Live from Tuscany...

Hitting the Books

2010-05-30T06:32:00.002-04:00

Pardon our appearance while the blog takes a short break.... and I study for my sommelier exam! Written exam June 7, oral June 21! Wish me luck.

Criminal Tries to Take Romanee Conti Vineyards in Burgundy Hostage

2010-05-09T17:05:00.003-04:00

Check out this article, found here:

Blackmailer threatens to poison 'world's most expensive wine' vineyard

Producers of the Burgundy wine, which can fetch more than £15,000 a bottle, received a letter from the man earlier this year in which he promised to spread poison on the vines unless he received the pay-off, which amounts to almost £850,000.

"I didn't really know what to make of the first letter," said Aubert de Villaine, co-manager of the estate. "But when a second arrived shortly afterwards, I took the affair very seriously," he said

One of the letters included a map of the Romanee-Conti vineyards. "It was written that if we didn't hand over a million euros he would quite simply poison the vine stumps," said Mr de Villaine.

"The letters were very well-written and there was a real knowledge of our domain. I didn't want to take the risk of being taken hostage, as we could have been dealing with proper gangsters," he said.

To prove his determination, the extortionist said he had already poured a chemical on two vines, one of which was pulled out and handed over to investigators. However, the second vine is "growing normally. It appears that is was a hoax," said the manager.

Together with the police, the wine estate hatched a plan to trap the extortionist. Firstly, they replied saying they needed time to call a special general assembly to muster the ransom money.

Once contact was established, the owners wrote again to say they were ready to hand over the cash at a drop-off in a cemetery in Chambolle-Musigny, near the estate headquarters in Vosne-Romanée.

In fact, the booty contained only false bank notes.

When the man showed up and took the phoney ransom money, he was immediately seized by police. The man, who police said has a "busy" judicial record, faces charges of attempted extortion and is expected to appear in court within a year.

Romanée-Conti is Burgundy's most-prized wine and made entirely from the Pinot Noir grape. As Clive Coates, the Burgundy wine critic put it: "This is the purest, most aristocratic and most intense example of Pinot Noir you could possibly imagine. Not only nectar: a yardstick with which to judge all other Burgundies."

The vineyard is tiny, only covering 4.5 acres. Vines, which are on average 53 years old, are organically grown and yield kept down so that it takes three vines to make one bottle. Only 450 cases are produced per year on average.

Last month, an Ivorian woman bought a Jeroboam of Romani-Conti 1986 for 25,000 euros at a wine shop in Paris' Charles de Gaulle airport. She took it with her on her flight to Abidjan.

In 1996, a set of eight bottles of Romanée-Conti 1990 fetched $224,900 (£149,000) at an auction at Sotheby's in London, which is nearly £19,000 per bottle.

Mr de Villaine said the poison scare would have no impact on the wine's reputation: "I can't see how this affair can damage our reputation, nor the economy of the region: it was snuffed out before any harm was done."

I find this story not that surprising - since when I was in Burgundy in May 2009 I noticed how extremely unattended the vineyards were - even Romanee' Conti. In fact, here I am, inside their vineyards, trampling up their terroir:

There was no one guarding the vineyards, which are not near the chateau. No security cameras.

For those that are not familiar with the intricacies of Burgundy wine rules, each plot of vineyards is not owned by any one producer - multiple owners have one or two rows of grapvines each. So the vine's owner may live many kilometers away. This is a unique system that is very different from Bordeaux, where the vineyards are owned by one chateau, or even Tuscany, where it is rare that producers have vineyards far away from the central farmhouse of the property. But in Burgundy no one is watching the goods.

So does anyone know the answer to this one? Why hasn't Romanee' Conti, producer of one of the most expensive wines in the world (I would estimate each little bunch of grapes represents hundreds of Euros in sales considering the prices of a bottle) let their grapes go unwatched?

The DOCG Mystery

2010-04-25T16:35:00.003-04:00

I should preface this post with the fact that Italy never ceases to amaze me - I guess by now I should stop being surprised, but... seriously. Wine is big business here, one of Italy's best exports and a great branding tool for the country, which by and large it knows how to use. But the classification system is a mystery, even to experts in Italy.

The highest classifications in Italian wine is DOCG - Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita. Winemakers producing a DOCG have to follow a series of rules and regulations set out by the government in order to have this title - they have to use certain grape varietals, there are rules about the harvest, how long the wine can be aged, where it is aged, etc. Here is its tell-tale label:
The next highest classification is DOC - Denominazione di Origine Controllata. These wines have similar regulations to the DOCGs, but the rules are not as strict.

Then there are IGTs - Indicazione Geografica Tipica. These are "typical" wines from certain areas.

The lowest category is Vino da Tavola - table wine. These wines don't even need to put a year on the label, as they can be a mix of different harvests together. Obviously this category has the fewest regulations.

Please note all of the above information may change pending new EU regulations that will change DOCG and DOC to IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta).

The question of the day is - how many DOCG wines are there in Italy? You'd think this would be easy to answer. Surely the agriculture ministers that regulate these things would have a handy cheat sheet lying around, oh, I don't know, on their website or something? Ha! Not even expert sommeliers seem to know that Elba Aleatico was just named the latest Tuscan DOCG, and they may have heard a rumor that Amarone was going to wear that pink label, but apparently didn't get the memo that it already is a DOCG!

For the most up to date and trustworthy list, it takes someone in Texas to take the time and figure out the Italian bureaucratic ins and outs of wine. Keep your eye on Alfonso Cevola's On the Wine Trail In Italy posts about DOCGs to know what's really going on, and see his latest post with the most recent list here.

The Whys of Wine - How To Store Opened WIne

2010-04-06T06:59:00.001-04:00

Have you ever NOT finished a bottle of wine? I guess it can happen to the best of us. Here's how can you make your wine last as long as possible before oxygen gets to it and it turns to vinegar!

The enemy of wine is oxygen. So the less air your wine gets exposed to, the longer it will last. This is why it can last for years and years sealed in its bottle with very little airspace. You can buy air pumps and other gadgets that suck the air out of the bottle, but the best and cheapest trick is to pour your leftover wine into a smaller container that will minimize its air, and therefore oxygen, exposure.

The easiest way to do this is to buy a half bottle of wine, which you can find at your local wine shop, and save that bottle and its cork for this purpose. (Half bottles are a great thing to buy anyway if you are only planning on 2-3 glasses of wine, and they save you from this problem in the first place. They also allow you to taste wines that may be out of your budget at a more reasonable price point. Look for them!) Any smaller container will do, however, as long as the air space is kept as small as possible. You will see this will add a couple of days to your wine's life span!

After doing this, whether your wine is white or red, it's best to keep it in the fridge to keep it at a constant low temperature to help make it last.

Dessert wines, since they have from 14-20% alcohol, will last longer than regular wines. None of these above tricks, however, work for champagne. The only hope for a bottle of champers is one of those gadgets that sucks the air out. Or, even better, drinking it!

If you know for sure that you're not going to drink the wine, you can also pour it into ice cube trays and freeze it, and then use the wine-cubes in your sauces and stews!

Hello Kitty Wine: "Our Favorite Girl Has Grown Up"

2010-03-28T13:46:00.003-04:00

Everything is possible in the wine world nowadays - everyone from Wayne Gretsky to Rapper Lil Jon is making wine. But I never expected to see little Hello Kitty join the list! But, as the Sanrio company that merchandises Hello Kitty says "Our Favorite Girl has grown up!" And the best part is this phenomenon comes out of Italy! Read more here.

Tasting Notes in Images

2010-03-23T17:27:00.002-04:00

Wine tasting notes as told through images - too funny!

http://chateaupetrogasm.com/

The Whys of Wine - What Wine with Spicy Foods?

2010-03-21T08:57:00.009-04:00

This week we have a question from our faithful reader FilotetteManfredi:

L'abbinamento vino e peperoncino. E' ritenuto molto difficile per le sensazioni causate dalla capsicina contenuta nel peperoncino. Abbinamento considerato fino a qualche tempo fa addirittura impossibile e tanti pensavano che qualunque vino con la cucina a base piccante fosse sprecato. Non essendo ormai nella cucina moderna il peperoncino l'elemento base, ma si combina con salse, confetture e mousse anche il vino riesce a ritagliarsi il suo spazio offrendo nuovi sapori e combinazioni accattivanti, di sicuro interesse... Hai consigli di vini per varie cucine regionali piccanti?

Translated: A wine/hot pepper pairing. This is considered very difficult because of the sensations caused by capsaicin in hot peppers. This pairing, until recently, was considered impossible and many people thought that any wine was wasted on spicy foods. Now that hot peppers are not a basic element in modern cooking, but rather are part of sauces, jams and mousses, wines are able to carve a space out for themselves at the table, offering new flavors and attractive combinations, that are certainly very interesting... Do you have any suggestions for pairings with various spicy cuisines?

This is an interesting question coming from an Italian, considering that most of the wine pairing challenges for spicy foods that might leave Americans confused (Mexican, Thai, Indian, etc.) are not even present here, or at least hard to find. But southern Italian cuisine can be quite hot, due to the ever present Italian peperoncino:

But it's not hard to find an enjoyable pairing with either spicy Italian food or other Asian cuisines. Here are the keys to remember:

Alcohol produces a hot sensation on it's own, so a high alcohol wine will only make your spicy food seem more firey. You're looking for something low alcohol, under 11%.
Acidity helps - The acidity in wine is what makes you salivate after you've swallowed it. That mean wine is doing its job - quenching your thirst while you are eating. This is important in general, but especially in this case to counteract the heat of these dishes.
Residual sugar in your wine can help too - this is the sugar left in the wine that was never fermented into alcohol. Not all wines have this. It can help with some of the burning from a really spicy dish.
You don't want a tannic red - tannins dry your mouth out, so you don't need that with spice.

You can't generalize, it depends on the dish, but here are a few suggestions:

Dishes with Italian hot peppers (peperoncino): Usually these Italian dishes have a subtle spice from peperoncino, unless you are in Calabria! These dishes are usually tomato based or have a tomato based sauce, and light reds go well with them. The only trick is to watch the tannins, and serve with a slight chill to keep the alcohol in check. Normally with any Italian dish I would automatically say drink the local wines, though Ciro DOC, the most famous Calabrian wine, can be a bit tannic. Look for a Val di Neto as a good alternative, or a Barbera if all else fails.

Creamy curry dishes: These dishes usually have Indian spice blends such as garam masala, making them difficult to pair up with. A low alcohol Muller Thurgau, served chilled, should be able to stand up to this, with an acidity that cuts through the creaminess and floral notes that complement the spice. An Alsatian Sylvaner would also be excellent.

Hot & spicy Thai dishes: You can use some sweetness to balance the heat in these dishes, especially since Thai food often incorporates sweet flavors into their meals. Try German rieslings, such as an Auslese (late harvest). It should have low alcohol (8-10% by volume).

Mexican (jalapeno): Light beers or a margarita always goes well with Mexican food, but if you have your heart set on wine there are options. Anything with cheese or creamy beans, and meats in tomato based sauces could do with a rose' or light, fruity red. A Merlot or a Pinot Noir would be interesting, or a rose' served chilled. A Teroldego from the Trentino in Northern Italy would be an interesting experiment. Avoid any oaked reds with Mexican.

As with all things wine, all of this is very subjective! Pairings are like rules, meant to be broken. Here is an article that shows you some funky alternative pairings by none other than restaurateur Danny Meyer. So get out there and have fun, with trial and error you will find out what wines you like with what foods!

This post has made me very hungry!

Piemonte Trip

2010-03-17T09:23:00.002-04:00

Well, I am back in the land of reality after a dreamy week in Piemonte. The trip was 5 days of intense drinking, marathon eating, and little sleeping and resting. It's a tough life - but somebody's gotta live it. I learned a lot in the week, at a rate that was almost too fast to process all of the information. And I was able to have the opportunity to taste some wonderfully aged Barolos and Barbarescos that were truly memorable.

Agenzia di Pollenzo - hotel where we stayed.

We had mornings at the "Wine Bank" - more on that later, and lunches and dinners with local winemakers. Each day had a focus - Dolcetto, Barbera, Barbaresco and Barolo. Each winemaker had their own personality, and it really proved that to get the full wine experience you have to be a people person and you have to travel. Meeting these characters was a great way to attach a face to a wine.

There is so much to describe, I can't say it all, but I'll let a picture say a thousand words:

Intro by Carlo Petrini himself the first day! Why didn't I take a better picture?

The Wine Bank - an idea to create a centralized location to store every vintage. There are producers from all over Italy leaving a couple cases of their wine there, but they are mostly Piemontese wines. This was inspired by the French system of negociants, which are merchants that sell wines from various producers. A middle man, basically, responsible for sales, similar to American distributors. Because of this French system, many negociants have stored various vintages over the years and it's easy to find an old vintage of your favorite Burgundy for sale. In Italy, since most sales are direct from wineries, this hasn't been the case, so the Wine Bank will serve as a living memory of the best vintages of Italian wines!

The meals were all delicious, and we ate in various places - the restaurant of the Agenzia di Pollenzo hotel, with winemakers in their homes or agriturismos, and at restaurants. We often had this dish above, beef tartare made with from the prized local Piemontese beef. This time it was served with lemon, Hawaiian black salt, and peppercorns.

We also often ate this dish - the traditional Piemontese ravioli, called "Plin". They are closed by hand, and usually stuffed with meat and vegetables and served with butter and Parmesan cheese.

This was my favorite dish of the whole trip, served at the famous enologist Beppe Caviola's winery. They were handmade whole wheat gnocchi served in a Gorgonzola sauce made from cheese aged 8 months, with plenty of black pepper. It was a perfect accompaniment to the Dolcettos we were tasting that night.

Dolcettos:

We also had the best wine of the trip at that dinner, which was a 1999 Barolo, not a Dolcetto, from Luigi Einaudi:

The area around Roero:

There were Barberas to be tasted:

And 60 year old vineyards at Podere Einaudi:

The whites, especially the Arneis and the dessert wines, were a surprise hit. Lovely fresh acidity, vivacious wines:

Castello di Neive winery courtyard:

The best panna cotta I've ever had in my LIFE, the final dessert at the final dinner at Boccondivino in Bra:

A wine served to us blind as a "game" on our free night out, we went to Guido restaurant, right behind our hotel. Shockingly it turned out to be this, which we took for about 10 years younger. The aging potential of these wines was beginning to be very clear to us:

One of these wines is from 1998, one from 2004, hard to tell the difference. Major aging power. This is at a tasting of Marchesi di Grezy in Barbaresco.

The last wines we drank at the last dinner. Our livers could barely take it anymore. Barbarescos from Produttori del Barbaresco, 99s and 05s, and Barolos from Damilano, Cannubi, 98, 99 and 01.

Ciao Piemonte, thanks for the amazing experience!

Gone Tastin'

2010-02-27T12:41:00.005-05:00

I know I am missing a Whys of Wine Friday, which I will get to soon, following up on Emanuele's question about wine pairings for spicy foods.

This week I am off to Piemonte for a great opportunity - a week long course at the University of Gastronomic Studies, started in cooperation with Slow Food. I am ready for 5 days of intense tastings, classes, and winery visits, and I hope to come back with great knowledge of the wonderful wines of Piemonte.

I will be sure to take lots of pictures and post a trip report on the blog. Till next week!

