IWineALot... Soon to be a part of La Vendangeuse Tardive: Arriving Late To The Harvest website

Gli Alici del Nonno Amedeo or My Grandfather Amadeo's Sardines in Spicy Tomato Sauce

2012-01-21T16:21:00.000+01:00

I am a true Cancer. I love tradition, setting up a cozy home,antiques, and yes, I’m a dreamer. My world for the most part, is a happy, cozy place. That bowl full of fresh lemons smells asbeautiful as it looks and it makes me happy. They are there to remind me to make a lemon meringue pie from scratch,but I keep putting it off mostly because, they just make me happy to see them and to breathe in their fragrance when I walk by. I own no shiny furniture. Everything is pock marked, and old and I always imagine what life waslike for those who owned them when they were new. I wonder how they got their marks and theirstains. My antique glasses remind me oflemonade and Kool Aid, and picnics in baskets and mint julep and verandas.

Today, I’ve beenthinking about my grandfather, Amedeo Temistocles Orazi who lived in our homewhere I grew up in Sudbury, Ontario. Bythe time I was old enough to really study this character, his tall build wasburdened by his years, and he couldn’t see or hear very well. My visits to him in the basement didn’t lastlong, but they were frequent. He had awood stove down there, and I’m sorry to use that adjective again, but it wasreally "cozy" on a cold winter night, when the only thing to watch on tv washockey or Don Messer's Jubilee. He also cooked on that stove,and he only owned 1 pot and 1 pan. The pan was so seasoned with olive oil and garlic that no matter what he cooked,it smelled good. Today I’ve tried tore-create one of his concoctions. I haveno idea what his recipe was…I’m going by smell. Here it is then

Alici del NonnoAmedeo or Nonno(grandfather) Amedeo’s Fresh Sardines in Spicy Tomato Sauce.

I bought some fresh sardines today at the localPescheria and I asked them to clean them which means cutting of the head andpulling out the entrails. I bought ½kilo. Once home, I rinsed them, and took out the backbone.

I placed them to dry on a paper towel.

Then I added olive oil to cover the pan, two clovesof garlic, 1 diced small onion, and a bunch of flat leafed parsley, 1 hot pepper(should have added two, because I like it spicier) and I simmered for a bit.

I added the fresh, cleaned sardines ( I know mygrandfather used canned sardines which would have had a stronger taste andsmell), and I mixed everything around now and then. I put a pot of salted water on to boil for the pasta.

Then I added the passata to the almostcooked sardines. I would hazard a guessat 1 cup but it was really half a beer bottle. (Passata is slightly cooked, crushed and sieved tomatoes preserved in a beer bottle. The process is done at the end of June whenthe southern Italian tomatoes are ripe and sweet and they are bottled insterilized beer bottles and a crown cap is put on. You can buy Italian passata in glass bottlesin Italian grocery stores.) In Canada, Iused crushed tomatoes. I added a couple of fresh leaves of basil and a bit of salt to taste (only add salt if using fresh sardines.) I let simmer and reduce.

Next, the wine. My grandfather would add a few glugs of hishomemade wine, usually made from Zinfandel. Instead I opened a white Biancolella, Casa D’Ambra from Ischia 2010. Fresh sardines are not strong tasting, and Iwanted a lighter sauce. I thought the minerality of this wine would go well withmy salt-water fish and that it could also stand up to the tomato sauce.

The first pour went into my glass and on the palate there is no doubt that this wine reflects the terroir of a volcanic island surrounded by the salty sea. The wine is like a breath of salt sea air. Biancolella is usually blended with Forastera, 2 indigenous vines of Campania, but the wine is mainly found on Ischia. To date, Casa D'Ambra is the best producer of this wine that I have tasted. It is complex, floral, fruity, and has a lingering mineral aftertaste.

I added a couple of glugs, and I let simmer uncovered while I put the pasta into the salted boilingwater.

I served this dish on pasta, but I realized that once it hadreduced it was better suited to a bruschetta. I could not resist the fresh Italian bread that I bought this morning ,so I returned to the pan after my meal was finished and just scooped it on mybread.

This is a dish perfare la scarpetta, or good enough to cleanyour plate with your bread.

Grazie Nonno!

Why?

2011-12-15T09:24:00.000+01:00

I had reason to be scared of writing the Level 1 exam leadingto the 4^th level and pinnacle level of Master Sommelier qualificationwith the Court of Master Sommeliers. Thetwo days of review before the exam were grueling: 8 to 6pm of one power point after another,one country after another, flipping from old world to new world, districts,zones, individual vineyards, varietals international and indigenous, winecontrols, labeling, geography, soil and blind taste tests all followed bystudying until 11pm and up at 3am for more review. If I hadn’t prepared for 3 weeks prior tothis, I don’t think I would have stuck it out past day one. But I passed the first exam, and with a gradeover 70%, I was invited to attempt the second level test. I knew in my heart of hearts that I was notprepared but buoyed by my initial success, I went for it and did not pass thesecond level exam.

Although I am a Certified sommelier in Italy, I wanted toknow more about International wines. Icouldn’t have picked a more rigorous course of study: the Court of Master Sommelierbased in Torquay, England. It seems thatsince the Brits don’t have a wine culture of their own, they have taken it uponthemselves to maintain an encyclopedic knowledge of everybody else’swines. It didn’t take long for me torealize that I was in a different league.

When you step out of your comfort zone, youlearn a lot about yourself. Thisexperience ended up being a bit of a revelation for me. My first epiphany was that I learned that I do not want to work asa restaurant sommelier. I realized thatthey go to work at about the time that I start looking longingly at my pajamasand continue ‘til the wee hours of the morning. I know that I would not be able to maintain that schedule for very long. But, that does not imply that I don’t want tocontinue with my studies. I am asdetermined as ever to continue with my studies and master this thing calledwine, albeit hopefully by a different route.

People were curious as to why I was there. One person told me I looked too scholarly tobe in the “sommelier business”. Perhapsthey were just being kind and “scholarly” was their euphemism for “old”. I did feel a little out of place, but enjoyedlistening to these young people banter about their work, and it caused me toanswer a really important question. Why am I doing what I am doing? It wasn’t easy to answer that right off, andI think I’m still working my way through it. In order to come up with an answer to that question I had to go back tohow I got here.

Seven years ago, I was a new vice-principal livingin Halifax, Nova Scotia with 3 sons and a husband. We had lived in Halifax for 10 years. My husband had been in the military and wewere used to moving, but it was nice to finally start putting down someroots. For Christmas 2003 I bought myhusband a book called “The Voyage of the Northern Magic: A Family Odyssey”

This is the true story of a family from Ottawa, Canada with3 boys about the same age as our boys were at the time, who sold their home, bought a sailboat,left their jobs behind and sailed around the world with their family for 4years : 65,000 kilometers in 1,145days. The book chronicles all that theydid to prepare for the voyage (they were not sailors), their reasons, and thedetails of the trip. I longed for thatsort of sustained time with my family. Up until then, being together as a family seemed to come in small spurtsof time, interrupted by phone calls, sports, lessons, school, work andfriends. Family vacations had allowed usa short period of time together floating in our bubble, undisturbed by oureveryday routines. To make a 7 yearstory short, we got what we wished for: ouradventure brought us to Japan at the foot of Mount Fuji for 2 years and then toNaples, Italy at the foot of Vesuvius. We managed to give our family the adventure we were looking for, andthen suddenly, our 3 sons were walking out the door seeking fortunes andadventures of their own. You’ve heardthis part of the story before: ourentire married life had revolved around our children and suddenly they weregone.

Tired of feeling sad and lonely, my husband and I were notsatisfied to let the adventure end and we decided to do something useful withthe extra hours in the day that you find yourself with in an empty nest. We had to find comfort in our lives. We hadto find something other than the television at the end of the day. We were not in crisis mode for long before wecame up with a plan. We spelled out howwe wanted to live an active life, how we would do it, and what we were going todo to achieve it. We were faced over andover with the thought of failure, of family and friends laughing at our “mid-lifedecisions”. The decisions that we madehave taken us in a direction that we would never have imagined 7 yearsago. We thought and we planned out howwe wanted to live for the next part of our life. We were faced with all kinds of fears, but wedid exactly that, we faced them and we got busy. My husband signed up for a certificate coursein winemaking and viticulture with UC Davis, and I signed up to be a sommelierand we bought a vineyard, the unfolding of which is all chronicled right hereon this blog. So to answer the question“why”? What started out as an escape hasbecome a passion. When you begin tolearn something in part 2 of your life, you learn it with zeal. I am prepared to master it one hour at a timeeven if it takes me 10,000 hours.

I have, after 4 years of study become confident enough to saythe following: I am a grape grower andmy grapes tell a story and I know how to read that story of weather and soil,of sun and rain. I can foretell harvestdates. I know how to winter prune, andgreen prune and I know why and when to do it. I know about bugs. I tend my vinesand care for them with the attention that I afforded my children and mystudents. I am a sommelier and I notonly know what makes good wine, I am able to taste it and describe it to youusing all of my senses. I may havestarted out unsure, but I know what I know, and I know how to teach you what Iknow. I know where I’m going and I knowwhy: because I want to.

Searching for the Veritas in the Vino.

2011-11-16T17:48:00.001+01:00

I wake up in the dark of the night, out of breath and in apanic. Failure is on my mind and for therest of the night I toss and turn in and out of sleep. Some people motivate themselves by buildingthemselves up, by telling themselves they can and will achieve their goal andthen they begin to believe it. That’snever worked for me. I motivate myself by living and re-living theshame of failure over and over again, night after night in what should be sound,peaceful rest. It’s the sort of spur Ineed to keep me plowing through the studying. It’s the guardrail that keeps me from skirting too close to failure.

I am studying for yet another sommelier exam. It was just last March that I received mycertificate and tastevin from the Associazione Italiana di sommelier. The certificate and tastevin are carefullystored, but it is almost as though I don’t feel that I know enough yet to wearthem. I have done a couple of tastingswearing my full uniform, but I hid my beautiful shiny tastevin in behind myapron. It is a prize that I still don’tfeel qualified to wear. It sounds easyenough doesn’t it? Becoming a sommelieris not a degree; I don’t have to defend a thesis. I just have to have encyclopedic knowledge ofall wines ever made on the planet and the grapes from which they were made, thecharacter of their terroir and their aroma and taste profile as well as bestvintages and be able to tell you all of that in a blind taste test. It is nowonder there are barely over 180 Master Sommeliers in the world! That's about the same number as there are astronauts in the world!

So for whatever deep psychological need that Imay have to be more knowledgeable, for whatever shortcoming I may have that Iam trying to compensate for, I’ve signed myself up, at quite a financial cost,to write the introductory course for the Court of Master Sommeliers in Torquay,Devon on December 4 and 5th. If I dowell enough on the introductory exam, I will be invited to write and performthe exam to become a Certified sommelier with this most distinguished of wineservice examining entities. This is notthe Master Sommelier certification to which I referred. There are two other exams that must bewritten, recommendations submitted, and 5 years experience under one’s belt inthe wine business to be able to even consider writing and performing that exam.

And what do I hope to achieve with all of this? I think it all started as one of those “onething led to another scenarios”…. we wanted to buy an Italian vineyard; we hadbetter know something about wine, especially Italian wine … check. Now, what? Why the self-imposed torture of memorizing wine control laws, anddetails about wine areas in the old world and new? No one is depending on me to learn thisreally well. What do I want to get out of this?

I really don’t know the answer to thatquestion. What I do know is that wine isas complicated a body of knowledge as anything that I have ever studied at university. I feel compelled to better understand it. I know that in order to wear my tastevin withpride, I need to know more. If in vino veritas, then surely that should also betrue of your sommelier.

But this time...I'm really scared.

"All My Life's a Circle"

2011-10-14T10:32:00.000+02:00

I look at the photos and the day replays itself as if it is a slow-motion movie picture. I can’t believe this is my vineyard, and I can’t believe sometimes that this is my life. My friends’ faces are lit with dappled sunlight as they bend to cut the bunches of grapes through the vines and people everywhere are smiling and laughing. The day is playing out as I had hoped: the weather is balmy, sunny, my friends are relaxed, and their children are running freely as kids do when they visit the countryside.

There are more than 30 of us on this day, our second vendemmia or grape harvest since we bought our vineyard. All of us except for Filiberto are Canadians living in Naples as well as 5 friends from way back who came from Toronto and Norway specifically to participate in the harvest: a juxtaposition of faces, times and places that is not lost to me as I move from vine to vine, so filled with joy and excitement, that I can barely speak, but I enjoy listening to their conversations and banter.

The day was made easier by my friends who camped out at the vineyard in true Canadian style the night before in order to get everything ready. Colorful curtains were hung “Bedouin style” to add to the air of festivity. Barbeques were ready for the firing, fire pits blazing, tables and chairs set for the grand feast –our recompense for a day of work well done. The new outhouse that Ron and Joey built was painted and ready just days before.

My friends Carole and Ted organize the guests as they as they arrive, directing them as to where to park, sorting out their cutting tools and gloves, and showing them how and where to cut. Our friends Sharon and Randy are in charge of barbequing the baby back ribs, and setting out the food and tables. Friends, Karen, Scott and Angela take pictures to capture the day. Filiberto, my faithful Italian friend, neighbor and vineyard advisor, dedicates his entire day and tractor to us even though it is his 15^th day of collecting grapes. As busy as he was, he took time to give every child there a ride on the tractor. At the end of the day he invited his family over and with them came home made sausages, Filiberto’s home made wine, his wife Pina, his brother Michele and his wife Giovanna and both of their children. Their presence means a great deal to us. It means that we have and ally and a friend. Above all else, that is what is important to him, which is what his wife Pina tells me. Communication is not always fluid between us, but somehow, I feel as though he cares deeply for us.

The day was grand: our grapes were upgraded this year and went into the “superior” blend. That was indeed a nice surprise but the highlight for me was being able to share this day and this place , to host friends new and old, Canadian and Italian on our vineyard in Solopaca.

On this day, the vineyard, and why we bought it suddenly started to make sense. In the words of Steve Jobs, “As you get older, and you look back on your life you begin to be able to connect the dots and it all begins to make sense.” The vineyard to me is a dot, that once connected to the others, must make up the perfect outline of a circle: the presence of new friends and old friends coming together in this place—this place which is a return to my Italian roots and a return to working the soil and the legacy of my “mezzadri” ancestors who worked Italian soil for landowners; they left for Canada, and in a sense I’ve brought part of them back. My circle is made up of dots of places, and people, which all suddenly became poignant for me today.

The day ends with traditional Italian hospitality, which has been so much a part of my upbringing: sharing in the breaking of bread and too much food.

The cycle on the vineyard is complete for another year. The vineyard’s cycle has now become part of our cycle. It has brought wholeness to my life. In training grapes to make good wine, I've reminded my soul to remember who I am and where I've come from. My vineyard has brought me full circle---it brings others and me a lot of joy, I love sharing it with all of you. It’s our way of giving back what all our friends and family have given us.

