The week that wasn’t

  • Houston food and wine-lovers lost out on a lot of in-person fun over the last couple years because of COVID-19, but the parties are mercifully returning. I had a ball at Sunday night’s Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo’s Best Bites competition and I’m now looking forward to another one of my favorite gastro-oenological confabs, the eighth annual Taste of Italy, March 13-14.

    Kudos to Italy-America Chamber of Commerce Texas for rallying the troops after two years of having to do everything virtually. More than 500 folks are expected to attend the various events at the Hilton Post Oak where 150 Italian brands and more than 750 Italian products will be showcased. Also returning will be a competition for local sommeliers (I’m looking forward to making my debut as a judge) that, considering the prizes at stake, figures to attract many of our best and brightest wine stewards. The champion pockets $750 and a sponsored trip to Verona to attend Vinitaly, one of the world’s most famous wine trade shows, while the runner-up collects $750 and $500 goes to third place. The Texas Wine School is also offering two scholarships on the side.

     

    Kroger’s Jaime Deleon is the primary force behind the competition, which had to be shelved the last two years because of the pandemic, with help from his AwwSommHouston study group. Entrants will be tested on theory, tasting and service skills. In the inaugural competition in 2019, the Post Oak Hotel’s Danny Steiner took top honors.    

     

    Panel discussions on Monday include one at 10:30 a.m. on responsible, sustainable wine-making focusing on two Umbrian producers and another at 2:30 p.m. on pairing Texas barbeque with Chiantis. My podcast partner in crime, Jeremy Parzen, heads up the morning session with me and Pappas Bros. Master Sommelier Steven McDonald joining him on the dais. Harlem Road Barbeque pitmaster Ara Malekian, Spec’s Italian wine buyer Tom Dobson and Culture Map food writer Eric Sandler are leading that talk.

     

    A walk-around tasting for registered guests follows from 3:30 to 5 p.m. Information on all of the above and more can found at tasteofitalyhouston.com.

     

    And, speaking of the Rodeo, the popular Wine Garden at Carruth Plaza is back in business, too, with the most highly decorated bottles from the International Wine Competition being showcased plus an excellent lineup of live music every day and terrific food-and-wine seminars most evenings from Feb. 28 through March 20. Reservations can be secured at rodeo-houston.com((where you can also peruse the Best Bites! Winners).

     

    Wine lecturers include Master Sommelier/vintner Guy Stout and fellow local vintner, Ryan Levy, whose 2018 Nice Winery Cabernet Franc earned Reserve Grand Champion Best of Show honors. That’s a remarkable achievement made all the more special by the fact that, back in the day, Levy’s earning a Rodeo scholarship set him on his current life trajectory. Click on the Wine Garden link at the Rodeo web site above for the complete lineup of seminar hosts.

     

    In case you missed it, the category champions are as follows:

     

    * Grand Champion Best of Show – 2017 J. Lohr Vineyards Cuvee PAU Red, Paso Robles

    * Reserve Grand Champion Best of Show – 2018 Nice Winery Cabernet Franc

    * Top Red Wine – 2019 Three Sticks Pinot Noir, Gap’s Crown Vineyard, Sonoma Coast

    * Top White Wine – 2020 Ruffino Italian Orvieto Classico DOC

    * Top Sparkling Wine – 2020 Meiomi Sparkling Rosé, North Coast

    * Top Dessert Wine – 2019 Pillitteri Estates Winery Vidal Icewine, Niagara-on-the-Lake VQA

    * Top Value Wine – 2019 Apothic Merlot, California

    * Top Wine Company – E&J Gallo Winery

    * Top Region Wine Company – Ste. Michelle Wine Estates

    * Top Region Wine – 2018 Revelry Vintners Limited Edition Reveler Red, Columbia Valley

    * Top All-Around Winery – J. Lohr Vineyards

    * Top Texas Winery – Becker Vineyards

    * Top Texas Wine – Hye Meadow Winery Boooom Red, Texas High Plains, 2017

     

    Sippin’ with Sporty

     

    Bubbles

    The Villa Sandi Prosecco family

    * Villa Sandi Prosecco Superiore – Diva Moretti Polegato was in town over the weekend working to get more of her family’s delightful Villa Sandi wines into our market. (https://www.villasandi.it/en/) All that I tasted were delicious, including a new pink Prosecco, but my favorite was the winery’s higher-end bubbles from Valdobbiadene, the region’s epicenter. It’s bright and acidic with a medley of fruit flavors playing off each other and some creamy mousse to boot. $22.99 at wine.com    

     

    White

    * 2020 Marco Bonfante Roero Arneis Persté – Marco and his sister Micaela launched their lovely winery (marcobonfante.com) in 2000 in Ninza Monferrato across the Tanaro River from Barbaresco. The arneis grape has grown in their Roero neighborhood since the 1500s. “Persté” honors Micaela’s first son, Stefano, born in 2014 (“Persté” = per Stefano). How they can produce this good of a wine at this price point is beyond me, but a hearty “bravo!” is order. You’ll love the stone fruit notes on the nose and the fresh minerality in the glass. It’s only $9.89 at Costco. Are you kidding me? But hey, folks, please save me a couple of bottles!  