Chianti Classico Collection at Stazione Leopolda in Florence

2010-02-25T13:48:00.006-05:00

Florence and the Chianti Classico Consor held a lovely event that was a Chianti lover's dream last week on February 17th at the Stazione Leopolda event center. It was the preview for press and wine industry professionals to taste the 2008, 2009 and Riserva 2006 Chiantis, before they go on the market. There were 148 producers presenting 358 different Chianti Classico labels and 70 barrel samples on hand for tasting.

These events are always overwhelming - there is so much wine to taste and only so much time and your palate can only go so far. I can only taste about 12-15 wines before my palate gets pretty dead. It would be great if you could go over more than one day.

The decor was chic and they did not cover the bare stone walls of the old train station, Stazione Leopolda. The lighting was really hot though, which is always annoying because you get hot from tasting plus the wine gets warmer than it should as well. Overall though, it was quite organized (for an Italian event) and they gave each attendee a nice weighty book that had one page per producer with the wines they brought and space for tasting notes. This was a BIG plus for me, as large wine tastings rarely give you something where you can write nice notes on each wine.

This tasting was not very publicized, and the buzz in the Florentine wine world was that these upcoming years were nothing great, especially 2009's previews. But I found a few great wines:

The highlight was definitely from Isole e Olena, their Chianti Classico 2008 preview, which was a barrel sample. The wine was harvested on October 15th, which I mistakenly thought was a late harvest. Especially since the nose was very raisin-y, it seemed like a late harvest, with amarone-like notes. The nose was extremely complex, with licorice, cherry and floral notes combined with the raisiny aroma. Obviously it's hard to judge when the wine is so young, but the fresh acidity balanced well with the young tannins. This wine is one to watch for the future.

Other standouts were the Badia a Coltibuono Chianti Classico Riserva 2007, which had a beautiful nose of pepper, macerated fresh red fruit, and sweet spices such as cinnamon. The tannins were pretty mellow considering how young it was though. This may be one of those wines made to show young and not for long term aging.

The Castellare di Castellina Chianti Classico 2008 was also lovely with cherry, red licorice and herbt notes with a lively acidity on the palate.

And at the very back end of the room, there was an Enomatic machine, which you may have seen at a local wine store. These machines help preserve already open wine bottles so that they can be dispensed by the glass without going bad quickly as the outside air, filled with oxygen, breaks them down.

Except this Enomatic was a bit different - it was filled with bottles of oil!

Of course, oil does not need to be preserved this way, but it was a cute presentation and there were lots of olive oils available to taste.

The Whys of Wine - Why Does Wine Smell Like Fruits Other Than Grapes?

2010-02-19T17:25:00.006-05:00

I've been asked before why a Chardonnay for example smells like bananas. Do the grapes grow near banana trees? Just last weekend someone was tasting a wine from Puglia with me at dinner and they said "I can smell the pomegranate in this wine, you know the winemakers plant pomegranate trees in their vineyards." Hmmm... so is that the case? How does wine get all the weird things that people say they smell in it?

The answer is no, it doesn't matter much what grapevines may be planted near. The aromas you find in wine are due to three possible different things -
1) How aromatic the grape itself is - some wines like gewurtzraminer smell exactly like the gewurtzraminer grape itself.
2) The fermentation process
3) The aging process - did the wine age in small French oak barrels, larger barrels, or in stainless steel or in the bottle? Each one creates different aromas.

The most common causes for various aromas you may smell are number 2 and 3. There are not that many aromatic grapes, so most aromas you get from wine are coming from alcohols evaporating, acids that have a certain smell, sometimes yeasts, and then aromas the wine can pick up while aging, such as vanilla, butter or coconut if it has been in oak barrels.

If you are just getting into wine, and have trouble picking up on some of these different aromas, the trick is to get your nose out there. Smell EVERYTHING, especially when you are at a fruit stand! And try to memorize that smell as best you can. Repeatedly smelling one thing helps you remember it. Or, invest about 100 bucks and go all out like Gary Vaynerchuk!

Keep the whys of wine questions coming in the comments!

Wine News Day!

2010-02-18T04:20:00.004-05:00

Wow, I woke up to wine news on the front pages today! The scandals keep a-coming, this time not in Italy, though - in France and America. It seems that California juggernaut E.J. Gallo got into a bit of trouble with his Red Bicyclette Pinot Noir that it is quite popular in the States. Turns out the grape growers he was buying from in France weren't actually selling him Pinot, but rather some cheaper grapes.
Media carnage can be found here in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Guardian.

As the Guardian article mentions, what is most disconcerting about this story is that Gallo's buyers didn't pick up on the fact that they weren't buying Pinot. Obviously someone did eventually pick up on it because they sued the supplier and won, but still. How many bottles of Merlot Red Bicyclette were drank before they realized? Also Pinot is hard to imitate...

I am selfishly glad that this story is getting so much press so that it is clear that this doesn't just happen over here in Brunello-ville. Wine fraud is probably happening all over the wine making world, and everyone has to be a smart consumer to be able to know what is in your glass!

Calabrian Olive Oil Giveaway

2010-02-15T17:41:00.004-05:00

Here is a great opportunity for all of you in the U.S., brought to you by the lovely Cherrye of My Bella Vita blog, who runs the Cedro B&B in Calabria! Olive oil is not only made in Tuscany, but rather all over the boot of Italy and around the Mediterranean. Cherrye reports that 25% of Italy's olive oil production is made in Calabria. I am willing to bet that a lot of it is rebottled as Tuscan as well... but Italian tricks aside, this is a great chance to win some of this liquid gold to taste for yourself!

To be eligible to win the free 250ml bottle of Calabrian olive oil, all you need to do is become a Facebook fan of Monica’s Fine Foods (who just began distributing Calabrian olive oil in the States) before Friday, February 26 at 5:00 PM (Pacific Time). At that point, Monica will randomly select a winner from her Facebook Fans and the winner will be announced at My Bella Vita on Monday, March 1.

Bloggers, this part is for you …

For your chance to win a $50 gift certificate to Monica’s Fine Foods, just re-post this contest information in full on your website or blog by Friday, February 26 at 5:00 PM. Leave a comment on My Bella Vita telling us about your post, and you will automatically be entered into the drawing.

Due to distribution restrictions, Monica can only ship items in the US and Canada, so if you have a US address … you are good to go!

Good luck everyone!

The Whys of Wine on Friday - Sherry v. Port

2010-02-12T02:00:00.000-05:00

Thanks to the mysterious “Anonymous” loyal reader that asked our current question for the Whys of Wine this Friday! She asked “What is the difference between sherry and port? And, can you recommend a sweet not too dry sherry for me."

There is one main similarity between sherry and port - both of them are called “fortified wines”. This means they have extra alcohol added to them. Besides this one thing, they are pretty different.

First of all, there is a geographical difference – Sherry is made in the south of Spain and Port is made along the Douro river in Portugal. Port is made with red grapes, and Sherry with white grapes. But there are also some pretty big contrasts in how both of them are produced. And these two different methods of production lead to the one big thing to remember when you're at the wine store - Sherry is usually dry, and Port is sweet. Why is that?

Just like with most wines, the grapes are picked and pressed so the raw grape juice comes out. At that point the juice is left to ferment. There is plenty of sugar in the juice, and that is what will be fermented into alcohol, with the help of yeasts. But in the Port process, the fermentation is cut short - all of the sugar is not fermented into alcohol. It is cut short by the addition of alcohol, which is when it gets "fortified". But there is still the residual sugar left over that never got fermented out, and that is why it tastes sweet.

When making sherry, the winemakers allow the full fermentation to happen before adding the extra alcohol to fortify it, so it is usually dry.

So if you are looking for a nice after dinner drink to keep you warm on these chilly nights, dear anonymous reader, you should probably look for a Port! Since Sherry is dry, most people drink it as an aperitif before dinner.

Port goes well with aged cheeses, chocolate, nuts and dried fruits, as well as desserts that incorporate any of those. This recipe for Black-Sugar-Glazed Medjool Dates With Pecorino and Walnuts from the New York Times would be perfect with a glass of Port! Look for a Ruby Ports, they are the most affordable and have a good amount of sweetness.

If you have your heart set on a not-too-dry sherry though, look for the sweet Pedro Ximenez sherries, made from the grape of the same name. They will be very sweet and syrupy. Stay away from sherries labeled "fino", which are the driest. "Amontillado" is also dry, but may have some sugars added, the label should let you know.

Here is an example of a Pedro Ximenez sherry in a glass:

One of my latest winter discoveries is Barolo Chinato. It will really warm you up during this snowy (in Florence, rainy) season. Try to find it at your local wine store. It is an infused wine made from a base of Barolo, one of Italy's finest wines from the Piedmont region. Traditionally they added quinine to the Barolo, called "china" in Italian, hence the name. It was used for medicinal purposes and as a digestive.

Now it is infused with other spices such as cinnamon as well, and does not necessarily contain quinine. Every producer has their own recipe of herbs, spices and sugar. The ones I have tasted smell like sweet spices (cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg) along with dark red fruit from the nebbiolo, almost syrupy. Here is an example:

Able Grape

2010-02-10T16:40:00.002-05:00

Just found this cool "Google" of the wine world. If you are looking for info on a specific wine, a specific grape, anything wine-related, rather than search through regular search engines, there is a special search engine with reliable wine information, called Able Grape. Check it out!

The Whys of Wine - What is up with America?

2010-02-04T12:11:00.010-05:00

What IS up with American wine drinking? Our loyal blog reader Emanuele asked this question in response to my call out for questions to start the Friday Whys of Wine (Whine?) tradition.

Considering Emanuele is an (probably our only) Italian reader, he wonders about the differences he has heard about with regards to wine sales and wine consumption in U.S. I recently told him about a post from November in Dr. Vino's blog called "Why do American Elementary Schools Equate Wine with Pot?" about this anti-drug pamphlet that Dr. Vino Jr. brought home from school. The pamphlet showed lots of wine bottles and grouped them in with some illegal drugs.

In contrast, Emanuele's brother worked on a project with children in Ciro' Marina, Calabria, in Southern Italy. In teaching middle school children how to market and use art for promotional purposes, each child created an original ad campaign for Ciro' wine, their most famous DOC:

I think there are a couple of things in play here -

1) Prohibition-era laws and the influence of, you know, Prohibition - Most of the distribution and sales laws in many states are were created right after Prohibition in the late 1920's. Some have not yet been changed! Many are undergoing court cases currently (MA and TX just received decisions) about selling wine across state lines and opening up their wine market. I think this will continue and hopefully wine sale prices will become a little more fair. But some of these Prohibition mentalities die hard. Alcohol in all forms, be it vodka or Chianti, is seen as dangerous intoxicating stuff that must be regulated! Ironically there is a lot more binge drinking in the U.S. among teens and college students. This is a longer discussion than I can go into here, but I think the "taboo" that surrounds it is part of making that happen. I hope that over time, wine becomes more of a part of a meal in the United States, and is no longer grouped in with hard liquor.

2) Wine history - Obviously Europe has a much longer history of viticulture than the United States. Way longer. Like 4000 years of history compared to our 200. This is why the middle school kids in Calabria are already defending winemaking - their parents might be winemakers, or a family member, or a friend. This is not the case in the United States. Even California, our shining example of wine country, has not been a fully developed region until the 1960's. So regular wine drinking as part of a meal and wine making by Americans is fairly new. Although things move fast in the United States, wine is still not part of our daily culture. I hope to change this!

Thanks, Emanuele for the first Whys of Wine question! Coming up soon - why does Champagne have bubbles and how do they get in the bottle? Do you have a question? Need to buy a wine for dinner with a friend? Want to know what to serve with your favorite chicken recipe? Let me know in the comments here!

5 Reasons why YOU should be drinking wine

2010-01-30T16:33:00.003-05:00

Here is a lovely article from wine writer Gretchen Roberts about the 5 top reasons wine is good for your health!

Click to read the article here

New Blog Feature!

2010-01-28T15:04:00.005-05:00

Let's face it - wine is confusing. Sometimes we all forget that, hey, it's just something fun to drink! Enjoy it, don't worry about what you're pairing it with, how the vintage was, did it rain in the hills that year?? Leave that to us sommeliers.

To clear up all things wine-related that you don't understand, I am going to be starting a new weekly feature on Live from Tuscany - The Whys of Wine. Every Friday I will answer a wine related question. It can be Italy related or not, something that just popped into your head or something you've always wondered. There are no "dumb questions".

Leave some comments on this post with your first questions and I will start next week!

Basilicata Wine Trip

2010-01-22T12:11:00.004-05:00

Considering I was going to be spending 10 days in Calabria around New Year's, and had already visited a couple of Calabrian wineries, I figured I should use the opportunity to do some southern wine travelling. It seemed like one of the closest areas to get to would be the region of Basilicata, and since I had tasted a bit of Aglianico del Vulture DOC made there, I set my sights on Rionero in Vulture.

The area has an interesting terroir, considering that the grapes are planted in the volcanic soil of the extinguished Vulture volcano. Here's a look at one of the wineries:

I searched some of the forums including Wine Berserkers, WLTV, etc. and no one had much to say about touring Basilicata with wine in mind... I was going to have to go it alone! Online I researched wineries to find the best producers. We decided to drive from Calabria, and stay one night in a hotel. We picked the Hotel San Marco right away which was a good deal at 60 Euros a night, simple and clean, and central.

Here were the wineries we chose, and some notes on each:

CASA VINICOLA ARMANDO MARTINO - gave us a tour of winery but no tasting, does not even export to the US, doesn't seem interested in doing so http://www.martinovini.com/

TERRA DEI RE - these people were the most hospitable, the nicest, gave us a full tour and we did a full tasting with the enologist, who is a true font of info on the history of the area. They are young, opened in 2002 I think. Here we tasted a dessert wine made from Aleatico that he has just started producing, it was amazing, like tasting sweet roses! It is not available yet in the US, and he only made 1400 bottles at the moment.

They also had a wine named Nocte, which was 100% aglianico grown in the same vineyard where they grow their usual harvest for their Aglianicos, but harvested at night. (These were all 2006's) We were lucky enough to taste the day-harvested Aglianico next to the Nocte, and the difference in aromas was notable. The Nocte was much more smoky, dark, with liquor soaked blackberries and floral, almost perfumey notes. There was a lot more spice and barnyard on the day-harvested one, called Vultur, and no floral perfume at all. They found that this phenomen of aromas happens because of the large temperature difference between day and night in October when they harvest the grapes in their area. The grapes create some kind of elastins on their skins (I am recounting this from memory, hope it's right) to protect themselves from the cold temperatures at night, and these substances have polyphenols, which create aroma. They harvest at night, and put the grapes immediately into a cold pre-fermenation, which preserves these aromas so they are not lost in the rest of the winemaking process. I would really like to observe this in other wines, if you have heard of this tactic with other producers, let me know! http://www.terradeire.com/home.htm

PATERNOSTER - gave us a tour of the winery but no tasting with the enologist, very nice, makes the only biodynamic wine I ran into there. One of the oldest wineries. Haven't tasted their stuff yet though http://www.paternostervini.it/

Here is Paternoster's entrance and grounds:

BASILISCO - in the town of Barile next to Rionero. They gave us a very nice tour, they have restored all of the traditional caves where wine was stored for their aging in bottle. Striking to look at.

D'ANGELO - Also one of the older producers, we met quickly with the owner, they offered no tour or tasting or anything, did not seem equipped for visitors.