My circle is the symbol of wholeness and unity...I'm overflowing.

I Am a Sommelier…Finally

2011-05-30T15:18:00.009+02:00

I am finally a card-carrying, bling-wearing, uniform-sporting, sommelier. I began this journey at the urging of one of my Italian teaching colleagues, Eleonora, who helped me find the course, found out the details for me, and gave me the courage to start on this journey. It was only fitting that she and her husband attend the graduation ceremony with us. Most graduations are significant as defining moments, but this is my re-defining moment. I have always been defined until recently as a teacher of languages: French and English. My recent studies have enabled me to inform about the language of wines. My major, you could say is Italian wines. Tassels and mortarboards were exchanged for tastevins and corkscrews.

The AIS graduation ceremony was held at the Feudi San Gregorio winery in Sorbo Serpico, Avellino, an hour and half drive from where we live. A half hour through Naples traffic, taking the A1 autostrada Bari/Salerno exit to the A16, and finally a 20 minute ride up and around rolling, and lush countryside. As you approach the winery from the parking lot your only access inside is through what looks like a rusted out space age cubicle, which had all of us, puzzled about what could await us on the other side. The entrance is definitely meant as a statement--“this is no ordinary Campanian winery”. There will be no castle, no antique old presses in the yard. The only thing aged here is the wine.
As you make your approach, the sliding doors open “Get Smart style” to finally reveal the conception of the Milan based, female architect, Hikaru Mori. At this point the statement made at the entrance begins to reveal itself as prose: a man-made brook and small pools accompany you on the paths through the herb garden, and the rose garden all surrounded by pastoral hills of vineyards folding into one another, a little reminiscent of Cote d’Or in Burgundy. Even their vines are kept short and close to the ground as they are in Burgundy, perhaps because of the elevation and coldertemperatures in Avellino.

Here is a photo by Tom Hyland, used with permission, of part of the estate or the Cutizzi vineyard. http://learnitalianwines.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/best-italian-wines-and-producers-2010/cutizzi-4/

Hikaru Mori is known for integrating nature into buildings and those man-made brooks somehow meandered their way inside the winery where it is said they keep the barrels moist.

The wine and the winery, however, are not the only draw to Feudi San Gregorio. There is a lot of competition among winery owners to get people to their winery and Feudi seems to have the drawing card: their Michelin star restaurant, Marenna’. Our 3-year-long sommelier course culminated with the perfect pairing of 6 of Feudi’s wines with a 7-course meal. Each plate was subtle yet flavourful in a room that was equally as understated. I did not take any tasting notes that evening, and photos were an afterthought but none of the wines nor the food, were a disappointment. Careful thought by chef Paolo Barrale went into the pairing of each course on the menu that night with the wines to masterfully highlight the best in both. The menu was as follows:

Antipasti of local goat cheeses and homemade salumi. This was served with the DUBL Falanghina 2007, Metodo Classico. Winemakers at Feudi, Riccardo Cotarella and Mario Ercolino teamed up with French champagne maker Anselme Selosse to produce this dry, persistent citrusy sparkling wine.

Homemade breads and breadsticks with a second Sparkling: DUBL Greco 2006, Metodo Classico

Zeppola di baccala' con verdure in carpione e pepe limonato served with Pietracalda 2009 Fiano di Avellino DOCG
(sorry I ate it before thinking to take a photo)

Risotto al pomodoro, ghiaccia di basilico e Olio followed by Ravioli di ricotta, fave e guanciale Extravergine d'Oliva di Ravece all topped by Taurasi 2007, Taurasi DOCG

Controfiletto di vitello affogato al Taurasi e cipolle di Montoro followed by Il Maialino...peperoni e patate in concert with Montevergine 2004, Taurasi Riserva DOCG.

Predessert and Caffe' e nocciola were crowned with Privilegio 2008, Campania Bianco IGT.

After this meal, which is one of the finest I’ve ever had in Italy,…no make that anywhere… came the speeches and finally the presentation of diplomas and tastevins.

So here then is Cathy re-defined in simple terms: teacher of languages and wine, vineyard owner, and sommelier.
http://www.feudi.it/en/

Of interest to viticulturists:
Pierpaolo Sirch, a transplant from Friuli is Feudi’s in-house “agronomo” (vineyard manager). He runs a one-of a kind vine pruning school held at Feudi: Simonit and Sirch’s Scuola Italiana di potatura della vite.
Their philosophy is to maintain the integrity of the vine using a combination of modern and traditional pruning techniques in order for the grape to show off its true character.
www.preparatoriuva.it

A Year Later.

2011-01-31T15:07:00.010+01:00

The date today is January 26th, 2011: the 1st day of the last quarter moon before it begins to wane. It will be a good time to finish the winter pruning in the vineyard. The new moon begins on the 3rd of February, so we will have to get it done by then. Coming around full circle to where we started in the vineyard, one year ago is a good time to reflect on what we’ve done, what we should have done, and what we have yet to do. The vineyard is a quiet, contemplative place through the winter. There are no tractors in the distance, not even the sounds of insects buzzing. On our vineyard today, there is only the sound of my clippers, cutting away last year’s growth leaving but two new arms on each trunk. I remember how unsure we were pruning last year. We are in control of the vines now. It may seem pastoral today but the past year was in fact more akin to a roller coaster ride. The waxing and waning of the moon had a lot less to do with it than did our lack of knowledge of vineyard maintenance and Italian agrarian/property laws which at times led us barrelling and stumbling through unknown, unexpected twists and turns. Mistakes were made.
Last August, I made a big mistake by not trusting Filiberto. He was away on holidays with his family through the month of August and September when the betrayal occurred. Before leaving, he advised us not to become members of the local cooperative winery as he would find a buyer for our grapes: “Non preoccuparti. Mi occupo io”. He assured us we could get considerably more for our grapes per kilo by selling them privately.
Our summer holidays came and went and our sons returned back to university. We began visiting the vineyard in earnest again, but come September on a vineyard there isn’t much more to do but wait. Our grapes were ripening and were hanging heavily from their stems. With no more work to do on the vines at this point, I did what comes naturally to me. I worried. I hadn’t heard from Filiberto since June. What if Filiberto doesn’t find a buyer, or what if he’s washed his hands of us? I thought of calling but I didn’t want to disturb him with my preoccupations during his holidays. I waited a bit longer, to the middle of September, and still no word from Filiberto. That day, worry gave way to action . I had no clue how to find a buyer for our grapes, but I decided to visit a local winery. In conversations with Filiberto, he explained to me, that he had a cousin who worked at this particular winery and there might be a possibility that they would be interested in buying them. It takes great courage for me to approach people in Italian, but you can imagine my trepidation in approaching an established winery and asking if they would like to buy our grapes. How do you even start a conversation like that? I drove up to Santi Martini Winery and asked to speak with the manager. The place was empty except for the young woman who greeted me at the locked door, and the manager that I could see through a glass door, who was busy with someone else. She asked what my business was with him, and I foolishly explained the whole story. She had a doubtful look on her face, but recognizing the desperation in my eyes she kindly offered an optimistic “maybe” to my query of “do you think he would be interested in buying some of our grapes?” The first 10 minutes of our meeting began with him asking me how I know Filiberto, and where exactly is our property, and complimenting me on the land as he knew it well, and what are Canadians doing here, and why the interest in owning a vineyard. Then he said something hopeful: Filiberto took me out to see your grapes…your grapes have fared better than a lot of people in the area who had a bad onset of peronospora at the beginning of the season.” “What a relief,” I thought to myself. “Filiberto had been thinking about us. That’s why I probably hadn’t heard from him…the grapes are probably already sold.” Feeling a little more courageous, I was finally able to blurt out why I had come, and blurt it out I did. The expression on his faced suddenly took on a look of incredulity, and then seriousness. He very quickly but delicately explained how these are difficult times in the wine industry, and I knew immediately where the conversation would go from here. I wanted to bolt not so much out of embarrassment but more from the feeling that I am running out of time. I had to sell these grapes, and I had to do it today. “You will have a hard time finding any wineries around here that would be looking for extra grapes. “We’re having trouble selling the wine that we have. People aren’t buying.” I walked away with what felt like our whole load of 51,000 kg of grapes on my shoulders, and the smell of them rotting everywhere. I scrolled down to Filiberto’s number on my cell phone, stared at it for a while but I really didn’t want to disturb him. We had gone to him for advice at every turn throughout the year…he was on holidays, and I felt it would just be too much of a “disturbo”.
From there I wandered somewhat aimlessly to the Cantina Sociale di Solopaca, the local Wine Coop—the group to which Filiberto warned me not to join. “You have to join for life, which isn’t fair. What if you and your husband want to make your own wine one day…you won’t be able to? They don’t market the wine well, and you are paid according to how much wine they sell. You can make double and more if you sell privately.” I walked through to their cool but empty air-conditioned sales room to ask about the looming dates for the harvest, which should be for any vineyard owner a much anticipated climactic high point. “Anytime during the first 15 days of October” was the reply. I was trying to play the part of a casual interested party and I couldn’t figure out how to segue into getting down on my knees and begging, “Is it too late for me to become a member? Will you buy my grapes? I’ll do or pay whatever it takes.”

I left the Cantina Sociale di Solopaca with its glistening crusher, polished and idle; I looked at the silos soon to be recipients of Solopaca nectar wondering how I could get my grapes in them. By now, I believed that Filiberto had not found a buyer, and that he didn’t have the heart to tell us what the manager at Santi Martini Winery had told me: “these are hard times for wineries. You’ll be hard-pressed to find any winery around here buying extra grapes. We can’t sell the wine that we have.” With these words echoing in my head I had made a decision. Within 5 minutes I arrived unannounced outside the home of a business man who had handled the legalities of me becoming a registered farmer. He had told me in the process that he was once the president of the Cantina Sociale di Solopaca and strongly urged me, to become a member.
I was greeted by 3 barking dogs and a woman who appeared from the upstairs window, calling out, “Chi è?” “It’s me…Catherine.” He wasn’t home at the time but she advised me to wait, she would call him on the telephone and he shouldn’t be too long. I waited awkwardly outside the large fence while the dogs continued their face off with me. A few minutes later, a Jeep arrived and the large cancello opened and allowed us both entrance to the driveway.
“Signora Caterina…come sta? Come va al vigneto?” Once again, it didn’t take long for me to get to the reason for my visit. I tried to work through my conversation with him so that he could fully understand my predicament. As I talked, he leaned back in his leather chair, in his relaxed dress and Dock Sider well-warn shoes, and watched me and listened to me intently with a strange bemused smile on his face. “So where is Filiberto?” he asked. “I thought he was taking care of things for you.” I explained that I didn’t want to disturb him during his holidays, and that I think it is time to take matters in my own hands. "Maybe I’ve depended on him for too many things." And then I just came out with it, “Is it too late for me to become a member of the Cantina Sociale as you had suggested we do from the start.” He didn’t reply, but asked me to wait a moment and left the room to go into an adjoining office, leaving the question hanging in the air like wet clothes on a clothesline on a cold Canadian February day. I wondered…did I say something wrong? Am I that inconsequential that he would just leave me here, and he’s now gone on to complete some other business? He returned after a minute and produced a piece of paper. It was my registration to become a member of the Cantina Sociale, already completed awaiting my signature. “I knew you would be back” he said smugly. “For people like you,” he said, “people who know nothing about grapes and making wine, this is what you need.” I wondered what he meant by “people like you” but relief and gratitude allowed me to recognize that I was not in a position to argue at this point. I felt immediately as though I was turning my back not only on someone who had helped, but worse, that I was betraying a friend. Filiberto never made us feel different, he never made us feel stupid…he recognized our passion, and our dedication and did everything in his power to teach us to be successful. He treated us like a friend or family…the highest compliment an Italian can bestow on a foreigner.

Within a week Filiberto had returned and I broke the news to him over the phone. He didn’t say much, but when I met him a few days later at the vineyard, he seemed at first to be insulted and angry , but then I realized it was “hurt”. “I had your grapes sold” he said. “My brother and I…we went to the trouble of bringing someone to the vineyard…I had your grapes sold. You could have got over 30 cents a kilo, but now you will only get under 16 cents.”
I tried to explain how I panicked and I didn’t want to disturb him during his holidays. “It had nothing to do with betrayal…I panicked…that’s all…I panicked.” His reply, “I thought you trusted me….I helped you because I wanted you to succeed.”
I am, as a result of that mistake, a lifetime member of the Cantina Sociale di Solopaca. I cannot, even if I had the means to, make my own wine with my grapes, or sell them to anyone else. Rigid rules to which Filiberto did not want to see us confined to.
In the end, Filiberto realized how the situation had evolved. He forgave us, and helped us bring 51,000 kg of grapes to the Cantina Sociale. As members, we get wine on tap. I don’t know who was more proud that day, he or we as he dumped our grapes from his tractor into the crusher followed by a toast among friends and family who had helped us pick. All eyes were on Filiberto followed by the gaggle of us, foreigners, snapping photos at every turn. I heard him say to a passing member who was staring at our shenanigans that day, “this is really good publicity for us you know…to have foreigners come here. We could use a little more of this.” He was still trying to protect us.
We have come full circle in the yearly cycle of the winery. Filiberto is leaving us to do our work in the vineyard and will come by when it’s done with his tractor and tools to help us mulch, and fix some posts. As we work our way through the vines once again, pruning last years’ growth and leaving only two new arms, the vines are more agreeable to being disciplined. They are listening to our good council. They grow and bend the way we want them to. Even though our grapes get mixed into the bunch with all the other producers in the area we want to grow the best quality product that we can. For this, I find myself looking up to the moon for the optimal time to prune, and to Filiberto, for his good sage advice….the kind that only comes from friends.

