This week I had the pleasure of sitting down with Justin Gallen, an Italian importer and one of his producers, Francesco Cirelli, a winemaker from the eastern Italian region of Abruzzo. In the first part of this interview series, Gallen discusses his passion for wine and the qualities it must possess before he brings it to the United States.

Drink of the Week (DOTW): You’re a sommelier and Italian importer of fine wines. How did this all come about and have you always had a passion for wine?
Justin Gallen (JG): I’ve been in the wine business for about 20 years. I was the kid who wasn’t interested in getting beer. I always wanted a gallon of Burgundy or Bartles & Jaymes or wine coolers or whatever else it happened to be. I’ve always been fascinated by wine.

DOTW: How do you find your producers?
JG:  I’lI go to the organic and biodynamic fairs that take place in Italy a couple times a year and meet the producer and taste their wine. I met Francesco by chance. He was given a list of importers and sent out a blind email with his contact information and website. The website looked professional and the wines looked good. When we met, I tasted the wines, looked at the package, and said “yes,” right away.

DOTW: What do you look for in a wine?
JG: The wine has to be very, very good and at a really good price point. I’m looking for wines that are food-friendly. Wines that have a little less alcohol and a little more acidity, so that it pairs well with a different range of food and won’t overwhelm. I’m also looking for wines that will age well, because it’s important to drink wine at many different times of its life. In its youth, when it’s got a lot of fruit and it’s beautiful and exciting and vibrant, and then at its middle-age, when it’s gained a little bit of sophistication and it’s turned into something a little bit more interesting, and of course, in its older age, when it’s gained a sort of delicacy and wisdom for a wine that you won’t find in a wine that’s youthful.

DOTW: You chose the word renascimento for the name of your business. Why?
JG: Renascimento means renaissance in Italian. It represents the rebirth and revival of the types of wines I would like to find in the market. Hopefully the wines that I’m importing are providing a rebirth or revival or renascimento for the people who taste them, so they discover a new world of wine that they never knew they had.

Image courtesy of Rinascimento Wine Company.

There is no better word for Speed Rack than girl power! Gatherings of the best female bartenders across the United States supported by male bar backs and crowds of people gathered to watch them compete. The venue awash in people sporting pink apparel. All money donated to the fight against breast cancer!

Speed Rack is round-robin style competition that focuses on a bartender’s speed, accuracy and presentation skills. The competition was developed by Ivy Mix and Lynette Marrero of the New York City chapter of Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails (LUPEC) as a way to promote female bartenders. While the ladies from New York City’s LUPEC pioneered the concept, they also had the brilliant idea to turn it into a national competition. Local competitions have already occurred in New York City, Boston, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Los Angeles and Houston with two more in Chicago and Las Vegas. The winners of each local competition and selected wildcard participants will meet in a final showdown in New York City on May 10.

Each competition is a fierce, nerve-wracking event. The best female bartenders gather in each city. Preliminary rounds are held and only the top seven to eight competitors advance to the final round. As the crowds mass, the finalists prepare. The showdown starts, drinks are called, mixed and judged by a panel of industry luminaries based on accuracy, speed and presentation. This continues until only one remains.

In San Francisco, the house was filled with a raucous crowd. House music pumped through the air. You could feel the electricity pulsing and vibrating. People thronged the stage in the center of the room where the bartenders competed gladiator style. You could hear members of the crowd shouting out the name of their favorite contender. The bartenders’ brows furrowed and glistened as they concentrated in an intense race against the clock and each other. Each woman was on a mission to pump out drinks there were more precise, tastier, prettier and made in less time than their competitor.

San Francisco Speed Rack was an epic event! The competition fierce. The crowd engaged. The punches and cocktails supreme. In the end, Jill Webster was crowned Miss Speed Rack San Francisco and will be representing our fair city in the final competition in New York. We can’t wait – Girl Power!

As a side note, Jill tends bar at Lazlo if you want to try her cocktails.

Quattro Mani is the brainchild of Domaine Select Wine Estates.  It is an offering of second label wines from some of Italy and Slovenia’s best winemakers.  The 2010 Quattro Mani Barbera is made by Danilo Droco, one of Piedmont’s greatest winemakers.  Not only is the Quatro Mani Barbera a zippy little wine, it’s also a great price at $8.99 a bottle.  In fact, it’s one of the best wines priced under $10 that I have tried.