CANTINA DEL NOTAIO - One of the friendliest visits, with a very nice young host who was willing to spend time explaining their wines to us. No tasting. We visited their cantina in town rather than their winery because of lack of time. Would have loved to see the winery which apparently has a lot of old grottoes inside, just outside town. Their rose' had just won a wine award. http://www.cantinedelnotaio.it/

The Aglianicos I tasted where all big, round and tannic, wines that beg for food. They were pleasingly fruited without many vegetal aromas. The grape matures slowly and is harvested late, meaning that when the yields are low, the wines were rich and full bodied, and had a backbone of acidity that meant they would age quite well. Most of the strong tannins and strong acidity I was tasting in these latest vintages will soften nicely over time. Since these wines are usually well priced, look for them in your area.

Sarah Palin on Wine?

2010-01-15T16:14:00.002-05:00

I guess I've heard it all now... Sarah Palin will be the keynote speaker and receiving an award at the Wine & Spirits Wholesalers of America meeting in Las Vegas in April. WTF??? What does she know about vino? Guess they must be courting the conservative vote? Well, they claim she also stands for "free trade", so maybe she will say something about the state-to-state shipping regulations?

In other wine news about the regulations, a Massachusetts court just ruled that it is unconstitutional to ban wineries from shipping directly to Mass customers. Finally the market will open up a bit, I think. It sounds very complicated, with the wine distributors determined to keep the importer-distributor-retailer three tier system going at all costs!

Help Haiti

2010-01-13T16:56:00.002-05:00

I am gearing up to add more to the blog this year - leave any suggestions in the comments section. Some possibilities are a weekly wine question, value wines found in Italia, wine book reviews, and maybe recipes. I wanted to start working on it tonight

But unfortunately I have other things on my mind... namely the mass destruction that the earthquake in Haiti caused. Please see this link from Charity Navigator for verified charities to find a way to help.

Points, Scores and Robert Parker's Tongue

2009-12-12T12:51:00.004-05:00

Ciao from the US! I am at home in Boston for the Christmas holidays, and trying to taste as much new world wine as possible now that I am away from my regular Italy-focused options back in Firenze. I have already been to a local wine store to stock up on Chile, Argentina, New Zealand and Aussie bottles. Last night I tried a 100% tempranillo from southwestern Spain, tasting notes to follow.

My lovely aunt Mary saved an article for me that has been bookmarked on my laptop for about a month now and I never got around to reading - it is a Wall Street Journal article from mid November about wine ratings. This has become a hot topic in the wine world lately as more and more (younger) wine drinkers turn to blogs and online forums to discuss a wine before they turn to Robert Parker and other famous critics to get their tasting notes and point score. Parker scores on a 100 point scale and according to a 2001 study of Bordeaux wines cited in the article, one point from Parker can mean a 7% increase in price.

That's a lot of money! Clearly, even today, Parker rules the wine world. But this article discusses several studies done about how valid this scoring system really is - it shows that in blind tastings judges varied scoring the same wine without knowing it - sometimes up to 5 points! Anyone that tastes a lot knows this to be true without reading the statistics - I personally can't taste over 10 or 12 wines without my palate going a bit dead anyway. And a lot of factors influence your tasting - expectation, ambient smells and lighting, how much you already know about the wine or not...

Then there is the juggernaut of Wine Spectator - here's a very recent study that wines that advertise with them mysteriously get slightly higher scores.

My take - educate yourself, drink drink drink to find out your tastes and then follow them! Listen to your local wine store owner more than the "experts". Once you tell them what you like they should be able to show you wines you would enjoy in the price point you are looking for. The wine world (just like every business, right?) is changing, and the consumer will have ever more power!

Etna Tasting at Accademia dei Palati

2009-11-29T16:54:00.003-05:00

The day after Thanksgiving (I know, how can you go to a big dinner the day after Thanksgiving? What can I say, I took one for the team, skipped breakfast and lunch on Black Friday...) E and I went to a very interesting wine dinner at Accademia dei Palati. Accademia dei Palati is a lovely little foodie's heaven tucked away in the Novoli area of Florence, away from the city center. They have a butcher shop and speciality food store with wines available, small bistro where they do these wine dinners and have lunch service with wonderful wines by the glass.

This dinner was all about Sicilian food and the area around Mount Etna, including their wines. The winemaker himself was there, from the Graci winery. Couldn't find a site but there is some info here. He served us 4 wines, all made from autoctonous (native to that region) grapes and paired with traditional dishes. I hate to say I did not take photos of everything as I was busy writing tasting notes and eating! But here's what we had:

Etna Bianco 2009 -made from Catarrato and Carricante grapes. Lots of banana on nose, banana candy. Herbaceous notes. Some citrus - lemon. Peach. In mouth, bracing acidity, very dry. A lot of minerality as well. Very heavy on the harder elements, so unbalanced in this regard, but so young... will improve with age.

This wine was just made, 10 weeks before it was still in the tanks, hence the bracing acidity. It was served with a caponata of vegetables, including eggplants, peppers and capers that was quite good, served with the small focaccia that they always serve at Accademia dei Palati which are to die for.

Next we had "pasta alla Norma", which is a traditional Sicilian dish - short pasta in tomato sauce with ricotta salata and a piece of fried eggplant on top with...

Etna Rosso 2008 (not on the market yet) - made from Nerello Mascalese grape. Tons of peach on the nose! Very weird... some red fruit, cherry. Also some black pepper. In mouth, dry with strong tannins. A pleasing fruit finish - it will age well. Over time with food has a coconut quality.

Then came the "falso magro", meaning falsely lean meat. This was a meatloaf type of dish that had layers of prosciutto, ground meat, and a boiled egg in the middle. It got its name by seeming like lean meatloaf but there is a lot in there!

It was served with two wines - one Etna Rosso 2006 and one the exact same Etna Rosso 2006 that had not been treated with sulfites (which most all winemakers add to help protect the wine against oxygen damage). This was an interesting experiment that the winemaker had done and I couldn't wait to see what the difference was.

Etna Rosso 2006 - Red fruit and cherries on the nose. Some sweet spice. Not very complex, but very pleasant on nose. In mouth, balanced tannins, nice fruit finish and persistence. Balanced acidity.

Etna Rosso 2006 without sulfites (just grapes!) - More spice on the nose - somewhat hard to define unrefined aromas. A lot less fruit. Some animal notes. Iron and mineral notes after a couple of minutes. In mouth, harsher with more tannins. Seems like less acidity.

He then served the last wine - Etna Rosso 2007. Sounds strange to go out of chronilogical order, but the winemaker felt that o7 was such a great year, weather wise, that this made this wine the most balanced and integrated of them all. It was true, it was the best of the reds in my opinion.

Etna Rosso 2007 - Smoky on the nose with red fruit marmelade, most concentrated of them all. Some red pepper notes. In mouth, spicy entrance but very elegant with subtle tannins. Persistent with spicy red fruit finish. Balanced acidity and minerality.

Then came dessert, E's favorite thing in the world, cassata Siciliana:

Under the white part is a small cake that is usually soaked in alcohol but luckily you couldn't taste it in this version (I hate desserts with alcohol). Then it is topped with some sweet ricotta with chocolate pieces, white frosting, and the whole thing is surrounded by very sweet very sticky green colored marzipan, then covered with some candied fruit. The whole thing together is quite sweet, a bit too much for me, but very good and very filling. Not a light dessert by any means, but what a night...

Luce Tasting

2009-11-29T16:01:00.006-05:00

What a week here - tastings, tastings, classes, Thanksgivings, and wine dinners. I will have to buy all new clothes when I go back to the States for the holidays because I don't fit into mine! It's been a great time of year to be in Florence taking advantage of all these great wine tasting opportunities, some of them free.

At Enoteca Alessi, there was a vertical tasting of "Luce della Vite" (the site is a little much), produced by the Frescobaldi family in conjunction with the Mondavi family of California. We tasted 1999, 2000, 2001 and 2002, with lovely snacks, and it cost only 25 euro. "Luce" is a merlot and sangiovese blend from Montalcino. It is not a Brunello because it does not contain 100% sangiovese. I always say yes to vertical tasting opportunities because seeing the same wine through different years helps you to understand the difference that climate changes from year to year can make.

Without going into all the tasting notes, since they are all similar to each other, I will say that the 1999 was my favorite, which goes to show the longevity of these wines. They can age 15 years or even a bit more. The tannins are pretty tough in the younger versions, and must be drank with food, preferably a steak or some meat. The 1999 was already integrating tannins with acidity and other components, and was becoming velvety on the palate. It was still vivacious with a full color even with 10 years of age.

Winemaker Simone Fabbri with Frescobaldi marketing rep:

"Olio Nuovo", this years fresh pressed olive oil, the best time to taste it! On toast with salt and pepper, this dish is called "fettunta":

More to come soon...

How to open a bottle of wine without a corkscrew?

2009-11-12T03:20:00.004-05:00

Practical advice from my favorite commenter, Filottete Manfredi:

Sono sicuro che l'autunno rivela molte cose, aldila' dei tuoi ritmi e tempi di consegna nel raccontare i tuoi "tasting". Sono sicuro che l'autunno forse non ha mai fatto caso, come la primavera, a ubriacature francesi come in questo video SU COME STAPPARE UNA BOTTIGLIA DI VINO

Incontri d'Autunno Wine Tasting at Relais Certosa

2009-11-08T16:09:00.003-05:00

Sorry for the delay in posting but alas I was downed by some kind of swine flu sort of virus. Now I am back, and struggling to find time for all of the free tastings (and not free tastings) that are going on in Florence in the fall. These first few weeks of November will be the last, as everything will die off around the holiday season. But for those in Florence, head to Enoteca Bonatti and Enoteca Alessi for more tastings on Thursday evenings.

At the end of October I went to a tasting at the Relais Certosa Hotel which is just outside Florence. It was sponsored by the Vinoteca Al Chianti, a great wine shop near the hotel which I would go to all the time if it weren't so far out of the city. It's a long bus ride to get out there, if the bus even passes there. It was an interesting one because it was mostly French wines, with a huge Champagne and Burgundy selection.

None of the Champagne was from recognizable producers - at least recognizable to me, but I only know the 10 or 15 biggest ones... so it was a good opportunity to taste new stuff. The champagnes all seemed quite minerally, with chemical notes as well, maybe it was just my palate that day... many seemed similar to each other as well, maybe it was the terroir from zones near to one another.

The Burgundies were OK but all the newest vintages, most of them needed much more time before they really could express themselves. The standout was a Hungarian sweet wine that was just delicious. Here are the highlights:

Veuve Elenoire "Oger Grand Cru" (Cotes des Blancs) Cuvee Rubis Brut Rose' de Saignee - made from Pinot Noir 100%, raspberry, vanilla and toast notes on the nose. In mouth, very pleasant with red fruit taste after swallowing. Nice perlage.
Amiot Pierre et Fils "Clos de la Roche Grand Cru 2006" (Morey St. Denis) - Currant and red fruit on the nose with a touch of black pepper. In mouth, smoky with good acidity, feels a bit hot.
Tokaj Classic "Aszu 5 Puttonyos 1998/03" (Hungary) - Made from Furmint, Lindenblattriger and Muscat grapes. Very caramel apple on the nose, very pleasant. Balanced acidity on the mouth, very soft with a lot of depth of flavor, simply delicious.

Here is a picture of the tasting setup, there were 3 rooms like this:

It was a lot! And despite the fact that they said there would be a buffet or something, there was no food! The tasting cost 30 Euros, which was pretty steep but it was also a good opportunity to taste non-Italian wines so I can't say I regret it.

In other wine news, there was this annoying piece on Dr. Vino: http://www.drvino.com/2009/11/03/kids-children-wine-drug-education/ about American schools grouping wine in with pot and other drugs, encouraging kids to just say no. Funny how here in Europe it's normal to drink wine with meals and there is much less binge drinking. Liquor is not as popular though. But wine and beer is not grouped in with liquor or any other drug at all. It's pure ignorance to group them together with illegal drugs.

The Latest Brunellos - How is 2004?

2009-10-17T06:49:00.004-04:00

Despite all the hype this past year about Brunellogate, everyone seems still quite interested so far about tasting the 2004s that were released in February.

I had tasted some at the Alle Corte del Vino event which is a great chance to taste, but the day it was held this year was so unbearably hot and the wines were not kept cool - I basically scrapped all of my tasting notes because they were pretty useless. It was so awful I just wanted to go home, which is such a shame because for 12 Euros you can taste hundreds of wondeful Tuscan wines from Chianti to Super Tuscan to Brunellos. Will definitely try again next year.

This week I did get to taste Caparzo "La Casa" 2004 Brunello, as well as 2001, 1995 and 1993 at Enoteca Alessi right near the Duomo in Florence. They have a beautiful underground wine cellar with Italian wines from every region on sale. They also do free wine tastings every Thursday night from 5-7pm for all you Florentines. This tasting was a special event since it was a vertical of Brunellos and they invited a representative from Caparzo and their enologist as well. It still cost only 20 Euro though, which is a pretty amazing deal.

And check out their cool chairs made from wine barrels:

Here are the bottles we tasted:

They had nice paper mats where you could place your glasses and had space to write notes:

The 1995 was definitely the standout - each component of the wine (tannins, acidity, alcohols, polyalcohols, minerality) were so well amalgamated and in such harmony that you hesitated to start thinking about anyone of them individually, both on the nose and when drinking. It became the wine itself, with all parts perfectly integrated. So I guess the Caparzo Brunellos at least are drinking at their peak between 10-15 years.

The enologist said the the 2004 would become like the 1995, that he recognizes the characteristics of how the 1995 was when it was young. But the producer is always telling you that the best vintage is his most recent one, or the next :).

Here are the other tasting notes, including the '04:

Caparzo "La Casa" Brunello di Montalcino 2004: Purple reflections on fairly intense ruby red tones. On the nose mature red and black berries, vanilla and a bit of leather. Some balsamic notes as well, and over time (30 min) some caramel candy notes. Some tasters said the aromas were still quite closed but I didn't feel that way. In mouth, elegant and very drinkable though obviously the strongest tannins than all the rest tasted. More elegant than "big" and intense, still fruity with cherry on the palate. Very persistent.

Caparzo "La Casa" Brunello di Montalcino 2001: Not intense garnet red. When first opened, was quite tight with barnyard and black pepper. Over time with some aeration it opened up with much more fruit, red berry marmalade, spice, tobacco, tons of leather and vanilla but not "overoaked". Coffee notes as well. Really fabulous aromas. In mouth, tannins are persistent but well balanced and subtle. Good balance of acidity, minerality, and alcohol. Very persistent.

Caparzo "La Casa" Brunello di Montalcino 1995: Not intense garnet red with orange reflections. Rich, lush and velvety on the nose. Fruit in alcohol, vanilla, red berries, licorice. In mouth, tannins are very subtle and all components are extremely well balanced. Very elegant and drinkable. Good persistence.

Caparzo "La Casa" Brunello di Montalcino 1993: Intense garnet red with orange reflections (intense because enologist told us 93 was a hot year). Caramelly marsala-ish smell starting to develop over fruit. Over time after being poured for 30 min more red fruit syrup started to come out. In mouth, tannins very subtle but still alive. OK persistence. Still very drinkable and balanced. Less refined and elegant however than the others because of the hot year.

So far, from my tastings and everything I've heard from others (including Gary Vaynerchuk's blockbuster Brunello tasting the other day even though the producers he tasted are not my favorites), the 2004 is a good vintage. Considering the current economic situation, it is also underpriced, so if you can, get some now and save it in your cellar!

