Craig Camp

It was about Euro 70 a head including food, wine and grappa. I am sure the culatello will show up when the weather is cold.

Do you find the current fashion of judging wine on the 100 point scale useful or detrimental for the appreciation of wine? Is wine drinking a quest for perfection? Should it be?

Thursday markes the third day in a row of cloudy, damp (showers) and cool. Barolo Boy I have been laid up with a nasty flu and had to postpone my trip. Looks like I will be there next week.

While we were talking about that troia you brought up microoxygenation. This and many other new wine making technologies have been demonised by many wine journalists. Are these methods evil or good? What other modern technologies do you embrace as useful?

Randall, Nero di Troia is a varietal that, even in Italy, many a serious Italian wine connoisseur has never heard of - at least outside of Puglia. How did you discover this varietal and where is the vineyard located? Why that troia instead of the virtuous negroamaro? Do you have other projects with indigenous southern Italian varietals in the works?

Today WineCommune.com announced an agreement with eRobertParker.com, the on-line presence of wine critic Robert Parker, focused on improving fine wine research, and buying and selling wine on the Internet. WineCommune.com announced that beginning in September, the two companies will work together to achieve two primary goals: providing WineCommune.com members access to their eRobertParker.com subscriptions through WineCommune.com, and providing eRobertParker.com members access to WineCommune.com's wine marketplace through eRobertParker.com. This unique combination will allow fine wine lovers unparalleled access to wine reviews, pricing information and purchasing avenues.

Bonny Doon Vineyard of Santa Cruz, California said on Friday it will release some 200,000 cases of wines whose bottles are sealed with screwcaps instead of cork.

Bologna is good - to say the least. Home of Italian communism, mortadella and tortellini. What more could you want?

Seems a shame to do to REAL Champagne. Why not use a more mundane sparkler for blending?

I have yet to find any region in Italy where the cuisine is not consistantly good. My favorite regional cuisine tends to be the region that I am in at the time. As Stephen Stills wrote: Love the One You're With. Yet there are always bad restaurants everywhere. I still strongly recommend the Osterie d'Italia Guide by Slow Food as the best way for tourists to avoid bad meals and to find delicous authentic Italian food. After a while you also get an instinct - some places just don't look good, but there will always be some that fool you one way or the other.

If you eat next to the tourist attractions yes, but Roma is a big city. With little effort it is easy to find exceptional food. Roma and Venezia are two different things all together. Venezia is a tourist attraction that has a city and Roma is a city that has tourist attractions.

Other than Venezia - you can say the same about all of Italy!

...ummm..aaa....wow... quite a first post. Thanks and welcome. I will be in Romagna in October and will definitely hit some of this spots. Can you explain more clearly the difference between the Mortadella foam and the Mortadella mousse at Diana. You seem to equate them a bit. Keep the details coming. Great stuff. Been to any NYC Italian spots since you have been back?????????

Champagne harvest cut

Tiffany Corte, financial officer for the Southernmost Illinois Delta Empowerment Zone -- the group that received the USDA funds -- said most of the grants were administered to local economic development group Johnson County 2000, which, in turn, released funds to the winery cooperative. Shawnee Winery Cooperative board secretary Annet Lofton said setting up the winery is expected to cost roughly $400,000. She hopes the facility will produce up to 10,000 gallons of wine within its first three years.

There's nothing like a great bottle of wine-especially if you made it yourself. Winemaking, in fact, is more than a business; it's a lifestyle, say experts. And it's not exactly a bad one to be in. There are riches for entrepreneurs in every facet of the business, from growing a vineyard to owning a winery to publishing wine education products, it's all part and parcel of the growing wine industry.

The "two-buck chuck" table wines, low-priced imports and consumers' increasing taste for inexpensive wines have led to one of the toughest retail markets in years for the wine industry, according to an annual survey by a UC Davis wine economist.

yeah but are they more powerful than really really really big magnets? I guess for some reading comprehension is a weak point? I gave a basic explanation in my last post. Anything else I leave to the reader. yeah, but how about super-sized magnets? But what happens if you have really tiny ones?

The problem with all those California wines you see in those wine stores is that they are all basically the same wine with different labels. It does not matter which brand you buy they will all taste about the same (so just buy the one on sale). California is suffering from technical political correctness in its wine making. There is no doubt that you can find wines of greater diversity - and thus interest - in this price category from Italy, France, Germany and Spain. You also take more risk in getting a wine you don't like. No pain - no gain.

The Cathedral in Assisi is almost totally restored.

For art yes, but for food? Umbria is a gastronomic miracle. Toscana does not have a chance.

Raccolta: A weekly Italian wine harvested by Craig Camp 1998 Shardana, Valli di Porto Pino, IGT Sardegna

It is always painful to put your heart and soul into something only to have someone lightly trash it for fun, sport, spite, jealousy or for any reason. It is clear from his emotion and his history of posts that Mark indeed puts not only his heart and soul, but his entire being into Citronelle and being a sommelier that enhances the diners experience. Being a sommelier really means something to him. Mark I am afraid these are the wages of being on top. Someone will always be shooting at you -- some with good reasons and some with bad. The problem is of course that the general public can't tell the good ones from the bad ones.

Bergamo is a cool town. Also the birthplace of Gaetano Donizetti, one of my favorite composers. Bergamo is great, as is the wine and salumi bar in the AltaCitta called Donezetti, named for the composer. I OD'd on Lardo and Carne Crudo there a couple of weeks ago. Thank god for all the good wine.

The Catholic church turned me down Bill, but you are right Assisi is a special place.