Yesterday morning I tweeted a photo from the peak of the Passo Tonale, a high mountain road connecting Alto Adige with Lombardia. Time was of the essence, a top-quality Valtellina producer awaited my presence, and I only had 10 minutes to spare according to the GPS.

But here at the peak I decided I had to take it all in and stop for a coffee and a streudel and a roadside chalet advertising their bar.Skiers were decked out in their gear, fortifying for the day with pastry, granola and coffee. I watched as the ski lifts across the street carried the days first passengers to the top.

The Alps are a place of breathtaking beauty and travelling these high mountain roads with their spectacular views are worth the trip alone. My day of tasting that laid ahead would be equally inspiring.

I left the chalet and after several kilometers of switchbacks, weaving through tiny villages that seem to barely cling to the rocks, the valley began to open up. That's when I first noticed the mindbogglingly vertical vineyards of the Valtellina.

Nebbiolo has been cultivated in Valtellina since ancient times. No one would build these now. This is truly viticulture on the edge--the kind of wines we like--and we're happy to be working with some of Valtellina's best wines in the very near future.

Stay tuned for more!

When I worked for restaurants and hotels as a sommelier, I coveted the big-industry tastings because I could mingle with my fellow wine buyers for a few hours instead of unpacking wine boxes or re-organizing the cellar for the umpteenth time. At some point between signing off as The Boiler Room’s wine director and starting périphérique, I lost interest in such mega-tasting events. But don’t get me wrong: they provide a great opportunity to taste many wines in a short period of time. And to be honest, I’ve made a lot of successful buying decisions based on wines I’ve tasted with the huge masses of buyers and sometimes thousands of bottles. 

When it comes to selecting, however, a big-industry tasting is not the best way to do things, at least not for me. Today, I prefer tasting wines in the cellars of the people who grew the grapes and made the wine. Only by regularly tasting at the cellar can we follow a wine’s evolution from beginning to end and get the facts of its production straight from the producer’s mouth. Of course, the requisite time and travel is expensive (and comes right out of our bottom line), but that’s how we prefer to work, and that’s how we intend to select the wines we offer when you sign up for our e-mails.

In our e-mails, for example, you might see an offer for wines from Martin Foradori, whom we regularly visit at his J. Hofstätter estate in the northern reaches of Italy’s Alto Adige. We’ve now paid three visits to his estate (2007, 2008, and 2010) and greatly admire Martin’s range of wines. We’ve walked in the Kolbenhof together (one of Europe’s greatest Gewürztraminer vineyards), drank numerous older bottles of his remarkable Pinot Noir Barthenau Vigna S.Urbano, and shared many meals.

I’m obviously a fan of Martin’s work, so I expected meeting him and tasting new wines at a big-industry tasting in San Francisco yesterday to be predictably enjoyable, but I walked away from Martin’s table being even more impressed than ever. My notes on Martin’s 2009 Pinot Grigio and Bianco read: “why bother with PG from a different producer?” And on the 2009 Gewürztraminer: “is this the best Kolbenhof ever?” Even the Lagrein’s and Pinots seemed more expressive than usual. Maybe it was the 2009 vintage which was excellent, or perhaps it was because I tasted those 2009s from bottle instead of tank for the first time. Whatever the cause, the greatness of Martin’s wines really sunk in, in a setting where wines rarely show their best.