     

    Rosé

    * 2020 Rose Gold Côtes de Provence – I’ve added this gem from the countryside above Saint Tropez to my short list of favorites, now that it seems to be widely available around town. Dallas’ Casey Barber fell in love with Provence and its pink wines while traveling there years ago and the “affair” led to her launching the Rose Gold brand in 2018. Savory red fruit takes center stage. Spec’s price is only $17.89.

     

    Red

    * 2017 Allegrini Palazzo Della Torre – The Allegrinis are legendary in the hills just north of Verona, in Valpolicella country. (https://allegriniwine.com)  Three national critics have scored this vintage of the Palazzo Della Torre at least a 90 and I’m right there with them. An intensely flavored blend of corvina, corvinone, rondinella and sangiovese, it’s a steal for $16.89 at Spec’s.  


    A pink, a white and a red all under $20 

    Sporty Wine Guy Podcast


    A new one drops in the next couple of days. Parzen and I weigh in all manner of wine topics – and, sometimes, other stuff – weekly. Go to “Sporty Wine Guy” wherever you get your podcasts.     

     

    H-town happenings


    *March 5 – Taste of Two Legends: Morton’s and Michael David Winery. 6:30 p.m. at both Morton’s locations, downtown and in The Woodlands. $149 plus tax and gratuity. mortons.com

    * March 13-14 – Taste of Italy Houston. tasteofitalyhouston.com 

                            

    Follow my friends


    * Sandra Crittenden (winelifehouston.com) – Sandra assesses the “undiscovered” wines of Mexico that she paired with Hugo’s cuisine.

     * Russ Kane (vintagetexas.com) Russ weighs in Thomas Volney (T.V.) Munson, a fascinating and seminal wine-world figure whom Kane suggests was Texas’ original Renaissance man.

    * Jeff Kralik (thedrunkencyclist.com): Jeff offers an eclectic list of seven wines that have recently impressed him.   

    * Jeremy Parzen (dobianchi.com): Jeremy provides all the pertinent facts on the aforementioned upcoming Taste Of Italy.

     

    Follow me


    * Twitter – @sportywineguy

    * Instagram – @sportywineguy

    * Facebook – Dale Robertson


    Jock Shorts


    * The Texans got it right in the end by hiring Lovie Smith. But they couldn’t have gotten it more wrong in how they got there. Privately, Lovie is laughing all the way to the bank. 

    * Kudos to my indefatigable former Chronicle colleague Jonathan Feign for somehow making the nowhere-bound Rockets worth reading about. Note that they’re comfortably on track to posting fewer than 20 victories in back-to-back seasons, after having just one comparable death march in their previous 53 seasons.           

    * Anybody missing spring training yet? I didn’t think so.

  • Occasionally my two professional worlds, sports and wine, have collided. On Sunday, I celebrated the NFL’s 56th Super Bowl with three wines that proudly carry the name of Dick Vermeil, the NFL’s newest Hall-of-Fame coach.

    The timing was perfect, too. Twenty-two Super Bowls ago Vermeil led the Rams franchise to its only Lombardi trophy until Sean McVay’s Rams rallied late to beat the Bengals 23-20. Vermeil’s 1999 team, which called St. Louis home, had eked out a similarly dramatic 23-16 victory over the former Houston Oilers, who had moved to Tennessee three seasons earlier. Fortuitously, Vermeil had seen his first wine, the Jean Louis Vermeil Cabernet Sauvignon, go into the bottle that fall while the Kurt Warner-quarterbacked Rams were marching toward their date with destiny against the Titans in Atlanta.

    But, no, he wasn’t by then just another celebrity trying to capitalize on fame and fortune earned in another profession. Vermeil’s roots in Calistoga go down as deeply as those of the vines he grew up surrounded by, producing wines he first tasted as a child. Jean Louis, an émigré from France’s Var region in the hills above the Riviera, was his great-grandfather and every Christmas young Dick would be given a shot-glass-sized sample to try – and evaluate – by his winemaking grandfather Albert.          

