When we finally booked our rental in Verona for June, I knew for sure that I was going to head to Soave, just about a half-hour away, during the stay there.  That was because of ignorance.  I really didn’t know much at all about the wines of Soave other than a few producers like Pieropan and Pra were highly regarded and I remember enjoying those in the past.  Soave is made primarily with the Garganega grape, which is largely unknown to most, myself included.  Reading about the spectacular, brand new winery at Pieropan made the trip there even more desired.  Then the town of Soave was named this spring as the "Borgo dei Borghi 2022” or the most beautiful village in Italy by an Italian travel television show.  The most beautiful village in all of Italy, which is filled with hundreds of beautiful villages, towns and cities, is quite something.  I felt that it would have been a sin not to visit.
 
Thankfully, we were able to get a reservation for a tour and tasting.  As Italy has changed with he pandemic and reservations required for seemingly most everything, we almost missed our chance.  My brother and sister-in-law ran to the winery near the close of business the previous day to sweettalk us into a nearly last-minute spots for a visit.
 
Not far from the autostrada, the next day our van drove through some of the village and then snaking through vineyards to a parking space in front of the winery.  Pieropan’s entrance is rather dramatic: numerous irregular tan columns set in front of a lengthy curving portico with a walkway leading to small glass door entrance and the bulk of the winery hid under the rising hilltop that is covered in more vines.  I’ve been to a number of wineries, mostly in Italy, and I’ve never seen anything like Pieropan in Soave.  Finally finished and opening to the public in April and costing a reported 20 million euros, it takes advantage of current technology, inspired industrial design, beautiful contemporary architecture, a minimalist décor, and a strong sensibility for a low-impact to the environment and sustainability in production.
 
After an introduction by the entrance, our smallish group was lead through dark gray, mostly unadorned and soaring hallways to the first of the production rooms.  That was one of the most striking aspects of the winery’s design was the compartmentalization.  Each part of the wine production – crushing, fermentation, aging for each type of Soave, bottling, packaging – seemed to have its own room.  Another was the extensive use of nitrogen, which was distributed from a room of its own, too.  Pieropan claims to be one of the first to use nitrogen in the bottles, allowing for much less use of sulfites as a preservative, just 30 to 40 grams.  Those lower amounts help the wines age much better they believe.  Their basic Calvarino bottlings of Soave can easily age fifteen to twenty years.
 
Large rectangular fermentation tanks fit snuggly against each other with no wasted space in the fermentation room.  The aging room for Calvarino initially appeared to be something out of Alien, large almost egg-like cement vessels in two sizes set in three straight rows alighted from below in a largely darkened room.  The next chambers, for wood-aged La Rocca wines was nearly as dramatic, featured rows of similar-looking red-banded tonneaux, the French 500-liter barrels, on the floor with a few larger vertical wood tanks visible along the walls, and a pithy phrase shown in neon above some of them.  We saw rooms for bottling, for the direct distribution to restaurants in Italy of specially aged bottles, and for bulk distribution that had plenty of space for trucks to be loaded.  There was a lot of extra space for substantial expansion.  The winery makes around 700,000 bottles of Soave now.  The most surprising thing to me was that there are just two production employees, if I heard our guide correctly.  That is efficient.

There were several other men in our small group for the tour.  Tall and poorly dressed, I assumed that they were German or Dutch.  Taking non-touristy photos like the inside of a large fermentation vessel and asking very technical questions, it turned out that they were from a winery in Croatia getting tips and inspiration.  There was a lot to learn from this new subterranean palace.

Though each of us was quite impressed with the design and look of the winery, we were mostly there to taste the wines, which did not disappoint after we had moved to a clean-lined conference room that looked out to the expanse of vines.  All were beautiful balanced, fruity enough and noticeable acidity and a certain depth of flavor.  Pieropan’s wines are made only with organic grapes if selected yeasts.  From the base Soave Classico, crisp and tasty and a very welcome aperitif, especially on a warm day.  The Calvarino Soave that is aged in the glass-lined cement tanks was my favorite, with a pronounced minerality, a salinity, and a long taste and notable finesse.  The wood-aged La Rocca was a favorite of a few of the others, offering a different, more deeply flavored aspect of the Garganega, with even a small portion of grapes that might see some botrytis depending on the year.  We also tasted a Valpolicella that Pieropan makes in a separate winery in the Valpolicella territory just to the west of Soave.  They “make red wine like white wine.”  Delicious, too.
 
