Ruché, Ribolla, Refosco...

[Craig Camp]

You are obviously heavily involved in the Italian wine business with extensive Italian wine lists at your restaurants, as a partner in The Italian Wine Merchant and with a business partner, Joe Bastianich, who owns the winery of the same name in Collio. As part of all of your ventures you devote significant space to lesser known Italian varietals and place names. How successful have you been inducing your American customers to experiment with these wines, which are essentially unknown to them?

[Mario Batali]

we are not trying to change the world, rather we are just sharing some of our faves withthe rest of the us.... i am tired of the cabernization of both cali and ital vineyards and am pleased to make and represent regional indigenous varietals as the expression of the natural terroir... this said we are now producing a morellino di scansano doc in our new property in maremma under our fattoria la mozza label... but we will also produce a hybrid using granacha and tempranillo (neither indigenous to maremma) that will begin a new phase for the words super tuscan proving that i am also slightly full of it!!! (the morellino) mb