Wine and Memory by Tom Maresca (original) (raw)

Tom Maresca is an old friend and one of the best wine writers. I have long been a fan of his blog, and was very sorry to learn that his latest post will be his last. This final post is especially meaningful for me since I was fortunate to enjoy the dinner and the wines he describes. Thank you, Tom, for many years of informative writing!

Wine and Memory by Tom Maresca on December 30, 2024

Certain wines just live in your memory, always on call when wanted, and sometimes intrusive when uncalled for. One unforgettable, wonderful wine for me is Avvoltore, a wine from the Tuscan Maremma, a blend of mostly Sangiovese (it’s truly Tuscan, so what else?) and about 10% Cabernet sauvignon.

As Christmas approached this year, Avvoltore danced in my head, bringing along with it memories of my decades-ago visit to Moris Farms (the Spanish-English name of a fine Tuscan winery) and its wild boar-hunting, boar-raising producer, Adolfo Parentini.

At the winery, Parentini poured his Avvoltore for me and a few other journalists to accompany his stufato di cinghiale – boar stew – and that forceful wine and that delicious, gamy meat were a marriage made in heaven. No question: I had to taste that combination again.

Well, thanks to D’Artagnan for the boar, some assiduous work on Wine Searcher for the Avvoltore (I lucked into a pair of bottles of the 1997 vintage, a very great year in Tuscany) and the enthusiastic cooperation of Diane for the cooking, our Christmas menu was set.

A few old friends joined us for the meal. We started lightly, with parmigiano flans lapped with tomato sauce. With them, we drank a 2004 Boca from Vallana, a lovely, beautifully balanced wine that easily handled the smooth richness of the flan and the acidity of the tomato sauce. This too was a wine of nostalgia: Diane and I used to drink a lot of those northern Piedmont wines, especially those from Vallana (Wonderful Spannas from Vallana!) back in the days when Vallana’s wines were better distributed in the US than they are now. Where are the snows of yesteryear, eh?

Then we proceeded to the main course. The dish and its interplay with the wine were every bit as marvelous as I remembered. The boar stew was as rich and gamy as you could wish, and the 27-year-old Avvoltore was amazing – incredibly young and vibrant, with deep, complex flavors of Maremma-grown Sangiovese understrapped by dark Cabernet tannins.

How to convey some sense of this? The wine’s color was deep garnet, clear and bright. Its nose intensely earth-and-dried-cherries, very big and pure. On the palate it was limpid and astonishingly fresh, deeply cherry-and-plum, with very soft tannins – a lot of them – and a long, long finish. A perfectly balanced wine, poised and composed, dominated by mature fruit flavors, interwoven with dark, earthy undertones.

That was an incredible dinner – pure enjoyment on every palatal level. You can dream all you want about white Christmases – I’ll take the memory of a red wine this fine every time.

* * *

And with that, dear friends, this blog too will pass into memory. This is my last post – no pun intended and no taps, please. I began the blog more than 15 years ago so I could write about wines and events that I was interested in and magazine editors weren’t; and so I could tell wine lovers about wines and makers and regions they might not otherwise hear about. I emphatically did not want it to be reports on what I drank yesterday – yet that is what, inevitably, it has become.

I’m almost 87 years old, and I was not a very great vintage to start with. I’m no longer an active wine journalist, so I don’t now have access to the tastings and trips (even if I were capable of them) that gave me the kind of information I can pass on to you. I’ve enjoyed writing recently about some of the more interesting – to me, at least – wines in my cellar and in my memory, but I can no longer provide the kind of useful information it was my original intention to offer. So it’s clear to me that it’s more than time for me to retire my quill pen, cap my inkwell, and say farewell. It has been a long ride, and great fun for me. I hope you have enjoyed it too.

Happy New Year, and many of them! Continue drinking good wine, no matter what your doctor tells you.