A visit to Pieropan was the start to a very enjoyable day – there were two more stops in Soave – and one of the highlights of two weeks in Italy this summer.

All photos courtesy of Rob Montoya with the exception of the "Pieropan" wall, which is from Italian Weekly Wine News.

I dine out frequently; it’s been even more so this August with Houston Restaurant Weeks that benefits the Houston Food Bank – doing charity work while at the table – and also some renewed desire to try and re-try places on my lengthy list of eateries.  And I’ve eaten at a number of well-regarded restaurants very recently including Izakaya, The Grove, Brasserie du Parc, Kiran's, Coppa Osteria, Weights & Measures, Bludorn, Riel, Toro Toro, and The Annie.  A few a visits were for lunch or happy hour and a few were quite good, but clearly the best meal I’ve had in the last three restaurant-packed weeks was at Saldivia’s, the Uruguayan steakhouse in west Houston.

Long a favorite of the family, we ate there in early August for the first time since the advent of the pandemic.  It had been too long.  My meal was terrific, no surprise.  The star, as almost always, was the entraña, a dark-brown cut of skirt steak crisscrossed with darker grill marks and topped with a nearly addictive chimicurri sauce and in a small pool by some bloody juice from being perfectly cooked to medium-rare.

The entraña is the signature cut at Saldivia’s.  It is the rather humble outside skirt steak – which is from the plate section, below the rib and between the brisket and flank and whose fat has been trimmed off by the restaurant.  Proprietor Gus Saldivia told us that he purchases halal steaks for its more natural and better flavor.  The entraña remained juicy and remarkably tender for the cut, while being nicely beefy and extremely flavorful.  Though no assist was necessary, the oily, tart and garlicky house-made chimichurri sauce is an excellent accompaniment.  Made in the traditional Uruguayan, Argentine way, it is much more savory and complementary to food than the versions of chimichurri served at Churrascos and the newish Toro Toro in the Four Seasons.

The twelve-ounce steak came with a half-dozen slices of grilled carrot, squash and zucchini displayed in an alternating orange, yellow and green-tinged array, a thick column of yellow rice and some plump, roasted potatoes with a few small pieces of parsley, all provided welcome partners to the meaty centerpiece.  It was an impressive plate for now just $35 or so.  Excellent empanadas in several varieties, blood sausage, sauteed sweetbreads and crusty, fresh bread provided the delicious opening rounds.  And there was plenty Tannant, the star varietal of Uruguay, to wash down the meats and everything.  It was a fun, caloric and noticeably very tasty visit once again, notable even among meals at top local restaurants.
 
Saldivia’s
10850 Westheimer (between Walnut Bend and Westheimer), Houston, 77042, (713) 782-9494
saldivias.com

An order of the entraña at Saldivia's earlier this month

The name “Soave” doesn’t mean much to most wine drinkers.  If the name resonates at all, it doesn’t resonate well: it’s as a bland or insipid white wine, at least for those with a few vintages under their belts back when Soave was one of the most popular wines from Italy.  And, much of what was sold here under the Soave banner – from Bolla, for example – was truly bland and insipid.  However, the influential Italian wine critic James Suckling has asserted that “Soave should be your go-to dry white for food… [as a] fresh Soave pairs well with almost everything on your dinner table thanks to its approachable styles, freshness and wonderful balance that are keys to drinkability.”  That was a key take-away after recently spending nearly a week in Verona and visiting a few wineries in nearby Soave, the town, which gives its name to white wines made there and close by.
 
The cool, typically crisp, slightly fruity and balanced, surprisingly fuller flavored than anticipated Soaves, often with welcome minerality, paired extremely well with the very warm Italian summer and the Italian version of air conditioning.  Thanks to its evident acidity, these are very capable and versatile food wines, as Suckling wrote, more so we found with lighter fare.  We drank quality versions readily, as an aperitif, with the pasta course and even at the end of the evening.  
 
Soave does not feature a well-known varietal.  It is made with a minimum of 70% Garganega and a maximum 30% Trebbiano di Soave, which is Verdicchio in the Marche region, and possibly also up to 5% of Chardonnay.  Pronounced gar-GAHN-eh-guh, Garganega came to the Veneto, where it is almost solely grown, centuries ago from Sicily where its antecedent is known as Grecanico.
 
