Richard Juhlin took well needed fall holliday in the Amalfi coast. [read the full champagne story]
Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
If you’re a loyal Champagne Club follower, you can’t have missed that I’m a huge lover of the Amalfi Coast and the area that has its beating heart in and around the deceptively dormant volcano Vesuvius. Admittedly, I have never been up on the crater rim and looked down as I did at twice as high and violently active Etna in Sicily. But in all eight of my trips to the Campania region, I have been able to look out over the volcano’s angular horizon line and fantasize about what it was like in AD 79, when a sleeping Pompeii was drowned in ash and people’s lives froze or fried in a horrific historical moment. However, it was only this time on my eighth trip that I got to visit the excavated ash-buried city. The crowds of tourists and the predictable herd mastering of guides in scorching heat are not my thing no matter how interesting the historical site is. This time it was a pleasant temperature and sparklingly beautiful with airy surfaces to dodge on the way to when the blisteringly fast guide switched on his tired cassette tape for story telling. Between interesting facts like the fact that the majority of about 20,000 people actually managed to escape the eruption, but that most of them froze to death when they had nowhere to go up into the winter mountains or return to when the entire city was gone, I had time to catch my breath the place, the space of time and let the imagination take in how these people of largely Indian origin and Greek cultural imprint lived. Just like in Naples or on Capri and our home holiday island of Ischia, you can always see the volcano in the distance. All the beauty that grows here and gives world-class flavors owes its unique magnificence to the volcanic soil combined with the favorable perfection of the Mediterranean climate.
My previous trips have taken place in spring or mid-summer. Going to the Amalfi Coast in November has never existed in my universe. However, that changed when my good friend Eddi trumpeted one late evening in April that he and his wife would be staying in Positano for three nights in November. A little Bollinger boosted, we were three Poles who immediately hooked up. Of course we also wanted to come along and celebrate Eddi’s 75th birthday. He who is from Udine and is an inveterate Northern Italian with more connections to both the former Yugoslavia and Austria than the area south of Tuscany had, according to his own statement, never been to Southern Italy, despite his impressive age. October was apparently raining away down there and our expectations for the winter gray Italian landscape were low.
But what on earth was this? When we landed, we saw lush greenery on par with what it looks like in mid-July. Everything was blooming and the fruit trees were full of sun-ripened fruit. The sun was certainly not hot, but it warmed like the flattering flattery of royalty. Silky, caressing and life-affirming vitamin rich in symbiosis with an equally velvety breeze that brought with it the most lovely scents of floral splendor and lemon zest. The lemons yes, these wonderful local delicacies. We learned the difference between the intense power of Sorrento lemons and the more lime-scented florality of Amalfi lemons. I love that the Italians are so local patriotic that they cultivate the unique differences of their ingredients and highlight its greatness in carefully thought out gastronomic combinations and encounters. Because we really got to experience this during our Guide Michelin-starred evenings. We started in Sorrento with the 1-star Il Buco where the staff were extremely knowledgeable and accommodating and where the wine list was brilliant with bargain prices on, among other things, several older vintages of the Louise Pommery Vinothèque disgorged 2017. Unfortunately, the decor was not our style and the lighting was far too harsh shocks candlelight-loving romantic Swedish boys. The food was ambitious, but a bit rustic and frankly a bit too bland to be at this level.
It was significantly better at La Caravella in 1959 in Amalfi. The restaurant that in 1967 received Italy’s first Michelin star. Signore Dipino whose mother earned the first star was rightly ultra proud of the family traditions and has faithfully kept the original local dishes, now with a personal twist. Initially, we all thought that the restaurant’s sommelier Toni and daughter Dipino, who served the delicious morsels, seemed a little stiff and weighed down by the seriousness of the moment. But the longer we sat at our table, the more impressed I was with their knowledge and timing. The wine list and cellar are among the best in Italy and we went hard for the rarities on the champagne pages. The real gem was a perfect bottle of 1989 La Grande Dame Rosé, also 1996 Dom Ruinart and 2002 Laurent-Perrier impressed. The biggest positive surprise was probably the first pair out. Yes, I try as often as possible to place two different, but somehow related champagnes next to each other so that they enhance each other’s beauty even more. That’s exactly what happened with late disgorged 1997 Billecart-Salmon’s two bastards, pinot-dominated N.F. and Blanc de Blancs. Dead race and lovely siblings in harmony together. Toni opened and served the delicacies with such love and knowledge that we were speechless. Was there nothing negative to tell home about? Well, the scent essence of artificial peach and pomegranate that poured out of the toilet, we would have preferred to do without.
The very best and well deserving of its 2 Michelin stars was Torre del Saracino in Seiano. In the slightly hidden coastal gem, we were met by sommelier Giuseppe who, just like Toni at La Caravella valley in 1959, was a really big follower of our achievements in the Champagne Club and also frequently uses my Master Class in his own wine tasting. If location, lighting and interior design were disappointing at the other restaurants, celebrity chef Gennaro Esposito’s premises were a delight for an aesthetically trained eye. With a view of the Bay of Naples and the volcano through generous windows accompanied by music from a perfect sound reproduction via a grand Mcintosh installation in Rolls Royce class and a perfect service, we received one creation more lovely than the other. Here too, of course, with local fish, lemons, tomatoes, buffalo mozzarella and herbs in focus. In all the restaurants, the area’s sardine flavor also appeared as a slightly obscure “love or hate spice” together with the finest zucchini from Nerano, which we also visited and had lunch in during our boat trip to Capri. Here, too, we were able to find in the champagne list with treats such as 2012 Laurent-Perrier in magnum, a couple of young vintages of Agrapart Avizeoise, Grand Siècle no 25 and an impressive finish of Côte-Rôtie from Jamet. Esposito, who I had previously only seen on TV, was a wonderfully jovial Ducasse-raised man and a great food creator with respect for both raw materials, technology and elegance, completely to my taste. Some of the pasta dishes were among the best I’ve eaten, so the overall rating stayed at an impressive 96 points.
When we weren’t taking taxis on winding roads to star restaurants, we enjoyed surreally beautiful and steep Positano. There is only one one-way road through the town and there are no sidewalks, so you have to be careful when you want to walk horizontally and not do hill training on one of the village’s many stairs. The splendor of color and the art of construction on the almost vertical walls are unparalleled in the world outside the west coast of Italy. At a reasonable distance from the road, we breathed fresh sea air on our fairytale terrace at Casa Maresca, where our friend Giancarlo Clark grew up. There, every evening began with a small Champagne Hiking in the early dusk. Of course always blind testing of favourites. The 1998 Piper Rare on magnum came to leave the strongest impression even though the 1988 Piper Rare is normally the group’s own cuddly pig.
Being able to lie and sunbathe in my underpants on the foredeck of the motorboat in November was as surreal as it was fantastic. The skipper Vincenzo (I think every driver and waiter along the entire coast was called that) glided along at a leisurely pace from Positano harbor along the Amalfi coast via every cave worthy of the name and when we reached Champagne Hiking site number 41 Il Faraglioni off Capri’s dramatic cliff coast we were in heaven on earth.
Was the 75-year-old as happy as the rest of us? Yes, he absolutely was and he is true to his habits already planning a reunion in the spirit of Campania, but he was a little embarrassed when he admitted with a magnum inside his vest that he had certainly been to Southern Italy several times, just not on the Amalfi Coast and that he did not turn 75 at all, but 76. But what did it do? A wonderful trip to remember for life, everyone got to be part of it and dream back to.
Richard Juhlin