    An essential source of grapes for Vermeil’s wines remains the Frediani Vineyard, 130 acres of prime Napa Valley terroir just east of Calistoga that first went under vine around the turn of the last century, when it was owned by Garibaldi Iaccheri, Vermeil’s other great-grandfather who had immigrated from Lucca, Italy. Vermeil might not have been destined to win a Super Bowl or become a Hall-of-Famer, but with his Franco-Italian grape-growing heritage he was all but certain to one day become a serious vintner.

    I never knew Vermeil personally as a football coach, although I covered both Super Bowls his teams played in. In the first, his 1980 Philadelphia Eagles lost to the Oakland Raiders (who had brought an end to Bum Phillips’ tenure with the Oilers a few weeks earlier). But I got to know him very well when he began passing frequently through Houston to help market his wines, which have always done well here. If there existed a Hall of Fame for all-time great human beings, Dick would be a first-ballot selection, as he should have been with the NFL’s years ago. A two-time NFL Coach-of-the-Year, he’s also one of only four to have taken two franchises to the Super Bowl.

    At least the Hall’s Veteran’s Committee finally got it right and Dick, who remains supremely fit and sharp as a tack at 85, will get his just desserts in Canton next summer. It’s safe to say Vermeil wines will be front-and-center on tables during the many celebrations surrounding his long-overdue induction.

    I’ll be there in spirit, believe me. I love the man. And I love the Vermeil wines, too. The three I shared with friends during the game Sunday are described below. All of them were still the shelf at the Midtown Spec’s Saturday afternoon, although, truth to tell, I may have purchased the final bottle of the 2017 Sauvignon Blanc. However, the current-release 2020 is available through vermeilwines.com for $38.     

    * 2016 Vermeil Chardonnay – Made with sustainably-farmed grapes sourced from the heart of the acclaimed Dutton Ranch property in the Russian River Valley, which has been under vine since the mid-1960s (when Vermeil first broke into the NFL with George Allen’s Rams), it screams California – but with a refined, elegant voice. The Spec’s price is $39.89.

    * 2018 Vermeil Sauvignon Blanc – All Frediani Vineyard fruit, it’s a classically creamy, oak-kissed Napa Valley expression of the grape and sells for only $24.99 at Spec’s.  

    *2016 Vermeil XXXIV Proprietary Red – This is a voluptuous, delicious fruit-forward cab-centric wine that finishes long and smooth. The cabernet franc and petit sirah in the blend add to its complexity. An off-the-charts value at $32.99 from Specs. I don’t need to tell you what the XXXIV refers to, right?

     

     

  • From the fall of 1973, when I began covering Texas Southern University athletics as a boy sports writer for the Houston Post, through the fall of 2021, when my fabulous 14-year run as a weekly wine columnist for the Houston Chronicle came to an end, I rarely went more than a week or two without hacking out a story of some kind. But my recent four-month “sabbatical” – interrupted only by a couple of assignments for the Chronicle’s sports department – would be fortuitously timed. It gave me the chance to work through the loss of our beloved 18-year-old dog Ollie and, more recently, provided the downtime required for a total hip replacement. In between, I must admit it was nice to celebrate a holiday season completely unfettered by writing deadlines. 

    However, the act of stringing sentences together for the purpose of educating, entertaining and, yes, occasionally irritating readers has been my raison d’être since I was the sports editor of my high school paper in El Paso. Not writing felt strange and a bit isolating so . . . here we go again. With this missive, I officially become a blogger.

     

    I’m one of “them” now.

     

    So, does Houston need another wine blog? Truth to tell, probably not. We’ve already got many good ones done by smart, passionate folks, several of whom have become great friends. Therefore, part of my mission going forward is to be a clearing house for their work, an aggregator if you will, which means I’ll be sharing links to their work in my space. I’ll also, of course, be providing recommendations – some totally my own, others from collective tastings – updates on the local wine scene and a listing of the best wine events happening in the area. As COVID eases its dastardly grip on our daily lives, there’s certain to be a major uptick in dinners, tastings and seminars, many featuring fascinating vintners and their representatives.

     

    Until the pandemic hit in March of 2020, practically a day didn’t pass that we weren’t swirling and sipping with somebody from someplace far away. Damn, I’ve missed that. But, because Houston has become a hugely significant market for winemakers, those folks will be back, I promise. They love our restaurateurs, our sommeliers and, most of all, our consumers, whose thirst – pun intended – for wine knowledge and wine experiences rival that of any city anywhere. It’s this that makes me want to stay in the wine-writing game. 

     

    As for sports writing . . . meh, not so much. Fifty years of that quenched my appetite. But, a word of warning, fellow winos: Do expect the occasional hot sports take (or, if the topic is Texans related, probably a profanity-laced rant). Can’t abandon my roots altogether. And, to close a circle in that regard, I’ll be calling that segment of the blog “Jock Shorts,” a nod to my column that ran in the Daily Cougar 50 years ago.

