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Wine and Food

Alexander van Dülmen

Month

September 2018

Veritas, Restaurant, Naples

Veritas, Restaurant, Naples, Italy

5,0 points

Maybe you travel to Naples with false expectations, but unfortunately, the image of the city is bad. Trash, mafia and a pretty dirty bay with high pollution. Much of this is probably even true; otherwise it likely would not have stuck as Naples’ reputation over decades. Indeed, the city looks dirtier than other Italian cities; the area around the huge harbor is rather run-down. Perhaps the story of Naples’ tramway mirrors the chaotic, but perhaps not even scandalous condition of public services in this Southern Italian city. Because the street in front of the tram depot is under construction (according to different internet resources – including Wikipedia – the size of construction is only 40m long), not one tram has driven in the city since 2016!!!! This is crazy, isn’t it? I can imagine that the Neapolitans are quite used to this, they don’t trust politics – and for good reason – and if there is something behind all this that is really powerful,  it is the Camorra. You can be sure that they earn on every little “error.”

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“P”, Guccione

“P”, Azienda Agricola Guccione, Perricone, Red-wine from Italy

5,5 points

Uh, this one is sour. Really sour. This is, frankly speaking, the first reaction upon tasting this wine. But you could probably also just call it: “I wasn’t expecting that.’

“P” by Francesco Guccione is an extraordinary, if not an unusual, wine. Not a wine for beginners, as I provoked on Instagram when I posted a photo of the label. P stands for the Perricone grape variety, also known as Pignatello, which, as far as I know, only grows in Sicily. Find out more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perricone.

The wines of Francesco Guccione are perhaps the most radical organic wines from Sicily, where you can find some “world-famous” organic wine producers, such as Occhipinti and COS. Everyone who read my last post about COS (Zibibbio in Pithos, COS, 2016), knows about my friendly acquaintance Joanna. When we spent a very nice evening in the wonderful garden of Bar Sabadi at Modica, she introduced me to Francesco Guccione’s Trebbiano, which is truly wonderful – such a fantastic wine. Because of this, I decided to order two or three bottles of each of his wines, and I tasted “P” in recent days.

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Fresco, Restaurant & Pizzeria, Naples

Fresco, Restaurant & Pizzeria, Naples, Italy

2.5 points

The very beautiful receptionist Valentina at the highly recommended Hotel Excelsior advised us to have dinner at a place close by called Fresco — saying that there was not only excellent pizza, but also many other good things. Asked if she would go there with her family, she said yes. Our experience there ended up being rather disappointing, unfortunately, and maybe Valentina has not been there for a long time or maybe she has no family – who knows.

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