October 1988, I was in Italy, researching stops for a guided tour of Detroit foodies. I stopped at Cibreo for a meal. Back then, Cibreo was a small neighborhood trattoria known for incredible old world Tuscan cuisine – like Ribollita soup made with cavalo nero, Tuscan black kale (which we sell at Hiller’s); Ciangale, wild boar slowly braised with sweet and sour fall apples; or Bistecca Fiorentina, a triple-thick Porterhouse steak done in a wood-fired oven.

Today, Cibreo is known internationally – and it’s a veritable food empire consisting of the original trattoria, an elegant restaurant, a coffee bar, a take-out store and a new Theatre Salon. All of these are located in the old Santa Croce neighborhood of Florence, where you can find the oldest Franciscan church and a beautiful example of Italy’s many piazzas as well as one of my favorite fruit and vegetable markets.

Some vivid memories from that meal:

• fire roasted yellow pepper soup-a mélange of sweet yellow peppers, fresh oregano, a swirl of fresh olive oil and the smell of the wood fire
• porcini mushroom-one huge, just-picked beauty wrapped in parchment paper, splashed with oil and paired with a garlic sliver, roasted to perfection

But the best dish was the brains! After seven courses of incredible food, with dessert on the way, I remembered reading in an old Gourmet magazine that Cibreo’s chefs do wonders with lamb brains.

I called to my waiter: “Cervello?”

He looked at me with amazement in his eyes, then reminded me of all I had already consumed.

I convinced him I was serious. No more than five minutes later, a small plate arrived with a tiny foil packet. No wonderful odor, no glorious droplets of sauce. Despite the heat of the packet, my fingers navigated the foil open – and the soul-soothing scent hit me straight-on.

It was like nothing I had ever experienced: butter, lemon, garlic, olive oil, fresh bay leaf, laurel and something else….

Fabio Picchi, Cibreo’s chef-owner, had placed a tiny sliver of “Tartufo Bianco,” the prized Italian fungus with an aroma of things exotic and forbidden, inside the packet with the tiny lobe of lamb brain. Mmmm…eyes closed, I opened my mouth.

Two tiny bites, and I was done in! Delicate couldn’t describe that dish. It was the epitome of rustic perfection, supremely fresh ingredients treated with the utmost respect.

Just how I like it.

– Chef Rick Halberg

A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.
-Clifton Fadiman

Of all ways that wine enriches our lives, the joy found in sharing it may be the greatest.  A friend drops by and you share a bottle while swapping stories of the kids, the house, the dogs. You prepare a recipe from the latest issue of Gourmet or Real Simple, anguish over the perfect wine to pair with it, and delight afterwards in the fact that it really didn’t matter to any of your guests which wine you chose.  It was perfect because wine loves company, and company is always better with wine.

So why not organize a wine-tasting party for your next gathering of friends? A wine event can be elaborate or simple; only a few essentials are required and the rest relies on your crowd and creativity.

Unless you are conducting a formal, blind tasting and don’t want other tastes to influence the wines, arrange bread, cheese, crudités, olives, and fruit. And don’t forget to have lots of water for drinking between sips.

Have plenty of clean stemware with bowls large enough for a good swirl, but certainly don’t need to be Reidel.

Some folks offer paper and pens to encourage note-taking; jotting down thoughts on appearance, aroma, flavor, and overall impression of each wine is an excellent way to focus. (Of course, omitting the schoolwork keeps your party informal and less intimidating.)

Make sure you accurately assess your group’s true interest; don’t make things too technical, or too much work, if most guests aren’t seriously into wine.

Consider these ways of structuring a tasting, based on the crowd’s collective level of experience:

Cross-varietal tasting. This can be fun for beginners or a group with widely different experience levels. Taste a number of wines in approximately the same price range made from the same grape, and focus on identifying distinguishing characteristics. For reds, pick a Cabernet Sauvignon, a Pinot Noir, a Merlot, and a Syrah. For whites: a Chardonnay, a Sauvignon Blanc, a Riesling, and a Gewurztraminer. At the end, pour from a covered bottle something tasted earlier and see who can figure out which one it is.

Cross-regional tasting. Try the same type of wine but from different regions or countries. For example, compare Sauvignon Blanc from Bordeaux, the Loire, New Zealand and California.  Or Cabernet Sauvignon from Napa, Australia, Chile and Bordeaux.  Syrah from the Rhone and Washington State, Shiraz from Australia and South Africa, Pinot Grigio from Italy and California, Pinot Gris from Alsace and Oregon.

Price-level tasting. This is appropriate for an intermediate level of wine knowledge. Compare the same type of wine at different levels of quality: a Bordeaux, a Pauillac and a Premier Cru Pauillac; or, a Kendall-Jackson Grand Reserve versus the K-J Vintner’s Reserve versus Camelot (a K-J second label).

Vertical tasting. One needs a pretty extensive cellar or some good connections for this. Compare the same wine over several vintages. A vertical tasting can clearly show the effects of weather variation on wine.

Blind tasting.  Wine bottles are covered so there’s no way to identify the wine. The point is either to compare similar wines without prejudice or to have tasters identify the grape, region and vintage. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

For a wine tasting party with minimum pretension and maximum conviviality, you can’t beat an idea from Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher, who write the wine column for The Wall Street Journal. Ask each of your guests to bring a bottle of the same kind of wine within a certain price range-say, for instance, Chardonnay under $20. Tell them to put the wine in a bag with their names on it. Do the same. When people arrive, give each a glass of your wine (no more than two ounces; remember, this is a tasting) and put theirs on the table. After everyone finishes the first wine, pour tastes of the second and leave it on the table. And so on. Keep opening until all the wines have been tried. Then, take the bottles out of the bags. Don’t worry about assigning best and worst. It’s exciting enough to see who brought what, find out how much everything cost and compare who liked what.

Some members of Jim Hiller’s Wine Club say that after each quarterly arrival of Club selections, they convene a party of friends to taste our picks. They discuss the wines, decide which ones they like and as a final laugh for the evening, read my newsletter aloud and rate the level of bombast in my tasting notes. It’s okay – I’m tough, I can take it.

No matter what type of tasting you organize, if your friends are driving, be careful. Have designated drivers or call for cabs. You want your friends to be around for your next party.

- Eric Novak, Hiller’s Wine Guru