Green Pruning, Red Tape

2010-06-21T10:21:00.004+02:00

After a one weekend break from the vineyard we’re back at it again. Filiberto saw us drive by, and came to tell us that he had done one more spray application and that it was now time for la potatura verde or green pruning. “Si deve liberare I grappoli”:you have to free the bunches of grapes before they get too big. He spent no more than ten minutes with us, giving us a lesson in what needed to be done, and how it should be done. In five minutes he managed to work half-way down one row, all the while explaining and talking about what we were trying to achieve and why. He explained that this is done to rid the plant of unnecessary foliage, to free the bunches, to allow air to circulate around them. The bunches will also be a lot easier to pick if positioned this way come harvest time. The thinning is only done underneath the bunches, but not above them. The canopy on top is maintained in order to protect the now dangling bunches from the hot sun, and from hail in the event that it should fall. The ideal canopy allows for a dappling of sun to hit the bunches. He explains that we also must be mindful of next year’s shoots. If we trim some of the shoots that are hanging over into the rows, we must remember that at least two of them will make up next year’s new cordon. Next year’s shoots need to be kept at least 5 buds in length. “allora fate attenzione”…so, be careful, don’t cut them too short. Filiberto left, and the 3 of us began making our way through the 38 rows, one vine at a time. We could not come close to keeping up with Filiberto’s pace. There were too many decisions to make: pull this, keep that, “oh no…those were grapes I just pulled off and not leaves; is this a shoot I’m going to want for next year? How long should I keep it?” To give you a better idea of what we were up to this weekend here are some before and after photos:

Alittle while later, Filiberto’s brother Michele and his wife Giovanna drove by. I went over to greet them and they got out of their Jeep. They apologized for being hot and sweaty, as they also had been doing the potatura verde. They made sure to give us the same lesson that Filiberto had given us about an hour earlier. We didn’t mind, as they really seem to care that we do things well. Michele asked if I had registered my vineyard yet. This is a bit of a worry for me, but I told him I was in the process of getting it done. In order for me to be able to sell the grapes,( legally), I need to make my way through the maze of Italian bureaucracy. Italians themselves complain to no end about government workers, but I’ve rarely seen an Italian lose their patience with one. This surprises me, because Italians are not known to maintain their decorum when frustrated just for the sake of politeness. I’ve asked a few people about this and they say, that you must treat these government people with kid gloves because if you get mad at them, they can easily sabotage what it is you are trying to do. With this in mind, I realized I was in way over my head, as I didn’t have a clue about what I needed and which government agency I needed to report to. I needed help and I hired, a local geometra, who just happened to be in the grape business, and who just happened to be the person who cultivated the land that we bought as the former owner had died and his wife allowed him the rights to cultivate it. Already too complicated for me.

I made an appointment to see him, but I was not sure what I was going to ask of him, and what it is, if anything he could do for me. All I knew is that he had some papers that were in his name that needed to be transferred into my name. As he mentioned all kinds of officious documents that I would need, documents I couldn’t even remember the names of let alone understand what they might be, I was filled with despair, but convinced that this was a person that I shouldn’t aggravate, and who might be able to help. So I apologized for knowing nothing, and asked him to repeat what exactly I needed to do. I would stop him in conversation and ask him to repeat the name, and I would write the words down. If I could get the correct names of the papers that I needed I could go home and them up on the internet to come to some sort of understanding of them. I know I must have looked pathetic, but even at that, I didn’t get the impression I was arousing any sympathy. The list went on, and I continued to ask what it was called, and where I would go for it. There were no straight answers. I pressed on. He finally offered to do it all for me on my behalf. I didn’t have all the words that I needed in Italian to express the relief and the gratitude that I felt for him in that moment. "You mean, I could hire you to do all of this for me?" “Siiii” he responded with a smile. I am not sure of this man, and it is clear that he is not sure of me. The relationship is not yet one of trust as I would like it to be. He’s a person whom people speak sotto voce about when I mention his name, and then they speak in dialect to each other about him and I can’t understand what they are saying. I can’t be sure of his trustworthiness, but no one has really come out and said anything against him. I know that he lives in a rather large stately home in Solopaca.
He wrote up a document that he asked me to sign identifying the actions that he would take on my behalf. I went home and I looked up every term that I had written down during our conversation. This is what I understand he will do for us, and what I understand the terms to be based my on internet searches:
(1) He would transfer the declaration of the area under vines(la dichiarazione della superficie vitata) into my name. Curiously, this doesn’t happen automatically when one buys a property.
2) He would get a VAT number for me which essentially means a business taxation number. (accensione di Partita IVA)
3) He would register the business (and I needed a business name) with the Chamber of Commerce (la Camera di Commercio). As a business name we chose Azienda Agricola Cerasella (little cherries for the cherries that grow around the property).
4) He would transfer my name to the Fascicolo Aziendale which is a set of documents and information that summarizes the business situation held by the regional government.
5) He would register me with INPS (Istituto Nazionale Previdenza Sociale or the National Social Security Institute which issues pensions, unemployment benefits and other types of aid administered by the Ministry of Welfare….I’m guessing a pension plan) as a “coltivatrice diretta” literally I’m the person who directly cultivates the land: the farmer.

I had to first of all become a farmer. I found out there are two types of farmers: an impreditore agricolo, and a coltivatore (or in the case of a female a coltivatrice) diretta. No one, could tell me what the difference is. I went onto the internet going from site to site, reading different threads of people asking the same question as me. Though there was discrepancy in the answers that I found, I think I basically know what the difference is. The Coltivatore Diretto or “direct farmer” has to pay a registration fee (120euros/year)and is issued a partita IVA (VAT) number. The coltivatore can sell his product for up to 7000 euros a year. The coltivatore diretto may hold another job and doesn’t need to have any professional training nor does he need to keep accounting unless he makes more than 7000 euros. This person is registered at the Coldiretti I haven’t found out what that is, or where it is. I think it is some agricultural association or government division. My guess is that this category is for hobby farmers. They can pay into INPS (Istituto Nazionale Previdenza Sociale or the National Social Security Institute.....Issues pensions, unemployment benefits and other types of aid administered by the Ministry of Welfare.
The second type of farmer is an Impreditore Agricolo Professionista who is a person who has had some sort of training in agriculture, the raising of animals, or in the care of a forest. It is also someone who dedicates at least 50% of his work time to this endeavour and derives 50% of his income from it. This is an agricultural business, and accounting is formally kept and dues are paid to the INPS and INAIL (Workmen’s Compensation – Istituto Nazionale per l’Assicurazione contro gli infortuni sul Lavoro.)

I don’t know how much I will be charged for these services either. When pressed, I got an answer like, “well, it wouldn’t be much”.

As I left his office and proceeded down his long driveway I felt conflicting feelings. I was relieved but still a little uneasy. For some reason, I felt compelled to turn around and look back when I noticed my geometra /appointee was watching me leave. He had both hands on his hips, and he still wore the suspicious look.

Dinner Tonight: Zucchini Fritters with Romanesco Salsa, Peperoni in Padella col Pomodoro, and Ravioli con Ricotta e Spinaci col salvia

2010-06-13T20:37:00.007+02:00

We had a lazy Sunday, and I was meaning to go grocery shopping today, we were meaning to go to the vineyard, and we never got to either place. So, dinner was the result of what we had on hand.

The zucchini fritters with the Romanesco sauce is a recipe that I got from my cousin in Toronto who took a cooking class. They are made by grating zuchini; I used 2 very large zuchini that Giacomino gave me yesterday, grating an onion, chopping up 1 clove of garlic, parmesan cheese, and adding to that 2 eggs, and flour. I squeezed the extra liquid out of them, formed little patties, and fried them in olive oil, because I didn't have any grapeseed oil on hand.

The salsa calls for tomatoes, a handful of almonds, parsley, de-pitted green olives, roasted red peppers n brine, all mushed up in the blender, oh...and a red hot dried pepper. I don't use quantities when I cook...you'll have to guess. Here's what it looked like on the plate. They were crunchy on the outside, and sweet on the inside with the sauce adding zest and flavor, and spice.

I also needed to finish off some green peppers that I had in the fridge, so I made a typical neapolitan dish: peperoni in padella col pomodoro (green peppers and tomatoes fried in olive oil and garlic). I vary the recipe, and some neapolitans may tell me that I've made it all wrong, but to my palate, it tastes the same. I cut up the green peppers and tomatoes, and fry them both together in olive oil and garlic. I didn't have a lot of tomatoes left, so I didn't get a lot of juice from it. It's best served on fresh pane a legna, a dense, heavy bread, sold by the 1/2 or kilo, cooked in a wood-fired oven.

The last dish was Ravioli filled with Spinach and Ricotta, with olive oil a little bit of butter, sage, topped with tomatoes and fresh Italian parsley. If you would really like any of these recipes please let me know, and I will do my best to come up with quantities. The wine? That was left over too--last night's Falanghina/Garganega. It all tasted so good.

Trying to Make Sense of New EU Rules Governing Wine and a couple of questions.

2010-06-13T13:22:00.008+02:00

The EU has recently legislated new communal regulations regarding food and drink, and wines have not escaped the makeover. There was a lot of negativity in the industry, as you can well imagine, when the reforms were first proposed as every country scrambled to decode the regulations to figure out what the impact would be for them. Thankfully, the reforms also insure that traditional “best-practices” that currently offer such diversity in the Italian wine landscape for example, are preserved throughout the re-structuring.
I have read as many articles as I could find on the subject, which I have referenced below, and have summarized, and greatly simplified the amendments, which apply to the vineyard owner, the winemaker and the consumer.

The main reasons for the reform were to effectively deal with overproduction, to harmonize vineyard practices and winemaking rules, and to create more transparent labeling practices to make choices clearer for the consumer throughout all EU member states.
While Europe is still the biggest producer and exporter of wines, New World wines seem to be gaining greater market shares and this fact has led European winemakers and economists to squirm and look for ways to maintain and increase their foothold.

The first area that caught the eye of the Common Market Organization for Wine (wine CMO) was the wasteful surplus of wine due to overproduction. They have set out a plan to eliminate this surplus and equilibrate supply with demand. Every year Europe is left with large quantities of wine for which there is no market and they must then deal with costly decisions either to store or distill the surplus. Hence, they decided that a good way to discourage this practice is to eliminate distillation or storing subsidies and to encourage producers only to make wine in the amount that they can sell.

Overproduction is also directly related to over planting to which the following rules have been established with regard to the conversion and re-structuring of vineyards:
-grubbing up of unlawful plantings (literally pulling up vines) which according to the Official Journal of the EU “constitutes a source of unfair competitions and exacerbates the problems of the wine sector”. As well, there is a 3-year voluntary grubbing up scheme for producers who wish to turn their vineyards into other uses.
They have incorporated stricter rules and monitoring with respect to awarding planting rights or replanting rights
-maximum yields per hectare preserving the quality of the grape over quantity
-the grapes planted must be of the vitis vinifera species, the species native to Europe

The most salient regulation for winemakers seems to focus on the prohibition and/or limitation of the practice of chaptilisation (the addition of sucrose to a low-alcohol wine or use of concentrated musts in order to increase the natural alcohol strength of the wine) except in certain areas where achieving ripeness in the grapes (and thus minimum sugar content) is difficult due to climatic factors. In these areas, chaptilisation will have maximal limits: 2% for Spain, Slovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, Italy, Portugal, Greece, Cyprus, Malta, and 1% for certain parts of France.
Why would this practice have come under the microscope? Well, some consider the artificial addition of sugar gives the wines a certain “blousy” unnatural effect (MacNeil, Karen: The Wine Bible). The regulations aim at improving the quality of wines.

Everyday consumers are often perplexed by the complicated and diverse labeling systems that don’t give the consumer a lot of information about what they are buying. Not only do rules governing quality vary from country to country, but some EU countries (France, Italy and Spain), label their quality wines for the terroir from which they come. In other words, the place of Origin and associated traditions and grapes varietals particular to that area, represent quality in some countries, while others govern their labeling purely on quality, unrelated to terroir, such as Germany.

Labeling rules have been simplified to allow more transparency for the consumer and must conform to the new labeling hierarchy as illustrated below. Each country will have the same categories.
The IGP wines (Indicazione Geografica Protetta, or PGI, Protected Geographical Indication) were formerly the IGT category of wines in Italy.
The DOP wines (Denominazione d’origine Protetta, or PDO, Protected Designation of Origin), which in Italy are the former DOCG and DOC wines, consolidated into one category.Before this reform, these terms only applied to food products such as cheese, some fruits and vegetables and olive oils. Now these terms apply to wines. IGP wines may also include the former table wines that had a Geographical indication. Table wines without the Geographical Origin would be delegated to the category of “Wines or wines without a geographical Indication”. Wines in this category will now be allowed to mention the grape variety and the vintage. The accuracy of this information will be monitored by authorities, and the list of grape varieties will be limited.
The new rules were legally adopted in March 2008, came into effect in Aug, 2008, but producers have until December 2010 to comply with the new labeling rules.

The question that comes to mind in all of this, and I admit that my research has been cursory, is how will the consolidated category of DOP wines make the distinction between the current 49 Italian DOCG's which are, as I understand, of superieor quality, to the more 300 DOC's?
And I have one more question related to this...how will future superior Italian wines distinguish themselves? Perhaps, I've got to get away from the old categories. Perhaps, this time it will be left to the consumer to decide.
I welcome any comments, answers or clarificatons.

You may read the reforms in English at the following site
http://www.apeda.com/apedawebsite/Announcements/LexUriServ_479.pdf - 61 pages

You may read the more concise and comprehensive EU Commissioner for Agriculture and Rural Development, Mariann Fischer Boel’s explanation and justification for the reforms at
http://ec.europa.eu/agriculture/capreform/wine/infopack_en.pdf
Both of the above were sources used for this article as well as

http://reignofterroir.com/2009/06/21/the-wines-they-are-a-changin-the-new-eu-regulations/

While the Italian wine pyramid in this article is my own drawing, the original comes from the following Italian site
http://www.edagricole.it/terraevita/archivio/2010/18/TV_10_18_p022-24_OCM%20vino.pdf

http://www.calwinexport.com/files/Europe%20Wine%20Reform%202008.pdf

Getting from Here...To There

2010-06-11T23:01:00.009+02:00

Here There

As we tie the last vines we hear our very secretive neighbor call out to us once again. She has been making herself known on our frequent visits, but refuses to show herself. Her call sounds an awful lot like “cu-cu”, begging us to repeat it back to her. This is the first time I think we’ve ever heard a real cuckoo before. I look around, but I can’t see her. I call her a “her” because she doesn’t appear to be doing a lot of work while we are there. Female cuckoos are a clever, lazy, lot and get other birds to make their nests, and even raise their young. They will go as far as eating the other eggs in the hosts’ nest that they choose. They spy on the nests’ occupants closely, and can often mimic their eggs in color and size. The foster parents are none the wiser, and lavish the young cuckoo with all the love and attention that they would offer their own. Where’s the satisfaction in that, I wonder.
But then, as the spring sun heats up, and we can barely work past noon anymore, and whatever unseen, unheard bugs that have found a take -out lunch on my neck bring my frustration level to boiling point, I entertain the thought, for a while, of hiring someone to do this work. I’m in a sea of grapevines, and I know that if I stop now and linger on that thought for too long, I might give into it, so I put one foot in front of the other, and go to the next vine. It becomes apparent to us that we will have to move: either closer to Solopaca, or build something on the property. We should be doing this work in the early morning and late evening, but we live too far away for that right now. No one works in the afternoons here except us; it’s just too hot.
We are beginning to know our vines, and they are beginning to respond in a way that kind of makes us proud. I can’t help making the comparison between parents and children. It is very similar to the pride that I feel towards my own children when they accomplish or do good things. We have put the time into parenting these vines, and they’re responding, just like we had hoped.

