Category Archives: Italian wine

Tenuta Licinia: In Praise of Philosophers & their Wines

May 22, 2025 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets 1 Comment

If you flip to the back of my 2017 book Around the World in Eighty Wines, you’ll find a list of the wines from my global adventures. I didn’t want to just list them alphabetically or sort by price or critic rating. Organizing them by country of origin didn’t seem right, either. So I invented categories that would link wines with similar characteristics.

The Joy of Lists

The first category, “Wines of the People,” includes Two Buck Chuck, Mateus Rosé, Mouton Cadet Rouge, and Four Cousins Sweet Rosé from South Africa, among others. These are very different wines united by their popular appeal and market success. Do you see the connection?

Next up is “Noble Wines,” and it starts with Chateau Petrus and continues with Henschke’s “Hill of Grace” from Australia and several others. You can probably think of the wines that you’d add to the Noble list. I admit the lists are totally subjective. I’d probably include different wines today. That’s part of the joy of wine (and of lists).

One of my favorite groups is called “Philosopher Wines.” Sometimes we encounter wines that demand more attention than others and provoke a certain amount of introspection, too. You don’t drink them so much as contemplate them. And we are sad when the glass is finally empty.

Philosopher vs Philosopher’s

These are the “Philosopher Wines” and just reading the list (which starts with a 100-year-old Tawny from Seppeltsfield in Australia and ends with Methode Ancienne Cabernet Sauvignon from Springfield Estate in South Africa) gives me a special feeling.

I don’t plan to revise or update my 80-wine journey but, if I were to update the list, I think I’d have to add a new category. In addition to “Philosopher Wines” I’d have “Philosopher’s Wine,” wines made by philosophers. I’ll bet there are more than a few (didn’t  Warren Winiarski of Stag’s Leap Wine Cellars study  political philosophy at the University of Chicago before he went down the wine rabbit hole?).

This thought is provoked by an online tasting of Tenuta Licinia wines that Sue and I took part in a few weeks ago. Tenuta Licinia is a small (6.5 hectares of vineyards) winery in a part of Tuscany that doesn’t get too much attention.  This particular area near Lucignano had a long history of wine that faded in the 20th Century. Now it is coming back.

A Certain Idea of Wine

The project started about 50 years ago as the personal mission of Jacques de Liedekerke, a prominent Belgian attorney. He recognized the potential of certain vineyard plots in the region and, over 20 years, slowly brought them back to life.  His vineyards and his mission eventually passed to his grandson, James Marshall, who, like Winiarski, has followed a path from the serious study of philosophy to the serious study of viticulture and enology.

Talking with Marshall via Zoom reminded me (in a good way, I want to point out) of any number of conversations I have had with philosophers during my academic years. There were thoughtful pauses and occasional clouds of self-doubt mixed with sure statements of principle and intent.

Marshall has for sure a certain idea of wine (to paraphrase Charles De Gaulle), which is based on particular sites with their aspects and soil profiles and particular grape varieties and getting the combinations just right. Winemakers, like philosophers, need to have strong principles that they constantly question, I guess.

Marshall has a number of provocative ideas about wine and one that I like a lot is that his wines should be so good that they appeal to novices, people who don’t know much about wine or don’t have much experience with it. This struck me as odd at first because we normally think of novices as having simple tastes that need to be developed over time to appreciate the best wine.

The Magic Words

But then he said the magic words, Chateau d’Yquem. D’Yquem is widely recognized as one of the world’s greatest wines (indeed, it is often named the world’s best). Yet, Marshall noted, it is immediately appealing to both experts and rookies. His goal isn’t to make a Tuscan d’Yquem, but to make wines as delicious and appealing in their own ways as d’Yquem is in its way.

We were lucky to receive four wines to sample. The Tenuta Licinia Montepolli (named for the vineyard) is an IGT Toscana blend of Merlot and Petit Verdot that was elegant and delicious. The IGT Toscana Sasso di Fato, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, and Petit Verdot, was complex, elegant, and memorable. One of the best wines of the year so far. Both wines were light and bright and refreshing, but serious at their core.

Sue and I agreed that the wines did not especially remind us of their component grape varieties. They tasted like … well, I guess they tasted of the place more than the grape and, if this is true, it reflects Marshall’s intent and his attention to detail.

The Petit Verdot Question

We also received half bottles of varietal Cabernet Franc and Sangiovese and we are working on a sampling strategy for them. But the wine that I would love to taste is the 100% Petit Verdot Sasso di Licinia because Marshall brought it up so often in the Zoom interview.

He really doesn’t like the Petit Verdot, he said a couple of times. Wrong grape, wrong place. Subsoils not exactly right. Not what he wants to do. But it is really good with the local Tuscan steak and in fact a neighborhood restaurant wants him to put some in bag-in-box for by-the-glass sales, which makes sense. Marshall really doesn’t like the idea of bag-in-box any more than he likes the Petit Verdot itself, but the wine is really nice with the steak. That’s a fact. So maybe he should do it.

And so on, around and around. Maybe yes, maybe no. It’s kind of fun to turn it over in your mind and see where you come out. Oh, philosophers, you are so interesting! And some of you make really good wine. I’d love to hear from other philosopher winemakers in the comments section.

Cru Cerrati and Ruchè: Piemonte Wine’s Past, Present, & Future

February 4, 2025 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets Leave a comment

What do you remember about the hit 1985 film “Back to the Future”? Doc? Marty? The “Chuck Berry” scene? How could you forget that time-traveling DeLorean sports car?

I don’t know if anyone thinks much about the film’s deeper messages anymore, but the idea that the future is somehow buried in the past is a theme that has long been of interest. It shows up in wine in various guises. Here are two “Back to the Future” stories from the Piemonte region of Northern Italy.

The Return of Cerrati in the Land of Barolo

The Rossi Cairo family has been making wine, especially Gavi DOCG,  at their biodynamic farm, La Raia, since 2002. They began a “Back to the Future” journey in 2015 when they expanded their vision to Tenuta Cucco in the prime Serralunga region where the Nebbiolo grape and Barolo wine are firmly rooted.

Tenuta Cucco presented the Rossi Cairo family an opportunity and a challenge in the form of the Cerrati vineyard. Cru Cerrati was well known and respected in the past, receiving special note in Renato Ratti’s Map of Barolo in 1971, for example, and even in the 1990 Slow Food wine atlas of the Langhe, but its glory faded over the years until Piero Rossi Cairo, working with La Raia winemaker Clara Milani, determined to convert the project to organic viticulture and to revive the vineyard and the reputation of the Cerrati zone.