Drama in Wine Book Land

2009-10-15T10:19:00.004-04:00

I happened to finish "The Billionaire's Vinegar" last week and just happened to catch this post on the Dr. Vino blog about a lawsuit that Michael Broadbent, ex Christie's wine expert, has just won. This means the book is banned in the UK!

The book follows the story of a German wine collector who started selling bottles to some auction houses and other private collectors, including on Lafite that was said to have belonged to Thomas Jefferson. The bottle was never proved to be from Jefferson, although there was lots of circumstantial evidence. Bottles were bought by the Forbes family and other famous collectors, so it would be pretty embarassing for them if it was proved fake.

It was a good book, I would recommend it for non-wine-nerds as well, it reads like fiction novel at times. It was interesting to hear about Thomas Jefferson's past with wine, and also the radioactive dating that they used to try to identify the wine's actual age - basically anything created after the atomic bomb was dropped has a higher level of radioactivity than all the things before that date. Crazy to think about.

Blog Overhaul!

2009-10-04T06:35:00.003-04:00

I finally took to the blog again and in the past few days have been inspired to overhaul - new look, new content. The new Live from Tuscany reflects more about what's going on with me now, which is studying wine here in Florence. I will still put in pics and stuff about my daily life so that family and friends are still interested and it doesn't just become wine nerd central!

Putting more of a wine spin on my blog selfishly helps me too - one of the most important things when getting into wine, for business or pleasure, is to keep track of what you're drinking and keep track of your notes. You feel like a big dork pulling out a little notebook all the time, but otherwise the reality is you don't remember! Or you remember the wines that really stand out, but nothing about all the ones in between.

I am now into my 2nd level of the AIS Sommelier Certification Course, only a few lessons down so far. We are going region by region throughout Italy, and at the end of the course a bit of France and New World, but let's be honest, they don't really care about that part. For every region we are learning winemaking styles, grapes used (local and brought in from other regions), DOCG and DOC wines where applicable and general geography/terrain useful to know. It is a LOT of information but completes the Italian wine world for me, I already feel like I have learned a lot in the first weeks. Not having done a wine tour through the North yet (hoping for this fall!) it helps to see it all.

Now that the blog is up and running I am going to bring my camera to tastings and put up some pics. There is SO much going on in the Florence wine world in these weeks, it's tough to keep up. Last weekend was the Florence Wine Event held in the Oltrarno neighbordhood of the city, which was really fun. There were different tastings being held in all the piazzas of the area, so you paid 10 Euros (I think) for a glass and then could go from piazza to piazza tasting and had a card with 12 squares on it. At each table the winery representative would mark off a square, so you got 12 tastings. It was a busy weekend for me, so I didn't do much of the tastings honestly. I only got to go the last day, Sunday, in the final hours. Naturally this meants crowds and a lot of drunk people, and certain wineries were out of certain wines.

On Friday night, though, I did a bio-dynamic wine tasting with Andrea Gori, a cool young local sommelier that keeps Florence posted with his tastings and events through Youtube, Facebook, and his blog, using Web 2.0 for all it's worth. The location was great - a small garden in a piazza on the Arno River, in the early evening so the sun was setting, the weather was nice and you could see the tower of Palazzo Vecchio in the distance. A great Florentine experience. It was a good intro to the bio-dynamic concept. Wine "naturally" turns into vinegar, obviously, so it's not really possible to have "natural" wine. The winemaker has to intervene. These winemakers theoretically try to intervene as little as possible, meaning no pesticides or natural pesticides, no filtering sometimes, little treatment after fertentation such as sulfites or other additives. This is a controversial topic, some people thing it's all a joke. I will say some of the wines were definitely different than what you see in non-bio stuff. Some of the wines were really interesting. Here are the highlights:

"Donna Rossa" IGT Passerina del Fusinate 2008 Az. Agr. La Visciola - I have to mention this wine just because it was so WEIRD. It smelled like dill, like a ton of fresh dill, and that was certainly the strongest note on the nose, along with yellow flowers. It was cloudy, unfiltered. It was complex and dry in mouth, I didn't even write more tasting notes because the nose was so strange! From Lazio region.
Canestrino IGT Toscana Bianco 2007 Fattoria Cerreto Libri - Amber yellow color tone, bright color though. Smells like vin santo, with an intense aged nose, although it's not. Complex herb and dairy notes on the nose. Lemony on the palate, with a balanced acidity, soft and a bit hot. Winemaker tells us the grapes aren't pressed, but rotated in a large tube with holes in it, so the juice falls off by itself, then the rest is pressed.
"Perpolio" DOC Oltrepo' Pavese Chardonnay 2007 Fattoria Mondo Antico - Like no other Chardonnay I've ever tasted. Freshly cut grass, candied banana and candied pineapple with honey on the nose. After a bit there was also hay and a bit of barnyard. Some said bergamot tea, but I don't know that one well enough to identify it. It was well balanced in the mouth, soft and minerally. All told not normal Chard. From Lombardy.
"Sinodo" DOC Oltrepo' Pavese Rosso 2007 Fattoria Mondo Antico - Another one from this producer, this time red, made from the Bonarda grape with l'uva d'oro, uva della cascina and uva rara. This wine was very dark and luxurious in all senses - smoky, cherry, black currant and black pepper nose. Clove as well. Very elegant in mouth, smooth tannins, very drinkable. From Lombardy.
Barbera d'Asti DOC 2007 Agricola I Tre Poggi - The nose and taste on this wine was amazing - like strawberry pie! There was a lot of strawberry jam, plus a cookie/buttery overtone so it was really like a pie. A bit one-note, but it was so delicious you couldn't help but like it. Had such sweet overtones that it would do well with salty dishes and aged cheeses. From Piemonte.

Here are photos of the event and of some of the labels: http://www.flickr.com/photos/burde/sets/72157622330645491/

For all the Americans out there, unfortunately these are probably not widely available, as a matter of fact I am trying to track them down here, even just to find the pricing.

More to come, stay tuned and thanks for reading!

Scoppio del Carro

2009-04-13T15:36:00.003-04:00

LO SCOPPIO DEL CARRO

Here is a short video of the Easter festival in Florence in front of the Duomo cathedral.

Checking In

2009-04-09T15:36:00.002-04:00

Despite a tragic week here in Italy after the earthquake in Abruzzo, everything in Florence is OK. I felt a tremor and was woken up by it at 3:23am the night of the earthquake, but it was just the bed shaking a bit, and I went to sleep. When we woke up we couldn't believe the news of what happened. If you are interested in helping out please check out fellow blogger (with a much more developed blog!) Bleeding Espresso's post about how to help.

Life goes on in Florence, with no noticeable change. Berlusconi is still making depressing gaffes and although some clients have been asking me if the museums are still open due to the earthquake in Abruzzo (?), everything is still open of course and nothing much has changed. It is definitely full tourist season here, and though not as packed as in better economic times, there are a lot of people on the streets each day. This week was also school field trip week for Italian high schools, so very loud large groups of Italian kids can be found making it hard to hear in museums, restaurants, and open public spaces everywhere through Florence.

I stayed in tonight and skipped drinks with the girls to hang out at home because it has been a long week and a long month! My parents visited and we spent a weekend in Rome, a day in Lucca and lots of eating out. Then work got busy and I have been putting in somewhat long hours. Luckily my sommelier course has taken a little Easter break so I can catch up on studying.

Easter is coming up, and we are getting ready for the festivities. It is funny that you hear "Buona Pasqua" from just about everyone this week, because it is pretty much assumed that you are Catholic. I am not planning anything big, since I am working both Saturday and Monday, but there will be a fun festival in Florence at the Duomo called the Scoppio del Carro. From About.com:

A huge, decorated wagon is dragged through Florence by white oxen until it reaches Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence's historic center. Following mass, the Archbishop sends a dove-shaped rocket into the cart, igniting the fireworks held in the cart. This spectacular display is followed by a parade in medieval costumes.

So I am definitely going to check that out! Here is a pic from previous years:

So Happy Easter everyone! Will blog about the parade soon!

Sommelier Course

2009-02-24T13:25:00.003-05:00

Since I heard through my biggest blog fan (my mom) that some people were asking about a post about my sommelier course that I am taking, I decided to please the few readers I have!

I have started taking a course with the most prestigious Italian sommelier association. It started in late January, so I've only taken 6 courses so far. It will go until April, and this is just the first level.

We meet once a week, sometimes two, from 8:30pm to 11:00pm, which makes for a long day if I start work at 8am that day! But when you're really interested in something, it's easy to make the sacrifice. I am happy that I am getting a serious wine education, from the bottom up. So far we have learned about wine making, and we are just starting on tasting with the visual exam. I do a lot of studying also! Learning all the differences between producing reds, whites, champagne and liquers is a lot to keep straight, but I am into it.

I have a little case that they gave us with three glasses in it, and I bring it to every class and we taste this way. We taste three wines at the end of every course. We also have two big textbooks, one general one and one only about tasting.

My favorites so far in the tastings:

Cupra Ramato, Attems 2007 - Pinot Grigio from the Collio region of the Veneto. This was almost a rose', with great minerality and intensity. Lots of wild strawberry on the nose and very balanced in the mouth. I think this is about 12 dollars a bottle from what I can tell online.

Batzella, Pinksy - This is a rose' made from Cabernet and Syrah from Bolgheri, where the Super Tuscans were born. I don't think you can find this wine in the US, unfortunately. Apparently the winery is owned by a former banker who invested in this property. I found it very refreshing, a great dark pink color. The nose was very candylike after swirling the glass, and it was very fresh and firect in the mouth, with a lot of strawberry flavor.

Last week we tasted Piaggia Riserva, Carmignano 2005 - a sangiovese, cabernet and merlot blend from an area west of Florence that has had a long tradition of Cabernet vines. In 1716 Cosimo III d' Medici decreed it a wine growing area, to give you an idea of how far back it goes! But it is not as well known as Chianti and other parts of Tuscany. This wine was great but still very young, it has a lot of aging power and a lot of tannins. It had intense flavor of blackberry and marmelades, with leather and cherry. You could really smell the barrique as well, but again it is very young and would be a great longterm buy. I see online the 2003 is about $30 in the Boston area.

Of course the lessons are quite Italy-centric. The Italians hate to talk about French wines, and even less the US, even though they freely admit their first international market is the US. We've only tasted one French wine so far. So I am trying to also supplement with other info that I get on the internet, I started really getting into wine blogs this week, although it's hard to add something to my internet to-do list each day.

I noted the amazing amount of interest in this guy from Jersey that has Wine Library TV. He is goofy, but I do appreciate some of the things that he is passionate about, such as the importance of expressing terroir, and taking out the intimidation of wine in the American market. He's entertaining and keeps you watching, even if you find him annoying.

I also just got into Snooth and for a while I have been reading Domaine 547, which is a California based web wine seller that has a blog, and Dr. Vino. I'm sure I am missing a lot of great blogs, so any internet wine lovers out there, send me your links in the comments!

Florence in Feb

2009-02-13T15:27:00.004-05:00

Well now that I restarted the blog I have to keep it going! Luckily there is a lot to talk about.

It is still chilly here in Florence, in the 40's every day, and hopefully next week will be in the 50's. The city is starting to wake up from its winter slumber, with some tourists starting to come back. Hopefully this season is not going to be too slow, and some travellers will decide to come to Florence!

The mayoral elections are also coming up this weekend. An interesting candidate named Matteo Renzi is running. He is only 33 years old, and very hip, with a Facebook presence and a lot of fresh new ideas. Instead of vague promises, he has issued a list of 100 concrete things he wants to accomplish/begin when in office. Could he be the Florentine Obama?? I hope he wins.

I could theoretically vote in this election. There is a new law in place that allows all residents of Florence to vote in the primaries, no matter their citizenship status. Because I still have my residency declared at my old address and it is a bureaucratic nightmare to change, I have not "officially" become a Florentine. But the tension is building and the voting is tomorrow, February 15, 2009.

Other than that Valentine's Day is alive and well in Firenze. But I am not that phased by it, doesn't Valentine's Day seem more of a big deal when you're not with someone than when you are? We are either having a dinner at home like any other night or.... hitting up our favorite pizza spot: Pizza Man!

The Blog is back in celebration of World Nutella Day!

2009-02-04T11:00:00.007-05:00

Well, I didn't exactly plan for the blog to take a 6+ month hiatus, but it did. Sorry to all that may have been interested in my life in Firenze! All in all, everything is going wonderfully here. I am still in the apartment that I moved into when I moved here, which I love. I am also returning to the same job this year and hoping that this tourist season won't be too awful considering the economy. I also am officially "fidanzata" in the Italian sense of the word. I will refer to my other half as "E" here. Maybe he wants to remain anonymous? And Obama became President! Obviously I was thrilled about that, and still kind of can't believe it.

But the real occasion that inspired me to restart the blog is one of the loveliest holidays, World Nutella Day today, February 5th. This holiday was started by the lovely Ms. Adventures in Italy with the help of Ms. Bleeding Espresso. It celebrates Nutella, the chocolate hazelnut spread that is a staple food in Italy. To participate, create a recipe using Nutella and send it to the email address listed on the website. Then post it on your blog. So here is my creation, which was really E's idea.

Here in Tuscany a popular fall/winter dessert is something called Castagnaccio (cahst-ahn-eeach-o):

This is a dense cake made out of chestnut flour, with pine nuts, raisins and usually rosemary on top. It is definitely an acquired taste, as the chestnut flour is a bit acidic and although it is a dessert it's not very sweet. Chestnuts are also very "pesante" as they say here, meaning heavy and rich. I honestly have never been much of a Castagnaccio fan. But if you cover it with Nutella....

So here is the recipe for Nutella Castagnaccio:

500 g. chestnut flour
4 T. olive oil
1 pinch salt
3 T. sugar
Zest of one orange
1 cup hazelnuts
1/2 cup Nutella

Preheat oven to 200 degrees Celsius, or 400 degrees Farenheit.

Make castagaccio according to package directions (sorry Americans, you will have to ask an Italian to bring you a bag of chestnut flour castagnaccio mix). Ours asked for water, 4 T. olive oil, 1 pinch salt, 3 T. sugar and the zest of one orange.

Place the batter in an oiled round or square pan (9 inch round or 10 inch square, more or less). Crush or chop the hazelnuts and spread over the batter. Note E's medieval method of crushing hazelnuts, which worked better than a knife.

Bake for about one hour. Once it is out of the oven and still hot, spread the Nutella on top (which will melt with the heat) in any artistic form you like.

And here is the finished product:

Enjoy!

Happy Ferragosto

2008-08-17T16:44:00.004-04:00

Happy Ferragosto, which is the largest summer holiday in Italy, August 15, to celebrate the Assumption. Most Italians go away for this holiday and the cities empty out while the beaches and coasts fill up. Unlike Americans that often go away at different times of the year to different places, a lot of Italians vacation at the same time of year and to the same place every time! This means that Florence has been pretty dead, and it's nice to feel like you have the city to yourself but also nice to not feel like there's nothing to do because everything is closed. I am dying to get a pedicure, but alas every single "estetista" place is closed this weekend. Next week!

Beyond that I have not done very much around the house besides some home improvement (put in a new shower head) and cooking. I made shrimp and couscous salad and also honey cookies, which I made with chestnut honey so they have a kind of strange taste but are good nonetheless. I have also been trying to study the first level books for the sommelier course I will be taking. Luckily my roommate took the first level so she has all the materials, this way I don't feel lost at the second level. It is a lot of dry information about the agriculture of winemaking so far, so it's not going very fast. I can't wait until I get into the tasting and can train my palate more, which is what I need badly.