While we don’t drink tons of Barbera in the United States, it’s one of the most popular grapes in Italy where it is the third most planted grape varietal.   Barbera is popular in Italy for good reason.  It’s high in acid, light to medium bodied, low on tannins and high on fruit flavors.  Older vines produce wines that can age.  Young wines are crisp, juicy and enjoyable. 

The 2010 Quattro Mani Barbera tasting note:

Appearance:  Clear with a medium purple to ruby core and a light ruby rim.

Aroma:  Clean with a medium, youthful intensity of blueberry, black cherry, raspberry, blackberry, vanilla and baking spices.

Tasting: Dry, medium high acid, medium minus body, medium alcohol, moderate tannin, medium plus flavor intensity of black cherry, blueberry, bramble berry, raspberry, vanilla and baking spices.  Medium finish.

Grade:  Very good.  The young wine was crisp and refreshing with flavors of jammy, ripe berries, vanilla and baking spices.  Delicious with pizza or barbeque.

What do you get when you combine the oldest, longest-operating, American winery founded by an Irishman and the newest Irish distillery? Concannon Irish Whiskey made in Ireland by acclaimed Cooley Distillery for Concannon Vineyard.  

To fathom this unlikely pairing of wine and whiskey, remember that Concannon Vineyard in Livermore Valley,California is owned by The Wine Group, one of the largest American wine companies. In 2011 The Wine Group launched Cupcake Vodka with similar branding to Cupcake Wines. Picture Cupcake Devil’s Food Vodka shelved next to Cupcake Red Velvet wine.

But Concannon Irish Whiskey is no fluffy cocktail mixer. Aged four years at Cooley Distillery, the whiskey is finished for four months in Concannon Petite Sirah barrels—a first for the industry. The whiskey is bottled in California in the same glass as Concannon Conservancy and Reserve wines.  

Cooley uses traditional copper stills and two rather than three distillation to retain a tad more of the malted barley and corn essence. Layer on the fruit-flavored molecules from the Petite Sirah barrel and the result is a soft whiskey with hints of caramel, fruit and a light finish of vanilla. 

 At $24.99 it compares favorably to higher cost bottles, but the most important thing to remember about Concannon Irish Whiskey is that it pairs beautifully in Irish coffee.

I bet you didn’t know that cocktails are being made from Artichokes.  Over the last few years, Amari (bitter liqueurs) has swept the cocktail world! One its rising stars is Cynar, an Amaro from Italy made from artichokes with a few other herbs and plants thrown into the mix. Rather than hide its artichoke heritage, Cynar showcases it and the liqueur has a distinct artichoke note. Cynar is versatile. It can be served as an aperitif to stimulate the appetite, as a digestif to calm the stomach, as a mixer to make cocktails or as a substitute for bitters. Its versatility and unique taste have attracted
star mixologists from coast to coast, and it regularly pops up on menus of craft cocktail bars.

The tasting note for Cynar:

Appearance: clear, medium plus brown in color with viscous legs.

Aroma: clean, medium plus intensity with an herbal overtone of artichoke, saffron, cardamon, star anise, white pepper, cinnamon and quinine.

Palate: Dry, medium acidity, medium body (not as heavy in body or viscous as it’s appearance suggests) with a pronounced flavor intensity of artichoke, saffron, cardamon, star anise, white pepper, cinnamon and quinine.  Medium plus finish with no bitterness or alcohol burn.

Grade:  Good spirit.  Given that it’s main ingredient is artichoke, it lacks the bitterness that one would expect.  There is a bitter quality but balanced with sweetness.  Not an easy sell for the American pallet but worth a try.  A well crafted spirit.

Try substituting it for Campari or Fernet Branca in your favorite cocktail or use it instead of bitters in your next Negroni or Manhattan.

We spend a lot of time thinking about drinks but I was still taken aback by the impact that six beverages had on world civilization. In his book, A History of the World in Six Glasses, Tom Standage explores the effect that beer, wine, distilled spirits, tea, coffee and Coca Cola had on civilization and world history. It’s nothing short of remarkable.

