• Gargenega
• Italy
• Pinot Grigio

Review Date:	11/17/2007
Price Range**:	$
Winery:	Delle Venezie Indicazione Geografica Tipica
Vintage:	2006
Varieties:	Pinot Gris
Country:	Italy
Region:	Venezia
Appellation:	Friuli
Rating:	8/10
Notes: Light acidity with plenty of fruit and floral notes. Excellent companion to spicy dish like a Fra Diavolo.
** $ - approx $10 or less $$ - approx $25 or less $$$ - approx $50 or less $$$$ - approx $100 or less $$$$$ - more than $100

• Italy
• Pinot Noir

Apparently, there are a few modern Gregory Mendels tinkering with the genetic makeup of various plants, especially wine grapes, most likely because the grape is such a cash crop. Who doesn't like grapes after all? Nobody, that's who. But some grapes have become extremely popular of late since a critically-acclaimed movie or two haved hyped one varietal over another.

Italian scientists have cracked open the genetic make-up of Pinot Noir, responsible for the great red wines of Burgundy, in a breakthrough that may lead to hardier vines and cheaper fine wines.

The researchers said on Wednesday they had found more than 2 million genetic variants within the Pinot Noir grape, providing winegrowers with a "treasure trove" in the hunt for new strains.

Pinot Noir, made famous by the 2004 film Sideways, has been dubbed the "heartbreak grape" because it is so difficult to grow and susceptible to disease.

Pinot is one of our favorites at the moment, mostly because the pinots of California and Oregon are so very very good, but we've started to run into the higher end pinots. It's truly prohibitive to drink such expensive wine regularly unless one has started his own vineyard or technology company in wine country.

If modern science can perfect the pinot grape to make it much hardier than we're all for it. Pinots are wine grapes too, and getting a bottle of Goldeneye or Jack Creek Cellars for under $30 would suit us just fine.

• Italy

Day two of our trip to Italy bleeds into the previous day since we necessarily took the red eye flight from Philly to Venice.  As we explained however, the delayed flight put us into Venice too late in the day to really see anything that we wanted to see.

Customs in Italy is kind of a breeze, especially when compared to the time we had going through customs when returning to the good ol' US of A.  We were through there in no time at all, and picked up our baggage quite promptly from the baggage belt, the one not sponsored by the Venice Casino and decorated like a roulette wheel.

Getting into Venice itself is something of an adventure, and we'd recommend that you decide what to do before you actually get there.  There are several options that you have at your disposal.

Getting into Venice:  If you plan to travel to Venice, read this!  You will not find a better description of how to negotiate your way out of the airport and to the city anywhere that we've seen.

If travel by water is your thing, purchase a ticket at the
AliLaguna (the company that runs the boat from the airport) ticket windows to the left as you exit the baggage claim, and then follow the signs down the walkway out of the Marco Polo Aeroporte to the docks (out the front door and to the left; there are signs with little boats floating on the water).  At the end of the walkway there are water taxis immediately in front of you and public transport boats to the left by a cafe.  The boat from the airport is quite slow and ponderous, although relatively direct with a couple of stops in Murano and Lido respectively before landing at the dock at San Marco Square.  This square and the surrounding few blocks seems to be the primary destination for visitors on holiday since all of the best hotels and shopping are located generally around this area.  The ride is slow, about 40-60 minute trip into San Marco, but about 12 euro per ticket.  However, you may wish to take a direct water taxi, which is a really fast ride directly to the dock closest to your hotel.  Be sure to locate your hotel on a walking map of the city before boarding the taxi.  The taxi guys may know the address or at least a city landmark like a Piazza, but you still need to locate the actual hotel.  If you've never been to Italy before, you can not really navigate easily by street signs or addresses since the street names change each block, signs are very few and sometimes unreadable if they exist at all, and the cities are never laid out in neat city blocks.  Anyway, the taxis are fast but extremely expensive, like 100 euro or so depending.  You could probably split a taxi between a number of people if you're all bound for the same general area.  Although, you could be charged slightly more, amounting to a per person surcharge.  The taxis sit about eight people or so depending on the number of bags and so forth.