Sue and I enjoyed the opportunity to taste the wines and participate in a Zoom call with Piero Rossi Cairo and Clara Milani. About 80 percent of Tenuta Cucco’s production is exported; the United States is the biggest single market.

The two estate vineyards total about 20 hectares and total production is about 70,000 bottles (6000 cases) each year including  white wines (Chardonnay), a traditional method sparkling Pinot Nero, Rosé, and, of course, the reds. The Barolo DOCG Serralunga d’Alba, a blend of grapes from the two vineyards, is the main focus with production of 25,000 to 40,000  bottles depending on the year. Only about 2400 bottles of single-vineyard Barolo wines from Cerrati and Bricco Voghera are produced each  year. And 5000 to 8000 bottles of a fresh and fruity Langhe DOCG Nebbiolo are made.

The “no wood” Langhe Nebbiolo was simply delicious, with beautiful color, light body, soft tannins, intense aroma, and complex fruit flavors. If you are looking for a “Baby Barolo,” this isn’t it. But who wouldn’t enjoy a wine like this with cheese and salami or a light pasta? And the Serralunga d’Alba was delicious, too, a great culinary wine because of its medium body and nice acidity. The single-vineyard products are philosopher wines, to be appreciated at a relaxed pace. We haven’t decided which one we like best, but are very much enjoying the opportunity to study them.

Ruchè Renaissance

Wines made from the Ruchè grape variety are full of contradictions. Wine Grapes tells us that “Varietal wines tend to be headily scented, often with aromas of roses. They can be spicy and the tannins so marked that the wines can sometimes leave a bitter aftertaste.”  Roses, spicy, bitter — not something you find every day.

Sue and I first stumbled on Ruchè back in 2011 when we attended a food and wine festival in Moncalvo, near Asti. As I wrote then, “I had never heard of Ruchè and honestly didn’t know what it might be until I happened upon the stand of the Castagnole Monferrato group. They were cooking with Ruchè, marinating fruit in Ruchè and selling it by the glass — they were obviously very proud of their local wine. I had to try it and it was great. Suddenly I saw Ruchè everywhere (a common experience with a new discovery) and enjoyed a bottle at dinner in Asti that  night.”

Ruchè very nearly disappeared at one point as attention focused on market-friendly grapes such as Barbera and Nebbiolo. As Ian D’Agata explains in the chapter on Ruchè  Italy’s Native Wine Grape Terroirs, Don Giacomo Cauda, Castagnole Monferato’s town priest, was obsessed with Ruchè, studied it, collected specimens from scattered small plots,  and promoted Ruchè as the region’s signature wine. Ruchè di Castagnole Monferrato received DOC recognition in 1987 and was elevated to DOCG in 2010, putting it up among the elite of the Italian wine world. A long climb from near-extinction to the summit in just 50 years.

But DOCG recognition does not automatically translate into sales. Almost everyone around Castagnole Monferrato probably drinks Ruché, but almost no one does anywhere else. Selling an unfamiliar wine like Ruché requires creativity and determination. So we were intrigued to learn that a local importer, Mallard Libations in Woodinville, Washington) has taken up the challenge so that those who know Ruché  will have an opportunity to enjoy it and hopefully help spread the word.

We’ve started our new Ruchè research with the Ferraris Agricola Ruchè di Castagnoble Monferrato Riserva DOCG, which featured medium body, a memorable nose, and more depth than I remember from the wines we enjoyed in Italy. This single-vineyard wine deserves its “Riserva” designation. It is one of five different Ruchè wines that Ferraris produces. We are especially looking forward to trying the flagship Opera Prima Riserva.

Ferraris Agricola takes Ruchè and its history very seriously. Luca Ferraris, a.k.a. “Mr. Ruchè,” has created a Ruchè Museum that chronicles Ruchè’s history and celebrates its rebirth. We have added it to our “must-see” list for our next trip to Piemonte.

Discovering new wines or wine regions is always interesting. Re-discovering (and perhaps even rescuing) over-looked wines and regions is even more satisfying. Innovation, we are told, is especially important in today’s wine market environment. Back to the future can be part of that process.

From Sharecroppers to Superstars: Family Wineries in Italy

December 10, 2024 By in Antiinori, Family Wineries, Italian wine, wine, wine history, wine markets 1 Comment

The arc of the Italian wine industry bends towards quality in the 21st century, something that has become increasingly clear to Sue and me as we have visited many of Italy’s important wine regions in recent years.

Quality has not always been Italian wine’s guiding star, however. Piero Antinori’s 2014 book The Hills of Chianti traces the 20th-century transformation of Italian wine from quantity to quality that continues today. The role of forward-thinking family wineries and their intense focus on quality from the vineyard to the cellar and beyond comes through on every page.

We recently sampled wines from two of our favorite regions — Romagna and Piemonte — that illustrate Antinori’s hypothesis about the link between quality and family-owned wineries.

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Rediscovering Romagna

I was reminded of Antinori’s book recently when we were invited to taste wines from Romagna, a region that extends from the Adriatic coast inward toward Bologna. We enjoyed these wines, mainly Sangiovese di Romagna and Albana di Romagna, when we lived in Bologna years ago (I was a visiting professor at the Johns Hopkins center there).

The wines were perfect with the city’s rich cuisine. We look for them here in America, but they are hard to find. I once asked one of the Colli Bolognesi winemakers about the problem and he just pointed over the hill. Tuscany, he said. Tuscany (and Antinori, I guess) get all the attention. We mostly sell our wines at home.

But the bending arc can have many effects and it seems to me that the rising quality of Italian wine offers wine drinkers around the world new opportunities, both within Tuscany (as Antinori’s book suggests) and in other parts of Italy, too.

All in the Family

So we were excited to taste the Romagna wines of Poggio della Dogana and Ronchi di Castelluccio, wineries owned by the brothers Aldo and Paolo Rametta. The Rametta family does not have centuries of history in the wine business like the Antinori family, but they are firmly rooted in the Romagna region. After working in other industries (finance and renewable energy), Aldo and Paolo Rametta found it impossible to resist scratching the itch to return home to work with the land. Wine, of course, but not just wine. They are interested in agriculture and bring family business values to their work.

