. Read More!

It was one of those sad days when it felt good to be sad. On Thursday, after 8 debaucherous days of rather intense wine drinking, our good friends waved good-bye and hopped aboard a nighttrain to Florence. Jael and Mandi were visiting my girlfriend Kristin and I from Hawaii. Jael is a college friend--one of those guys that you thought might be dead by now, but who, against all types of sound reason and unprejudiced logic, somehow became a lawyer. Though we only went to school together for two semesters before he went back to Hawaii and we didn't see each other again for nearly five years after that, we've somehow stayed close. When he happened to be heading through San Francisco for the Rock The Bells concert a few years back and crashed at my place, it was enough to convince me that I needed to visit him in Hawaii.


Kristin and I headed west--even further west--and spent an amazing month in jungle-bound treehouses without electricity and such. There I met Mandi for the first time and found myself happily perplexed by the beautiful, fast-talking, good-cooking Mainland girl who knew enough about wine to keep us talking until late in the night. Mandi, Jael, Kristin, and I averaged four bottles of wine a night while gorging ourselves on Mahi-Mahi and Opah with avocado-pineapple salsa and I think we signed some kind of pact to all marry each other if we weren't already married to each by the age of 35.

We repeated the luau Italian-style this time. Tons of cooking in our villa and, well, again roughly four bottles of wine a day on average. We rode bicycles through vineyards and Jael got to eat grapes from the vine for the first time. We visited Apollonio Winery, where Winemaker Massimiliano Apollonio gave us a tremendous tasting (that evening we rode 15 bottles of wine home on four bicycles). Massi took us on an intimate tour of the facilities and let us try the recently released 2004s (the winery never releases red wines younger than four years old). Later in the week we visited Sergio Botrugno at Botrugno Winery in Brindisi and drank his wines on the roof of the winery, overlooking the western side of Brindisi Bay. Sergio gave us a detailed, step-by-step tour and explanation of how he makes his wines. For me, the most interesting thing I learned was that he does not always add sulfur to stabalize his wines (a common practice completed during the pre-fermentation process in most cases, which protects the wine from turning in the bottle because of bacteria). Instead, he works at very cold temperatures to kill most of the unwanted organisms in the wine, then if, after intense testing, he discovers high levels of organisms, then he resorts to sulfur. He remarked that "it is not a matter of believing that sulfur is bad, it's that I prefer not to use it."


Being able to share wine with good friends is perhaps the best capability of wine. That Mandi and Jael love a good red as much as Kristin and I resulted in multiple 3-5 hour dinners where we mixed conversation about the marrow of life with your-momma jokes (and worse: your grandmomma jokes). That they love a good bottle of Prosecco even more than Kristin and I--though we do love Prosecco--resulted in perfect pairings with buttery mussels and mozzerella balls stuffed with ricotta.


Strange how thankful these times make me feel. Cheers to your own times... Your own bottles of wine and your own all-night luaus. Read More!