Food Read: Palmento

Last week I was fortunate enough to attend a wine tasting and book signing with Robert Camuto, author of the 2010 book Palmento: A Sicilian Wine Odyssey. The tasting featured the wines (and real live winemakers) from two of the wineries highlighted in the book, which chronicles the evolving wine scene in Sicily. The wines were interesting - something like a wine nerd's dream, as they departed significantly from the usual styles in their utterly unaltered Mt. Etna-ness. Well, actually, though the Mt. Etna terroir undoubtedly contributes, "unaltered" is probably the key here. The wines are raw, minerally, acidic, fruity, oxidized...and strangely attracting. These are wines that have practically made themselves in how unmanipulated they are. Interesting.

Also interesting is Camuto, who can claim Sicilian roots, but was born in New York, has lived in Texas, and now resides with his wife in southern France (his book on French wine country, Corkscrewed: Adventures in the New French Wine Country, is next on my list). Sometime mid-tasting, Camuto wandered over to my end of the counter and was generously forgiving in his evaluation of the amateur explanation of wine regions and their varietals that I was imparting upon my beer-centric countermate. We had a lovely conversation, at the end of which I found myself with my very owned signed copy of Palmento (which I purchased, of course).

The next day, on the plane to California, I found out just how fortunate I'd been. If Camuto is pleasant in conversation, his writing is twice as captivating. This is not a stuffy wine book, but rather wine lit, a foodie read, and travel writing all in one. Camuto's descriptions of food are like poetry. His accounts of the countryside, the wine, the weather, the people - are all shockingly vivid. The end result is a tome that will make you want to immediately travel to Sicily, or at least to wine country, and that really makes that wine information stick. How can you forget the details of making fine Marsala once you've read about its modern caretaker? I read the whole book over the weekend. My only regret? That I wasn't able to read it before the tasting, so that I could have appreciated the experience all the more.

Wine of the Week: Cusumano Nero D'Avola 2007

When I heard wine expert Joshua Wesson refer to Nero D'Avola as the "next big thing" on a recent episode of The Splendid Table, I immediately knew that a bottle of it was in my future. The grape is a native of Sicily, and still relatively unknown (read: affordable). I found Cusumano's 2007 vintage at my local wine shop for about $12. The young wine is a deep purple color, with an aroma of red fruit and not a little alcohol on the nose. I read several reviews that also referred to an aroma of juniper berries, but I had a hard time picking that up through the alcohol. I found the wine to be medium- to full-bodied, with noticeable tannins and a medium, crisp finish. In terms of taste, it seemed to me that a lot of the fruit got lost behind the tannins, acid, and alcohol. I picked up a strawberry flavor, but the wine seemed a little tight, which is not surprising, since it is so young. Overall, I found the wine to be just okay, but I suspect there is a lot more to it and would like to try decanting it in order to bring out more of the flavors.