Italian wines are my favorites. I like a big, booming red wine that blows your taste buds away.
Italy - I love the late-night culture, hanging around the square at midnight with everyone, catching up and having a drink.
I've been buying the same lambrusco from Correggio [a town between Reggio-Emilia and Modena] since 1965.
The first wine I drank, a Chateau Haut-Brion, I was 22, it was my first glass of wine, and I discovered voluptuousness. From there, I started tasting French wines, then Spanish wines, then Italian wines.
The Italians always made good wine, but you had the impression they were friendly guys in straw hats running family vineyards with slaves or something so that the vino was never more than ten bucks a bottle.
I wouldn't say that I'm an Italian wine connoisseur. I do like red wine. I guess my favorites now are Bordeauxes. French.
I enjoy a Prosecco. It's bubbly; it's fun. I think it goes with a lot of food.
When I can, I always like coming to Italy to have some nice wine.
Lambruscos have been misrepresented by industrial versions that have the soda pop flavor they think Americans want.
After World War II, a lot of people moved to the cities for work and abandoned the old vineyards. Then in the 1950s and 1960s, wineries were paid to produce volume at a cheap price. That's when the Lambruscos and bad Chianti were popular.
All my wife has ever taken from the Mediterranean - from that whole vast intuitive culture - are four bottles of Chianti to make into lamps, and two china condiment donkeys labelled Sally and Peppy.
