In 1985 I went to Mastro's after Vin Italy. He relieved me & Jim(Morris)of
about 26 cases of wine given us or bought. They were in Hubleins next
shipment to DC. Mayflower in DC had arranged a 30 case drop at Fossi for us.

Sig Mastro(Walter not his son Carlo) told us Hublein wanted only one
bottling of Taurasi, Greco, Fiano, Lachryma from the normale uvaggio but
labeled Riserva or with a cru name. Mastro was free to sell the real
Riservas elsewhere in the world; thus there was a dramatic decline in
quality, which Hublein gambled the consumer would not notice + having tasted
some great wines from the brother's Ceretto and Monsanto--when the wines
came into DC they had lost their complexity. The Hublein guy who led the
tasting, then opened up his own samples and immediately noticed a difference
between the wines shipped in a container and those hand carried.

I did some nosing around with shipping companies like DANZAS & Hilldebrand
and found out Hublein used a large, naturally heated & cooled warehouse in
France and never used reefers in shipping and never monitored the movement
of wine from an Italian port to France. So the wine could have been on a
Livorno dock for a few days.

Hublein had a split personality in the wine biz---In California they left BV
alone but really screwed up Inglenook. Same thing in Italy were they tried
to get Bruno Ceretto to acquire more vineyards for their Arneis because it
sold real well and they needed more juice to meet demand.
"DaleW" > wrote in message
oups.com...
>
> I agree with most of what you say, though overall I tend to like Fiano
> more than Greco. With both grapes, I tend to like the Feudi di San
> Gregorio more than the Mastroberardino (by a hair). But I like
> Mastroberardino's reds.
>