Inside IWM

The Inside Story from Italian Wine Merchants

Grace in the Gravner

The magic of music meeting wine

Listening to music changes the way we perceive things—even, or perhaps especially, wine. I clearly remember last April when I met my friend at his rock studio here in Hong Kong. I got to the studio (equipped with a full stage, premium sound equipment and instruments for seven) and was shown the enormous wine cellar on the other side of the room, insulated from vibration and in perfect condition. I understood the way John Kinsella felt in Field of Dreams when he asked his son, “Is this heaven?” and was told, “No. It’s Iowa.” For one Sunday, I thought heaven was located in the Chai Wan district of Hong Kong.

As the house band started playing its repertoire of mostly Eagles ballads, we sat back and enjoyed a few finer Champagnes. The set list picked up, and the growing bass thrummed in sync with our move into a deeper Bordeaux. A well-timed guitar solo found me taking longer with each sip and blocking out everything but the Fender Stratocaster and Château Lascombes. The evening concluded, I returned to earth, and I filed this epiphany in the back of my mind; however, not long after, another music/wine synergy occurred.

“Lover You Should’ve Come Over,” the seventh track off of Jeff Buckley’s album Grace was playing in my apartment. I had a glass of Josko Gravner’s 2002 Ribolla Anfora in hand and was sipping. It felt as if the wine transformed into Buckley’s voice in amber, liquid form. Gravner’s wine has often struck me as artistic: fully alive, ever-evolving and somehow always striking the right chord. Like Gravner’s wine, Buckley’s voice is unfiltered and pure. I’ve never heard another singer pull off this song like Buckley, and I can’t help but note that there is only one Gravner.

Finding common threads in music and wines is easy if you think about your favorites. But having it occur spontaneously—and being perceptive enough to notice when it does—is an unexpected reward and an infinite pleasure. And if you do have a wine pairing for Springsteen’s “Born to Run,” Zeppelin’s “Babe I’m Gonna Leave You” or Pearl Jam’s “Black,” I’d love to know.

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Movia’s Genius

Ales Kristancic

When speaking about the estate and wines of Movia, you’ll without a doubt mention its famed producer Ales Kristancic. You simply can’t bring up the wine without the man, because they go hand in hand. Sadly, I’ve yet to have the opportunity to meet Ales, but I admit he’s such a fascinating figure that I’ve done some research on him (reading the Ales chapter in Sergio’s Passion on the Vine started my mini-obsession). Recently, I read Food & Wine magazine’s profile “Ales Kristancic: Wine Genius of Slovenia,” and what stood out to me the most was this passage:

Conversation is equally disorienting. This isn’t so much because Kristancic’s native language is Slovenian (he is also fluent in both Italian and English), but because his actual native language is Ales. To wit, cigarette in hand: “I need critics! I don’t need this wow-brow shiki-miki zak-zak!” Roughly translated, that means, “Hey, I need actual critics, not a bunch of useless hipster yes-men.”

I got the picture of a man who says, does and gets what he wants, and if it doesn’t exist, he will create it—including his own language. Ales’ unbounded need to create his own universe is especially evident for me in his choice to design his own crystal glassware collection made by Rogaska, Slovenia’s leading crystal producer. Hand-blown from one piece of crystal, these glasses are so time-consuming that one specialized artisan can make only ten glasses in a day. Ales doesn’t just have a glass for his red wine and for his white; he has several for each style. For example, he has a Champagne glass, but also a glass specifically for his sparkling wine called Puro. He also has a special decanter made for his Lunar—a wine named for the moon and crafted from 100% Ribolla Gialla.

If Ales puts this much care, dedication and precision into crafting the perfect vessel, I can only begin to imagine the intensity with which he creates his wines. Whether in his glassware or not, you really should try some of his wonderful wines, because while I’ve not met the man, I have drunk his wines, and they are amazing. And if you are interested in meeting him, we’re hosting a special winemaker dinner and tasting with Ales. (I’m pretty excited about the night.) We’ll be featuring a wide selection of Movia wines, some dating back to 1983, as well as the U.S. debut of the Chardonnay Lunar 2008.

As Ales himself might say, “Zak-Zak!”

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