If you'd like to stay on land for as long as possible, and if it's not too busy (rushhour), you could come into the north west side of the city at the Piazzale Roma via the bus, a cheap 2 to 3 euro trip and 20 minutes.  Alternatively, you could take a regular taxi into Ple. Roma for about 27 euro.  Piazzale Roma is about as far from the square as you can get on the island city so you'll have to walk a long way with your bags or get onto a Vaporetto.  Blue Line 1 goes through the city on the Grand Canal stopping at every single point, very slow.  The odd routes generally go round the city counter-clockwise while their sister lines of even numbers go around clockwise 41 and 42 and 81 and 82 are good examples.  Hop on a Vaporetto here, but be sure to validate your ticket in the yellow punch card machine.  You'll probably want to get on either of these lines depending upon which one is coming around.  The counter-clockwise lines seem to be closer to the square from the Ple. Roma, but we haven't timed the rides.

The Vaporetto tickets are issued for time increments so just tell the "Biglietti" guy where you'd like to end up.  The help will be marginal at best, but you'll get the right ticket.  There are options for puchasing full day transport tickets, but we recommend walking most of the city unless you're headed to Murano or another island or have your luggage with you.

Also, when you ride the Vaporetto always double-check the dock markings and the route number and stops marked on the boat itself to make sure you're headed to the right destination.  This is probably one of the most confusing aspects of using the water bus in Venice when compared to the trains in, say, London.  All boats  sort of come in to the same docks though not always, and it's hard to tell which direction they're headed.

There is a train station at the Ferovia boat dock that runs trains into the heart of Italy, but there is no convenient train into Venice from the airport so don't believe anyone who says there is.  The locals at the airport will give you some really weird looks if you ask them where the train is.

Hope this helps anyone going to the city for the first time. 

We met some friends from the plane and decided to meet up a little later for dinner.  Ask the hotel manager or concierge where to go for dinner or just walk around off the beaten track to find great food and wine.  Check out the menus, and see if locals are in the place.  We ate at a modest osteria packed with locals on our first night.  The dinner was excellend and the wine was pretty decent for being nothing more than red table wine.  Buffalo mozzarella is fantastic.  Be sure to have at least one caprese appetizer when in Italy.  If you're headed into Venice, you might try to find this delightful Osteria Campagna that is about 1 block or so south west of the Rialto bridge.

• Italy

So we haven't posted in awhile, and there are a few reasons for this.  We won't get into all of those at this time, but we did think it important to give an account of a recent trip to Italy since much of the trip revolved around having a glass of vino or something stronger, and we're not talking about the coffee.

We'll keep the mundane details to a minimum, but we'll throw in some of the highlights to, say, skewer our favorite airline.

Day One: 

We take extra care to arrive at the airport with extra time to spare since we haven't traveled out of country on a trip of this nature for some time, and as we are driving to the terminal US Airways calls to inform us that our flight will be delayed for long enough to ruin our chances of making our connecting flight in Philadelphia.  Thanks, US Air!  Luckily, we have actually arrived in advance with plenty of time to spare, and we happened upon a helpful person at the checkin counter for international flights.  He seemed to be the only person actually doing anything so it was fortunate that he helped us get onto an earlier flight so as not to miss our connection.

Getting off the ground was easy, but getting back onto it was another matter.  The Philadelphia airport was packed, and we had to fly in pattern for about an hour while we waited to land.  We can't really blame this on US Air, but what the heck, we're willing to do it anyway.

We finally land about the same time we would have, had we made the original flight time.  We crossed the entire airport to the international concourse where we stopped into the local duty free shop to check out deals on libations.  The deals were great, but we didn't want to tote stuff around europe, and we didn't want to bother with shipping at the moment so we proceeded to our gate.

After boarding the plane, the pilot shut the door to the aircraft, and informed us that the air conditioning was broken, but they were working on cooling off the plane.  The tempature was nearly unbearable, and the air was stifling.  Thanks, US Air!  Finally, after a couple of hours the brilliant group of jokers running the place decides to let us off since this problem is not going away any time soon.