We venture into a part of the vineyard that we haven’t been to for a while. We tend to spend a lot more time on the first rows than we do the last. As I am the first on this day to venture into this area, I am also the first to feast my eyes on a wall of overgrown cherry trees. We’ve heard locals refer to our part of the town as “Ceraselle” meaning “little cherries” for the now wild cherry trees that grow up here. I look up and there is a wall of green with bursts of bright red cherries. I’m delighted and I call everyone over to see it . Our son Adam acts rather blasé but it is he who took these photos:

Ron, my husband, thinks this should be the business name for the vineyard. The cherries are my pat on the back today…they seem to have recognized our efforts all these days, and reach out with their beauty to our tired spirits, and make us feel like it is worthwhile.
Something the cuckoo bird will never know.

Tasting notes tonight are of a local wine from Benevento. This wine, though not from Solopaca is from a town higher up the mountain in Frasso Telesino. It is IGT because of the use of the garganega grape which is not a local grape but more widely used in the Veneto region in Soave and Gambellara.

Azienda Agricola De Fortuna
Falanghina Beneventano IGT
Finile 2009
Grapes: Falanghina and Garganega
ABV 12,5%
The wine is bright, crystal clear and straw yellow in color, and almost transparent but with a slight tinge of green on the rim. It is fairly viscous with fairly quick tears, medium in size.

The town where the grapes are grown, Frasso Telesino, is located at about 374m above sea level, and has greater fluctuations in day and night temperatures than Solopaca where we are located, so I’m expecting to find more exciting aromas in the wine: it is intense with sweet, spring flowers like jasmine, and fruit-filled of pear, citrus, and definitely some flinty mineral tones, some almond. The wine is fairly complex in its aromas and presents an elegant bouquet. This wine has made a very good first impression.
To the taste it is dry, leaves behind a warmth from the alcohol, but is nice and smooth. There is a light and pleasant freshness from the acidity which is well balanced against the smooth feel of the wine. There is a liveliness there, but also a very persistent minerally,
flinty aftertaste which I think comes from the Garganega. What a lovely combination in a wine.
It is of medium structure, well-balanced, fairly intense and persistent. It has good overall harmonious qualities, and an elegant finish. Complimenti Azienda De Fortuna! It's late, and I'm afraid, I opened the wine just to taste, so I haven't paired it with anything. It's length and persistence would have be believe that it could handle a little competition from the food: perhaps stronger tasting fish dishes, medium-aged cheeses.

Filiberto

2010-05-27T15:35:00.009+02:00

This is the 4th time today that I see what looks like a miniature train crossing the valley floor. From our vantage point on the vineyard, the train from Naples to Rome runs by as though it were a little toy train: the sound it makes across the valley is faint like that of a toy train, and its bright silver and red paint sparkles as if it were under a Christmas tree.
It’s now 7 in the evening and we’ve been working all day tying the new shoots to the top wire.
When we arrived early in the morning, Filiberto, our neighbour, announces that he has just finished the 3rd application of Bordeaux mixture to our vineyard, a fungicide made up of copper sulphate and lime. It is considered to be eco-friendly and is used by organic gardeners. His sprayer is still attached to his tractor; he’s wearing a mask, a rain jacket and a baseball cap.
He looks a little embarrassed as he tells me that our vineyard has unfortunately been infected with peronospora, as have most of the other vineyards in the area. Peronospora or powdery mildew (exactly what we are trying to avoid when we spray), is a fungus that is the result of a wet spring and the leaves not having enough time or air around them to be able to dry properly. We have had a very wet, cold spring, with a lot of strong winds. The sunny days have indeed been few, and the weather is more like that of Nova Scotia where we come from. The hot sunny weather so common to this area is reluctant this year, and the vineyard is showing signs.
Filiberto informs me that he will be turning the soil this week so it is time for us to tie the new growth to the top wires. Before he leaves he shows me how his father used to tie the shoots to the wire. He grabs a handful of long grass and uses it like a twist tie. He says that it will last and hold the vines all summer.

As I tie I noticed that some of the grapes are starting to flower, and others show the signs of downy mildew…little grape bunches are turning brown, and I’m told they will just whither.
Sometimes this occasional withering of the bunches is another way to green prune. By reducing the number of bunches, you increase the quality of the grapes that you do harvest. That would be fine if we hadn’t already reduced our product by half. When we became owners of the vineyard, it was evident that it had had only minimum care over the past few years. The grass had grown so that it was now a vineyard on a lawn, taking valuable nutrients and water away from the vines. The vines had grown too big, and far too many shoots were allowed to remain on the vine.
The trellis system in place was two cordons of permanent spurs;
We use new cordons every year, a method called the Guyot System which uses last year’s shoots , a new fruitting cane as opposed to using the same cordon every year.

We tie all day, and we only manage to make it through 14 of the 38 rows. I don’t want to stop, but my husband and my son want to go home now. We worked through thunder and rain showers today.
On our way home we must stop off at Filiberto’s home in order to pay him for the work he does for us. Their home is newly built. The left side of the house is only a shell, and they live on the right side which in true Italian fashion is immaculate and finished in a nouveau but rustic style. His home is not on his vineyard but in the town of Solopaca. The left side of the house will be completed when one of their children marries, and they will have a ready made house for them to live in. This practice is very common in Campania as Campanians don’t like to be far from their family members, and by far, I mean across town. Next door is the ideal, shouting distance is considered acceptable. Many homes in this region either have an unfinished second story, or an unfinished duplex beside them waiting for one of their offspring to take occupancy. Many are now being sold, as it is the parents who are moving themselves to where their children have found jobs.

We arrived with a gift of a flat of strawberries, another practice that has become habitual for us when visiting someone at home. It needn’t be a big gift, but it’s a sign that shows that the relationship is more than just a transaction between two people. As tired as we were, showing up and just dropping off the money would have been an insult. Transactions in Italy are best made involving food of some kind, and the very best are those that are concluded around a table.

So paying Filiberto is not as simple as one would think. The arrangement came about during a casual conversation whereupon he realized that we didn’t own a tractor yet and so he offered his services. However, he wouldn’t tell me how much he would charge, and he looked very uncomfortable when pressed. We finally suggested a price/hour, which he agreed to, but we have no idea if we are paying him enough. He’s uncomfortable taking money from us, and we’re uncomfortable too, hoping we are not insulting him.

His sister-in-law Giovanna, his brother Michelle and his wife Pina seemed to be expecting us as they waited around his cozy kitchen table and the coffee was on. We had a cup of espresso and some “morzette”, the local name given to a biscotto, made with cacao, flour, egg whites, almonds, icing sugar and “mosto cotto”, or “boiled must” --the first free-run grape juice which is then boiled and allowed to reduce to one third to become a sort of syrup. Though I don’t have a picture of the actual biscotti from that day, this photo from the internet, pretty much resembles what we had and the recipe seems to match.
Filiberto has 3 vineyards, is a former prison guard, is a begrudging member of the Solopaca wine cooperative and urges me not to become one. He says that it will only tie me down and I will be forced to sell my grapes to them, for a lower price than I could get elsewhere. He promises me he will find a buyer for our grapes this year. I really hope so, I think to myself, wondering what I would do with all the grapes if I don’t find a buyer at the right time. I feel that he is someone I can trust. He went on to tell us about all the things he will help us do throughout the year, as well as go over all the things that need to be done in his opinion to bring the vineyard up to optimal standards. We really feel lucky to have found him.

Filiberto helps us, not because he does this for a living, as he keeps explaining to me-- he’s got enough of his own work to do-- but he says he does so because he sees our passion, and he sees how much we want to learn. When we do something that he doesn’t like, he tells us because, as he says “non vorrei che fate brutta figura.” ….he doesn’t want us to make fools of ourselves. Nor do we, so we take his advice.

Filiberto explains that he won’t be around as much to help us come September. He has a young 13 year old boy who has just been scouted by Inter-Milan, the famous soccer team, and because he is one year too young to be taken into their school and training camp, they advised his wife to take up an apartment in Milan next year. Filiberto will have to pay for this apartment and will take the little miniature train that we see from across the valley to Milan for occasional visits. His wife and their youngest son will live there. He explains that it will be a sacrifice, but what parent wouldn’t sacrifice it all to have their son set up for stardom, notoriety, and affluence, all while doing something that he and all Italians love. We all smile at this, and I wonder if the house they built next door will ever be inhabited by their children or be sold for a much grander lifestyle in Milan. Some would think that this wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice, but to see Filiberto, as attached to the land as he is, it would be, but then again, as he says, what parent doesn’t make sacrifices for their kids.

Dinner tonight.

2010-05-24T21:25:00.008+02:00

I was really hungry when I went grocery shopping tonight, and as a result, I became inspired.

I made two appetizers...a caprese salad with fresh Mozzarella di Bufala and sweet tomatoes with a drizzle of Extra virgin olive oil, and balsamic vinegar. A little sprinkle of salt.

The next amuse-gueule was deep fried zucchini flowers stuffed with mozzarella di Bufala. I got the recipe off of the following Italian site, but I left out the anchovies:
http://www.gustissimo.it/ricette/antipasti-verdure/fiori-di-zucca-alla-mozzarella.htm stissimo.it/ricette/antipasti-verdure/fiori-di-zucca-alla-mozzarella.htm

The main course was pappardelle ai funghi from the following site:
http://www.lospicchiodaglio.it/index.php?sez=ricette&azione=scheda&elemento=323

We drank Terredora 2008 Greco di Tufo, Terre degli Angeli, DOCG. It is made with 100% Greco grapes. It was bright golden in colour, with a good consistency/viscosity in the glass testifying to its 13,5% alcohol. The aromas were intense of fresh fruit: apple,citrus, followed by spring flowers and a little bit of fresh grassiness. I could taste the same fruitiness as I took my first sip. It was smooth but well-balanced with a nice acidity and minerality that was somewhat persistent. This wine held up well against the mushrooms, and neither overpowered the other. I thought it also went well with the zucchini flowers. This is a winery that is consistently scoring in the 90's, and they are a great ambassador of Campania wines. Here is their English website:

http://www.terredora.net/english.php

Some of my best meals are a result of being hungry in the grocery store. My head spins with my favorite meals, and my eyes dart around for the ingredients.

Buying a Vineyard in Solopaca, Italy.

2010-05-16T16:31:00.005+02:00

There are many people who have made their way to Solopaca over the millennia for a variety of reasons: Archeological digs have revealed that people have inhabited the area since pre-history. The first to plant vines on its verdant slopes were the Etruscans and then the Samnites. Virgil and Horace both make mention of the wines of Solopaca back in the 1st century B.C. The Romans thought of it as an area worth preserving for its important shepherd trails.
To reach Solopaca from Napoli you must first travel along the Strada Statale 7, Via Appia, the road that was first constructed by the Romans as a strategic military route from Rome to Brindisi. Almost 2000 years later, I followed the same route and made my way to Solopaca in search of a vineyard to buy.
In December of 2009 we bought a vineyard in Solopaca. We live and work in Naples so our vineyard had to be within commuting distance of our work. Our research, our pocket book, and some divine intervention led us to Solopaca.
Our criteria were an existing vineyard, preferably with DOC grapes, small enough that my husband and I could handle on our own. We looked at well over 20 properties over a period of 8 months, hemmed and hawed over a few of them and finally settled on the 1st property we had seen.
The divine intervention came in the form of a man called Peppino Riccardi, a geometra in Solopaca. When you buy a house or a piece of property in Italy it is necessary to have a geometra who’s job is something between that of a surveyor and an architect. (For more info on what a geometra is see the following website: http://www.keyitaly.com/article/geometra-checklist/ )
He is younger than he looks, dresses like a country gentleman but with baggy pants that are somewhat too long, a blazer that is too big, over a vest. His eyes resemble Mr. Magoo’s and his office is a jumble of fading stacks of blueprints and papers that look like they’ve been sitting in the same place since the 1970’s. He’s a one-finger at a time typist, and doesn’t see the keyboard very well, and is not sure where the letters are. Watching him fill out forms can be a painful experience for an impatient person such as myself.
When I first met him, I was in the company of my agent, Maria, who couldn’t understand why it was taking us so long to decide what to buy, when we had clearly seen all that there was to see. At that point we had our heart set on a piece of land that was part vineyard and part olive grove with a stupendous view over the Caldaro valley and the hills beyond. We had been back to see it many times, invited an architect from Rome out to see it, but something prevented us from moving forward. The owners were anxious to sell and Maria, our agent, was feeling their pressure. She finally brought me to Peppino, whom she said would answer all of my questions. In his office, Maria patiently asked me to explain to Peppino my concerns with the property in question. I thought about this for a moment or two, then explained in my broken Italian that I think it might be just fear of the unknown, that it was a big step for us, that we were afraid: afraid we wouldn’t like it in a town where we would be the only foreigners; I also explained that we were afraid that maybe after a while, we would want to move back to Canada, and would we be able to sell and get a good return on our build. Peppino asked me a simple question. “What is your goal in buying this land?” I said we wanted to first concentrate on growing good grapes, and then possibly have a winery.
The agent, went on her way, and left Peppino and I to visit the property that we had in mind. As I drove I noticed that Peppino crossed himself whenever we passed by the cemetery and everytime we drove past one of the 8 churches in the small town of Solopaca.
I showed him around the property, and explained to him our grandiose plans for the property while his expression became more and more perplexed. Finally he spoke.“Senti, io sono un uomo onesto….so I must tell you something. “Yes it is a beautiful piece of land and the view is meraviglioso…but I thought you told me that you wanted to grow good grapes, and eventually make good wine. Look around you…do you see any working vineyards here? This is olive country. People don’t even live out here. The land is dry and it is best suited to olives. Now show me another property, because you will never get your money back if you build a home and a winery here.”
His words were like a big Stop sign that suddenly appeared behind a cover of fog. The fog suddenly lifted, and all became clear. He recognized our fear and confusion, and led us to what we had set out to find. We settled on the first property we had seen…way back when we were clear about what we wanted. “Cerasella” as the area of Solopaca is called where we have bought our vineyard, was in our price range, is an existing DOC vineyard, has the perfect inclination on a verdant slope of the North side of Mount Taburno, looking onto Caldaro river and valley and mountains beyond, and is the right size being just under 1 hectare or 2.5 acres. It is known for its well-exposed, well-drained land, in clay-calcareous soils. It had been there all the time, patiently waiting for us to see its beauty, its practicality, its potential.
The name Solopaca comes from its 11th century name “Surrupaca” which literally means “opaque sun”. This has been interpreted as a land with a lot of sun or paese del sole which has inevitably led to its destiny as the most intensely cultivated viticulture zone in Campania. The sign on the way into town today says, Solopaca, citta’ del vino. It is nestled along Mount Taburno and stretches 2 kilometers horizontally at about 250 meters above sea level. Today it has a population of about 4000 inhabitants.
When you buy a piece of property in a place where there is so much history and folklore, you never really own it…you borrow it for a while, you become but a page of its story: One that started long before we arrived, and one that will continue on after we leave it.
The road to Solopaca is a new route for us, but the footsteps that led us there are deeply cast in the ground and history. We just needed to look for the signs through the fog.
Wine Review:
Pampanella 2009
Masseria Vigne Vecchie
Falanghina DOC Solopaca
100% Falanghina
It is bright straw color and green around the rim. It has medium legs and the label reads 13% alcohol. The perfume is subtle with scents of fresh spring flowers, and fragrant citrus scent. It is dry with a lovely smooth finish. While it may be subtle on the nose, it offers a long minerally aftertaste, typical of Falanghina. This wine received an honorable mention at the 2009 International Biological Wine Fair promoted by Citta del Bio. As with all Falanghina’s this would be a perfect accompaniment to fish dishes, but because of its mineral aftertaste it could also stand up to white meats and medium aged cheeses.
Sources:
http://www.seguendoulisse.it/regione-campania-contenuti/?id_cat=16&id_contenuto=48&language=en&index=Seguendo-Ulisse-BENEVENTO+AND+PROVINCE-SOLOPACA
http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solopaca
http://www.savourthesannio.com/blog/
http://www.sanniti.info/indexen.html
http://www.tigulliovino.it/dettaglio_articolo.php?idArticolo=969
http://www.cantinasolopaca.it/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Appian_Way

Italian Wine ….I’d Like To Get To Know You

2010-05-07T12:38:00.018+02:00

A question that I am often asked by friends when they find out I am an Italian sommelier, is what wine should I buy to bring home with me to Canada? How long will it last? It is really difficult to figure out Italian wines from the label: Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, Bardolino, Barolo, Brachetto d’Acqui, DOCG, DOC, IGT. These are the labels that you may have come across while trying to choose your Italian wine to accompany your Sunday dinner. To North Americans, these labels don’t give us a lot of information about the wine. In North America, wines are labeled according to the type of grape. If it is a California wine, it will tell you on the label that it is made with Zinfandel, or Merlot, or Chardonnay. In Italy and France, the name on the bottle tells you the area or the town that the grapes/wine have come from.