Six Glasses discusses the anti-bacterial properties of beer, wine, distilled spirits and tea that helped battle human disease at a time when the water you drank could literally kill you. By mixing water with wine, distilled spirits and tea, the wine literally worked as a cleansing agent, killing the microbes in the water and saving people’s lives who drank wine and tea. On the cusp of the industrial revolution in England, tea had spread across all class lines and the number of people dying from water-borne diseases decreased significantly. The increase in the population allowed the industrial revolution to take root in England.

Standage investigates each of his beverages in detail, from the first production of the beverage to its perfection and its impact on society. Standage further conjectures on how each of these beverages shaped the modern world. Beer arose as a by-product to the movement of humans from hunter gatherers to an agrarian society and helped the first urban societies to flourish. Wine was a key component in the development of the basic tenets of the Western World by the Greeks and then the Romans, which occurred in ancient drinking symposiums, and then assisted in the spread of the Catholic church across Europe. Distilled spirits literally built America. Modern philosophy, and a great deal of political unrest, was born and spread across Europe in 17th and 18th centuries in coffee houses. It was tea that birthed the industrial revolution and modern global commerce. Coca Cola become the symbol for American ideals, democracy and advertising in the 20th century. In the dawn of the early 21st century, Standage conjectures that the next great beverage shaping the world’s future will be water, itself, as water supply and clean water continue to be of great concern.

Who knew that drinking could have such a huge impact on civilization, society and history. The next time you have a cocktail party, remember the Greek and Roman drinking symposiums and the spirits, and early cocktails, that literally shaped America. Cheers!

Update: Now that the Giants and Pats find themselves matched up once again in Super Bowl XLVI, we thought it appropriate to resurface this one drinking game from Super Bowl XVII. We added a few new rules to drink by. Have some rules of you own to add, do it in the comments!

New for Super Bowl XLVI
Drink anytime:

• Tom Brady and Joe Montana are mentioned in the same sentence. Drink again if you hear “dynasty”.
• Someone says, “Belichick is an evil genius”.
• the 49ers or Ravens are brought up. Yes, this is what we should be watching.
• Plaxico comes up after any discussion or play by Victor Cruz.
• Pre Halftime, two words “wardrobe malfunction”.

original article (Jan 30, 2008)

I was already to sit down and write my own drinking game for the Super Bowl, but I ran across this on le basketbawl an NBA blog of all things, but this guy nailed it. So why recreate the wheel? I got drinking to do!

Here’s my favorites.
Drink every time:

- You see Peyton Manning in a commercial. Good Luck!
- The camera finds its way onto the Manning Family. I doubt you’ll make it through the first half with this one!
- An announcer makes reference to Gisele Bundchen!
- Randy Moss is noted as now being a hard worker or mature.
- Bill Parcells is brought up.
- You hear a player is giving it “110%”!
- You hear the word “Dynasty.”
- The Miami Dolphins or Don Shula or champagne are mentioned.
- “American Idol” is mentioned.
- Vince Lombardi’s name is brought up.

and one of my own:
Joe Buck forgets that Eli Manning isn’t Payton and calls him Payton.

The Super Bowl is a great excuse to indulge in a little gluttony. I mean most of us have been pretty good since the beginning of the New Year. Why not have a great time on Super Bowl Sunday.

When hosting friends for the Super Bowl, we like setting up a buffet with a number of offerings that satisfy even the pickiest of eaters. Here are our top picks for this year’s Super Bowl Buffet:

• Bourbon Onion Dip – check out this delicious dip. I am a sucker for all things onion dip and this one is worth the efforts.
• Taco Dip – in my humble opinion, no party celebrating football can be complete without Taco Dip.
• Guacamole – since you already have the tortilla chips for the Taco Dip, why not?
• Deviled Eggs – the hubby’s favorite!
• Cheese and Charcuterie – this is super easy and always a crowd favorite. I like putting little cards on the cheeses and meats to identify them.
• Pollo Asado Tacos – you can do this one ahead of time and allow your guests to assemble.
• Brat and Beer Stew – I would never be allowed back into my home state of Wisconsin if I didn’t include this Wisconsin specialty on the list. It doesn’t matter what team makes it to the Super Bowl, this dish makes the cut.
• Buffalo Chicken Wings – you can’t go wrong with Chicken Wings.
• Beer and Pretzel Marshmallows – OMG, who knew. Beer, pretzels and marshmallows. Chewy and salty. Yum!
• Whiskey Brownies – whiskey, brownies – enough said.
• Chocolate Covered Strawberries – for the ladies at the party, but the gents like it too.

