Campania is one big ole chain of Volcanos

Ciro Picariello, Il Cevittao, Capolino Perlingieri

Friday 5/10, 4:11 PM, Porta di Massa, Napoli

“I know they make liquor up there”, Calvin proclaimed, pointing at a tiny (probably) monastery sitting alone on the side of the mountains surrounding the little region of Avellino, “and I want it in my body.”  We were standing on the rooftop patio of the recently built modern winery of Ciro Picariello, overlooking about half of the winery’s 13 hectares of vines.  They mostly grow Fiano up here, with a smattering of Greco and Aglianico.  It’s remarkable how much the aesthetic of the winery and immediate geography directly translate to what you end up tasting in the glass.  Picariello’s new winery is distinctly modern- granite, concrete, stainless steel, lots of windows, shades of white and gray and slate everywhere.  Their Fiano is the same: mineral driven, precise, and bracingly refreshing.  They have a certain regalness (both the winery and the wine) about them that most facilities and wines at their price point lack; thick muscle and razor sharp sinew without an ounce of actual flab anywhere.  

The Picariello family- Emma, her brother (the size of an NHL defenseman), her father, and mother- greeted us upon our arrival and took us for a walk just to the edge of the vineyard and then through their squeaky clean cellar.  She’s 8 months pregnant with twins but didn’t show a smidge of fatigue or laboring all afternoon.  The quick lookaround led us to the chilly tasting room, where we grabbed seats for what turned out to be an absolutely revelatory display of the ageability of Fiano.  Fiano isn’t often considered among the age worthy wines of the world outside of those in the know, but considering it’s intensity, it makes perfect sense.  We tasted through their current releases and then popped a 2014 Fiano, 2006 Fiano, 2010 Greco, and 2008 Aglianico.  They were all outstanding, but the 2006 Fiano, to me, was the showstopper.  Fiano takes longer to show age on the eyes and nose compared to other wines, and the 2006 had finally started to transform into a golden, honeyed, lager-adjacent shade of yellow.  The nose and palate met the eyes to a T- it was dripping with aromas of honey, vanilla bean, and even a whiff of menthol.  The finish went forever and was reminiscent of sourdough smeared with cremieux style honey (I always buy a jar the first day I land in France and it’s gone by the time I head home a couple weeks later) and it met the sharp, dry cheese on the table with as much calculated enthusiasm as the best port-blue cheese pairing I’ve ever had.  Lunch was thorough but not brutally lengthy, which was appreciated.  The 3 hour lunches on trips like these begin to feel laborious quite quickly, and last night’s 5 course dinner didn’t feel like it was long ago enough to be that hungry, but everything, both last night and today for lunch, was simple, (mostly) not terribly heavy, and the portions were reasonable.  The wines all complimented the food perfectly (we ate olives that I swear tasted like a beef stew that took 3 days to cook), and our few hours at Picariello only made me want to pour (and drink) more of them once I return to Virginia.  At the end, right before we all slammed an espresso and hit the road, Emma’s mom brought out a big silver platter full of amari and digestivos.  Sure as shit, there was a bright green, minty liquor in a squat little bottle hailing from “that building right up there on the ridge”.  Calvin was right (I’ve come to learn that he typically is), they DO make booze way up there in the old building on the ridgeline, and it’s delicious.  

It’s been about 48 hours since I’ve checked in last, and a lot has happened other than a 3 hour meeting at Picariello in Avellino.  Jake and I’s last night in Rome was fun for us but seemed to be shitty for everyone that served us, as every single bartender and server we came across was flat out grumpy about grabbing us everything we ordered.  We did one last final leg of our whirlwind scooter and foot tour of the city, and we were misguided enough to grab a diesel-strong espresso at 9 PM before seeking out some pizza and drinks.  The espresso kept us up well past 3 AM.  For context, at home, I typically lay off the caffeine sometime around 2:00 in the afternoon, 3:00 if I’m working service up front, and 4:00 if I’m working service in the kitchen (and even then, I know I’m not going to bed anytime before midnight).  Two toddlers and three restaurants has my ass in bed no later than 9:00 most nights, much to my wife’s chagrin (you’re not seriously going to bed at 7:45, are you?).  On our caffeine high, we bopped around town eating pizza and tiramisu, drinking Barolo and grappa, and seeing as much as we could before retiring to the BnB to knock out payroll, get packed, showered, and hopefully a few hours of good hard rest.  