I started to take some pics around Firenze so I could share them on the blog. These are ones I took on a recent lunch break when I stopped into the Orsanmichele, which was a granary and then a center for all of the Renaissance guilds (woodworkers, butchers, bookmakers, etc.) and then became a church. I love stopping in places I haven't been to before or was in only once when I studied here. Somehow I think I missed the inside of the Orsanmichele. Now that I have two hour lunch breaks (!) I have time to hang out in these places and learn about them.

First off here is my office building (with the yellow paint), viewed from across the street:

Here is some very cool light in an alley across from my office:

Orsanmichele altar, with 13th century painting inside:

Statue on the outside of Orsanmichele:

Here is a statue detail at the base. This statue represents the stoneworker's guild, as you can see here:

I've also been noticing more and more all of the Dante Divina Commedia quotes littering the city. I try to decipher them, which I won't do here, just know it's talking about Florence:

Here's the cafe where I get a cappuccino and a brioche if I don't have time to have coffee at home:

More soon!

Day at the Beach

2008-08-02T14:47:00.007-04:00

This weekend I am working to see the weekend operations of the office. I don't mind that much except I did mind getting up at 6:50 this morning after going out for drinks for my co-workers birthday! I feel much better tonight that I did this morning.

Last weekend I didn't work, though, and was able to get away for a day to go to the beach. I went to Principina al Mare in southern Tuscany. The beaches here, in a very non-Italian move, are very well organized. Umbrellas are set up with nice lounge chairs like this:

Everyone pays to use them, it's about 10 euros per person for a lounge chair for the day. A lot of people rent their spots for the whole summer, years in advance, and so a lot of the chairs are already reserved, but we always find a spot. The water, which is the Tyrrhenian sea, is not too cold and so it's refreshing to jump in. We had a great seafood lunch and hit the beach.

I went home through my old house and stopped to see Obama. We also brought him to a friend's house who also have a kitten, so now he has a girlfriend. Sorry I didn't take any pics of them together, but they were running around like madcats for hours playing.

Here was Obama before he left to play, in the box that we closed up and transported him in:

And here is a pic of a beautiful sunset over Buonconvento that happened a week or so before I moved to Florence:

Those are most of my photos that I didn't show yet. So far everything has been going great in Florence and I am very happy here. I have cool people that I work with, and have been out with friends a couple nights last week which was a breath of fresh air, back to regular life!

My main concern is selling my car, since now that I am paying rent I have to get rid of the car expense. Everything is proceeding well, in that I am getting the couple of scratches fixed this month. The dealer I took it to to help me sell it told me to keep it for the month of August, since all of Italy goes on vacation this month, it's pretty much useless to try to sell anything because no one is selling and buying anything, everyone is at the beach. Such is life in Italia. So I guess I will use it to take a trip since I have it this month. At the end of the month when the body shop guy gets back (he went on vacation too), it will be all fixed up and ready to sell. Cross your fingers!

Ciao from Florence!

2008-07-22T16:21:00.005-04:00

I am finally moved into Florence! I moved bit by bit and worked at my old job up until Sunday the 20th, then came in on Sunday night and started work right away yesterday the 21st. Even still, I was working so many hours in my old job, this feels like vacation!

The new apartment is working out great, here are some pics, before I moved in:

This is from the terrace, it's much more impressive in person than in this photo:

It is to the northwest of the train station, so it's not so far from the center of town. It takes me about 15 min to get to work, which is right in the center, to the south of the Duomo. I started work at a tour company, and for this week I am training in the office, learning their systems. I also get to go on a bunch of walking tours in Florence to be able to experience them and better understand the company. I am going to do one general Florence walk, an Uffizi gallery walk, and a David walk.

So everything has been going well, and I have been settling in and trying not to spend too much money in the city! I am trying to be thrifty. I really need to sell my car, since I don't need it here and I am still paying for it monthly. So if anyone in the blogosphere knows someone looking for a perfect car for the country in Tuscany, let me know! I was going to drop it off to the Hyundai dealer tomorrow but they decided to close on weekends in the summer so I will go during the week. I am hoping they will be able to sell it for me fairly quickly! They will also put it on Ebay.

But so far that is my only problem, so I am doing OK. I finally finished reading The Omnivore's Dilemma, which if you notice has been on my blog reading list since about December, because I have literally been reading it that long. I managed to finish it already this week! It is nice to have a normal life back with time to cook and look up recipes as I always used to do, talk on the phone, take the long way home and read and be online, and actually have time to blog and respond to emails, and see what other expats in Italy are up to on their blogs... back to normal life basically!

I haven't taken that many pics yet and I will take some new ones soon. The Telecom man is coming to hook up our internet on Monday so I can't wait. Right now I am using a Vodafone external modem and it is not so great, the signal goes in and out.

Once I have better internet I will post more pics and some nice recent videos of Obama. He is home alone in Montalcino this week, and being cared for by the landlady since my roommate is on vaca and I moved out. I hope he is doing OK!

This morning I am off the beach, since I am stuck with my car I might as well use it. Will take some pics!

Lots Going On

2008-07-10T04:02:00.003-04:00

Well, it's been so long since I've written because it's been quite a busy time. I have been working like crazy as usual, but also gave my notice and so July 20 is my last day at this job. In the meantime I found another job in Florence, working in the office of a tour company. I am super excited to get back to city life and a less stressful work environment.

I found an apartment in a nice area not too far from the center, near Fortezza da Basso. It will take me about 20 min to get to work I think. Work seems very cool, there are about 5 or 6 Americans already working at this company and they all seem nice, we will see how it goes when I get started! I have to go on a bunch of tours to learn about them and learn about the company which I think will be a lot of fun.

In the meantime, Obama has been growing fast and is now 6 weeks old. He likes to run in circles, practice fighting, and attack anything he sees, including my feet. His mom Barack has escaped and is still living around the house, but only comes back every once in a while to say hi and eat something. In general she hates to be inside and doesn't stay long.

I don't think I've mentioned here that we found out that Obama is actually deaf. We noticed he didn't respond to any noise and we've tested it a bunch of times. Then I looked online and found out that cats with white hair and blue eyes are often deaf becaues the gene for that color and deafness is almost identical. So although when we open the door he runs outside, we keep him inside because the country cats here are pretty vicious and he is at a severe disadvantage. So far he has learned "no" in sign language, but it takes a lot of energy because you have to physically go over and get him every time he does something wrong because he can't hear you yelling.

Here is a recent pic, although with a dirty face:

I will definitely miss Obama when I leave, but I will come back to visit him soon. I will only be a little over an hour away.

In other recent news, I was able to go the Palio in Siena a couple of weeks ago. The Palio is a famous, historic bareback horse race that happens twice a year in Siena's main piazza. Each horse is from a different contrada, or district, of Siena, and there is huge competition between each contrada to win. The owner of the property where I work rented an apartment in an old palazzo right on the piazza from an eccentric old contessa, and I went with a coworker to oversee the drinks and snacks we served. Although our guests were parked in front of the windows, which cost €4000 each to rent by the way, I got plenty of chances to steal a look at the race.

I don't have all of my pics on this computer, but will upload some soon. I can't wait to get to my new apartment in Florence to hook up internet and get back on regular DSL! It is not easy not being able to call home and friends easily and cheaply using my Vonage.

I also am getting ready to take a sommelier course once I get into Florence, the Italian Sommelier Association is doing the Second Level courses beginning in September, so I am hoping that I don't have to take the First Level course to get in. I am starting with a good amount of knowledge so I don't feel I need it. The second level course will focus on all the Italian winemaking regions, which is what I want to learn about.

Yesterday I took a break from packing to go to the beach in Southern Tuscany, at a beach I have never been to before, Principina a Mare. It was very pretty and I love how the beaches are organized here. You pay €11 for a nice lounge chair with this great piece on top that shades your face from the sun, which I love because that is what drives me crazy at the beach. You also get an umbrella, and there are showers, bathrooms, changing rooms, a bar with ice cream and drinks, and a little mini boardwalk throughout the chairs so you don't have to walk in the sand. These are just lined up all along the beach, I guess it's different companies operating the chair rentals, and a lot of people rent them for the whole summer so they always have a spot. The water was nice, not too cold, and so I went swimming. We also rented a paddle boat which was not too easy to manage once the wind started blowing but it was fun.

I don't have any other pics uploaded to this computer, so more soon - from Florence!

Barack & Obama Updates

2008-06-16T16:16:00.004-04:00

Well the kitties have been doing very well since their rescue. Friday, in a big rainstorm, I took Barack and her son Obama (we switched the names around because they are more fitting this way) to the vet to get her stitches taken out. So now she is doing well and almost fully recovered.

Here are the pics, which is what everyone wants! Obama just opened his eyes fully yesterday as you can see.

Bath time, which is pretty much all day:

Family portrait:

Nap time, which is what happens when it's not bath time or eating time:

One more bath pic:

I don't have much time to write, but lots has been going on here. I may be leaving Tuscany soon and moving to Rome for a return to city life. Stay tuned!

Cat Drama!

2008-06-07T04:44:00.006-04:00

Well, it's been a hectic week. Work - busy as usual as I have been working 12 hour days fairly regularly and 6 days a week. Then, there are the cats.
As I mentioned in my last post, we had two cat births at the house. For one mom, no one knows where her kittens ended up, we've never seen them. The other one, a tiny little cat, had one white one that she was carrying around and always looking for a place to put him. Then one day we found her with two, one white and one orange, but we've never seen that orange one again. Here are some pics from last week, when she had a near tragic situation with the dog and couldn't find a place to safely put the white kitten. I put a box outside the door and she enjoyed it for a while, but then the next day they were gone.

She had moved him high up above something in the garage, and it seemed like everything was going OK and she was getting used to being a mom.

Then Thursday night when I got home I thought it was odd that only one cat (there are 5 total running around) came up to the door when I pulled up. They know we feed them so usually everyone rallys around when we come home. And so after I changed into sweats I went outside and found the young mom cat under a car, looking pretty down. These cats are wild, basically, so they let you touch them and stuff but are always very attentive when humans are around, and I noticed that she wasn't even looking at me as I approached her. She was all dirty, and when she moved she was kind of limping along. She was moving around from place to place, you could see she was in pain and couldn't get comfortable. Then after a little while she started to breathe heavily. The cat was clearly on the brink of death, and so we started to call vets in the area. Our landlords meanwhile think we are crazy since they let these cats live and die without much thought, but we couldn't sit there and just watch her die, knowing there are babies around as well.

So eventually we found a vet that was open - in Siena which is 35 min. away. So, still in pajamas basically, we hurriedly put the cat in the car and leave for Siena. She didn't even care that she was in a box in the car. When the vets saw her, they said she had a raging infection. It was a common infection that can happen after giving birth, and had they caught it earlier she could have taken antibiotics and would have been OK, but at this point her body temperature was already falling and the only option would be to have an operation to take out her uterus. Being the animal lovers we are, we agreed and urged her to do it that night because I personally didn't think she would survive the night to wait for a morning operation.

The operation took 45 min. and she came out OK. We left her there overnight, she was just waking up from anesthesia and pretty out of it. The vet told us she wasn't sure if she would survive the night. We got home at 11pm.

As soon as we got home, we heard cries. The white kitten was in the garage in a basket on top of a closet. So we took him inside, fed him milk through a syringe, and decided to leave early the next morning to take him to find his mom. Without her he would definitely die because even with the milk we were giving him, he didn't seem to even want it. He cried most of the night so sleeping was not too possible in my house.

Here is the next morning still looking for mom. As you can see his eyes are still closed. He is about 6 days old.

So at 8:15am we were already in Siena with the baby. When we put them together the mom didn't really remember him, or was too out of it to do anything, and he couldn't eat because she had disinfectant on her and he couldn't smell the milk. Of course he couldn't see because he's blind. I felt bad for the mom because he was climbing all over her and she had stitches and everything! In the end we left him to look on his own and he found the nipple and started eating. So we left them there and are going to pick them up today! After all this, we are officially adopting them of course. The mom is named Obama and the baby is Barack. More pics of them recovering at home to come!

Catching Up

2008-05-25T17:00:00.007-04:00

Well almost a month has gone by since I have blogged! Work has been very busy, my landlady cut off her DSL so therefore mine has been cut off, and a lot has been going on. I will try to write as much as I can since it's almost my bedtime.

Most exciting (in a dangerous way) was last weekend. I have taken up horseback riding (which I used to do often years ago, so I'm not a total novice) at an agriturismo behind my house. It's only 10 minutes away and only 20 euros an hour, and there are lots of horses and a nice instructor. Their property is also beautiful so they take you on a nice trail. Here are some pics from a few weeks ago:

Last weekend I went riding by myself with the instructor Marco. The whole thing started off a little crazy before we even went anywhere because he was riding a horse he had just bought who was freaking out about the cows they have and Marco, riding bareback, was trying to tame this wild horse. Anyway we set off for the trail and everything was normal. We were chatting about the Brunello scandal, and trotting and walking. All of sudden ahead we see a group of some animals ahead on the trail, and Marco says, "it's a bunch of wild boar!" and starts to speed up because he wanted to see them. My horse of course speeds up too, since these horses all follow the leader after years of following Marco. We started to canter and my horse went farther than Marco's when he finally saw what we were speeding up to and stopped on a dime. Since we had been going fast, there was nowhere for me to go besides flying through the air, so I set sail off the horse and was watching the boar the whole time. They also got startled and luckily ran off. They were a family of 5, two extremely large black ones that were probably the mother and father, and three light brown babies. The largest one had to be 400 pounds and at about 5 feet long. What a beast. I was really more afraid of them than of falling, because all everyone talks about here is stories about how they attack people, cars, whatever, especially if they are with their babies.

In the end I just ended up with a large bruise on my lower back and it still hurts when I bend over and pick up something heavy, but other than that, nothing. Never a dull moment in Tuscany as you can see.

I had a lovely visit with some Bostonians, the Pateys, who breezed through Montalcino on their Italian vacation. We had dinner at Pane e Vino, one of my favorite restaurants. Unfortunately time was short so I only got to see them for a few hours.

Other than that, work has been very busy as we are opening the hotel and restaurants all in these weeks. This will probably be the last two day weekend I will have for a little while. Today was a busy day at my house, which though I often forget it, is still a farm. The cats that are constantly outside my door are a constant story. Two of them became pregnant (how is another completely scandalous story - it involved incest that I witnessed myself) and one is now obviously no longer pregnant but no one knows where the babies are. The other one is clearly about to pop, tonight she was sitting around always closing her eyes, so I think she might be in labor. And the chickens had babies last night! For the moment for their safety they are in a shoebox in my landlord's house upstairs. But here they are:

I had a great time at the Corte del Vino wine festival last week (I drank away the pain of the fall) but I will post about it later. I will leave you with a cool video I took from my house. A couple weeks ago before anyone started cutting their lawn for spring there was a lot of waves of grass moving in the wind and it looked so weird! Here it is:

Lazy Sunday...

2008-04-27T15:50:00.006-04:00

Well I haven't gone very far from my bed today, which is a shame because it was quite a nice day, but I had to put together a bunch of info for these wine lessons I am going to do with our enologist, and I was tired from yesterday! I took advantage of the nice weather yesterday and went to Volterra with my housemate. I must say it is one of my favorite towns so far. It is a bit bigger than most others, so there are lots of cute shops and also an Etruscan museum that showcases all of the Etruscan artifacts unearthed in the vicinity. Although the museum was not very well kept, they say it's one of the oldest museums in the world, so maybe that's why, it had amazing artifacts, and they were all local which is a testament to how big this community must have been, centuries before Christ!