Poggio della Dogana was their first investment in 2016; then an unexpected opportunity appeared in 2020 to purchase Ronchi di Castelluccio, the very well-known maker of Sangiovese di Romagna. We know the latter winery because their Le More Sangiovese di Romagna is a wine we can sometimes find here at home to pair with Sue’s authentic Bolognese ragu.

Everybody and Nobody

We couldn’t resist sampling the Ronchi di Castelluccio Buco del Prete Romagna DOC Sangiovese Modigliana, made with grapes from a vineyard carved into a forest clearing in 1989. We paired the wine with roast chicken (which we often have with Pinot Noir) and I think the combination made us appreciate the elegance of the medium-bodied wine and the complexity that lingered on the finish. An excellent wine. We can’t wait to try the Ronco della Simia, made with grapes from an even older vineyard.

We loved the Sangiovese, but I admit that the Poggio della Dogana Belladamaa Romagna DOCG Albana Secco stole our hearts. Why? Quality was part of the answer, of course. Albana is a white wine that thinks it is red, with good body and memorable herby notes on the finish in the case of the Belladama.

We often enjoyed Albana wines when we lived in Bologna, but we always thought of it as a simple, easy wine, not something that can be serious. So tasting a next-level Albana got our attention.

But, if I am honest, it is also something that Aldo Rametta said on a Zoom call. Everyone drinks Albana in Romagna, he said, but no one drinks it anywhere else. And it is true. But maybe a wine like this at a time like this can change things. In fact, quality white wines from up and down Italy are now finally getting attention and developing followings in export markets.

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Tenuta Carretta was founded in 1467 when sharecropping arrangements were formalized for the estate north of the city of Alba. As Antinori’s book explains, sharecropping remained the dominant organization for Italian agriculture into the mid-20th century and in wine the turn towards quality only gained strength when the difficult transition from sharecropping was complete. In all its long history the Carretta estate has changed hands only a few times. The winery’s website explains that

In 1811, after 350 years, the property passed from the Marquis Damiano to the Count of Roero, who cultivated it for 120 years. In 1932, he gave the estate to the Veglia family of Turin. In 1985, the property finally passed to the Miroglio family from Alba, founders and owners of the textile group with the same name.

The Miroglio family’s commitment to the winery strikes me as very much fitting into Antinori’s ethos and the Rametta brothers’ work in Romagna. The Miroglio family have roots in the Langhe. Their apparel empire began there before expanding around the world. Their purchase of Tenuta Carretta almost 40 years ago seems to have been about family and tradition and they have invested considerable time and effort to develop distinctive wines that reflect the particular terroirs of Roero and the Alta Langa. Each wine is meant to be unique to its time and place, to bend the arc even more toward the quality pole.

Tenuta Carretta makes the great red wine varieties of  Piedmont, so it is noteworthy that the samples they sent us were white wines: the Roero Arneis DOCG Riserva “Alteno della Fontana” and the Langhe DOC Riesling “Campofranco.”  Interest is rising in white wines these days and many consumers are searching for distinctive wines, so we welcomed the opportunity to taste these wines.

The Roero Arneis DOCG Riserva was a wonderful wine, refined and elegant. It is a proper reserve wine having spent 24 months aging on lees and a further year resting in bottle. The Riesling was a completely different experience, however.

You might be surprised to see a Riesling from Piemonte, but we know a few other Piemonte winemakers who produce Riesling because they just love this noble grape variety and cannot resist the temptation to see what it will produce here. It seems that a great deal of effort was necessary to make this Riesling a reality. A special terroir was discovered in a long-abandoned vineyard area (“franco” in the name “Campofranco” means “unused”). It is kind of extreme terroir and the cellar treatment is distinctive, too. The result is a wine that Sue said she wouldn’t have guessed to be a Riesling. Lots of minerality, a whiff of petrol that quickly disappeared. Fascinating and delicious. Kinda wild, too. Worth seeking out as are all the Tenuta Carretta wines we have tried.

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At the end of Piero Antinori’s book, he peers into the future and sees the outlines of what is recognizably the wine world of today, where consumption quantities are falling, wine quality is rising, the family wine firms are stronger than ever. He was right about quality and about the challenges he saw ahead for the wine market generally. Time will tell how family wineries fare in the global and local market adjustments that lie ahead. These seem like just the sort of challenges that family wineries are built for.

Second Thoughts on Pinot Grigio?

September 10, 2024 By in Italian wine, wine 4 Comments

Sue and I find that we are having second thoughts about Pinot Grigio. And that’s a good thing.

I am not quite sure where and when it began, but we must have had a series of disappointing Pinot Grigio (PG) experiences. Maybe we were at too many receptions where PG was offered as the white wine alternative to Chardonnay. The wines seemed designed to avoid offending anyone, with no distinctive characteristic to raise eyebrows or draw attention and no rough edges either.

Pinot Grigio became a reliable cooking wine at our house, but not something that we’d go out of our way to drink.

Suddenly this Summer …

Then suddenly this summer something changed and now we find ourselves on the lookout for interesting PG wines to try. I think it started when we flew to northeast Italy to visit the Collio DOC region. We spent two mornings blind-tasting dozens of Collio wines: Ribolla Gialla, Friulano, Malvasia, Sauvignon, Collio Bianco. All of them were interesting and delicious.

But it was the Pinot Grigio that surprised us. We spent an hour happily working our way through 14 different Pinot Grigio Collio DOC wines. The wines were different from the stereotype imprinted on our memory. The differences in terroir and vintage came through clearly. If this was Pinot Grigio, we decided, we needed to pay more attention.

Then we started tasting Friulian Pinot Grigio wines made in the traditional copper-color Ramato style, which someone described as somewhere between Rosé and an Orange wine. These wines were recognizably still Pinot Grigio but taken in a different direction. How interesting.

Serious Fun with Pinot Grigio

Back home, we started looking for Pinot Grigio with character and we found interesting Pinot Grigio wines at a local tasting of Elena Walch and Cantina Terlan wines from Alto Adige. Different from the Friuli wines and different from one another. Fascinating. A trip to Total Wine gave us more to drink and think about. It was interesting that Ramato-style wines were featured in the Pinot Grigio section.