In Italy the grape topography is somewhat more complicated than it is in France. Whereas France has chosen to limit its viticulture areas to 10, Italy has taken the approach that each of its 20 political areas has indigenous grapes that are of high quality, and are valued for the terroir in which they grow, and are perfect matches with the regional dishes of the area. While France uses just over 100 different grape varietals, I’ve heard it said that Campania alone has close to 300 varieties. How can a foreigner ever begin to grasp what is in a bottle of Italian wine and what they can expect from it?

First of all, it is helpful to understand the hierarchy of wines that exist in Italy.
Italy has created a sort of hierarchy of quality for the consumer. At the base of the Italian wine pyramid, you will find the Vini da Tavola or table wines. They are usually generic, bottom end wines price wise, but not always in quality. They have only to follow the laws set out for hygiene and they must be produced in Italy. They will not have a year on their label, nor will they indicate where the grapes come from. There are some “Vini da Tavola” that are of very good quality. These are wines that do not adhere to any dictates by the government other than health regulations and taxes related to selling wine.

The second category is the I.G.T., which stands for Indicazione Geografica Tipica. This category refers to table wines that are produced in a certain geographical area. On the label they may refer to the types of grapes used, and the year that the grapes were picked. Generally, but not always, these wines are higher end table wines. However, even here you have to know what you’re buying because there are some “I.G.T” wines that are of extremely high quality. The only reason they are labeled as I.G.T. is because they may be using grapes that are not dictated by law for that area. They may have chosen to use an International variety such as Cabernet Sauvignon. The Super Tuscans fall into this category and they demand a very high price and are revered worldwide.

The D.O.C. designation or Denominazione di Origine Controllata has stricter, more rigid rules that must be followed. It refers to a specific viticulture zone within 1 of the 20 political regions of Italy. The zones are defined by specific boundaries and have to be registered with specific authorities. Not only do the wines have to come from within the boundaries of the specific area, but the grapes used and the quantities of the grapes that are grown per hectare must be those defined for that zone. These wines have to submit samples to be tested chemically as well as have the specific aromas and qualities of the wines that they represent. There are currently over 300 DOC wines in Italy.

At the top of the pyramid are the D.O.C.G. wines where there are even more rigid and strict quality controls. The same rules apply for the D.O.C. G. as for the D.O.C. wines but in this case there are more rules to follow in the vineyard and in the winery. Thus the word “garantita” is added to the Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita. As of March 2010 there are 49 D.O.C.G. wines in Italy. The following table is meant to help you with your wine choices by listing the Region, the DOCG wine name, the Grape, a short description of the type of wine, and it’s “best before date”, some of the best producers as dictated from the 2010 Duemilavini guide book to Italian wines, as well as some suggested pairings. I have not tried all of these wines, but I plan to make my way through them as I find them. The producers I have listed have the highest ratings for the wines that are listed. Most have received the maximum of 5 glasses (bicchieri) in the Duemilavini 2010 edition. Some of the wines, you may only be able to find in the area where they are made. Please contact me for a list of the websites and other contact information of the wineries that are cited here.

Where is the best place in Naples to buy wine? Enoteca’s will have knowledgeable staff, and will have on offer wines from the best producers as well as some very good values, and some new producers who are trying to make a name for themselves. The largest selection that I have found of DOCG wines can be found at Auchan. The best prices I have seen for wines are at the Save Center on the NATO base in Bagnoli.
While DOCG wines are not the only good wines to buy and taste while in Italy, they are a good place to start if you are trying to build a private stock of very good to excellent Italian wines.

Special thanks to Alfonso Cevola, in his wine blog “On the Wine Trail in Italy for his up-to-date list of ever growing DOCG wines.
http://acevola.blogspot.com/2009/12/newest-best-italian-docg-list-now-up-to.html

Some wine descriptions are my own, and for the others, I referred to the Italian descriptions in the book, Il Vino Italiano 2B, Panorama vitivinicolo attraverso le denominazioni di origine”

The Duemilavini/2010 is published yearly by Bibenda Editore and can be purchased from their site http://www.bibenda.it/

The table is here!

My Baptism as a Sommelier at the 2010 Challenge International du Vin in Bordeaux

2010-04-23T20:56:00.006+02:00

On a return flight from England, I saw an advertisement in the on-flight magazine that immediately got my attention: “Why not go to Bourg and Blaye in Bordeaux and apply to be an official taster at the 34th annual Challenge International du Vin, France’s largest international wine competition?” Why not? I said to myself. I speak French; I’m now a sommelier . It’s what I’ve been training to do for the past 3 years and it would be a good start under the “Experience” heading on my wine CV.
Upon my arrival home, I looked up the site, and though the date had passed to apply, I thought I would send in my application, and an email, and give it a shot. Sure enough, the next day, I was accepted as an official taster, and I was booking flights from Naples to Bordeaux.
I knew it was a bold move for a novitiate such as myself, but what gave me the confidence to apply were the words “seeking wine professionals and knowledgeable amateurs” on the website. That had to include me. I pounced on the opportunity like a dog on a bone. “Pounced” is probably too mild a word for the manner in which I seized this opportunity. I was fueled…maybe even jet propelled.
I was not to be discouraged from doing this. Not even when my husband broke his ankle and I realized I would have to go to Bordeaux alone. Not even when my badge and my instructions did not arrive 1 week before the event as was supposed to happen, not even when my husband remarked, “Do you even know how to do this?”
My official taster’s badges, instructions and directions arrived in the Italian mail the day before I was to leave. I arrived in Bordeaux undaunted but a little nervous. I was staying near the airport and I knew that the drive to Bourg the next morning could take from 30 to 45 minutes depending on traffic. The morning of the competition, I donned my new navy blazer with the badge of the Associazione Italiana di Sommelier neatly sewed on, lest someone think I was an imposter. I could say, “here it is, right here. Proof that I know what I’m doing,” all the while my husband’s incredulous refrain was ringing in my brain. I reassured myself that his lack of faith in my abilities as a sommelier came only from the fact that he has never really seen me in action.

My eagerness to be on time was immediately noticed as I pulled into the town of Bourg just as dawn was breaking. I sat and watched the sun rise for a while then decided I would go on foot to try and find the Gymnase where the event would be taking place. A car stopped and the monsieur asked if he could help. It was one of the organizers and he offered to show me the way. By the time I got back to my rental car, and figured out how to get it in reverse, my guide was gone. I found some people at a bus stop and asked where I might find the grand event--he Challenge International du Vin, and all I got was a squint in return. I decided to ask if they knew how to get to the Gymnase. One man's face relaxed, and within less than 2 minutes I was there. I hesitated to get out of the car as the event didn’t start for another hour and a half. I saw people rushing to get in, so I decided to go. I was told to go and get a coffee somewhere and come back in an hour.

Satisfied that I wouldn’t be late, I walked through the town, but decided against having coffee on my tongue before a tasting.
Upon my return, the event was gathering momentum and I saw many people lining up to get their badges scanned, because, after all, imposters are not allowed into this event. I am one of them—the real thing that is, not an imposter (or so I try to convince myself!)
My badge reveals the jury to which I will belong for today’s tastings or “dégustation”. We are supposed to be sitting in groups of 4 and at least one person at the table has to be a wine professional with many years of experience. That is not me, nor is it my jury mate Julie Wilcox, a Brit who speaks impeccable French. She too is new to the profession as a new graduate of Bordeaux wine commerce program. This is her second year at the Challenge. The wine professional at our table is called Lionel, and he described himself to us as a consultant to the Cognac industry. Our 4th jurist did not show up, as I understand often happens. However, I couldn’t have had better partners had I chose them myself. Julie seemed to be a person in a similar position to me: both starting out in the world of wine, wanting to gain some experience, and neither one of us has a job in the profession as yet. Lionel humbly played down his experience, was very reassuring, and treated us ever so kindly.
The 12 bottles were placed rather unceremoniously in a plastic crate beside our table. They are covered in black plastic thus hiding their identity. Each bears a number that corresponds to the numbers on our sheets. The sheets also list 4 characteristics in each of the categories that must be evaluated: olfactory, taste, and then very abruptly we had to give it a score out of 20: 10, 11 was a no medal score; 12, 13 meant that it should get a bronze medal, 14, 15 was a silver, and 16+ was gold. Our last evaluation was whether or not we would recommend this wine. We were asked to write comments especially if we were not awarding a medal to the wines. There was water, crusty bread, a wine glass and a pen waiting on our tables.
Our first task was to evaluate 12 Champagnes….oh, là là! I had great difficulty trying to find anything remotely unpleasant in these wines. The only information we are given about the wines is the year, and the denomination. They are all of course AOC or Grand Cru Champagnes with varying ages from 2 to 5 years of aging in the bottle. I know I gave way more prizes on the first day than I should have. We were the only 3 people that day evaluating those wines. I may have skewed their results.
Our second “dégustation” that day was none other than Bordeaux wines from the right bank. All of course AOC and some of these were also Grand Cru. I longed to finish drinking some of them, but I dutifully spat into the spittoon at my station.
When the degustation was complete on the 1st day, we were treated to a sumptuous feast, and all the wines that had won at last year’s competition flowed freely. The menu read as follows:
Croustillant de Gambas au gingembre et citron/ Crispy prawns with ginger and lemon
Tendre de Pintade farcie aux Asperges vertes, puree a la fourchette a l’olive noire/ guinea fowl stuffed with a puree of asparagus and olives and potato puree with black olives
Frivolite de passion sous son dome chocolate/ a frivolity of passion under a chocolate dome
Café et mini cannele/ coffee and the regional dessert –a mini cannele –a small French pastry with a soft and tender custard center and a dark thick caramelized crust.
The dinner and wines were compliments of the Challenge du Vin organization. The wines that I sampled were the following:

Montepulciano d’Abbruzzo, Colline Terramane, Farnese 2005—a 2009 silver medallist and one of my favorite wines at the dinner. Spice and chocolate!

Chateau Montpezat Corbieres – Languedoc Roussillon, 2007 Grande Reserve – silver

Waimea, Sauvignon Blanc, Nelson, New Zealand, 2008—silver

Chateau La Bourree, Cotes de Castillon, 2007 silver

Finca Antigua, La Rioja, Spain, Syrah, 2006 – gold

Domaine Bosquet des Papes, A la gloire de mon grand-pere 2007, AOC Chateauneuf du pape This was only a bronze winner last year, but was my favorite. It is made up of 98% Grenache, 2% Cinsault. It was luscious, pure fruit in the glass, with beautiful complexity on the nose and rich plum and licorice scents. I could go on.

The next day , and I was with a new jury. This time with Lidi from Hanzhou in China, Damien, also a new graduate of the wine commerce course in Bordeaux, who also spoke Chinese, and Patrick, a vineyard and winery owner in Bordeaux. This time we sampled 12 wines from Cahors, France made up mainly of Malbec, and then 6 wines from Tunisia, and 7 wines from Turkey.

Was it worth after all the expense, after all the miles traveled, after my flight got cancelled because of the volcano eruption in Iceland and I had to drive 12 hours from Bordeaux to Milan, then take a train from Milan to Naples? The answer is a resounding yes! What did I learn? I learned that French wines are pretty hard to beat. I learned to be able to tell the difference with my eyes, nose and mouth between a Champagne Blanc de Blanc, and a Blanc de Noir. I learned that even though I can call myself a sommelier, my education is just beginning, and my knowledge base, well, is exactly that: a base on which to stand. A base on which to be able to call myself a sommelier, but it’s just the foundation. It’s got me yearning for more. I have seen the light!

For more information about the Challenge du Vin visit:
http://www.challengeduvin.com/

Learning to Dance like a Sommelier,and A Comparison of two Toscana Sangiovese's: Morellino di Scansano and a Chianti Classico.