Here are some pics of funeral urns. The Etruscans (wealthy ones) were buried in these urns, often with a lot of dining equipment, because it was believed they needed it for banquets in the afterlife.

Wine jugs:

After that we walked around the town, it was packed with people. April 25 was an Italian holiday, celebrating the day that American troops liberated Italy in WWII. Because of this everyone (besides me and my colleagues!) had a long weekend, so Volterra was filled with Italians on break.

Here was the main piazza:

We turned a corner and ran into a big market:

It's artichoke and fava bean season:

This guy was hammering out his own plates in copper:

We went by the art museum, which had paintings from Ghirlandaio, Rosso Fiorentino and a lot of ancient coins. I couldn't take any pics, but I did get to take a pic of this weird perforation in the floor that was in the same place in all floors of the old palazzo where the museum was. Here I am in floor below!

On our way out we saw the big fortress the lines the southern part of the city. It was a fortress built by the Medicis when they ruled Volterra. Today it is a jail! I can't believe they would use such valuable property, and a historic monument on top of it for a jail. Who knows. Here it is:

Hope everyone has a good week!

2008-04-25T16:55:00.000-04:00

Non-Italy related, but I had to share this funny clip from Jon Stewart about the Presidential elections! More this weekend...

Weekend... Over :(

2008-04-20T16:24:00.002-04:00

I am wrapping up a nice weekend finishing my laundry and watching the replay of the Democratic debates. Hillary just admitted she lied about her Bosnia trip! Nice! At least she's... honest?

All in all I am watching because I have read so many editorials and blogs about how bad ABC botched it, and seriously, I am halfway into it and we're still talking about flag pins. Are lapel pins this important? Obama just said "manufactured issue"... yes! I heard this will be the last debate but I wish there was one more real one about the real issues. What a waste of airtime and energy.

Anyway yesterday I went to Florence for the day, and had lunch with a bunch of expats. It was an interesting group and there were some nice people! It was nice to have an English-speaking lunch anyway. Then I called the family that I lived with when I studied in Florence, and had a nice afternoon with them. They are all doing well and the house is as beautiful as it always was. I met a few of the current students living there, who were all from Georgetown. It brought back all my study abroad memories! I didn't take any pics, unfortunately! Then I went to Bagno Vignoni for dinner to a newer restaurant that I had heard about but it was not that great. I want to try the Vecchio Forno in San Quirico the next time I go out to dinner because I saw the menu and it looked interesting. As great as the food is here, there is nothing international whatsoever - almost all the restaurant menus are pretty much the same. This is why I go crazy for sushi or anything ethnic whatsoever when I get my hands on it. I try to make some stuff at home but it's not really the same.

Last weekend I went with a co-worker to Prato to the outlets outside Florence. I did a little show damage - 3 pairs. But they were great prices! I will take some pics and upload them! But we also stopped at a huge grocery store called Panorama, it was bigger than any grocery store I had been in even in the US. It had a pretty good international section, not great but OK. I got tacos, tahini, tempura breading, some Indonesian rice mix, and some dried fruit and a lot of other stuff. I heard at the Expat lunch that there is another place in Florence, so I will have to check that out next time I go.

I will try to take some work pics this week to have something new. Check out the cool map on the left to see the locations of my blog readers! I know who some of them are but there are random people from all over the world reading! Very cool.

Vinitaly Hangover

2008-04-09T15:46:00.006-04:00

I am extremely tired, having never really gotten over the time difference coming back from Palm Beach and losing a weekend of rest by heading to Verona for Vinitaly, but I am dutifully blogging for all the readers! All 4 of you! (Hi Mom!)

Vinitaly was worth the sleep sacrifice. It was a great experience and I learned alot in the two days. Basically the Veronaferie center is a huge event... place. Can't think of the word in English. Hall? Anyway a place where they can hold 4,600 wine producers. That should give you an idea of how big! There were about 12 pavilions, each one representing a different region of Italy. Here are examples:

Basically each producer has a stand and they offer tastings of their wine, if you ask them. Each stand has a couple of tables, some are nicer and bigger than others, and that way the producer can sit and chat with possible buyers or entertain people. I didn't take many stand pics unfortunately, here is one of ours:

Anyway I spent some time behind the bar, which isn't in this pic but was on the left, and then the rest of the time I was able to go around and taste. I did some PR work too, running into one of my Italian contacts who did some filming of our stand, and also a famous chef from NYC who I would love to invite to our project for a guest chef week. I also tasted a fair amount, especially the second day when I walked around with our sommelier. He was very helpful because for me to walk around on my own I would have been completely overwhelmed and would have "wasted" time tasting wines that were not that interesting. I took a lot of tasting notes. But even being there for a couple of days, I didn't taste probably a 10th of what was available. You would really need to go each day of the event to cover all the regions to really get everything out of it. I had an extra hour in Verona so I did walk around a bit and took some pics:

After that I headed home, and have been working ever since. I had a day off yesterday because I had to take my car to be serviced for its 120,000 km checkup. Besides being very expensive and leaving me stranded in Siena for a day, I found out that my car was supposed to be inspected in February and basically if the police or carabinieri (Italian military police) had stopped me between then and now they would have impounded my car and taken my license away. Nice. Basically the inspection/tax system is quite different here from the States and I never really understood it all, clearly. So my car is taking a little time-out and will be inspected tomorrow night. Never a dull moment!

First Video

2008-04-03T16:49:00.003-04:00

Can't believe I'm still up because I have to get to bed early tonight - last minute decision at work to send me to the Vinitaly expo in Verona! Very exciting. It is one of the largest wine trade shows in the world, and so I will get to taste to my heart's content. It will be a great learning experience for me and will certainly be overwhelming because I know there are thousands of producers there. I won't be swallowing any tastings for sure or else I will not make it through. Since I arranged it last minute, I have to spend the night at a hotel a long train ride away from the expo, and it's a little harried, but there's not much you can do about it since the producers and wine fanatics reserve hotel rooms the year before. Little Verona gets packed. I will try to catch some Romeo & Juliet touristy sites while I am there as well, if I can.

I am trying to get better about blogging and recording my experience so I am doing my first video test. I took this the other day when I was on my way home from work and ran into a group of deer. This is a pretty normal occurance but this group was quite beautiful and I figured I would record it. From afar it is OK but when I did a close up of them the resolution of the video is not that great which is a shame because you can't see the antlers of the male deer which were huge. Anyway it's a test, I will try more soon.

Back from the Dead Part 2

2008-03-31T14:43:00.005-04:00

More than one blog post in a week! I clearly have a bit of free time on my hands. Today and Friday were wholly monopolized by first aid courses at work. Being an employee in Italy - at least my company - means taking a lot of training courses. We also had to do medical visits to make sure we were able to fulfill our positions at work, but that's another story. So far in these courses we've done fire prevention, and my department did food safety since we're food & beverage. I thought I was going to get in big trouble for missing the first aid course since I took a couple days off to go home for Easter after Palm Beach, but my boss OK'ed it and in the end it got rescheduled to after I got back anyway. Thank God I didn't miss a family holiday for this crap in the end. It was very long and boring and included breathing into a mannequin and many a vocab word I definitely did not know. In the end I told everyone that if there is blood involved I would probably faint anyway so count me out in an emergency.

Even worse, I have found out that in an emergency situation I can only speak in Engligh. Very strange considering I think in Italian most of the time now, but I have learned that it is true. When I went to Florence last month and a car was about to run into a colleague, I was looking at him saying "watch out! watch out!" and thinking to myself "why isn't this guy moving?!" until I realized he couldn't understand me. Duh. So I already warned my co-workers to count the Americana out in any emergency situation.

Anyway, the bottom line is because the course I got out of work early today and had time for blogging. Having already worn out all of the "things to do" nearby in Montalcino, Buonconvento, and all other surrounding towns, I am getting a little bored of the surroundings I must say, I have been travelling a lot so now when I have down time I spend it relaxing at home, usually.

Here are some pics I didn't get time to post the last time. I went to San Galgano abbey, which are the ruins of a nearby abbey, I had heard it mentioned as a place we might take clients in the future, so I figured I would check it out for myself. Here are some shots:

The last pic the famed sword in the stone, the sword that Saint Galgano plunged into this stone you see above when he renounced everyday life to become a monk on the site of the hermitage above, with the beautiful ceiling.

More soon!

Back from the Dead

2008-03-27T16:37:00.005-04:00

Since I have totally neglected my blog lately I won't even try to recap everything that has happened since I last wrote. I went to Palm Beach for work, via New York, so I got to see some friends and family along the way. I had a little health problem and spent a couple of days in the hospital here in Italy, but everything is OK now and shortly after I left for Palm Beach a second time and just got back this past week. I have spent a lot of time travelling lately! Our promotions went well and even though I was worn out from all the work, I am glad to have done it. I got to spend Easter at home since I was already in the States and it was great to see friends and family.

I will get back to what everyone wants to see - pictures! Some highlights from the past couple months -

When I came back from Palm Beach the first time I took a couple of pics while I drove to work. I will take some more soon because my "commute" is usually very beautiful. Well, most of the time. It is a mix of gorgeous views and trucks such as these from the construction project:

I spent most weekends in March touring around Tuscany. I went to get my hair cut at Fonteverde spa and hot springs, which is about an hour from me. Here are some pics I took as I was leaving:

I have also been twice to Bagno Vignoni, a town 20 minutes from me with hot springs that you can swim in. The minerals in the water are supposed to be very good for you. I must admit when I get out of the water I feel relaxed, and it is good for your skin, although it is kind of drying. These hot springs have been used since Roman times for various cures and supposedly the Medicis came here to bathe in the pools as well. Here are some photos:

Heading to bed now, more this weekend!

So Much to Say

2008-01-20T08:59:00.000-05:00

Well it's been so long since I have blogged, there has been a lot going on. Work has been really crazy, and I have been working for really long hours.

I had a great time in NYC and Boston for Christmas. Lots of bonding with Anthony's fabulous Christmas tree, Keisha:

As soon as I came back work went into high gear as the hotel opening is practically around the corner. I have been starting up a lot of PR and promotion and will be pretty busy for the next 6 months or so.

In the little bit of time away from work I've done a couple little sidetrips. For my roommate's birthday we went to Castiglione della Pescaia, I went there once before but I don't remember if I blogged about it or not. It is a cute coastal town in the Maremma region of Tuscany, I can't wait to head out there in the summer when it's packed with beachgoers! For now it's pretty sleepy, but still a bit warmer there than inland, so we took a walk on the beach and stopped and had a great seafood lunch at a very good seafood restaurant, Pierbacco. So this is where I plan to spend my summer weekends. Luckily it's only an hour away from my house.

That was one of the only nice days that we have had lately. Unfortunately we have a little fog problem around here. More often than not you can't see two feet in front of you. Yesterday I went out to Montalcino to get my health card at the local hospital. First of all here is what the hospital looks like:

But the views once I drove out of the fog and up into Montalcino you could really see how bad it is:

As you can see, I am living in soup, basically. Somewhere under all that white stuff you see is my house! Today is a nice day but I have a lot of stuff to do at home and I figured I would stay in and spend a day relaxing. I also have to pack - because I am leaving for the US again next week! I have to spend a couple of days in NYC and then some time in Palm Beach for a promotional event we are doing there! I am excited to travel and very excited for nice weather. Bathing suit time!

The only other interesting trip I have taken lately was yesterday when I went to the Monte Oliveto abbey, which is not far from where I live, about 20 minutes. There were beautiful frescoes of the life of Saint Benedict:

There is a cute restaurant with a terrace there that will be nice in summer. The fog was pretty thick though yesterday and you can see it here around the abbey and the grounds:

It was a beautiful place though, with a cute gift shop as well that carries all kinds of interesting books and also herbs and liquors that the monks produce. I will definitely take guests there in the future.

Anyway, enough blogging for today! I will be back in touch when I come back from the US.

Back in Italia!

2008-01-07T16:17:00.000-05:00

Just a quick note to say I am back in Italia!

I had a great time at home and in NYC and will post pics soon! I definitely miss the city and all the conveniences of it, especially sushi delivery! I relaxed and ate all the foods I've been missing.

I had a long trip back but everything went well and I am getting over jetlag and went back to work today. I went to Ikea and got a ton of stuff yesterday and my house feels more like a home now. I will take some pics of the new look too.

Had other things to write but too tired to think about them now. More this week. Hi to everyone I saw at home that said they are actually reading the blog. I see you, Alba! Miss you guys!

Buon Natale!

2007-12-25T23:16:00.001-05:00

Merry Christmas from Boston! More soon.

Back from Rome, Just in Time for the Strike!

2007-12-12T15:44:00.000-05:00

I don't know if the news has reached the rest of the world, but we are dealing with a major strike here in bella Italia. I heard tonight that it is supposedly over but as I have learned, I will believe it when I see it.

I went to Rome for the past couple of days for work and didn't hear anything about the strike. Apparently most of Italy's truck drivers held a strike starting the 10th to protest lack of compensation for rising fuel costs and other complaints. They blocked the highways with their stalled trucks and refused to move. A few got arrested but I was surprised the police didn't take more action! Now it has been going on for days which means no gas deliveries, food deliveries, nothing. I only noticed all this when I arrived back from Rome and drove through my little town and there were about 50 cars in line at the gas station! I didn't even know there were 50 cars in the town! Like I said, apparently it's over but it will still take 48 hours to get everything delivered and back on track. I hope so because I have no milk! Black coffee for me tomorrow. Luckily I have 3/4 of a tank of gas so I don't have any problems for that. Only in Italy! I wonder if after it's all over the truckers actually got any of their demands... I will have to check out the news to see.

While in Rome I did a lot of work research, and spent some time checking out a cooking school in an old palace that had a nice museum attached, which showcased the art that the family had. Here are some pics:

Other than that I just did some walking around Rome and a little window shopping. The weather was kind of rainy and cold, but it was nice to get out in a city. Rome always is a bit overwhelming to me, though, and always has been! I probably am scarred from the time I went during college by myself and got awful food poisoning!

Anyway back to the country life, I am here sitting by the fire! Have been working late even though we're not busy... I guess there's always something to do. Am excited to go home and see family and friends soon!

Sant'Antimo

2007-12-06T15:38:00.000-05:00

Not much new going on around Toscana these days... have been busy at work and enjoying my car :). Next week I'm going undercover to test out a cooking school in Rome to check it out. That should be fun and I will let you know how it goes! I will report back how it goes!

I have been meaning to post pics of a trip I took to the Sant'Antimo Abbey, which is not far from where I live. It is a monastery that was founded by Charlemagne in 814! It was founded while he was travelling on the Via Francigena, which is the pilgrimage route that was followed to reach Rome. I live right off this road so I have been reading up on some of the history of it.

Anyway Sant'Antimo today is a wonderful example of Romanesque architecture and the home of some monks that chant their prayers several times a day. Here are the pics:

Mobile

2007-12-02T06:56:00.001-05:00

Check it out:

Parked right outside my house! The car exists!