We even enjoyed a sort of “back to the future” Pinot Grigio from Friuli producer Eugenio Collavini. Their delicious Villa Canlungo Pinot Grigio DOC Collio is the result of Manlio Collavini’s mad experiment. It is a white wine, one of the first white Pinot Grigio wines made in Collio back in the day when Ramato set the standard. Now white is the norm and Ramato gets attention. Funny how things get all topsy-turvy!

We re-discovered an old favorite at a wine dinner that our friends at Ricardo’s  Kitchen & Bar in Lacey, Washington, organized. It was Julia’s Dazzle from the Long Shadows winery. They let their Pinot Grigio grapes get very ripe indeed, and the dazzling result is more like a Rosé.

But wait, there’s more. The Graziano family was among the first to plant Pinot Grigio in California and their wine stood out as we began exploring American products. Grapes from old vines in Mendocino are barrel-fermented and sur lie-aged for their Monte Volpe PG. It turns out that if you treat Pinot Grigio like a serious wine, you can make a serious wine with character and complexity. Who knew?

All Along the Wine Wall

Sue was prowling the wine wall at the Proctor Metropolitan Market and stumbled upon a wine with “Ramato” in big letters. But it was from Washington, not Italy. So we had to try it. The deeply colored and intriguing wine is made by Sage Rat wines in the Rattlesnake Hills AVA near Yakima, Washington. It is an example of how the idea of interesting Pinot Grigio (and the traditional Friulian skin-contact method, too) is rapidly spreading.

We’ve changed our minds about Pinot Grigio and are now on the lookout for interesting PG wines. So what’s the point? Well, there are a lot of wines that have been stereotyped in one way or another (think post-Sideways Merlot, post-Yellow Tail Syrah/Shiraz, or post-Blue Nun Riesling). Stereotypes and fashions are powerful forces, but once you break through them you often discover a more complex and interesting world. That applies to Pinot Grigio … and a whole lot more.

No one likes a wishy-washy person, but sometimes it is good to have second thoughts.

Collio DOC: Wine, Brand, & Identity in Italy

August 6, 2024 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets 2 Comments

[This is the third and final article in a series inspired by our recent visit to Collio DOC in north-east Italy. Click here to read the first report and click here to read the second.]

What does it take for a wine region to stand out in today’s crowded market? Excellent wine, of course, but good wine isn’t enough because there are lots of quality wines around the world; consumers need a reason to buy one instead of another.

Brand and Identity in Wine

What else does it take? There are many ways to think about it, but in my book Wine Wars II, I focus on two necessary (but perhaps not sufficient) factors: brand and identity. Brand is the image that distinguishes your wine from the competition. Identity is the quality that defines the brand.  Many wines suffer from the lack of a memorable brand. Others may have a brand, but its power is limited because it doesn’t actually stand for anything. Put wine, brand, and identity together and much can be achieved.

Sometimes an iconic wine can define a region, giving it a brand and identity.  The market for wines from Bolgheri on the Tuscan coast, for example, was shaped by Tenuta San Guido’s famous Sassicaia, Bolgheri, Sassicaia, Super-Tuscan.

Sometimes a singular event can provide the spark. Here in the United States, for example, the Oregon wine industry’s rise to prominence was at least partly due to success at the Wine Olympics of 1979. I wrote about this in the Wine Economist on the occasion of the Eyrie Vineyards’ fiftieth birthday:

The Wine Olympics was a competition, sponsored by the French food and wine magazine Gault Millau, that featured 330 wines from 33 countries tasted blind by 62 judges. The 1975 Eyrie Pinot Noir Reserve attracted attention by placing 10th among Pinots, a stunning achievement for a wine from a previously little-known wine region.

Robert Drouhin of Maison Joseph Drouhin, a Burgundy negociant and producer, was fascinated and sponsored a further competition where the Eyrie wine came close second behind Drouhin’s own 1959 Chambolle-Musigny. Thus was Eyrie’s reputation set (and Oregon’s, too). It wasn’t long before Domaine Drouhin Oregon (DDO) was built in the same Dundee Hills as Eyrie’s vineyards — a strong endorsement of the terroir and international recognition of the achievement.

Oregon wine was a thing, the Willamette Valley was the brand, and Pinot Noir was the identity. Oregon produces other good wines besides Pinot Noir. And Pinot Noir grows in other parts of Oregon. But the wine, brand, and identity were established anyway.

Building Brand Collio

Collio DOC, which hugs the Slovenian border in north-east Italy, has long been known for its excellent wines and it is home to many strong private wine brands. Sue and I visited Livon on our recent trip, for example, enjoying the delicious wines and the amazing view from the tasting room deck. The sleek wines are easily identified by the distinctive art nouveau-style label, which is just risqué enough to have been banned by authorities in at least one state in the American South!

A strong regional brand benefits all producers, so the Collio Consortium, which celebrates 60  years in 2024, has worked diligently to establish the image and reputation of the region and its wines.

Sue and I encountered the “SuperWhites” campaign about 20 years ago at an event in Portland, Oregon (not “Porland” as printed on the event poster shown at the top of this page). Sponsored by Slow Food Friuli and supported by a range of regional organizations, the promotion was inspired by the success of “Super Tuscan” red wines. The idea is that Friuli (and Collio) are to Italian white wines what the Super Tuscans are to Italian reds.

Although the Super Whites theme seems to have run its course, the commitment to collective effort persists, along with the color of the Collio wine region, bright yellow, is still very much alive. (I think of it as Tour de France Yellow Jersey yellow, but that’s just me). Yellow is Collio’s color, featured in all the promotional literature, the capsules found atop many of the wines, and even a bright yellow Vespa scooter that seems to show up in many photos of the region. If you are in Collio and you see yellow,  you can’t help but think Collio wine.

More recently there has been an effort to promote a trademark Collio wine bottle shape, which is also shown in the photo above. The distinctive bottle actually requires a special cork to seal it properly. Adopting it is a serious decision from a practical standpoint.

The Collio bottle shape is instantly recognizable on store shelves and when you look around at what is on tables at a restaurant. Although its use is strictly voluntary, not mandated by consortium rules, we saw it almost everywhere and sensed a certain pride in the identity. It makes a strong statement about the Collio brand project.

Collio’s Identity Quest

If Collio has been purposeful and successful in building a regional brand, the road to a specific identity to back up the brand is less clear. Indeed one person we met told us he thought that Collio was still searching for an identity.