The Soaves we quite enjoyed there were: Ca’ Rugate Soave Classico 2021 San Michele; I Campi Soave Classico Campo Vulcano 2020; Le Battistelle Soave Classico 2021; Pra Otto Soave 2021; and three different expressions from Pieropan.  I was hooked, but it can take some effort to find these are similar quality Soave here.  There are seven Soaves at the closest Total Wine to me, including the terrific, mineral-laden Calvarino that regularly garners a prestigious Tre Bicchieri rating from Gambero Rosso and the richer, La Rocca that is aged for fifteen months in fairly large barrels then in 500-liter tonneaux, both that I really enjoyed both at the winery and afterwards.  The big Spec’s on Smith Street has only five, but the base bottling from Pieropan, the Soave Classico, which is still quite nice.  Be sure to check the vintage dates at Spec’s, which can’t really be trusted, especially for its Italian white wines.  From Houston for Soave, it might be easier to order from out of town.

At the new Pieropan winery in June in Soave.

You hear Frank Sinatra.  If Sinatra or any of the other notable Italian-American crooners are on the restaurant’s soundtrack, the restaurant is certainly not Italian; it is most likely Italian-American.  Sinatra was not from Italy, but from the New York area and his music was American and something that those seeking to create a genuine Italian atmosphere, usually primarily with its menu and food, will not play.  You don’t really hear Sinatra in the trattorie or ristoranti in Italy, after all.
 
His music is still great, and I am a huge fan.  It and that of fellow mid-century Italian-Americans, Dean Martin, Tony Bennett, Louis Prima, Bobby Darin, and even sometimes Vic Damone and the overly smooth Perry Como, have helped to provide a very enjoyable and complementary musical background to restaurants here – mostly Italian-American and steakhouses – for decades, long after they’ve stopped recording.  I’ve made note of that before.
 
I have enjoyed myself countless times when dining out with Sinatra and friends playing around.  It just wasn’t with Italian food.

Tajarin with shaved white truffles a few years ago at Ristorante San Marco in Canelli near Asti.  It wasn't bad.

“Wine was food, part of the necessary calories of the day” for those that worked here in years past said Vittorio delle Ore, the proprietor of the Villa di Maser, to our small group visiting earlier this summer.  Even the site of the villa, long called Villa Barbaro after its founders, was because the Barbaro brothers in the mid-16th century thought it was advantageous for vineyards he further explained. 
 
That statement was not surprising to me, but the juxtaposition of it with the extraordinary setting, in one of the most famous buildings designed by Andrea Palladio – “the perfect Renaissance villa,” according to a British Academy article and part of a UNESCO World Heritage site – while we were surrounded by magnificent and sometimes whimsical frescoes by Renaissance master Paolo Veronese covering its walls and ceilings, helped to emphasize just how important wine has been to Italian life over the centuries.  Though wine is luxury to many people today, where vineyards grew historically, wine was an important part of the daily diet for nearly all.
 
And in a link to its history, the vineyards here are still producing wine, now under the Villa di Maser label.  Wine remains a significant part of Italian life, maybe not as essential to everyday living but important for economic and cultural reasons, not to mention gastronomic and celebratory.  And, Villa di Maser’s wine were part of our enjoyment later.

The front of Villa di Maser, from Wikipedia

The strong smell of fish wafted by as the waiter brought a second platter with two very popular local items, baccalà and slices of prosciutto crudo, to the pair of slight college-aged women sitting nearby in the alleyway that provides the seating for the suitably small wine bar La Piccola Vineria in the medieval section of the port city of Trieste in Italy’s northeastern edge.  It’s certainly something not to be seen in wine bars in this country, an order, much less two, of reconstituted salt cod as happy hour snacks.  Nor the prices, which hovered around four euros – just four dollars these days – for most of the dozen or so likely delicious selections by the glass.  These are high quality wines that are at least $15 to $20 per glass here, if imported.  Maybe it was a little cheaper than most, but this is emblematic of the wine bars in Trieste, where high quality wine is very affordable, as the city lies quite near terrific wine areas all around, especially the Collio – which extends Brda in adjacent Slovenia – but also the Carso and Friuli Colli Orientali.
 
The wines of the Collio are generally serious but approachable, seemingly always with evident minerality, sufficient and enjoyable fruit notes, a complexity, pleasant acidity – a brightness – and nearly always balance among its white varietals from the crisp Ribolla Gialla both in still and sparkling versions; Pinot Grigio, which seems to reach its apex here; the local favorite Friuliano that seems made to accompany seafood; the rich and savory Sauvignon and Chardonnay, both tasting different than elsewhere and nearly always quite pleasurable.  And others.  I believe that it is clearly best region for white wine in Italy.  And then the wines from the small Carso appellation surrounding Trieste, lead by light and often almond-scented Vitoska, Malvasia, the unique, vivid red Terrano, can be quite nice.
 