My parents came to visit over Thanksgiving and I was able to pick it up with them, which was good because Dad could take a look at the car. It drives very well. It was so nice and sparkling clean when I picked it up, after a week of taking it up to work on our dusty roads it is a little less clean in the above picture but still bellissima! Yesterday I took it on a long drive, it was my first weekend alone with the car. I went all the way to Perugia to a Christmas festival to do some Christmas shopping. I got lots of food gifts, which I think is the best choice! I leave for home in three short weeks, and since Christmas is not as commercialized here I feel a little behind in my shopping. I barely realize it's Christmas season, besides a few lights in a few stores I saw in Siena yesterday. Here in my little town I haven't seen much sign of it yet.

My parents had a good, but short week here last week. We went to Montepulciano which was nice, though it was kind of a rainy day.

Other than that, not much going on. Relaxing at home today and doing some cleaning up. Can't believe I'll be home soon!

La Sagra del Tordo

2007-11-18T06:20:00.000-05:00

The last weekend of October brought the Sagra del Tordo to Montalcino. This tradition fall festival celebrates the hunt of the "tordo", a small bird called a thrush in English. All the tordi have gotten wise to this event and disappeared, so I heard that hunting them is actually no longer legal. But any excuse to party! Each of the 4 neighborhoods of Montalcino participates in a parade in Medieval costume and then, after a long lunch break and lots of Brunello, there is an archery competition among the 4 neighborhoods. Despite the fact that the 4 neighborhoods are in a town the size of a few blocks of NYC, the compeitition is fierce. The regions are called Pianello, Ruga, Borghetto and Travaglio.

Lots of visitors come from other parts of Italy and even internationally to see this event, so Montalcino was pretty packed. It was very difficult to find a parking space but my roommate and her visiting family lucked out and found one. First we saw the parade:

There was a proclamation and blessing from the local priests when the parade stopped at the church:

Then everyone went towards the fortress where there was another proclamation and the hunters were ready to go:

Everyone broke for lunch, drank plenty of Brunello and then the archery competition started. We had some tagliolini with white truffles and wild boar stew. Pear cake for dessert. Very yummy. At the archery competition there was standing room only by the time I got there. The targets were wild boar, naturally.

There were four rounds, each from a farther distance away from the target so it got progressively harder. After each round the judge would go to the targets and report how many arrows made it into the boar:

In the end, Ruga won, which was not a surprise since they usually have the most talented archers. Ruga fans rushed the field and were very excited:

More pics of recent pics to come...

Total Blog Neglect!

2007-11-16T16:34:00.000-05:00

Sorry for being totally MIA, blog readers, if there are any out there!

Italia being Italia, the phone lines connected to my house went out and it took over a week to fix them. No phone line = no DSL = no wireless for me. Last night I came home and turned on the computer and voila, it was back!

I have lots to share and have to upload pics to match. The last weekend of October brought the Sagra del Tordo, an annual festival in Montalcino that was quite fun. I found a car I want and am going TOMORROW to pick up my carta d'identita (ID card) that will officially allow me to purchase it. I have been going back and forth between the bank and the dealer to try to overcome this hurdle and finally couldn't take it anymore and called my town hall and told them I was at the end of my rope and they needed to speed it up.

The vigili already came to check that I really live where I say I do this week - I was in the shower when they rang the doorbell early in the morning so I rinsed off all the soap and ran out to answer in a towel. I think that scared them into only coming to check once, and so when I called the town hall this week they said they were ready to give me the card. Thank goodness!

My parents are coming to visit soon, on Tuesday, so I will be glad to hopefully have a car when they get here. Work has been very busy as my boss got sick and went into the hospital about two weeks ago. This meant that with two months of experience I became the manager of my whole department. And we have VIP guests arriving tomorrow, so no pressure, right?! Everything is going well and we are well prepared but I have been working a lot of hours and will work seven days this week. I can make up the time off later.

Anyway will post pics soon when I have time!

Some pics...

2007-10-24T16:35:00.000-04:00

I don't have much time to post tonight because I spent ALL night looking up info on cars trying to figure out what kind of used or new car I want. Now that I have my residenza in order (despite a request for a future copy of my birth certificate translated and certified by the consulate in Boston - all in good time), I can officially buy a car which has been the main thing I need since I got here in order to feel some modicum of independence.

But now that I am ready, I need to learn about how to buy a car, how to not get screwed in the deal, how to find the right person to take with me to look at the car's motor, etc., and - oh yeah - what car am I going to take to go looking at cars? Catch 22, muah ha ha! It would all be so simple if I could rent a car in my town but they don't even rent them here! I would have to find my way to Siena to get a car for the weekend to go to Florence or Perugia or Siena itself looking at cars - I'm losing my mind already.

Tonight I decided to focus my search some more and decided that it would be easier to either decide exactly what kind of used car I want - make, model, etc., automatic of course, and then search for it. If I can't find it somewhere near me I will go for a new car, in which I could easily ask for an automatic transmission to be installed. Otherwise I'm going to lose my mind before I even start. So lots of research was done tonight with the help of one Justin :).

On a happier note here are some nice pics I took last week after we went to Chianti to check out a cool butcher shop there. We might reconstruct it more or less in our new space that is opening in the spring. Here was the beautiful sunset that evening:

Almost makes you forget about not having a car...

Back in Business

2007-10-21T13:12:00.000-04:00

So I finally solved my internet crisis in the new apartment! I spoke to the landlord who lives upstairs because I saw a strong wireless connection available, but I couldn't get into it because it was password protected. I thought if I could get to the person who had it I could work out some deal with them to give them some cash and share it with them. Turns out it was the landlord herself and she happily obliged, so I know have full speed DSL wireless paying less than half of what I would to have a phone line installed and paid for to get it myself, and also 10 Euro less than what I would have paid to Vodafone for that AWFUL connection I was getting through the USB modem. I'm sure this is not interesting to anyone else but me, but I must share because I'm so happy about it!

On a more interesting topic, here are some pics of my new home:

The windows on the bottom right of the house are mine. Here is the living room/kitchen:

From the couch (note ugly blue flowers and cover - we have to figure out a solution to that problem) there is a small fireplace which we lit this morning for the first time:

Here is the view from the property, it's on a hill:

Note the neighboring cows, which I didn't even know were there until I walked over to the edge of the property to take a picture. Anyway I am doing well here, setting up my stuff, buying what we need that we're missing, etc. There is a small dog named Pipo that lives upstairs who is really cute, I will post a pic of him when I take one.

In my room is a separate door that goes into a little terrace area. I will put a table out there when it gets warm again. In that area I also found this cool seal today above my room on the exterior of the house:

I take it to mean that the whole farm/farmhouse once belonged to a powerful Renaissance family, a la the Medicis that have their seals all over Florence and everything else they owned. It's hard to see the details though so next time I have a chance I will bring out a chair or something to take a real closeup picture of it and try to do some research.

Now that I have this place to live, I was finally able to go to my local "comune" and take care of the residency dilemma. It took over an hour, but all my info was entered and I got this long receipt. It means that my application is in process, and I hear through the grapevine that with this receipt it's possible to get insurance for a car. So I have been researching what cars are available this weekend. I'm still looking for an automatic, even though I have learned (finally) to drive a standard. Automatics are just so much EASIER. Less thinking, more driving. I only came across a few that are available this weekend so I'll have to keep calling, especially tomorrow since it's Monday and everyone is back in their offices. Then hopefully next weekend I can start to go around and see what I would like to buy so I can buy something soon and move along with this process!

Today I had my roommate's car at my disposal, luckily. I went to Abbazia Sant'Antimo. I will explain and post pics in a later post this week. I also have to post pics of Pienza and my other temporary home where I had no internet, the Albergo Brunello. Although it was a pain to be there, the view from my room was beautiful and I took some nice sunset pics.

Glad to be back in the internet world!

Post from Oct. 18th....

2007-10-20T10:16:00.000-04:00

From Oct. 18th:

Sorry for the total blog avoidance these weeks. It's been tough!

I am finally in an apartment! Since Monday of this week I have had a home, which is in a very nice villa on a hill between some towns outside of Montalcino. It is an old farmhouse that has been separated into apartments. When I am able to upload pics I will.

Finding a reliable internet connection has been pretty stressful. I bought a modem from Vodafone that connects via USB and, despite an initial problem with the free first month kicking in, it works. It is, however, S-L-O-W. I can read Gmail on HTML version and IM works like a charm but getting most other websites is spotty at best. There is a wireless connection around here somewhere that is very strong, but it is password protected. I am thinking of asking the landlord who it is that has it and seeing if they are willing to let me use it with them if I give them some cash every month. To set up a phone line and DSL connection would be so expensive for me. Because of this, I have been internet-less and it drives me crazy. I also haven't been able to use my Vonage phone which is a free way to call friends and family at home, so not having those things set up stress me out and make me feel disconnected from the rest of the world!

Work has also been difficult, for many reasons. I have to deal with some difficult personalities regularly and it's been stressful. I am in a large company, at least larger than what I'm used to, and the system of hierarchy is different than what I am used to.

I am also still in the middle of Italian bureaucracy for my residency. I knew this would happen, but I never thought it would be something that would take over 6 weeks to even start the process. Now that I have a permanent residence, which was what was really holding everything up, I went to my local anagrafe, an office in the town hall, to start the process for residency immediately. It's very important to me since without this I can't buy a car, and not having a car is the thing that is really driving me out of my mind. I hate to be dependent on people all the time and work out who takes me home from work, who drives me to work, etc. Anyway, unfortunately the residency "expert" in my local comune is sick! This means no one who is trying to start their residency process can move along until this woman gets better. Typical. I was thinking of bringing her some cold medicine or something for whatever ails her to speed up this process.

Will write more when I resolve this internet problem!

Technical Difficulties

2007-10-04T08:44:00.000-04:00

This week has been pretty crazy between work and some housing problems.

I had to leave the hotel where I had been temporarily living, the one with unlimited hours of free wireless usage. Beyond that it was also in the center of a small town so, being carless, I could walk to the dry cleaners, restaurants, nail place, etc. Yesterday I unfortunately had to leave there and move to a hotel in Montalcino, but outside of the city center. So now I am a half hour walk from the center of town. Oh, and there's no internet in this new hotel. Great. I asked about it and they told me I could connect to the phone line but I don't even know how that would work and I doubt I have the right cords.

I hate to be a problem at work, but the reality is, I am. I am living a rosy version of the immigrant experience! I am not like the other employees that need housing that already have residency established somewhere in Italy, that have cars, that have houses in other cities where they can leave all their extra stuff, etc. Unfortunately I have a life's worth of crap with me in bags, and no current legal status until I get a place to live. Buying car, health care and so many other things rely on this residency.

Anyway, bureaucracy and incompetence aside, everything is going well. I have two days off, today and tomorrow, and slept 12 hours last night so I am recovering from the opening last week. I have spent a normal small-town day walking around Montalcino. On my way to a pedicure appointment (naturally the first thing I did this morning after cappuccino was ask around to find out where the nearest salon was) I ran into the husband of the other manicurist I found in the other town I was staying in. He was with the boyfriend of a girl I work with, who gave me a number of some car guy who apparently might help me get a car before residency. I'll call and find out what that is all about.

Later I went to little restaurant that I had already been to with my parents when they were here, long before I knew any manicurists. I saw the manicurist's husband again, with their little baby James who is SO cute. I said are you following me or am I following you? Turns out he was in that restaurant because it is owned by his parents. Of course! And so I started chatting with his father the owner, and it turns out he used to employ one of the chefs that helped us out to cook for the opening last week. Of course!

I walked around today wearing my "Everybody loves an Irish girl" t-shirt and made a lot of friends with various Americans that way too. It made me think about starting a travel business, because two different couples came up to me and said "Are you really Irish?" and proceeded to ask for some restaurant and travel advice and we exchanged emails. They were all interested in hearing about the large hotel project I'm working on here.

Anyway I would upload pics but can't because I'm just at some cafe that happens to have a computer with internet. Although I am sort of homeless and carless, it is still beautiful... :). My new hotel has a pool and so I am hoping the sun is as strong today as it was yesterday - it was hot yesterday! If it is I am going to go swimming.

Ciao to everyone I am missing at home!

Excuse the Absence....

2007-10-01T08:36:00.000-04:00

Sorry for being so MIA lately but we just did our soft opening this past weekend and I have been busy busy. I will get a couple of days off this week so I will do some blogging then.

There has been a lot to do getting everything up and running for a brand new opening, it's tough to get everyone coordinated and organized, and we did many dinners, brunches, etc. even outside. Saturday I worked for 18 hours straight - in a suit and heels the whole time. Longest day I've done in quite a while! Anyway, must nap now because I have to be back for dinner service later. Will put up new pics and info soon and sorry to everyone who has called/emailed that I haven't gotten back to!

Random Pics and Updates

2007-09-22T08:46:00.001-04:00

Looks like no matter how I try to prioritize my blog I only get to it once a week, on the weekends! Hopefully as time goes on that will get better.

This was a pretty good week. I definitely more settled in this weekend than I have so far. Work has been busy, because our soft opening is happening next week. This means next week I'll definitely be working all 7 days and will be busy busy. For now we are prepping and trying to organize, kitchens are being outfitted and tents put up, etc. I have been mostly occupied with getting all of our printed materials done in terms of menus and such. Monday I am going to go back to Florence again instead of to the office to check out the printer's final drafts. The printer that was chosen for us by our parent company doesn't seem to be really on the ball and it is making me pretty nervous. Unfortunately we took everything to this printer too close to the deadline as far as I am concerned, but there's obviously not much I can do about that since it was all decided before I got here. So now they need to get their act together and print FAST. Unfortunately from seeing their corrections I feel like I can't trust them to go it alone on anything, I need to see and approve every page in order to make sure it comes out right. Monday should be a crazy day.

On the stick shift update, I think I finally got it. I practiced a lot last weekend and then did a bit more driving this weekend too. I even mastered stopping on a hill. I definitely have enough to drive around with the company cars. The problem is that every clutch is a little different (for those of you that don't know the deal with stick shifts, the variables and ways you can screw it up basically never end) and we don't have the permanent company cars yet, they are rentals that keep getting cycled around. Like everything else, it seems, it will all be sorted out when we are closer to opening! I feel at least basically confident about it though.

Other than that not much has been going on. I am STILL not in permanent housing although HR has found the place where I will be. It seems it's been rented out until Oct. 1 so I will have to wait until after the Harvest opening to do that move. I am over it for now, I don't really care. I am only tired of not having my own kichen, that is really driving me nuts.

Last weekend I took some pics of my temporary hometown. It was nice sunny day and sometimes walking around or driving around in these hills I have to smile to myself and wonder if I'm really here?

It seems like everywhere I go I run into interesting dogs and I take pics for this blog. One day last week I went to work on the bus and while I was waiting I ran into this one, who apparently likes to climb on top of the medieval wall surrounding the town and check out the scene before he starts his day:

Last weekend the circus came to my little town as well, which was interesting. It was very old school, as in one tent with a show in it, not a spread out American fair style circus. Or maybe it's been so long since I've been to a circus that I don't remember what they were really like. I was eating dinner during all the night portion and I think it was more for little kids than adults, but I did take a walk over to see what it was like. The dog below was VERY upset that the circus was in town, and stood on the street outside and barked continuously.

That's it for today!

Oh, the cuteness...