Thirty or forty years ago Collio was pretty much synonymous with a wine they called Tocai, made from the Tocai Friulano grape variety. The grape variety’s name is still the same, but the wine can’t be called Tocai anymore because of objections from Hungary’s Tokaji region. Now the wine is Friulano and if you ask for a glass of local white wine at a bar or restaurant, it’s what you’ll get (and happily drink, I think).

Having lost control of its signature wine’s name, some winemakers in Collio looked in a different direction for a regional identity. The result, we discovered when we visited in 2019, was an emphasis on white wine blends under the name Collio Bianco. The wines we tasted on that trip were terrific. White wine blends are under-appreciated. But aside from their high quality, the wines didn’t have enough in common to be the foundation of an identity. Some were blends of native grape varieties. Others were blends of traditional grape varieties like Chardonnay, Sauvignon, and Riesling. Others combined native and traditional grapes.

The Collio wine identity remains a work in progress and perhaps that’s how it always will be. What all the wines really share is not color or grape variety but sense of the place, shaped by the local ponca soils and hillside vines. If I had to pick a grape variety it would probably be Tocai Friulano, but why do that? It seems like it would exclude so many great wines and accomplish very little.

No, I think Collio isn’t any particular wine. As we suggested in the first two articles in this series, it is best to think of it as a particular place and a deep experience. You don’t just drink Collio DOC, you experience the place through the wine. I know that that’s inconvenient when it comes to marketing, but important indeed when it comes to the wine.

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Sue and I recently received a very thoughtful gift, a copy of The Food of Italy by Waverly Root (1971). We turned quickly to the section on Friuli and found this:

“Our wines,” laments a writer from Friuli, “are more exquisite than renowned.”

More than 50 years have passed and I think the wines are even more exquisite, if that’s possible. Renowned? Not as much, but the word is getting out there and Collio’s reputation is fast catching up to its reality.

Leveraging Wine & Tourism in Collio DOC

July 30, 2024 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets, wine tourism 1 Comment

[This is the second in a series of articles inspired by our recent visit to Collio DOC in north-east Italy. Click here to read last week’s introductory report.]

When Sue and I first visited Collio in 2000 we stayed in the newly opened agriturismo rooms at Venica & Venica and in a rustic cabin at La Subida.  We dined well at several memorable restaurants including Trattoria al Cacciatore at La Subida and Trattoria al Giardinetto in Cormons.

Wine Tourism and Economic Development

Guided by articles in Gambero Rosso and La Cucina Italiana (and Ornella Venica’s wise personal recommendations), we found great food, wine, and many fun things to do. The foundations of today’s wine tourism industry were already in place. We returned to Collio in 2015, 2019, and now in 2024. We’ve discovered new hospitality and wine tourism opportunities each time.

A strategic focus on wine tourism makes good sense for Collio and the Friuli-Venezia Giulia region generally. The vineyard area is relatively small compared to the Veneto, for example. Yields are necessarily limited to protect quality. From an economic development standpoint, the two ways to grow for the region are to increase price (through rising reputation, for example) and to leverage the wine’s magnetic pull through tourism development. Both forces are powerful in Collio and they can work together to drive the region forward.

Casanova & Castle, Wine & Golf

More and more high-quality hotels and restaurants can be found today, which is necessary but not sufficient for the growth strategy. This time we stayed at the Relais Russiz Superiore, for example, adjacent to the famous winery (which is now owned by a partnership between Marco Felluga and the Veneto’s Tommasi Family). One of our favorite wineries, Gradis’ciutta, offers visitors the opportunity enjoy the hospitality of Borgo Gradis’ciutta, a cluster of buildings that date back to the 1500s with nine rooms and three apartments. Engaging visitors beyond the tasting room counter is clearly a priority today.

The most ambitious investment in tourism and hospitality is probably  Castello di Spessa, where we stayed during our 2019 visit.  The business combines the historic castle (famous for its connection to the notorious Casanova!), hotel rooms, dining and event facilities, well-kept vineyards, a substantial winery operation, and even a golf course. We ran into California winery owners in Collio on holiday, who said that they came for the golf and stayed for, well, everything else!

Collio was a great place to visit 20  years ago and it has grown in every way, but without losing the characteristics that drew us to it originally (and have kept us coming back). But this is just the beginning, according to Ornella Venica, who challenged us to consider how much more Collio and Friuli have to offer to visitors interested in food, wine, history, culture, and nature.

The Vine Academy

Our first stop on this trip to Collio was lunch at the recently opened restaurant at Accademia Vine Lodge. The food and wine were delicious and the setting beautiful, but what sticks in my mind is the fact that this attractive wine tourist destination is also an education institution. When wine tourists are not filling its rooms, groups of earnest students move in.

The Accademia Vine Lodge has a double personality. It is both an attractive venue for visitors like us and also the home of the famous Simonit&Sirch vine pruning institute. The restaurant’s wine list includes bottles from Collio and the region, of course, but also from some of the more than 150 Simonit&Sirch clients around the world.

The vine lodge fascinates me because it reminds us that wine tourism can spring up in many ways. It isn’t just wineries with food or rooms, for example. Here is a case where globally respected technical expertise in the science and art of vine pruning has grown into a venue that has broad appeal.

Collio & the Beach

A highlight of our visit was an evening event called Collio & the Beach, set on a broad shaded patio beside the beach at Baia di Sistiana near Trieste. Could a seaside party draw a different demographic profile than typical winery tasting rooms? This was a wine event, but not just a wine event. Bustling booths were pouring local wines, for example, but the longest lines were for delicious foods such as porchetta, frico, watermelon, and hand-carved local Prosciutto d’Osvaldo.

We sampled from the different wine stations, eventually focusing on Friulano because it is so popular in this region. We were surprised, however, that the longest line was for Pinot Grigio! In fact, the line never ended because some folks got their pour and moved directly to the back of the queue so that they could try another wine.

Pinot Grigio? Really? Here in America, Pinot Grigio is often made in unexceptional styles, designed more to avoid offending than to develop distinctive characteristics. But these Pinot Grigio wines were different because many of them were made in that traditional Ramato style, with lots of skin contact. These wines, which are both old-fashioned and cutting-edge in terms of style, had appeal that spanned the generations. And they matched up perfectly with the traditional food and festive venue.

The 70 Percent Solution

Sue and I keep returning to Collio because offers so much that we enjoy and appreciate in terms of food, wine, culture, and nature. It seems to us that Collio today is doubling down on the “Collio Experience” and not just the wine. That was the case at Collio & the Beach and Castello di Spessa. And the experience especially stood out at  Subida di Monte in Cormons.