The big game is here and millions will be watching around the world as the Giants and Patriots do battle this Sunday. From barrooms to back porches, Super Bowl Parties will be in full swing and spreads will be aplenty. Freaked out because you don’t even have a menu? Take a time out and we’ll help you brush up on a few Super Bowl MVPs – Most Valuable Pairings! Pour an easy cocktail and match it with a few snack classics and you’re sure to carried on the shoulders of your party guests! 

• There is nothing better than pizza and beer on game day, but a close second will be a slice of pie and a large glass filled with The Steel Curtain. Mix tequila, a beer of your choice and lemon lime soda for a strong, refreshing pairing with a  hearty pizza. 
• Looking to wash down a few tacos? Grab a shot glass and step into The Red Zone. Mix tequila, sangrita and lime juice for a quick shot sure to take that taco to the next level.
• Do you have any Patriot fans looking to warm themselves up with a bowl of New England Clam Chowder? Prep a batch of Patriot Tea and tell them to grab a mug of this black tea based cocktail. 
• Buffalo wings? Check. Blue cheese dressing? Check. Something to wash it down? Check. Grab a cocktail shaker and make yourself a Jolly Red Giants to ease the burn. Absolut Ruby Red, pomegranate and lemon juice along with maraschino liqueur will send your tastebuds into overtime!

Super Bowl XLVI will be here in two short days. It’s going to be a re-match of the two teams that slugged it out in the 2008 Super Bowl. During that epic game, the upstart New York Giants surprised the nation with a win over the New England Patriots, who dominated professional football during the first decade of the 21st Century with four trips to the Super Bowl between 2002 and 2008.

In our Cocktail Super Bowl, we teamed five classic cocktails from new New York and five from New England. To play: Pick one drink from each side per quarter. Tally the votes. The drink with the most votes wins that quarter. Use the 5th set of cocktails in case of overtime.

Let us know your winners in the comments below!

Representing New England:

• Ward Eight (Dewar’s Ward Eight) – the story behind this classic cocktail was that it was created in honor of a long-time Boston politician and named after Ward Eight, the district that delivered him to victory.
• Boston Sidecar – New England was once home to more rum distilleries than anywhere in the world. New England imported unwanted molasses from the Caribbean and turned into into liquid gold. This drink is a twist on the classic Sidecar adding rum.
• Irish Car Bomb – This twist on the Boilermaker and allegedly originated at Wilson’s Saloon in Norwich CT in late 1970′s. Fill your pint glass with Guinness and throw in a shot of Jameson’s Irish whiskey.
• Cape Cod – this drink is based on one of New England’s great exports – Cranberries – and named after one of New England’s best spots. A little fun fact – my home state of Wisconsin is now the largest producer of cranberries in the US – I have to get that fact in since my Packers couldn’t make it to the Super Bowl this year.
• Beer – we know that beer isn’t technically a cocktail. But, we are talking about New England here and that means Boston, which means Cheers!

Representing New York City:

• Manhattan – this is arguably New York City’s most famous drink. A stunning elixir of whiskey (or any brown spirit), vermouth and bitters.
• Bronx – a cocktail named after one of New York City’s five boroughs. This drink was one of the top 10 drinks in the year after the repeal of Prohibition and is making a strong resurgence.
• Long Island Iced Tea – this is a perennial favorite of DOTW readers. It was invented at the Oak Beach Inn in Hampton Bay and spread like wildfire across the US.
• Cosmopolitan – this drink is arguably New York’s greatest contribution to modern cocktail culture. While the exact origin is in dispute, no-one disputes that it was Dale DeGroff that perfected it.
• Algonquin – the famous hotel spawned this famous drink. In the 1920′s, some of the most famous writers in the United States gathered around the round table at the Alongquin and allegedly imbibed in this libation.