8 AM came early, but we shot awake and took an Uber to the airport, where we met up with Jose (our friend, our rep, and the number 2 guy over at Le Storie), Jason (whom I internally know as The Professor, and my pal from last year’s Italian adventure) and his coworker at The Buttery, Brad.  The van ride to Campania was the very definition of fine- we stayed moving on the highway but it was far from luxurious in the third row with a seat that I couldn’t figure out how to lean back from a strict 90 degrees.  We drove for a few hours and finally pulled into the stunning old Grand Hotel Telesio.  A walk was in order, so we took to the city for what we hoped would be a light lunch, knowing fully well that we had an appointment that evening with Alexia and Georgio of Capolino Perlingieri and Il Cevittao, respectively, and that the food would be in no short supply upon the completion of our tastings with them.  The lunch joint was a ghost town other than the dozen feral cats begging for scraps, and while most of the food was just ok, the pizza fritto wasn’t something I’d ever experienced before.  Think 10 layers of fried puff pastry with a little crater inside filled with just enough red sauce and cheese to make it eat well.  It was fucking awesome (Sky, take note), the liter of Peroni hit the spot (it always does), and we walked back to the hotel parking lot just in time to snag Kristin, Jose’s fellow Le Storie employee, and drive over to meet John and Gabrielle at Capolino Perlingieri.  

***break here.  Spoiler alert, we’re in Ischia now, and I had to stop typing to get on the ferry from Naples.  Picking it back up now at 1:05 AM with no clear ending to before or beginning to the present text***

I’ve long enjoyed the wines of Perlingieri, though I’ll admit, I’d never quite appreciated them before.  Alexia’s Falanghina, “Preta”, has been in my rotation of easy-to-drink summer whites for years.  We sell a lot of it at Jardin, including magnums, and the combination of bright acid, clean minerality, gentle florality, starburst lemony fruit, and the wildly competitive price point keeps it around and moving.  Southern Italy, Campania specifically, gets the shaft on reputation, and much is self-inflicted because they make a ton of bulk wine here.  But, like we experienced visiting the Roussillon in 2022 and Muscadet just last summer, there are a handful of dedicated winemakers who work their land and the cellars with pride.  Alexia is, of course, one of them.  We pulled up just before Calvin and Erin arrived in a second car (they had spent the previous night in San Gimignano to visit with Elizabetta of Montenidoli, where we had been in previous years), and after getting a thorough history of the estate, we sat down in the basement (500 years ago it was the stables) to taste her white wines, as well as her partner Gregorio’s white from his Tuscan estate, Il Cevitao.  

She opened our tasting with an honest question that came across as quite the salvo.  “So what do you guys think of natural wine?”.  We were all caught a bit off guard.  Asking 10 wine professionals with 10 individual opinions (especially given that a lot of us don’t really know one another that well) THAT question right out of the gates was unexpected, and there was a loud silence that fell over the room for a brief moment, as if nobody wanted to show their cards.  I mean, I was in the room with Erin Frickin’ Scala, and I didn’t know how she feels about the whole thing and didn’t want to sound dumb.  Once again, kinda professionally self conscious sometimes.

*Aside*

I love trade trips like these for a lot of reasons, but meeting fellow wine professionals is always a sneaky high one.  I’ve had the privilege of riding in the car for a few hours with Erin Scala, a somm whom I’ve quietly admired and looked up to for years despite having never met.  Her fingerprints are all over the Charlottesville and central Virginia wine scene, having been the buyer at Fleurie for years among so many other wine roles she’s had.  Her background is fascinating- a former professional xylophone player turned restaurant somm turned wine shop and business owner and mother, with an endless list of side passions and hustles- and feels a little bit familiar to me (replace the xylophone with a machine gun and restaurant somm with being a cook, and I’m there, at least in part).  Anyways, her approach to wine is clearly intensely rooted in the history of it.  She’s quick with good questions- the places, the vineyard and cellar techniques, the people and their family tree and who impacted what and why- and, much like being with Jason, Joe, and Winn in Italy last year, she has made my time here much more interesting.  Not to totally fan boy out, but it’s been cool to spend some time chatting with her.