Once upon a time, this was a small family winery, but new owners saw the “experience” potential to leverage the winery with hospitality investments, including Locanda alle Vigne. The restaurant features traditional dishes in a fabulous setting. We were there on a late June Thursday night and the place was packed with guests of all ages.

The winery anchors the operation, of course, but the hospitality business generates 70 percent of the revenues, bringing more and different consumers to Collio and its wine.

Back to the Future?

Our Collio journey began at Venica & Venica and La Subida and both are still leading the way. The plans for a wine resort that Giampaolo Venica showed us in 2000 are now very much realized, for example. Very impressive!

La Subida has created a more casual restaurant called Osteria la Preda de la Subida that’s become one of our favorite places to eat. It is popular with tourists, but delights locals, too, with its celebration of the traditional food and wine of the region. It’s where we had our last meal (for this trip) before heading for our airport hotel near Venice.

Collio shows that wine and hospitality are two industries that can leverage each other to generate both happy visitors and also economic development opportunities. Other regions should take note!

Collio Revisited: Tradition & Change in One of Italy’s Great Wine Regions

July 23, 2024 By in Italian wine, wine 2 Comments

Collio DOC is a tiny appellation snuggled up against the Slovenian border in north-east Italy. It is a beautiful place. How beautiful? After our recent visit to the region, I noticed that Sue changed her computer’s desktop image to a photo of these hills. Collio replaced another beautiful vineyard area, Cartizze, on the screen, which last year replaced a photo of the Douro Valley. The competition for real estate on Sue’s desktop is fierce. Collio is that beautiful.

2024 marks the 60th anniversary of the founding of the Collio Consortium and we were there to catch up with what is new in this dynamic region, best known for its stunning white wines. This was our fourth trip, having previously visited in 2000, 2015, and 2019. We are grateful to our Colliio Consortium hosts and to everyone who answered our questions and let us sample their wines.

Continuity and Change in Collio

Collio is a region of paradox and contradiction, which makes it very interesting indeed. Start with geography. Colllio is defined by its most distinctive common elements, hills and soil. As the map above (which hangs on Sue’s office wall) shows, Collio is crescent-shaped, with winegrowing concentrated in the hills at the two extremes. The soil profile here is called ponca, stratified marl and limestone rich in minerals and fossils, that resulted from the the rising seabeds that created the hills. Hills and ponca. That’s Collio. Seems pretty simple.

But it is more complicated than that and the wines can have great complexity because of variations in vineyard aspect, grape varieties, clones, blends, and winemaking methods. What seems timeless and simple on first glass is more like a kaleidoscope when examined closely.

And the region and its wines have changed over time, or at least that is how Sue and I have experienced it. We discovered Collio Sauvignon on our first visit and we were swept away by wines like the famous Venica Ronco delle Mele. These wines seemed to us to be a completely different take on this famous wine.

The More Things Change …

We still enjoyed the Sauvignon when we returned in 2015, but other wines caught our attention, including Ribolla Gialla and Friulano. I’m not sure if the style of the Sauvignon had changed or if we were just more open to these new varieties, but it was fun to explore them. Our 2019 visit was focused on Collio Bianco, which are blends of white wines of the region. These white blends were once “kitchen sink” wines meant to use up leftover grapes, but they work so well that they have become signature wines for many producers.

For this trip we explored all of the white wines, including also Pinot Grigio and Malvasia, in blind tastings led by the talented wine writer and Friuli wine expert Richard Baudains. One thing that stood out from the tastings, winemaker meetings,  and winery visits, in addition to the overall excellence of the wines, was the rapid pace of change in the post-covid era. We found a lot to consider. A quick list includes:

  • Generational transitions

The Consortium’s 60 years is short in terms of the region’s wine history, but long on the human scale that defines family wineries. As in many parts of the world, this is a time of transition, with one generation seeking to pass the wine torch to another.

Sometimes the generational transitions are smooth, but sometimes less so. Children who have seen how hard their winemaking parents must work often opt for a different lifestyle. Or perhaps they have different ideas about what their wine should be. In Collio, we were told, one of the effects is that more women were finally entering the industry.

  • Back to the Future wines

I think the generational transition must have gone well at Polje, for example, where we talked with winemaker Sebastian Juretic while sipping his fine wines and looking our over desktop-worthy vineyard views. He loved the winemaking life with all its travails, but he didn’t want to make wines just like his father had, so we tried his Labuccia, an amphora-fermented Ramato-style wine.

Ramato is a traditional Friuli style of wine, with extended skin contact to create a copper color. Ramato is part of the new Collio but it is rooted in the past. Indeed some say that this region is the cradle of orange or skin-contact wine. Sebastian showed us photos of his grandparents making wines like his, but in old-fashioned open tanks, not sleek stainless steel.

  • Investment from outside the region

Several forces are at work driving increased investment in Collio wine from outside the region. Generational change is one of them. This factor was part of the story, we were told, of the iconic Jermann winery’s 2021 acquisition by the Antinori family.

Economic forces are also important. Tenuta Borgo Conventi, for example, is now part of the dynamic Villa Sandi group as that important Veneto wine group has expanded to other Italian wine regions in order to build scale and diversity in its portfolio of offerings. I was discussing this with Borgo Conventi winemaker Paolo Corso over a glass of his fine Sauvignon when I remembered where I had tasted the wine before. It was during a lunch last year at Villa Sandi. The winery executives there were proud to show off this important part of their collection.

This is not a new trend. Collio’s distinctive wines have long attracted attention from outside the region. Attems has been part of the Frescobaldi group for more than 20 years. However, the combination of generational transitions and market forces today seems to be strengthening the investment flows.

Small is Beautiful

Collio is a very small wine region. The Consortium has only about 300 grower and producer members farming 1300 hectares and producing 7 million bottles. Just a drop in the global wine bucket, if you know what I mean.

But the wines are distinctive and differ both from other Italian regions and from each other, but with the hillside and ponca common thread to tie them together. Now more than ever, it’s the kind of place and the style of wines that people are seeking out.

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Sue and I send our thanks to everyone who took time out to meet with us during our brief visit to the Collio region. Special thanks to Lavinia Zamaro, Guilia Formichetti, Federica Shir, and Richard Baudains. Cheers to Dutch wine writer Fred Nijhuis, who shared his insights with us during this trip.