2007-09-15T14:49:00.000-04:00

So one of the highlights of last week here was that I was able to get to do a night tour of the property, which is something that they will eventually offer to guests, probably in a somewhat modified form. Since the property I am working on is quite large, over 4,000 acres, there are many animals living there. On this night tour our guide, who is the property's hunter, took us around in a Jeep and had a long-range light so that we could see everything that was out in the fields. We saw deer (all kinds, small, large, male, female which all have different names in Italian), wild hare, wild boar (Mom and three babies) and a wolf. It was a little bit like that scene in Pee Wee's Big Adventure where Pee Wee is on the road in the dark and you just see the eyes of the animals and then they turn the lights on and he's surrounded by all these zoo animals. Driving through these fields in the dark all you see is pitch black and then when the light sweeps over it and all these eyes pop out and you see this whole other world. It was quite cool. We didn't see any deer up close though, and I had seen two pass in front of our car on the road to work the other day, very close, so I actually had a better view that time than on the night tour.

Anyway, the real true highlight of the evening came before we even started the tour. We went to the farmhouse where the hunter lives and of course they have hunting dogs there. One of which had just had puppies, 6 weeks ago! So without warning I walk into the house and find this:

I really don't have much else to say about it, the pics speak for themselves:

The puppies were very hungry and looking for their mom but their aunt came by instead:

Finally Mom came by and everyone went nuts chasing after her to get some dinner:

Mom wasn't really having it though, and only stayed for a couple of minutes. The puppies were so hungry they started in on shoes:

I'll try to go back sometime in the next few weeks to give you an update on how the pups are doing!

Bad Blogger!

2007-09-14T15:43:00.000-04:00

My blog has been so neglected lately! I have wanted to write every night, and have wanted to go to bed early every night, but it never seems to happen. Since dinner in Italy is a two hour event no matter what you eat or where you go (unless it's take out pizza or something) I end up coming home late and tired from speaking Italian all day. I've also been out to Florence one night this week and took a night tour around the property where I work to see the animals after dark, it was very cool.

As far as the Italiano goes, in this last week though I am able to express myself much better, almost like in English so I am getting there. I imagine in a week or so I'll be at near complete fluency. For the moment I've been focusing on vocab, since there are a ton of words I don't know. Work has been pretty busy as we have been finalizing a lot of menus for our upcoming soft opening. That and managing... personalities, let's say, in the office. I did take a tour of some of the villas, which are under construction, close to being finished for the soft opening. Here are some pics, including views. These pics were all taken in the early morning. Here is a villa under construction:

Some other pics of it, including views from it:

Here is the kitchen and pool (soon to be) of another one:

As you can see the property is getting close to done but not quite. One day this week I went to Florence with some other co-workers to see our printer. I showed him our texts and it was a bit of a challenge to organize all the printing and explain what it should look like in Italian. It is the ultimate challenge for me, since this stuff was old hat for me in English but now I have to be a bit more on top of my game to remember what I've already said, what I have left to do, etc. I think I remember differently in different languages, it's strange... maybe because I remember by sound/tone? Who knows.

Anyway, so after the printer my co-worker introduced me to a friend of hers and then we went out for sushi! Florence has changed so much since I lived there 6 years ago... you can tell that the immigrant population has grown exponentially, bringing with it a lot of new ethnic food stores and chic little East Village-ish type of restaurants. This new sushi place could have been anywhere in NYC, it was quite chic. It was fun to be there and remember a taste of my life circa a couple of months ago!! But on the other hand it was annoying to walk the streets and be stuck on a packed sidewalk with tourists in front of you, and congestion and traffic and dirt and noise, etc. I guess I had already decompressed out of my city lifestyle a bit because it was a little too much for me.

It ended up being yet another late night since we had an hour drive to get home, and then the next day was the night tour of the property. I happened to meet some VERY cute animals, but I will post the painfully cute pics later as it's my bedtime and I have a stick shift driving lesson tomorrow, early morning! That's another story - the night where I stalled about 25 times in one ride. Practicing the basics tomorrow, needless to say...

More tomorrow!

First Week

2007-09-08T07:44:00.000-04:00

So I have completed my first week of Italian working life. The difference from Monday to Friday was really noticeable! It was pretty hard in the first days to understand everything and get myself situated, all in Italian. I love a challenge but then get mad at myself for putting myself in these situations! But over the next couple of weeks I hope to be back at my normal level of capacity for work. If I was just in an office by myself or just doing office work that would be one thing, but since I am currently an assistant manager and have a boss that wants me to learn his style of management. This means that I will soon be managing employees in Italian, so I need to know what I'm talking about, and fast, in order to be respected and lead a team. God forbid my boss gets sick between now and the next two months or so.

Anyway this weekend I am off to Montecatini to visit some friends so I came into Florence with coworkers this morning and will be off soon. At an internet cafe with time running out, more later!

Still Alive...

2007-09-05T16:27:00.000-04:00

Wanted to really put some stuff up on the blog today but by the time I came home from work and then went out to dinner with some co-workers (two hours of dinner of course) I just got home and am so tired.

Speaking Italian all day in a work setting is TIRING. I never thought I would be overwhelmed language-wise, but I am. Especially since most of my job has to do with intricate kitchen and hotel vocab that I don't even know. It will come in time and work has been going well, getting used to everything and learning a lot for sure.

Will write more when not. so. tired.

Even More Internet Access... Muah ha ha!

2007-09-02T08:35:00.000-04:00

So I am now in my temporary housing and starting work tomorrow!! I am in a hotel in another little town, which has wireless! Who knew. I asked them if they had any internet for guests and the receptionist said, no, unless you have a computer... and I was like, yes, I have a computer! I was pretty excited when she gave me the code to get into their wireless, and they're not even charging. People probably never ask for it so they don't even have any system for it. Whatever, the bottom line is I can finally organize my email, computer, blog and do some research on cars and all kinds of stuff. Also use my Vonage phone, which was a great idea to get. Works like a charm.

It's been nice to have a weekend off just to relax and get ready for work. On the topic of work, I was able to get a nice tour last week with my parents and see a lot of the property, though not even all of it. It's huge! It is very new (not the property but the project) so this means most of the employees are very new too.

It is tough in one sense because it's still in a very pre-opening phase. This means disorganization, general insanity and scrambling to iron out details without having systems in place or experience yet to know how it's going to work. But, on the other hand, it's good for me personally because everyone is starting out fresh, I'm certainly not the only new person there. No one knows each other too well yet and everyone is creating new organizations and new systems. Also I already went through one large restaurant opening from construction to completion, thank God. Without that, when I walked into the dust and construction workers last week for the first time I probably would have been really overwhelmed and turned around and went home. At the very least I have a taste of what this opening experience is going to be like.

Although this is much bigger than just one restaurant. I will be totally focused on restaurant and catering operations, but there will be over 20 villas that are part of a private real estate club which members can join and then leave to a friend of relative as part of an inheritance. There will also be a hotel on property. There's a vineyard full of sangiovese grapes that make Brunello and Rosso di Montalcino (employee discount, what?!), there will be a golf course with 26 holes, a spa, a cooking school, etc., etc.

Here are some pics. This is one of the villas from afar on top of a hill:

A fig tree on the property:

Some of the vines:

I will take better detailed pics of stuff later this week if I can. Luckily while we there, they started to haul in some of the grapes to check on the harvest. Here they are:

They put them into a big machine which seperates out the stems:

Then the grapes get sent through a large tube that goes all the way into the cantina downstairs. I think from there they went right into the large tanks to start fermenting. We were able to see how the bottles get washed, filled and labeled. It was amazing to see.

That's pretty much all for now, I am going to hang out and try organize some of my clothes, most of which are in bags. Since my parents took all the large suitcases home with them except for one, I had to find a solution of some sort for this temporary housing. Unfortunately I had so much stuff that I had to do something. My boss sent one of my colleagues to get me from the train station when I left Florence, and he kindly helped me move all of my stuff to the hotel. Of course, it started raining. Not just like little drops. Like torrential downpours. It was such a mess. Like taking a shower with your clothes on. I am indebted to him for helping me! Especially since it took two trips, what a scene. Let's hope when I move this stuff the next time it's not pouring!

Internet Access! Yessssss!

2007-08-31T06:34:00.000-04:00

Well. Allora. Here I am finally. I have spent a week getting set up (somewhat) in the country in my new town. But today I am in Florence, since my parents left today and they left from Florence. We spent one night here in a beautiful hotel by the Arno river, which my future boss kindly set up for us with a great rate. Here is the view from the terrace in my room:

But anyway Florence is Florence, let's get back to the sticks. My town is small, to say the least, but the countryside is truly beautiful. It will be an adjustment of course, but I think I will adapt to it pretty well over a bit of time. I arrived with my parents last week, we picked up our rental car and went straight to where I will be working. I met my future boss and he was kind enough to set us up in a small villa in the hills outside the property, on top of a hill. Here is the house and some views. It was really a Tuscan experience:

And some views from our hill, which actually look out into the property where I will be working:

There are more pics, but my internet time is sadly slim, I am on WiFi in the hotel lobby and it's by the hour.

I will post more later, but basically we spent a week there, and toured all around the area. Montalcino is very cute, and we also went to Siena of course, and a small town called Murlo. There was a cool Etruscan museum with these artifacts of an Etruscan village found not too far from where I will be living. This Etruscan population lived there in 700-500 BC! I'm clearly not the first to move into this part of the country :). Here is a pic from the exhibit, the edge of the roof of one of their buildings, what you see here is decoration and the drainage system for rain:

Anyway, tons more to say about what we saw, what we ate, etc., but that will come later.

I am temporarily in a Hotel until I get into my permanent housing, which is a bit unexpected and makes things difficult. I am hoping that is going to be resolved very soon and we'll see as I start work Monday. I don't have a car yet, am still doing research and I can't buy it anyway until I have my residenza which I can't get without a permanent address. Plus I have to set up a bank account, etc., anyway. So it will take a couple of weeks I think before I find the car and can buy it. Luckily I am going to get a temporary one from my job, everyone there has been very helpful, as much as possible. But still now that my parents left with the rental car I am officially homeless and carless - nice. I am training it back to Siena today. I have hope that soon all these details will work themselves out and I will feel much better being more established.

My time is running low but I will try to update much more later! A dopo!

Arrivata!

2007-08-25T09:29:00.000-04:00

Here in Italia, safe and sound, checking out the new hometown and getting acclimated to the time change. Montalcino is so beautiful! Just had a delicious lunch of pasta and now we're walking around. Staying in a beautiful Tuscan farmhouse in the hills over the location of my new job, thankfully organized by my boss. Everything great so far, if a bit overwhelming. More later with pics!

Counting Down the Hours...

2007-08-23T16:55:00.000-04:00

Well the packing has finished, finally. 4 large suitcases and 2 small ones... and still stuff left behind. It gets overwhelming and after a while I feel like just going with one carry-on and figuring it out later! But all the essentials are packed away and someone from my future job will be coming to help us with all the bags, thank goodness. We are going to be staying in an apartment not far from the property and then once my parents go home I will move into my new place. Now just a few short hours to rest and have a bite to eat before the trip. Finally!

Will write more from Italia next time!!

Welcome to the world baby Gael! Lili when are you going to start a blog???

Almost There! Ahh!!!

2007-08-21T23:29:00.001-04:00

Well, the day has almost arrived and the details to be ironed out are multiplying. I spent most of last week in Plymouth at my family's beach house relaxing:

It was good to hang out there, see family and just unplug for a while. I did get some things done, like set up a Vonage line so I can get calls on a U.S. number in Italy and try to keep my cell phone number, as well. Hopefully it all works out and I can get Internet access in my house so I can actually use it...

At my time last week at home in Boston I have been packing, packing, packing. The living room looks like closets exploded in it. The more I pack now that I get down to the wire and space disappears, I think I need less and less. Hopefully I won't be mad at myself later.

In other news, you know those machines with the claw thing in it and you put in a quarter and try to grab a stuffed animal? The ones that are the biggest scam because you never win? HA.

Behold me with my new friend, a little bear in a tuxedo.

I also played Bingo with my aunt, grandmother and mom but we all lost. What a bunch of losers. I did have two good free doughnuts there though, so you can't say the whole night was a waste. We laughed a lot too, as usual. Bingo brings out the crazy in us. And many other people, judging by the scene there. Here's the one card that I waited on, for an X obviously:

The most stressful thing in the beginning of this week was trying to sort out a bunch of logistical details of moving to a little old place called Europe. Trying to organize getting my savings transferred into an Italian account (that I can't set up unti I get my codice fiscale and possibly even residenza, which involves the police coming to verify where I say I am living) has been really difficult. The bank in the U.S. says one thing is possible, experienced expats say it's not, someone on the phone says it is, it's been crazy. Then today I finally called Citibank in Florence, and spoke with a nice guy named Alessandro who told me he couldn't see a problem with it, and to stop in and see him when I get to Florence so we could figure it out, "tranquillamente". Love it.

Throughout all this b.s. I would be lost without expatsinitaly.com. Like seriously lost. There are so many experienced expats on there who know the answer to every question it seems, even the crazy Italian bureaucracy, soon to become the main topic of this blog, I'm sure. If they don't they look it up for you, it's crazy. Hopefully one day when this is all said and done and I am settled I can give advice to someone as clueless as I am!

After NYC...

2007-08-11T00:23:00.000-04:00

So turns out a blog = time consuming. Every time I think about adding to my new blog I get overwhelmed with the fact that there is so much to say!

In the time since I last wrote, a lot has happened. I packed up my old NYC apartment and all my stuff except for one suitcase. The move was surprisingly not as hard as I thought, but moving always sucks regardless. It was cathartic to box up all of my stuff, I like to get rid of all my material things every once in a while. I'm sure it will get very tiring by the time I am in Italy and wanting to just have a place to live and a place to put my clothes.

After I packed up my apartment I spent one week with the lovely Tiffy, my partner in crime. And her two cats, Eli and Pumpkin. I bought them toys and then they liked me, though I think at the end they were pretty over me taking up their space. Here's Pumpkin:

And Eli:

We went to the Beyonce concert with Tony -

And hit a couple of my favorite spots in NYC after. I said my goodbyes to Bob's and No Name's! Bob's was so packed and it was really humid out so it was hot and sweaty. The second they started playing music that I didn't really like I was kind of over Bob's. Hurts to say but it's true. It's one of those situations where if I was staying forever I would have left Bob's all complaining about how over it I was. But leaving, I was sad and taking pictures!

The rest of my week included lots and lots of eating, despite the fact that I can barely breathe when I have my jeans on. But you only live once and my days in NYC were numbered. I know I won't be able to get a lot of ethnic foods in Italy, and a lot of my favorite foods I can't even get outside of NYC anyway. "Crack chicken" as we call it, from Pio Pio:

Momofuku ramen, ate a lot of that last week:

Then I went all-American with burgers and Toasted Marshamallow milkshakes at Stand.

It all went on and on, and I started to feel like a competitive eater, like one of those guys at Coney Island with the hot dogs.

I am now home in Boston, hanging out with family and trying to do stuff to get ready. Boring stuff like how am I going to transfer my savings account to an Italian bank, researching getting my residency and all that bureaucratic crap and worrying about things like managing employees in Italian and looking for a car. Sigh. There are a lot of things I can't figure out until I get there, so it's a delicate balance between being prepared and obsessing over things that I can't answer now.

I will try to be better about blogging these days now that I am fairly up to date. Stay tuned!

This is me!

2007-07-22T19:06:00.000-04:00

Here I am, at my going away party in NYC. I'm getting ready to wrap up everything in New York over the next two weeks or so, packing my apartment, moving out, spending time with friends, going to see Beyonce, eating hot dogs, all the things one does when leaving New York City. Stay tuned for more details of what happens when a city girl leaves it all behind for a new life in the hills of Tuscany.