*End Aside*

Jason was the first to speak (on brand for him, in the best way), and said the right follow up to that question anytime it’s posed- “well what do you mean natural wine?  Can you define it for me?”, and from there we all took turns trying to put a finger on Alexia and Georgio’s perspective that they were coming from.  A spirited discussion ensued for probably 20 minutes, and we ended up coming to a rough consensus that we all like wine that tastes good, and we all dislike wine that tastes bad, and despite taste being subjective, there is a pretty objective scale that ranges from delicious all the way to disgusting that we all more or less agree on.  Quibbling over subjective tastes and preferences gets us nowhere, but agreeing that a steak at Peter Luger’s tastes great and a steak at Denny’s tastes bad isn’t really debateable.  And I think wine isn’t that far off from the same kind of comparison.  It goes deeper than that with the topic of natural wine, but for now, let’s put a pin in that subject for later on.  

Almost every grape grown in Campania is considered “indigenous” to them, though thousands of years ago they came from Greece, just as all things come from somewhere at some point.  Alexia is growing Falanghina, Greco, and Fiano for whites, Sciascinoso and Aglianico for reds.  The whites all showed quite well, including the Vermentino that Georgio brought from a few hours north in Tuscany.  We piled into the van for a quick jaunt to the vines across the village and spend some time out there talking about soil, rain, bees, and volcanic mountains- you know, some real nerdy winemaker shit.  We tasted the reds upon our return to the winery, and Georgio’s wines really stood out.  He grows mostly Sangiovese, which is not only one of the most noble grapes in all of Italy, but a personal favorite of mine.  It’s not even fair for the Aglianico and Sciascinoso to share the table with Sangio.  Going back to our steak analogy: Sangio is a New York Strip and Aglianico is a skirt steak.  Sure, they’re both beef, but boy are they different.  And I’ll still take a perfectly prepared skirt over a shitty strip, but boy you’d really have to be at both ends of those extremes to make that the case.  His red wines were powerful but also elegant, showing freshness and finesse to go along with all that rich bass that’s so indicative of well made Tuscan Sangiovese.  

***break here again.  I had to get some sleep.  It’s now 9:45 AM on Friday, May 11, and I just returned from an hour jog around the port in Ischia.  Holy shit it’s gorgeous here.***

We finished the tasting and went up the staircase that was specifically built to defend from the top down with your strong sword hand free to swing and your invader coming up from the bottom stifled.  Alexia’s mother and helper were preparing dinner, a menu that Alexia told us she and her mother bickered about non stop the week before. I know I’ve hammered on the lengthy feasts for every meal, but it can’t be overstated.  Every winemaker only has us for one or two meals, and 10 people have come all this way from the US just to be here, and there is obviously a ton of pressure to show out for us and make it memorable.  We FEASTED at Perlingieri- asparagus wrapped in bacon, tuna stuffed pickled peppers, fresh farmers cheese, pasta primavera, an enormous, hours old log of mozzarella that was the size of a regulation NFL football, grilled zucchini with mint, roasted eggplant, stewed sweet peppers, bread and their own olive oil,macerated strawberries for dessert, all with a table FULL of every single wine we’d opened that day… it was impressive and staggeringly simple, all at the same time.  And yet, Alexia said her mother was disappointed in her choices and that she should have really done more for us.  That she was being rude, “a savage’s menu”, her mother called it.  I beg to differ, but try telling a 90+ year old woman (a total OG of thoughtful Campanian wine, too, who was the only woman running a winery in the region back when she was in charge) that she’s wrong.  It was our first meal together as a group, and it was perfect.

I’m going to break here for the sake of time.  I’ve got to be ready to head up the mountain to the vineyards of Cenatiempo, the producer that we’ve ferried over to this island to see, in about 20 minutes and still need to shower.  We’ve got some time this afternoon and tomorrow to ourselves, and I’ll pick the trip up from leaving Avellino then. 

Happy Birthday, MOM!