Wine Book Review: Italy in a Wineglass

July 16, 2024 By in book reviews, Italian wine, wine, wine history 1 Comment

Italy in a Wineglass: The Story of Italy Through its Wines by Marc Millon (Melville House Publishing, 2024).

They say that every glass of wine tells a story, so if you get enough of the right wines together, can they tell a really big and complicated story? Can you tell the history of Italy through its wines?

That’s the challenge that drives this very interesting new book by Marc Millon. Sue and I recently returned from a trip to Collio in Italy’s northeast near the border with Slovenia (watch for our first report next week) and Millon’s book kept me engaged during the long trans-Atlantic flights. I am a fan.

Zooming In and Out

The story is organized chronologically because the idea is to tell a history (you’d probably do it by region if wine itself was the point). The chapters follow a set pattern that I call PGP for Particular-General-Particular.  Particular, to start off with something concrete, then zoom out to General to make broad points, then focus on Particular again to drive home the point. It’s a very effective way to tell a story.

Millon begins each chapter with a personal vignette that evokes a particular time, place, wine, and usually good food, too. If you’ve been to Italy a few times it’s likely that you will be familiar with some of the places that Millon visits and the experiences he reports. A concrete personal connection is made.

The vignette is chosen to launch us into a more general discussion of a slice of Italy’s rich political, social, and economic history. Millon’s style here is fluid and footnote-free. Not simple in terms of ideas, but not difficult to understand. The history section almost always finds a way to bring the development of Italy’s wines and wine industry into the story.

Finally, Millon zooms in to provide detailed profiles of a few particular wines that he has chosen to illustrate some particular point. If the vignette introduction and the historical centerpiece haven’t hooked you, the stories of the wines surely will. I was interested that a couple of the wines that Millon chooses were also on the list I compiled for my book Around the World in Eighty Wines, and for pretty much the same reasons.

Conflict and Economy

Two noteworthy threads run through the book. The first is war and conflict, which has a big impact on wine, generally not in a good way. This especially hit home for me since we were headed to Friuli, where so many battles have been fought over the years (and indeed, Millon’s chapter on Wars and Wine opens in Cormons).

The second thread is economic change. We learn a lot about changing systems of wine production (feudal, sharecroppers, cooperatives, the “economic miracle,” and more) and how they have affected wine, wine producers, and the wine industry. If Italian wine economics were all you cared about, this would be a good introduction because the key elements are there, set firmly in a broader context.

How does Italy’s history (and its wineglass) conclude? Millon brings his book to a close by surveying the many problems facing Italian wine and wine more generally in a chapter he calls “Back to the Future.” He even offers a few wines to help the reader think through the journey (Gravner’s Ribolla Gialla from Friuli is one of them).

By the last glass, you’ve learned a lot about Italy, Italian wines, and how they are connected. An excellent read! The only thing that would have made it more satisfying is if Delta Airlines offered better wines (preferably fine Italian wines) for its passengers to enjoy while reading Italy in a Wineglass at 38,000 feet!

Cantina Tramin: Strength in (Small) Numbers in Alto Adige

June 18, 2024 By in cooperatives, Italian wine, wine, wine history, wine markets Leave a comment

Your first impression when you arrive at Cantina Tramin is that you’ve entered some sort of space portal. Here in the lush Alto Adige hills, you expect to see a sturdy old building housing Cantina Tramin winery, but it’s not there. Or rather it is there, but it is hidden by a very modern addition that was completed only in 2010. Old and new.

The new Tramin is striking. You feel like you are approaching a space ship when you drive up. And you feel like you are peeking out among the vines when you look out from inside.  It is quite an experience.

Quite a Surprise

The wines are quite an experience, too, especially the white wines. Bright, bold, complex. They fit the image of the winery perfectly. The surprise comes when you learn that this sleek, modern winery with its terrific wines is a cooperative, born from crisis more than 100 years ago.

Sue and I have visited the Alto Adige several times and we are always impressed  by the great wines we taste and the tiny vineyards we encounter. The vineyards cling to the hills in this region with the valley floor given over in many places to the tree fruit for which the region is well known. There are about 5000 hectares of vineyards and about 5000 winegrowers tending them. Even if math isn’t your strong suit I think you can tell that the average holding is pretty small and the smallest of them are like grape-strewn postage stamps.

1898 and All That

The Cantina Tramin cooperative took flight during a crisis in 1898. The many small growers lacking market power relative to a few large buyers, facing ruinously low prices, and led by Tramin’s parish priest, pledged to work together rather than run a race to the bottom. This is how wine cooperatives spring up. But as anyone who has served on a committee can tell you, it isn’t always easy to make collective enterprises succeed.

Cantina Tramin followed the well-traveled road in its early days, producing bulk wines (mainly red wines from the Schiava grape) and selling them off at low prices to be bottled, marketed, and sold by others. Then in the 1980s came the realization that competition for basic wines in the bulk wine market might not be economically sustainable, especially for a region with such fragmented vineyard ownership.

So the decision was made to radically change the cooperative’s model, moving from quantity to quality, from bulk wine to branded wine, from red to white. It was an expensive decision because it meant replanting by individual cooperative members and cellar investment by the group. The fantastic new winery that opened in 2010 was the crowning touch, but it came after much hard work and investment by the 160 families and their 270 hectares of vines.

Bold DNA

Bold moves seem to be in Cantina Tramin’s institutional DNA. Creating and later expanding the cooperative was a risky decision, albeit one that was more or less forced upon the grower families at the start. Breaking away from the quantity-driven bulk wine model was a big step, too. I am sure there were doubts and second thoughts at the time, but that bet has paid off very well.

You get a sense of the strategic thinking at work here when you look at the winery’s Chardonnay program. Chardonnay does really well here and there is a lot planted, but it wasn’t suited to the kind of buttery Chardonnay that was in fashion 20 years ago. So rather than release a 100% Chardonnay, Tramin created “Stoan” (stone), a blend of Chardonnay, Sauvignon, Pinot Bianco, and Gewurtztraminer. Only some years later, when tastes had changed, did Tramin release “Troy” (trail), a pure Chardonnay that spends a year on the lees.