We're given vouchers for $10 of food in the Philly airport.  Nice!  You can get about two bags of pretzels with that kind of dough.  There was a wine bar across from our gate that looked pretty interesting so naturally we headed there.  Unfortunately, the place smelled like moldy dishwater, and they had closed the kitchen for some reason.  Great!  At this point, we're settling for sandwiches or wraps or something.  Since the smell is unbearable, we're quickly on our way to one of the many places where one can order a subpar sandwich.  We're not going to be picky, and we don't have our wine so what can one do?

We entertain ourselves for a little while until we get sleepy.  US Air is giving infrequent updates.  Something about flying a part from Charlotte to Philly since they aren't going to allocate another plane.  Our crew gets off the place and walks away in front of everyone.  It's not looking good.

US Air now tells us that since there's no other plane, they will continue to work on this one until it's ready, inspiring plenty of confidence.  It's getting very late.  It's 11:00pm.  Midnight.  1:00am.  We're asleep on the floor with our carryons under our heads.  The airport is really cold, and the floor isn't helping.

2:30am.  The desk acquires a few new attendants.  We haven't seen these people before.  Our first day in Venice is already shot.  We've lost 7-8 hours at least.  We figure they're about to start handing out vouchers for a motel that makes you miss the luxuries and overall cleanliness at a Day's Inn, but the announcement comes that they are ready to start boarding the aircraft.

We board and we're finally off the ground.  Straight to sleep for the most part.  None of our movie screens are working.  Oh well, we're too tired to stay up for even a really good flick, and we're definitely not interested in dinner in the middle of the night.

We arrive in Venice.  The flight itself isn't too bad.  It's well into the afternoon when everything starts to shutdown in Italy.  First day here is kinda shot, and we still haven't had any wine.

• Cabernet Sauvignon
• Canaiolo
• Italy
• Red Wine
• Sangiovese

Review Date:	09/30/2007
Price Range**:	$$
Winery:	Contini Bonaossi
Vintage:	2007
Varieties:	Cabernet Sauvignon, Sangiovese
Country:	Italy
Region:	Tuscany
Appellation:	Capezzana
Rating:	8/10
Notes: Grapes: 70% Sangiovese, 20% Cabernet, 10% Canaiolo.
** $ - approx $10 or less $$ - approx $25 or less $$$ - approx $50 or less $$$$ - approx $100 or less $$$$$ - more than $100

• Italy
• Sparkling Rose

Review Date:	09/30/2007
Price Range**:	$$
Winery:	Banfi
Vintage:	2006
Varieties:	Brachetto
Country:	Italy
Region:	Piedmonte
Appellation:	Brachetto d’Acqui
Rating:	7/10
Notes: The Rosa Regale is a beautiful shade of translucent ruby. Holds a delicate scent and tastes of raspberries and cherries, short finish with the slight amusement of carbonation. Absolutely divine when accompanying dark chocolate.
** $ - approx $10 or less $$ - approx $25 or less $$$ - approx $50 or less $$$$ - approx $100 or less $$$$$ - more than $100

• Brandy
• Grappa
• Italy

Mazzetti Grappa Nebbiolo

Average Retail Price $45/ 750ML

What is Grappa anyway? A liquor distilled from the pomace of a wine press. We like to define it as an unaged Italian brandy made from the residue of wine-making.

Mazzetti has maintained a 150 year old tradition of producing grappa.  They store their grapes in humidity controlled bins. The vinaccia, or remains of grapes after pressing, are distilled in copper alembic stills designed to retain the grape's characteristic tastes.

Described as ''Very pale strawyellow cast. Moderately light bodied. Citrus, flowers, and sweet herbs. Extremely aromatic with a superbly balanced palate that has a real sense of lightness. Extremely lengthy and flavorful finish with very little heat.''

Wine Enthusiast Rating: 95pts

What we found was not only do the Mazzetti brothers, as the second oldest grappa producers in Italy, thrive to make
delightful liquors from grapes grown in the Piedmont region of Italy. They strive to give us a well rounded package; a wonderful drink and a unique experience. The have gone so far as to administer some of their grappas into hand blow authentic Venetian glass bottles from Murano. Now that's class!

The famous Laird & Company is an US importer of Mazetti grapa. Laird & Company has been distilling spirits for nearly 230years. Laird's Applejack, apple brandy has been dubbed a favorite of past presidents such as George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, William Henry Harrison and Lyndon B. Johnson.