Way back in the 70s I put myself through college by flipping burgers for 20 hours a week in a small chain hamburger joint. It was back in the times when minimum wage could actually get you a small room or apartment and some food. In my case it got me an education at a private university, too. Please don’t try this today kids. It won’t work.
Anyway, being of college age, I was “much” older than most people who put themselves through that kind of demeaning work. So I did what my mother taught me and applied myself to the task. I eventually got good and fast enough to “beat” a machine that made the same hamburgers from frozen patties rather than from raw meat, both in terms of quality of “the product” and the speed of its arrival at the bun station.
But the suits who came to our little shop to evaluate this quirk in their calculations were only temporarily derailed by human mastering of a task. You see, to them what was important (“I can’t emphasize this enough…”) was that a hamburger ordered in Illinois must be exactly like one ordered in Florida. It didn’t matter if mine was better, juicier, and gave you the strength of ten hockey players and a porn star, it couldn’t be different than the others made by different people at the different stores.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I like wine. It’s meant to be different. It’s meant to reflect the place where it was grown. Heaven forbid the industrial crap food producers should ever think of entering the wine industry in their normal hell-bent-for-monopolistic-pricing way. (I’m also glad I’m old; who’d want to spend your entire life in such hell?)
But the point of this post is to introduce you to Luca Currado, winemaker at Vietti in Piemonte. Luca and I like Barbera and Barbera is Luca’s passion. Luca is young and tells great stories about working in America and France before returning to his homeland to make great Barbera.
The audio interview on GrapeRadio is one of the most enjoyable I’ve ever listened to. You’ll laugh, you’ll nod your head in agreement, you’ll learn wine history and you’ll end up with a deep yearning for a glass of Luca’s Barbera.
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