2009-12-08T14:26:00.008+01:00

March 1st and March 13, 2010...those are the dates when I will write, perform and orally discuss wine with a panel of Italian Sommeliers, who will judge whether or not I get to enter their club. They will decide if I am worthy of that shiny bling..the tastevin on a chain. Though I am an Italian citizen, I am greatly disadvantaged in comparison to my classmates as they have lived here all their lives and have been weened on Italian wine and food. I, on the other hand, having lived in Canada for over 40 years, where I thought I was Italian , realized only upon moving here, that I was not quite as Italian as I thought. Now, I have to try to convince a panel of Italian sommeliers, using my foreigner's Italian, that I am worthy to serve, talk about, judge Italian wine, and perform the most difficult task of all, pair it with Italian dishes and specialties. I'm not sure that you realize the grandiose task that I have set for myself here: first of all, this will not only demand a level of Italian that will require me to describe the wine beyond "bianco" and "rosso", but also a knowledge of the geography and the terrain of Italy, a knowledge of the hundreds of different grapes used and where they belong on that map of Italy, but the most daunting for me, is the knowledge of Italian specialty foods, what their made of and where, once again, they belong in that Italian geography. Because if you have ever travelled to Italy, and have had a conversation with any Italian about food, they can tell you what the local specialties are, how they're made, where you can buy them and where you shouldn't buy them, because to them, one is real, and one is not, even if they're both made the same way with the only exception being that one is made outside of the zone. Then, I'm afraid it's not to be trusted. No matter how hard I may try to make a particular dish authentic-tasting, it will never happen; it never can, because, well, I guess, I'm just not authentic. There seems to be more to it than following the recipe.
Yes...I've taken this task on, and I am trying to make sense of it all...making charts, making notes, memorizing, tasting, and I have finally come to the conclusion that I need a tutor. But who could I find who will be understanding enough to know what I need to know. Who would care enough to help a foreigner learn about his sacred trade. Who would be strict enough with me to make me seem polished, and help me shine come exam time. I think I found that and more in Angelo Di Costanzo, Sommelier and winner of the Sommelier awards for the Campania region and co-owner, with his wife Lilli of L'Arcante Enoteca in Pozzuoli. I had heard about Angelo for the past year from an American friend of mine who settles for nothing but the best in wine and food. Angelo has a healthy clientelle of Italians and foreigners in his store and in his work as sommelier, so he was not put off by working with a foreigner.
Angelo knew just where to start...the presentation and the opening of the bottle with finesse and confidence. The bottle is presented to the left of the diner, while the sommelier denotes the name, the winery and the year. Then the bottle is brought back to the sommelier's table where the show begins: the removal of the capsule which is placed in a plate, then the careful removal of the cork without making a "pop" sound and without of course placing the bottle between your knees! The sommelier smells the cork, removes it from the opener with a white cloth , smells it for the mouldy corked smell, then places it on a separate plate to bring to the diner's table later on. If it is an older bottle of wine that needs to be decanted, the sommelier pours a small amount into his glass and smells it to make sure once again that it is not corked. He then pours that small bit of wine in the decanter to season it and get it ready to receive the wine. However, during today's lesson, there was no decanting. The sommelier first tastes the wine, then approaches the table this time on the diner's right. With a definitive hold on the bottom of the bottle in your right hand, and your left hand holding a napkin held behind your back, a small amount is poured; quick turn of the spout, napkin from left hand is ready to catch the drip before removing the bottle. Then step back to allow the diner to taste the wine. If all is good, then the ladies are served eldest first, and then the men, and finally, the person who ordered the wine.
It was like watching a ballet, and this is why I want to be a sommelier. Not only do I find it gratifying to be able to share my knowledge which is something that I have always done as a teacher, but I get to perform this show which must be done with confidence, finesse and humility.
My next test with Angelo was a blind taste test of two wines which he brought to the table covered in foil. The first wine was a deep red pomegranate-coloured wine, with legs that suggest a wine with body. The nose immediately offered ripe, red berries "sotto spirito", though initally I said jammy fruit, it later revealed a liquoricy note and finally a little damp earth smell. It was dry, and beautifully smooth, and warm. It was more spicy than acidic though it remained fresh and young.
The second wine was not as young looking in the glass--it was that same pomegranate colour, but with some orange tones. It revealed itself to be more complex in the glass, richer, and more austere. It offered up a bouquet of spice, fruit, nuts, toast. The spicyness followed through to the taste, with the tannins, the mineral, acidity taking a slight precedence over the smoothness of the wine, but not enough to be overpowering.
The bottles were undressed of their wrapping and while I thought they were so very different they turned out to both be made from Sangiovese grapes and both were from Toscana, another deft lesson from Angelo. The first wine was a Morellino di Scansano 2006, Fattoria Le Puppelle 70% Sangiovese with Alicante and Malvasia Nera, and the second was a 100% Sangiovese Chianti Classico, unlike other Chianti's I have tasted, this one was refined and elegant. Both wines were 2006.
I like to think of my wine education as my "vinification" the process of making me knowledgeable about wine. But now under the tutelage of Angelo Di Costanzo, I hope to pull off the the refining stage of my three-year preparation to becoming a sommelier...this is the aging in oak, the final touches that season me to be able to dance like a sommelier.
Here is a link to Angelo's blog and a facebook link for any of you who speak Italian:
http://larcante.wordpress.com/larcante-enoteca/
http://www.facebook.com/pages/LArcante-Enoteca/48143043595

2009-09-04T18:14:00.005+02:00

My First Plane Ride or How I Got Over my Fear of Public Toilets
Wine Review: Paglione, Bianco DOC - Gioa del Colle, Puglia, Italy, Tenuta Viglione
My dreams of travel began in July of 1968, in Sudbury, Ontario when long-lost relatives from California had come to visit us. The encounter had been orchestrated by my aunt. My aunt Clara and her daughter, Vicky, 19, were to accompany the American cousins back to California as ambassadors for the Canadian Branch of the family.

The California cousins proved to be a friendly lot with some strange names like Jo (female), Babes, and Tony, Tony-Lee and Jessie. Those weren’t Canadian names. They weren’t much interested in our names I noticed, always calling me, “Honey”.

As my cousin Vicky neared her departure date, much psychedelic clothing was being purchased. There was much hairspray, and eye makeup being bought. I watched in awe as suddenly, almost overnight, Vicky morphed into one of the Supremes…I couldn’t help thinking how beautiful she was, and how I was sure she would be discovered in Hollywood, and if not, a movie star would be sure to want to marry her. I begged my parents to buy me a ticket to let me go with them. They relented and my aunt agreed to take me along too.

The much anticipated departure date finally arrived. Vicky had on her new hot pink, “hot pants” outfit with the black trim. I was no match for Vicky for my mother bought my clothes and I was wearing lime green shorts and a matching striped lime green and white sleeveless top. But the piece de resistance was the chain-linked purse she bought me. That made up for the lack of hot pants.

Because my ticket had been purchased after everyone else’s, I was not sitting with anyone I knew. Disappointment struck as I realized I would have to sit for 6 hours with strangers. They asked questions and I answered to be polite. The man in the brown suit had bad breath, and I began to feel sad at the thought that I wouldn’t be able to talk to Vicky for 6 hours…I was seat belted in beside the brown-suited man with the bad breath on my right, and the lady wearing the sweet perfume on my left. I’m sure my eyes belied how uncomfortable I felt. Fortunately, my kind aunt recognized my pain, and asked if I wanted to trade places with her…she wanted to sleep and it didn’t matter where she sat she said.
“Yes…oh yes…oh yes!” Now I was sitting beside Vicky…the most beautiful, radiant beauty on the plane, and surely some of that would rub off on me.

Vicky and I talked and laughed, and pointed at things out the window. When she read, I tried to read Nancy Drew, but I was too excited to concentrate. We did crosswords together, talked about which stewardess was the prettiest, and we wondered and wondered about how hot it must be in California. I must have been the luckiest 9-year old in the world. I couldn’t imagine being any happier.

The tension began after I was downing my first Coke. I realized I had to use the bathroom. I had a problem using public bathrooms as it was. They were scary, and I was a bit of a germ-a-phobe at that age. I would never use the bathrooms at school. Instead, I would make sure I went before I left for school in the morning, and I would run all the way home at break neck speed at lunch time, kick off my shoes and run straight to the bathroom, doing the pee dance all the way. Now this was something that I hadn’t thought of. I never thought about how people go to the bathroom on a plane at 20,000 feet in the air. I never thought that I would have to go. I asked Vicky, and she said she would go and try it out and tell me about it. She came back with a smile on her face and a look in her eye, and I knew I wasn’t going to like what she had to say.

Where’s the light I asked? Does it make a loud noise when you flush? Where does the pee go? The long-lost California cousin, who always referred to people as “Dude”, overheard our conversation and decided he needed to have a little bit of fun instilling fear in the 9-year old. The pee, he said, goes into a big tank, just below our feet. “And you better be careful not to stay seated on the toilet when you flush. A little thing like you could get sucked right in.” That’s all I needed to hear. I don’t need to explain to you the visual I had when he said this to me. I decided right then and there that I wasn’t going to go.
“I don’t have to go that badly”, I said to Vicky. By now, Vicky was feeling a bit sorry for me, and maybe a bit protective and she said, “It’s not that bad, Cathy…I’ll wait for you outside the door.” I couldn’t risk it. It was just too scary for me. What if the light wouldn’t come on when I closed the door? What if I did get sucked in…I can’t even swim that well. Which stroke would be best to keep my head afloat in a tank full of pee and…poop? How would they ever get me out? Had such a thing ever happened before? Yes these really were the thoughts going through my head at the time. I could hold it. I know I could. I just wouldn’t drink anymore.
“How many more hours until we get there?”
“Four hours Cathy”, Vicky replied. “Are you sure you don’t want to go?”
“No…I’m Okay.”

I was OK for the next three hours, that is, of course, until I fell asleep. My poor tired mental self tried to find a way to relieve my poor tired physical discomfort, and tricked me into dreaming that I was seated on a nice comfortable warm toilet seat.

Vicky woke me up to tell me that we would be landing soon. That’s when I realized that I no longer had to go to the bathroom, and that I was a little cold …and damp.

“Vicky”…I said. “I think I sat on a wet chair.” It was the best line I could come up with at the time.
“You didn’t” she said. “Don’t tell me you peed in that chair”.
“Oh, please, don’t tell anybody” I begged her. I’m way too old to do this I thought to myself. “They’ll think I’m like one of those kids who do this all the time or something.” Sophisticated girls with chain link purses don’t pee their pants. “Please don’t tell them!”
Vicky promised she wouldn’t, all the time laughing and repeating that she couldn’t believe what I had done. I told her that I had a raincoat in my bag, and that the first thing I would do would be to tell the others that I’m a bit cold, and I’ll put my raincoat on. That might have worked if it wasn’t for the fact that it was 99 degrees F when we landed and that dogs wanted to follow me everywhere I went.

Of course Vicky told everyone we knew, probably everyone we met there, and I have never lived this story down. It has made me get over my fear of public washrooms. The trip was 40 years ago and instilled in me the desire to see the world. I realized I would have to get over my fear of public washrooms, because I just couldn’t make it home everyday for lunch. My cousin Vickie is visiting me here in Italy from her home in Toronto. She is now 60 and I am 51. We recalled this story over a bottle of Italian wine while munching on hot, fresh taralli(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taralli). I can now proudly say that I have peed in washrooms from holes in the ground to warm toasty heated toilet seats. Toilets with pull-strings, toilets with push buttons, toilets with kick flushes. I have peed in toilets from Sudbury to Shanghai, Timmins to Tokyo. I hereby declare myself public toilet phobia free.
Here's a lovely wine for you to try before summer's over. I hope you can find it where you are.
Wine: Paglione
Origin: Puglia, Italy
Bianco DOC – Gioia del Colle
Producer: Tenuta Viglione
Grapes: 50% Trebbiano, 40% Malvasia Bianco, 10% Falanghina
2008
ABV 12%
This wine was chilled to the perfect temperature (16C)on a hot summer’s eve. It was crystalline in the glass, and dawned a straw yellow colour. It had a fairly good consistency for a new wine. The nose was an immediate scent of floral, followed by honey--I think this comes from the addition of the Malvasia. In the mouth it was nice and smooth. It was in perfect balance, I thought--nice acidity and mineral notes in contrast with the smoothness of the wine, made it the perfect accompaniment to the taralli—warm and a little spicy. For a young wine it had a fairly intense bouquet, with a little spice note. This wine had a taste of honey, or perhaps the smell was so persistent that I felt like I tasted it…because the wine was dry. The mineral taste at the end made the wine fairly persistent in length. On the rating scale from the Associazione Italiana di Sommelier, it scores an 82. We thoroughly enjoyed the wine and our evening.

Swirling Turkish Wine to the Rhythms of the Whirling Dervish in Istanbul

2009-08-12T19:40:00.008+02:00

As the wine swirls and hugs the rim of the glass, they, begin to swirl, arms crossed, heads tilted, hands cradled around their shoulders, in a self-embrace. Their eyes are closed, and their far-away expression is one of longing. I'm in Turkey where the spectacle of the 700-year-old dance of the whirling Dervish is taking place. I am also using this opportunity to write about the 2007 Turkish wine I am sampling.

The thrill of being before real whirling Dervish makes it difficult to concentrate on my wine. The Turkish word for wine is şarap (pronounced sha-rap). It's difficult to make out the label on the bottle because it is written in Turkish. The winery, I've establish, is called Vinkara. What I think is the name of the wine is "Kirmizi Sek şarap 2007". I later learn that this means Dry Red Wine. I never did get its name and the waiter was not able to tell me the grapes from which it was made. I commit to looking this information up later.

It is a deep cherry color, with some purple tones, very intense. I'm expecting ripe, red fruit with the first exotic whiff. The first scent is as expected of cherries, sotto-spirito, and ripe, red jammy black berries, with a tang of pomegranate. There is the slight barnyard smell, that I really like in my red wines. It's not off-putting, it just smells of the earth. My first sip offers a disappointment, as I realize that the wine has been kept at room temperature, and that would be Istanbul room temperature...probably somewhere between 25 and 30 degrees C. It has soft tannins, is medium-bodied with a slight bitter-almond finish, and a medium length.

The Dervish belong to a Sufi sect and their dance and prayer meetings are banned in the Turkish Republic. They are however, allowed to perform them for cultural purposes. As I watch them prepare, I wonder how they can block out the audience of foreigners that surrounds them, and the clicking pens of the waiters, and the hustle and clanging from the kitchen behind them. They are solemn and intense. They remove their black cloaks and 3 men kneel on sheepskin rugs before 4 musicians with traditional instruments. The flutist, playing a traditional Turkish flute called a Ney, begins the haunting call to prayer. One of the men kneeling responds with a lone chant, soon accompanied by the other two men on the carpets. The stringed instruments join in and a climax of chanting seems to have been reached; the dancers rise, move onto the floor and begin a slow twirling dance. Gradually the pace becomes mesmerizing to all those watching and it is clear they've found their grooove. They are wearing tall white hats (shriner style but taller with slightly rounded tops). Their heads tilt and a peaceful, much less intense look takes over their expression. It is said that if they weren't in perfect communion with Allah throughout this prayer-dance, they would become dizzy and fall. As the pace increases, the flaring of their robes widens, like opening umbrellas, but instead of being rigid, they flow like capes, emphasizing the beauty of the dance. Under their white tunic and white skirt, they are wearing white, slim long pants tucked into black, soft-leather boots. Suddenly they are in a trance: their arms open and unfurl towards the heavens and the whirling and twirling is in full tilt.

Unlike the arms of the Dervish, my wine does not open and unfurl. It is not spoiled but neither does it have any more surprises for me. I wonder what it might have been like if served and stored at the proper temperature.

Throughout the evening, I can't help imagine what an evening of entertainment would have been like at the Sultan's court in the nearby Topkapı Palace. Would they have been served some of the same foods? Would there have been wine? The meal that we are served turns out to be enough to feed an entire harem. I especially enjoy the appetizers: flat, warm, savory bread for dipping into various purees, sauces and preserves: aubergine and tomato salsa, spicy tomato sauce, tzaziki, humus and a green pepper preserve. It did feel somewhat sacriligious eating and drinking in front of the Dervish who were in serious meditative prayer. I wished they had waited to bring the food. The Dervish however, continued to dance seemingly oblivious to those around them, with their eyes closed.