     

    Yep, Jock Shorts. I was 18, OK?   

     

    Anyway, a big new adventure begins and it even includes a podcast, the first episode of which can be found wherever you get your podcasts by searching for “Sporty Wine Guy.” I’m partnering with Jeremy Parzen, the Roma wine director, all-things-Italy expert and for-real Ph.D./Renaissance man. We’ll be riffing on all things wine, with a strong Houston focus. And, down the road, we’ll add some very cool guests.       


    Wines to try NOW!

    Bubbles

    * 2018 Cuvaison Brut Cuvée Méthode Champenoise – If you’re looking for new bottle of bubbles with which to celebrate Valentine’s Day, look no further. Carneros meets Champagne here. At $50 (cuvaison.com), this classic pinot noir-chardonnay blend isn’t cheap, but it doesn’t drink cheap either. You’ll taste almonds, pears and lemon zest.    

    White

    * 2020 Masseria Li Veli “Askos Verdeca” – Tired of the same ol’ same ol’? This fresh and lively verdeca will excite you. The grapes grow on Masseria Li Veli’s property on the sunny Salento plain in Italy’s Puglia region. The wine is full-bodied, spicy and nicely acidic with tropical fruit and citrus notes. You’ll find it for $23.99 at wine.com.

    Red

    * 2019 Ruggero di Bardo Susumaniello – This might be the best Tuesday-night pizza/red-sauce pasta-pairing wine I’ve ever encountered A friend found it on the shelf at Trader Joe’s for 10 bucks. Seriously, 10 friggin’ bucks! Susumaniello is also a Puglian grape, but its origins are thought to be Croatia’s Dalmatian coast or Greece, the latter because DNA profiling turns up the white grape garganega in its family tree and garganega definitely has Greek roots. With lots of red-fruit flavor, it handles spicy foods splendidly.       

     

    H-town happenings

    * Wednesday, Feb. 9 – DOC Wines: Italian Excellences at Roma Restaurant, 2347 University Blvd. 6:30 p.m. info@ieemusa.com or 305 937-2488.  

    * Thursday, Feb. 10 – Bubbles, Boots and Bourbon presented by the Women of Wine Charities at Pinto Ranch, 1717 Post Oak Blvd. $60 for members, $80 for non-members. Wowcharities.org.

                              

    Folks to follow

    * Sandra Crittenden (winelifehouston.com): Sandra gives her assessment of Stella’s, the airy new wine bar in the Post Oak Hotel presided over by former Iron Sommelier champ Julie Dalton. Jeffrey Young, previously at Georgia James, is part of the team, too.        

     

    * Russ Kane (vintagetexas.com) Our leading expert on the Texas wine scene, Russ tells the story of the long-lost Guadalupe Valley Winery in Gruene, closing with a plea for help in finding out why the place went under.

     

    * Jeff Kralik (thedrunkencyclist.com): Jeff talks about eight Italian wines that got his taste buds revved up.

     

    * Jeremy Parzen (dobianchi.com): Jeremy weighs in on the huge challenges presented by Italy’s hot, dry 2017 vintage.

     

    * Katrina Rene (thecorkscrewconcierge.com) – Kat tastes and tells the story of Jeff Long’s Longevity wines. Long, based in Livermore, Calif., is the president of Association of African American vintners and a great interview. I spoke with him this time last year. 

     

    Jock Shorts

    I’ll keep it short today. The Texans’ coaching fiasco . . . No words. Well, how about two? Utter friggin’ insanity. Wait, that’s three. Sorry.     

     

     

     

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  •  A retired, and recovering, sports writer these days after almost half a century in the bidness, I’ve long told people the reason I became a wine drinker was because I had to cover Houston’s teams and wine seemed the most civilized way to kill all the pain. Think about this: The year I signed on with the Post the Oilers were about to endure back-to-back 1-13 seasons. The Rockets, having just moved here from San Diego, were still four seasons away from making the playoffs. And,10 years into their existence, the Astros were in the midst of an 0-for-18 postseason drought. Nonetheless, it was a gig that beat working for a living and I got to hang around long enough to be part of the magic of Luv ya Blue, then see the Rockets’ claim back-to-back NBA titles and the Astros finally win a National League pennant before becoming an American League powerhouse. The ride had its bumps, to be sure, but I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat. Like I said, it gave me an excuse to explore wine, often on somebody else’s dime. I do miss that expense account. I don’t, however, miss trying to explain the unexplainable, which is pretty much every decision the Texans make.