Big Bets Pay Off

Maybe the biggest bet of all is Tramin’s signature wine, the Nussbaumer Gewurtztraminer. Although it is difficult to know for sure, many think Gewurtz originally hails from this region. It sure does well here, whatever its origin. It is an easy wine to enjoy when done well, as it is at Tramin, but not necessarily an easy wine to sell. There’s the name, which some consumers are afraid to pronounce, and then there are the different styles of Gewurtz that you find, from austerely dry to sweetish and flowery.

The Nussbaumer is more about minerality than flowers. Made from very ripe grapes, which account for the surprisingly high 14.5 percent abv, it is all about balance. The winery’s food pairing recommendations are speck (the delicious smoked prosciutto product this region is known for) and saffron risotto with licorice powder.

Winebow represents Cantina Tramin in the United States and a look at its online catalog shows a surprisingly wide range of wines including other white wines like Pinot Grigio (an important export to the U.S.) and reds, too, including Lagrein, Schiava, and Pinot Noir.

Cantina Tramin is a great success. Could it be a model for other regions? Definitely yes if you are looking for a business model for cooperative success. In terms of organization, Cantina Tramin does everything right, especially in terms of creating strong incentives for winegrower members to produce the best possible grapes and no sacrifice of quality for quantity or collective reputation for individual gain.

It is never easy to get collective agreement for such systems and many cooperatives failed in the past precisely for this reason. One key, we were told, is that Cantina Tramin is not too big so the families know one another and the social contract that binds the members together is as tight as the legal contract. (Not for nothing are Italian cooperatives called cantine socialle). So there is strength in numbers … so long as the numbers are not too big!

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Here are the Cantina Traminb wines we tasted for this report:

Pinot Grigio Classico 2023

Unterebner Pinot Grigio 2022

Stoan Bianco (70% Chardonnay, 20% Sauvignon, 5% Pinot Bianco, 5% Gewurtztraminer) 2022

Troy Chardonnay 2020

Nussbaumer Gewürztraminer 2022

All of the wines were distinctive and delicious. The biggest surprises were the Chardonnay, which was complex with a long finish, and the two Pinot Grigio wines, which set a high standard for wines made from this grape variety.

GD Vajra: Once Upon a Time in Barolo

April 30, 2024 By in Italian wine, wine, wine markets 2 Comments

Once upon a time … That’s how many of our most beloved stories begin, so that’s how we begin this report on the wines of G.D. Vajra. These wines might be best understood in the context of the stories about them. And the stories have surely helped us understand and appreciate what we found in our wine glasses.

So … once upon a time Sue and I were invited to take part in a Zoom interview with Giuseppe Vaira, the second-generation family winemaker of G.D. Vajra. It was a great pleasure to spend an hour (even a web hour) with him.  If you ask him a question, he will tell you a story (once upon a time …) using metaphors to communicate both facts and feelings. I think you can get a sense of what I am talking about from this video. 

Every Glass Tells a Story

Mr. Vaira is such an engaging person that it would be difficult not to like his wines, but the memory of his stories certainly added to the experience. Here are three brief examples to show you what I mean.

Barolo is famous for Barolo, of course. That’s what they make and export around the world. But what do Barolo winemakers like to drink, Mr. Vaira asked. Dolcetto! Not, he made certain to add, because they are cheap (it would be difficult to get as much for a Dolcetto as for a Barolo), but because it can make such an appealing wine.

Dolcetto was once widely planted (and enjoyed), but it lost out to Nebbiolo when the region was replanted after Phyloxxera. G.D. Vajra began making a very special Dolcetto Costa&Fossati in 1979 and it shows what Dolcetto can be. Complex, elegant, great with food. Who would not want to drink a wine like this?  Mr. Vaira’s story made us pull the cork and now we can’t think of Dolcetto the same way.

The Sun? Or the Moon?

The second story is about Freisa, an ancient Piemonte grape variety that you rarely see anymore. Freisa was once very common in the region, we learned and used it to make the base wine for Vermouth. But then came Prohibition in the United States and the bottom dropped out of the Vermouth export market. Most Freisa vines were pulled out so only a little is left.  Many different styles of wine are made from Freisa today, so it would be easy for consumers to get confused. What is Freisa? Well, it depends.

G.D. Vajra’s Freisa “Kyè” plays on this theme. Look at the label. Is it the sun? Or the moon? Hard to pin down. As you might imagine, our minds were racing as we tasted this wine. I imagined that I could sense the Vermouth connection, but that might be the power of suggestion. A unique experience, more moon than sun for me, but maybe it was the residual effect of that solar eclipse a few weeks ago?

At one point Mr. Vaira suggested that we taste the 2020 Barolo wines over a couple of days to appreciate how they evolve. We took it as an opening to sample two different wines, half on one might and half on the next so that we could both compare the terroirs and experience the evolution. You’d do the same thing, wouldn’t you?

Turn It Up to Eleven?

Inevitably each wine came with an image or story to provoke our imaginations. The Coste di Rose comes from a small steep vineyard at the top of a hill. Reaching to the top, the notes tell me, that you are confronted with a tall sandstone dune, a dramatic sight that makes this vineyard’s unique soil profile clear. A wine with emotion, according to the tasting note, with tones of cherry and rose petals, mint, and sweet spices.

I selected the Ravera Barolo to complement the Bricco delle Viole partly because of the difference in terroir but, I admit, mainly because of a note I found where Giuseppe Vaira says, “I am intrigued by Ravera’s indomitable personality. It is crisp like the sound of a Telecaster, straight and electric.” How can you not taste a wine that evokes the iconic Fender guitar that has featured on so many rock hits?

The experiment was quite an experience. The two wines were indeed quite different from each other, showing the influence of terroir, and the second night tasting added more depth and richness. It reminded me of my friend Brian’s advice to always double-decant Barolo wines. These wines have years of development ahead of them, so it will be interesting to revisit them and see how their stories and personalities have evolved.

An Unexpected Favorite

Of all the G.D. Vajra wines we have tasted so far, Sue and I think the humble Dolcetto is our favorite, which is a surprise. But this isn’t just any Dolcetto because great effort was made to select the best heritage clone vines and to plant them in just the right place (a vineyard plot that would have made great Barolo) to tell the story of this historic wine in the most expressive way.

It doesn’t make economic sense to make a Dolcetto like this, but sometimes there are more important things to consider. It is all about the story at G.D. Vajra. I think that’s why their wines are so appealing.

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An article that begins with “once upon a time” and ends with electric guitars needs a theme soung. Here it is. Enjoy. (It’s a Stratocaster not a Telecaster, but you get the idea!)