Eventually all 3 dancers returned to their kneeling positions. They gathered their mats, and humbly and quietly left the stage. The audience seemed unsure whether they should clap at the end of this solemn event.

In complete contrast, the entertainment continued with a raucous group of belly-dance musicians, who invited the crowd up to do some belly dancing to their tunes. They seemed to know who to approach, because the audience members who were invited, knew how to belly dance.

The contrasts in Turkey continued to face-off throughout our 5-day stay. East continually meeting West, spiritual and sensual, sweet and spicy, St. Paul and Mohammed. Old and new seem to be as interwoven as a Turkish rug in the fabric of modern-day Turkey. Its monuments and ruins are testaments to the fact that it is a land much trespassed, an intersection where the world's peoples met and passed each other. I was happy to be but one of the many trespassers throughout history...a prilgrim of sorts in the steps of St. Paul from Istanbul to Ephesus.

I'm afraid I can't tell you much more about the wine. All the websites I came across except for one were in Turkish. I did read however that Vinkara winery makes an Alicante, Merlot, Cabernet Sauvignon blend, which I think may have been the wine I tasted. They also make one that is made from an indigenous red grape called Kalecik Karasi. If any of you can tell me more about this winery, I would much appreciate any blanks you can fill or information you can provide.

Old World and New: Italy, Falanghina Campi Flegrei DOC, Nova Scotia, L'Acadie vineyards 2006 Alchemy.

2009-04-26T18:19:00.004+02:00

In light of my recent post on "Straddling two Continents", I decided to have a little taste of both.

I'll start with the white, from the DOC zone where I live in Italy: Campi Flegrei.

Campania, Italy
Falanghina
Producer: Grotta del Sole
Grapes: Falanghina DOC, must contain a min. of 90% falanghina grapes according to DOC standards. This bottle does not mention whether or not it is 100%
2008
13% ABV

This area is known as the "Terra del Fuoco" for all the volcanic activity in the zone. Falanghina is the characteristic wine and grape of the area. Some of the vines are over 100 years old, and many are on their original rootstocks.

The wine is crystal clear, straw-transparent yellow, with greenish hues. It swirls fairly heavily in the glass, and leaves little traces of bubbles on the sides of the glass. There are particles in wine, but none that would fault its clarity.

Everything in the glass is reminiscent of Spring. It is Spring outside as I write this, and this wine evokes a fairly complex bouquet of the sweet smells of the orange trees in blossom, some jasmine, some citrus, fresh grass, and lastly some mineral notes. Based on the olfactory sensations, the wine would seem to be of good quality.

To the taste it is dry, medium-warm and smooth. It has high acidity, but the length brings out the minerality of this volcanic wine. And what length! It is very persistent lasting over 10 seconds. It is beautifully balanced, intense especially in the mineral finish, very good quality wine. It is medium-bodied, ready to drink, and harmonious.
This area of Italy produces fresh fish dishes, and with them is often the suggestion of the local Falanghina.

A taste of bread, a drink of water, and I'm ready for my New World wine.

Nova Scotia, Canada
Alchemy
Producer: L'Acadie Vineyards
Grapes: 40% Leon Millot, 30% Luci Kuhlmann, 30% Foch, produced in an Amarone style
2006
15.5% ABV

The colour is deep, rich and opaque. It is almost black-cherry red in colour with an orangey hue towards the rim. It is so thick when I swirl it in the glass that I get a clear impression of the term "chewey" as it describes wine, though I'm only going by sight at this point. This is clearly a viscous wine, with some body to it. Slow, long legs form down the sides of my glass.

The nose...oh la, la! This is not what I expected from a Nova Scotia wine. This wine is not one of those "foxy" wines that bely the Concord grape that is better off left in jams. Oh no! I would never guess, in a blind test that this is a Canadian wine, made from all Canadian, Nova Scotia grape. The bouquet is intense and complex, suggesting this vintner has some experience making wine. I smell, "terra bagnata" or wet, rich earth, ripe red fruit, a sweetness of caramel or is maple syrup, and finally a faint suggestion of acidity. I can't at this point smell the chocolate or coffee that is suggested on the back of the bottle, but that may come out as the wine breathes.

I taste the chocolate! Another lovely surprise. The wine is dry and leaves some warmth from the alcohol as I swallow it. It does have a high acidity that I could smell through the more powerful scents in the glass, which is always good in a wine. It suggests that it has a lot more time to age well. It is also fairly tannic, and if I could fault it at all, it would be that it is only slightly minerally....maybe even barely minerally or spicy. The acidity and the oaky caramel-maple syrup-chocolate flavors pervade. I'm looking for the smell of black pepper, but it's not there.

The wine is however well-balanced, intense, persistent and of good quality. It is full-bodied and fairly harmonious.

This is not as robust as an Italian Amarone, but it is an interesting promising wine. I would pair it with grilled or barbequed steak, and hope that the pepper on my steak would make up for the lack of spiciness in the wine. There were some lovely surprises in this wine. Here is the website where you can read about the description of this wine:
http://www.lacadievineyards.ca/index_files/Page392.htm

Straddling two continents.

2009-04-26T16:31:00.005+02:00

Right now my husband is in Nova Scotia for a week, and I am home here in Italy by myself. Home is the subject of this meander. Where shall it be?
We will soon be heading into our retirement years, and it will be time to decide where we are to live. God willing, we hope to see those years through on our own vineyard, and maybe working in our own winery. My husband is spending a week on a vineyard in Nova Scotia, something that would have been impossible to find 20 years ago. There has been a growing momentum in the wine industry in Nova Scotia over the last 10 years and we are excited that we can entertain the idea of fulfilling our passions in so familiar a place. Nova Scotia was home to us and our 3 sons for over 10 years. But will it still be home in ten years time, or will Italy feel like home? That is our dilemma. We want to get started on the vineyard idea, but we don't know where to buy. All my adult life I have wanted, dreamed and schemed of living in Italy. Now, here I am. In fact, I am even a card carrying Italian citizen. Italian vineyards are the stuff of romance, and that I am doubtful about wanting to own one seems absurd, even to my family members back home.

It's as though we are straddling two continents right now, a sort of Colossus of Rhodes, but instead of straddling the harbor, we straddle the vast Atlantic ocean. That's a difficult pose for anyone to hold for any length of time. We will have to choose. The straddling metaphor is one that suits our lives right now as we strive to build a bridge from our youth to our retirement years: just as we get used to living our lives as a couple again, we are reminded that we are still parents when our kids are home from university; we are both Canadians but have a deep connection to our European roots; we are neither young nor old, we live here, but wonder whether we should be thinking of living there.

I think there are two plaguing thoughts that confuse us and assault us every time we think we are ready to make a commitment. The crux of our dilemma is the idea of growing old away from our extended family and the other is where will our children want and best be able to visit us. Will choosing one continent over the other have any bearing on their visits to us? Will it be the familiarity of where they grew up that they will want to have? Will my extended family be drawn by the lure of the warm southern Italian winters, or will they see it as being too far and costly? Do I really want to live through 6 months of Canadian winter when I am elderly? When I ask my family these questions, they of course can't give me an answer. The answers are nowhere to be found, but in the future that is left to be played out.

We realize the seriousness of our investment. It could mean that if we had to pick up and sell for whatever reason, a vineyard and winery may not be an easy sell either here or there. We have to be sure. Will we play it safe and move back to Canada? Will we move into riskier territory, and buy that Italian country property, that I see in my dreams?

In one week's time, my husband will be home with our youngest son. We will have learned a little more about what it means to own a vineyard and be a vintner in Canada. We will go back to being parents again for the next four months, and so we will probably put our decision on hold until the fall, when once again, alone as a couple with the itch to get started on a dream and straddling two continents become a difficult pose to hold.

The Wedding.

2009-04-20T11:29:00.004+02:00

I was waiting for it and it finally happened: my first European, Italian, Neapolitan wedding. After two years of waiting and anticipating, this one did not disappoint. The invitation arrived hand-delivered by a friend. The directions were vague, but we had an idea that it was not too far from our home. One half hour before the wedding we plugged the address into the GPS, which brought us to a completely different town. After doing a bit of back-tracking, and finally finding the church tucked under a busy road, down what looked to be someone's driveway, whose owners told us to continue on down the road that was under construction, and after snaking around the building in the middle of it all, we finally arrived at the well-hidden Chiesetta di San Filippo. We had missed the mass but were just in time to meet the bride and groom as they exited the Church as newlyweds. So, unfortunately, I can't tell you about how beautiful the ceremony was, but the rest of the day was indeed magical.
My friends, Maria Elena and Francesco are former colleagues from the school where I taught last year. Maria Elena teaches social studies to middle school students and Francesco is the music teacher to the elementary, junior high and high school students. They are both young and vibrant and passionate teachers, dancers and musicians..
Maria Elena comes from an unconventional Neapolitan family and has lived around the world. She speaks Arabic, English and Italian. She is a belly-dancer and an Italian folk-dancer, and gives lessons as just one of her part-time jobs. Her mane of thick, long, and very curly hair is what you first notice, until that is, her gaze fixes on you and you wonder who this Italian beauty could be, with her deep brown eyes, set against her olive skin. This is when you begin to realize that Neapolitan history has left its mark on the people of this town. Maria Elena could be Arab, Spanish and she could also be mistaken for Greek. All of these cultures have made their presence known here: they're in the ruins of the city, they're in the foods, in the language and they're part of the people.
Francesco comes from Pozzuoli, the home of Sofia Loren. He puts his heart and soul into his music-making and his teaching. He is the pied-piper of the school, as he is often followed by groups of kids who just enjoy his enthusiasm and company. He and Maria Elena have taught music and dancing to the kids in the Quartiere Spagnolo in Napoli, the Harlem of Napoli, a program they initiated. I can imagine that Francesco would not be afraid of these kids; he would be accepted as one of them.
Francesco had at some time in his past befriended a band of gypsy Romanian street minstrels, and they were the featured musicians at the wedding. These troubadours were playing the accordion and the violin as we arrived at the church.
After the requisite photos outside the church, the bride and groom, followed by the musicians led the procession to the reception on foot. This tradition I had only seen in movies, and I was not sure it still existed. You can't imagine how delightful it was to be part of such a euphoric, happy event. Traffic was stopped, and though Neapolitans are not known for their patience when their travel plans are interrupted by such things as stop lights, or pedestrians, this time it was clear that the honking of horns was in celebration of the wedding. The procession crossed a busy street, and climbed up a set of steel stairs that crossed over the railway tracks to finally arrive at a most enchanted stage for the reception. This was the scene for the rest of the celebration: an outdoor restaurant on the beach. There were soft off-white curtains blowing in the breeze and the chairs were covered in matching cloth each tied with bows, under white umbrellas. The white tablecloths had violet gauze accents, and formal waiters dressed in black and white delivered the food, served buffet style. The backdrop was the Mediterranean. Though the day was overcast, it did not detract from the scene. Beside the eating area there was a pool and beachfront. Parents made futile attempts at trying to keep their children from wandering there and getting their formal clothes dirty. It was to no avail. Eventually, I was overcome by the same temptation and the sheer joy and abandon of the day, and took off my own stockings to walk barefoot in the warm sand. Looking back at the scene from the beach only added to the dreamlike, surreal, wonderful feeling that my husband and I experienced that day. It was a feeling of levity, and almost of relief to discover that the weddings I had only seen in movies truly existed. They are joyous community celebrations, and this one in particular was free of any pretense. I have played this movie over and over in my mind, and each time I smile.
After the meal, the band played and the bride and groom and parents danced a waltz or two. The rest of the afternoon took on a carnival-like atmosphere of folk dance after folk dance. The highlight was watching Maria Elena dance a seductive belly dance before Francesco who played the clarinet for her. The dance seemed to tell the story of a beautiful young woman seducing and finally conquering her man. Her shawl became the instrument she used to capture him, first using it coyly as cover, then using it to incorporate a game of peek-a-boo into the dance and finally as a lasso to capture him as she tied it around his waist. She told this story with her hands, her hips, her eyes, her entire body.
As we left the reception we were given our gift of bomboniere (a container holding traditional Italian candies called confetti, given out as a thank you to guests). True to style, Maria Elena and Francesco did not want any gifts. If they received money, they would use it to cover expenses and the rest they would donate to GMA Napoli, an NGO in Ethiopia. The bombonieri themselves were made as a make-work project for mothers in Shashamene, Ethiopia.
On the way home, I was reminded of the significance of the confetti candies in the bombonieri: they are almonds covered in a sweet white icing, the almond representing the bitter, and the icing representing the sweetness that accompanies marriage. Even in a marriage celebration, Italians are a practical people. They take the good with the bad, hope for best, but are realistic about the trials ahead. In a sense, they want to experience it all...it is pura vita.
Maria Elena and Francesco, thank you for your friendship, for your example, for your invite, and for a day that will live on in our memories. We walked away feeling a little lighter on our feet than when we arrived.

Gatij Brachetto D'Acqui, Marchese di Barolo

2009-04-20T10:39:00.003+02:00

Piemonte, Italy

Gatij Brachetto D’Acqui

Producer: Marchese di Barolo

Grapes: 100% Brachetto

No vintage date on bottle

DOCG

6% ABV

This was the dessert wine served at the wedding. It is brilliantly clear and cherry red. It is effervescent with medium-sized bubbles. This sparkling wine is not pronounced in its perlage. The bubbles don’t ascend in the tight chains that characterize champagne. It is more frizzante than champagne-like.

The first aroma that rises from the glass is the sweetness of prunes, and then ripe red cherries. It is delicate in its intensity and would seem to be a wine that is of good quality. The is a fine scent of damp forest at the end.

To the taste it is sweet and light. You immediately feel the fizziness on your tongue. I taste prunes, but it is balanced by a nice acidity, not making it cloyingly sweet. The acidity gives it a medium length, and the final note is of prunes. It is well-balanced and fairly intense on the palate persisting for a medium length of time.

It is a good quality, light, harmonious wine. It was paired with two desserts: the Delizie di Sorrento that I have previously described, and the chocolate, nutty caprese cake. The Brachetto was a good accompaniement to them both. The chocolate is a nice combination with the cherriness of the wine and the Delizie mixture of sweet chantilly cream and lemon scents were also in perfect agreement with this wine.

Here is the producers description of the wine and how it is made:

http://www.marchesibarolo.com/pagine/eng/dettaglio_vini.lasso?cod=024

The View from our Balcony

2009-04-14T15:49:00.006+02:00

Photos by Giuseppe Lambertino

Giacomino is the gardener where we live. There are just 3 floors to our apartment building with each of the three apartments taking up the entire floor. There is a balcony that surrounds our home uninterrupted on 3 of the 4 sides. Our view on one side is of the Mediterranean and the islands of Procida and Ischia. But it is the view from the other two sides that I wish to tell you about. These two sides look out onto the vineyard and vegetable garden. It is from this vantage that we have learned the habits of Giacomino. Giacomino in Italian means “little James”.