Though it was wine that played a part in bringing me to Trieste – I had been on a trip nearby sponsored by the consortiums of Collio and Carso a decade ago – it took me a few days to discern the bars where best to discover and enjoy quality wines, as I didn’t come across signs announcing “wine bar” or its Italian counterpart “enoteca” in my walks around the city.  I miss some things.  There are certainly no shortage of places to get a glass of wine in the tourist-friendly expanse of central Trieste, though.  Cafés and restaurants both with plenty of sidewalk-facing seating abound.  Coffee might be the beverage that most would associate Trieste with.  It is home to the famed Illy brand, around 40% of Italy’s coffee comes through its port, and there are still a few grand Viennese-style cafés.  Then Trieste has culture of drinking that might be more pronounced than elsewhere in Italy due, in part, to its Austrian and Slavic influences. The enjoyment of coffee, aperitivi and wine might be on display at many of these places, often at the same time, even well before noon.
 
You can get some really good wine by the glass at many or all of these, but it really helps to do some research.  I finally did that, or remembered some, after my first few days.  My unimpressive and uncomfortably warm business hotel had a magazine guide of the city from the end of last year, and in it was a page recommending spots to drink wine from Stefano Cosma, a food and wine writer in the area.  I also found a piece online a few years earlier from the estimable Jancis Robinson and re-read a helpful “36 Hours in Trieste, Italy” from The New York Times.  I used these to track down a spots, and wines, especially where there was overlap between the articles. 
 
Here are wine bars to suggest in Trieste near the tourist heart of the city, all unpretentious, which provided some excellent white wines to help quench my summertime thirst:

• Al Ciketo – Just off the pedestrian via Cavanna that is strewn with shops and restaurants, and a stone’s throw from La Piccola Vineria, this tiny, atmospheric place with alleyway seating can be a popular happy hour stop, and it’s blackboard filled with interesting wines both local and from elsewhere in Italy and there are cicchetti, small plates, to accompany.
• Enoteca Nanut – Around for a quarter of a century tucked away in the touristic center by the Canal Grande but easy to miss, here you can explore lesser-known Italian labels along or indulge in bubbles from Champagne, and it has a kitchen, too.
• Gran Malabar – Walking by, a visitor would probably just see this as a comfortable attractive café with tables on the small piazza in front.  The chalkboard of wines by the glass is notable, enticing with about three dozen selections, mostly white and mostly regional, but also a nice collection of bubbles from Champagne and Franciorta, and items like Gaja’s Chardonnay and a Gewurztraminer from Elena Walch.  The staff might have no idea what a barrique or tonneaux is, but what they are pouring will be very enjoyable. 
• La Bottiglia Volante – A couple of blocks from the Canal Grande, this smart and contemporary space is inviting and gives off a trendier vibe with its penchant for natural wines.  
• La Piccola Vineria – Invitingly quaint and friendly, you might enjoy a Collio producer like Toros that’s not widely distributed in this country, or even a Champagne from a historic house.
• Portizza – On the busy Piazza della Borsa, this popular café sports a terrific collection of regional wines that many spritz-drinking tourists and locals might not notice.

 
Though these wine bars might be the best places to casually explore the wine regions nearby, seemingly all the local restaurants will serve quality wines for a pittance.  Along those lines, I had to stop and gaze at the wines by the glass menu – “vini alla mescita” – posted outside of a humble restaurant serving the hearty fare of Alto Adige. For between all of between three and five-a-half euros per glass was about a dozen choices including the excellent wineries Venica & Venica, Villa Russiz, Russiz Superiore and Jermman, that last with a couple wines. 
 
Trieste is a wonderful place to drink wine, especially white wines.
 
Something else to mention concerning wine and Trieste: Though it doesn’t ship to the U.S. – I tried when I was there – Enoteca Bischoff, a retail shop along the busy via Mazzini and about a block or so from Enoteca Nanut that’s been around in some form since 1777 is worth a perusal for wine lovers for its impressively curated selection of wines, mostly Italian and well beyond the region and more.

Just the white wines at Gran Malabar in Trieste in June