If you could imagine living where I live, and if you could conjure up in your mind a portrait of a stereotypical Italian “contadino” gardener, you would undoubtedly come up with the image of the man that greeted us on our first day in Italy. He’s a difficult person to describe because he is a man of few words, but our entire family, and each of our many visitors are immediately struck by his beauty inside and out upon meeting him. I will try to tell you what I know about him, but my words don’t come close to capturing his qualities or the reasons why he has so enamored us.

He is a mere 5 feet tall, with gray-blue, gentle eyes. He always has an easy, kind smile and greeting with a little bit of neighborhood gossip or news thrown in because Giacomino is always “in the know” in this town. He doesn’t however, like to talk for long….he’s all about work. He wears gray wool pants tucked into black rubber boots, and a plaid shirt opened at the neck to reveal his undershirt.

The vineyard and garden that he tends take up the space of about one acre, and Giacomino, tends every plant, every day, by hand. There is a garden hose, but to Giacomino that would be a waste of water…so he uses a rain barrel and a watering can. Right now it is the tender shoots of the tomatoes that he is watering. In the dry heat of a the Neapolitan summer, his arms will fill the watering cans innumerable times to water each and every plant in the vineyard. This is a garden with over 500 grapevines not to mention the fig, lemon, orange, grapefruit, loquat, pomegranate, walnut, laurel and willow trees in the yard. He feeds the chickens and the cats and does not like it when the owner asks him to kill a chicken for him. He confided in me once that he would always get his wife to kill the chickens because he didn’t like to do it. When he’s finished he scrubs his hands with a lemon cut in two to get rid of the smell.

Giacomino is sometimes difficult to understand as his Italian is colored with a lot of the local Montese dialect as it is known in our little pocket of Campania. He walks at a brisk pace, and he makes a“whoosh-ing”sound from his mouth to call the cats at 6am in the morning. They come from all parts of the vast garden for their morning meal, which usually consists of leftover fish skeletons and some sort of pasta. I once tried to imitate the sound when he wasn’t around, but the cats never came. It is not surprising that these contented felines follow Giacomino around as he meanders about in the vineyard throughout the course of the day. When he’s gone, they wait very close to their feeding dish for his return, sniffing around for reminders of their last meal. These cats are content.

The first day I met him, he told me his story. He’s worked all his life…since he was 9 years old, he boasted with great pride. He was the chief engineer on the ships owned by the same family who owns our apartment building. When he retired from the ships, the same family hired him on to tend the vineyard and vegetable garden. He has 4 daughters, 2 sons and he lives downstairs from his youngest daughter in the home where he raised his children, one street over from where I live. His wife died in 1982. This December he will turn 82 years old. He attributes his good health to the fact that he doesn’t eat meat, or pizza—only fish and I think a healthy amount of red wine. Sometimes he tells me about relatives or friends who have died. His tone is mournful and respectful, but I can’t help detect a sense of glee that he has so far escaped illness, retirement, idleness, and can still get up and put in a good days work.

At 1:30 he goes home for lunch and a siesta. I sometimes see him late in the day, all cleaned up, hair combed, in the piazza with some other men his age. Even though I see that he is involved in animated stories with them, he always stops to say hello. I also see him at church every week, looking rather polished. He doesn’t sit in the pews…he stands at the back of the church with the other men. This isn’t particular to Giacomino however. Few men accompany their wives to church, and most who do, don’t sit with them. I can only guess at their reasons but it could be out of politeness, reserving the seats for the women, or it might be that it just isn’t cool, or maybe a little of both.

Giacomino informed me this week that he won’t be coming back in the afternoons to work anymore, and he won’t be planting as many tomatoes this year. He just learned that he has dangerously high blood pressure. He adamantly refuses any help in the vineyard but I can see that he is scared. I know that he couldn’t bare living life as an invalid. I see how he still loves his life.

These days, I make my way around to the other side of the balcony a little more. It is a view I hope to see for many more years: the vineyard, the garden, the cats, the chickens and Giacomino. This gardener has become part of the ground that he labors, part of the view from my balcony. They say that grapes offer more succulent juice if the vine has had to work hard and dig deep for its nutrients and water. Like the vine, Giacomino has had to work hard and struggle throughout his life, and all who know him are enriched by his presence.

A year ago, I had a taste of Giacomino’s wine. He buys Aglianico grapes from Puglia and makes his own. It was not bad. However, the bottles he gifted me this year were difficult to swallow. I have seen Giacomino’s winemaking techniques and he’s a staunch promoter of quantity over quality, pressing, and squeezing every last drop out of the grapes. What follows is a description of what I tasted this year.

Giacomino's Wine

2009-04-14T15:46:00.000+02:00

Italy
Artiginal wine
Producer: Giacomino
Grapes: Aglianico from Puglia
2008

Deep, dark and almost black except for a shimmer of ruby where it picks up the light. I cannot see through the glass, though I don’t see any deposits. After I swirl, it is a different story…small deposits remain on the side of the glass, instead of the sweet tears that I usually see. The wine has weight as I swirl it

The first and strongest scent is that of leather followed by a vegetal green pepper and wet earth smell. It is difficult to smell the fruit over the intense animal and vegetal scents. This is the daily wine of most Neapolitan tables..made in their own cantinas, by their own hands, with ambient yeast, and fermented in plastic vats and then in demijohns. This is not a complex wine.

This wine is dry, high in acidity, with medium tannin and alcohol levels. It is medium bodied and surprisingly smooth. The flavor characteristics of this wine are unfortunately the spoilers, almost to the point of being undrinkable…there is a taste of fruit that is starting to spoil, and green pepper possibly. It is unfortunately pronounced in its intensity and is of medium length in the mouth.

Though it has good acidity, and may last a while longer in the bottle, I don’t think it will get better.

This wine should be paired with…..7up…and a lot of it.

Sauternes Chateau Le Mayne 2005 tasting notes

2009-03-31T11:34:00.001+02:00

France
Château Le Mayne
AOC Sauternes
2005
90% Semillon, + Sauvignon
13% ABV

Golden yellow, with orange-amber hues, crystal clear, beautiful transparency adding to its brilliance. Swirls heavily in the glass, viscous. Even tears quickly form on the outside of the glass.

Intense brandy- scent with a honey and beeswax, citrus and white spring flowers. This glass smells of orange blossoms, and honeysuckle. The brandy and honey sensations are predominant at first scent, but the citrus-flower freshness is what is making me look forward to those first few sips. Here goes.

Honey, honey, honey. It has some weight on the palate and is as smooth as silk. The initial tastes are exactly what awaits me in the glass. Honey, beautifully counterbalanced by a fresh acidity. Though 13% alcohol, the silkiness and sweetness of this wine, soften the heat that you would normally feel from the alcohol.

It is full-bodied, creamy-intense and of medium length on the palate. In my opinion it is a beautifully balanced, still developing wine. The acidity in this wine will offer it a long life in the bottle yet.

This is an elegant, captivating wine to enjoy with desserts, but the label on the back of the bottle also suggests it seals a nice marriage with foies gras. The wine is nice to drink on its own, as I am doing now, so would also make a nice aperitif. I’ve seen this bottle online for $12.00 USD.

Bordeaux 2002 Chateau Desmirail tasting notes.

2009-03-26T09:55:00.004+01:00

After decanting, this wine reveals itself as a pomegranate color with orange hues. The wine leaves some shades of brightness, though most of the color is intense. It is fairly viscous leaving slow even tears on the side of the glass.

The first scent makes me imagine myself sitting in the glass under a forest canopy after a rainfall. It’s a really beautiful, mushroomy fairly intense smell, which opens the door to its further complexities. The scents indicate that I might be in for a treat, that it might be the scent of a fine wine with aromas of deep black cherries, a hint of green pepper, and a finish of vanilla, followed by discreet suggestion of black pepper spiciness.

On the palate it is dry, fairly warm in its alcohol content and is smooth and silky in the mouth. The acidity is still fairly refreshing. It has soft tannins, and is slightly more minerally than acidic. It is medium-bodied, but only lingers a short time on the palate therefore only fairly intense but and fairly well-balanced. Overall this wine is good but not spectacular...I expected it to deliver a bit more from the wonderful scents in my glass; it was not unpleasant, but I found it disappointing in its length once swallowed and on the impact delivered. It is ready to drink, and perhaps will remain that way for years to come, but I have doubts as to whether it will improve.

Angelo's Limoncello Recipe

2009-03-25T20:59:00.010+01:00

When most people think of limoncello, they are probably reminded of the Amalfi Coast,and its spectacular vistas of sheered cliffs, azure sea and sky, and the ubiquitous lemon trees which give birth to the liqueur. Limoncello, however will forever remind me of Angelo. Angelo is my neighbor here in Monte di Procida, near Naples, where I live. He quickly befriended the new “americani” who moved in next door to him. We are Canadian, but that doesn’t seem to make much of a difference to Angelo, or anyone else for that matter. Europeans don’t seem to buy the distinction that we in North America insist exists. Angelo is elderly, has one married daughter who lives nearby, and a nephew who visit him often, making sure his needs are met. He walks with great difficulty as he is overweight and suffers from diabetes. In his one-bedroom ground floor apartment, he gets around with the help of two long-handled scrub brooms, with their bristles now flattened from the weight of his body.

In the dark entrance-way that leads first to his bedroom, then to the tiny kitchen and bathroom, he has a shrine to his deceased wife and his wife’s sister. There, on either side of a dresser sit bookend photographs of his wife and his sister-in-law. In the middle, there is a bouquet of artificial roses, atop a plastic lacy-looking tablecloth. On top of the table cloth is another cover of transparent plastic to protect it all from dust. On my first visit to his home, Angelo proudly showed the photos to me and his coin collection which he hides under the tablecloth, protected by the photos of his wife and sister-in-law standing guard like sentinels over his treasure. There on that dresser, are his most prized possessions.

Angelo loves food, and loves to cook and we’ve been summoned to his tiny table more than once for a feast that could have fed our family for a week. Most of it, comes home with us. He seems to know our comings and goings, as often the phone will ring about a minute after we walk through the door. His door is always open for us he tells me, time and time again. If we have company, I will immediately get a phone call, and he will invite us and my company over for dessert, coffee, and his delicious home-made limoncello -- the signature liqueur of the Gulf of Napoli, though I think that Sorrento claims it as its own. It can be bought anywhere in the region, but the best I have tasted is Angelo’s. The limoncellos I’ve had elsewhere are overpoweringly alcoholic. Angelo keeps his limoncello in the freezer. When it is served there are sometimes bits of slush in the frosted shot glass making it all the more refreshing.

Here is his recipe:
-2 liters of spirits (alcool)
-to this add the peel of 13 large lemons – no pith
-let sit in a dark place for 13 days
-after the 13th day (I’m not sure why it is always the number 13, but he seems quite emphatic about the fact that it is 13 days and 13 lemons.
-boil 2 liters of water and add 2 kg of sugar adding the sugar bit by bit to the water to be sure that it is dissolved
-let cool
-mix the sugared water with the drained spirit/lemon mixture
Let sit for 2 days…voila…Angelo’s limoncello.

Above is a photo of Angelo but the ones I have of him in my mind’s eye are the ones that paint the best picture of him. Angelo embodies the Neapolitan ideal of so many of his generation of making do with nothing. They know how to stretch their money, they eat well from the fruits of their own gardens, and take solace in the companionship friends and family. They share all they have with whoever happens by their door. Angelo knows that his coin collection would not be worth having if he had no one to show it to. The coin collection is only the bait to lure you in. It is obvious that what he treasures most is the pleasure of your company. If you come to visit me, you are sure to be his guest at some point during your visit. I gladly indulge in his gracious company and the best limoncello in the Gulf of Napoli.

Natalie MacLean's Free Drinks Matcher Widget

2009-03-24T13:38:00.006+01:00

This is really cool and easy, and a fail safe method for picking the right wines. I've got to wonder what I'm doing studying to be a sommelier with tools like this.
http://www.nataliemaclean.com/matcher/

Morellino di Scansano DOCG, Toscana

2009-03-23T10:02:00.003+01:00

Italy
March 23rd, 2009
Morellino si Scansano DOCG
Toscana
La Mora
2007
Producer: Cecchi
13%

The color of this wine is ruby red with purple hues. It seems intense at the bottom of the glass, yet is transparent enough to make out lettering where it lets the light pass through. It is viscous in body with slow even tears.
Rich red ripe berries emerge from the glass. The smell of luscious jams, like blackberry, a suggestion of fresh violets, followed by a faint woodsy, mushroom scent, and some black pepper spice. This is a fairly complex wine.
It is dry, and warm in the mouth, and fairly smooth. The balance between the acidity and the mineral content is almost perfect…the fresh acidity is at first noticeable, but then the spicy pepper kicks in and then the warmth of the alcohol, each bringing balance to this wine. It is a fairly tannic wine. The sensations last for over 7 seconds giving it length and persistence in the mouth. It is fairly intense and of very good quality. It is medium bodied –and ready to be appreciated paired with barbequed steak, pork chops with lots of salt and pepper. This is a really nice wine to bring to a barbeque and would be robust enough for a winter wine, and fresh enough to drink in the summer.

Asprinio di Aversa DOC, Italy

2009-03-22T12:00:00.004+01:00

Date: March 22, 2009
Asprinio d’Aversa DOC
Min. 85% Asprinio grapes
Grotta del Sole
2008
12.5%

I found this wine difficult to assess. Perhaps some of you can help me with it. The wine is crystal clear in appearance and is a very young-looking greenish–yellow in the glass. I even hesitate to say greenish-yellow as it is more watery in color with greenish yellow hues. The color intensity is definitely pale. It is only barely viscous. It has a fairly intense uncomplex bouquet of fresh fruit such as apple-- almost cidery, and a hint of sweet floral scents. There are no undesirable qualities in the scents so I would award it acceptable as the scent is pleasant with some good nuances letting me know that something is there, but nothing really jumps out at me.
The wine is dry, offering a medium-warm feel from the alcohol content. It is smooth on the palate, but…..high acidity as expected from Asprinio. The name of the grape, Asprinio comes from the word “aspro” in Italian meaning “sour”. I cannot fault the acidity as it is a characteristic of the grape and the wine. This wine respects the tipicity of the grape. The beauty of this wine is that even though it is a very fresh young wine, it is also nice and smooth. Could it have spent some time in oak? I don’t smell any tasting notes that indicate as such. This wine also has a slightly minerally aftertaste that lingers for about 5 seconds causing it to be somewhat persistent in length.
I would rate it a good quality wine for its type. It is light-bodied, young or maybe even “ready” for it’s tipicity. I believe it should be consumed within the year after it has been made. It would be a good wine to combine with the frutti di mare fresh salads that are so often served in the restaurants around Napoli.

Parcels of Hautes Côtes des Nuits Vineyard Available for Under $10,000. USD

2009-03-22T10:49:00.007+01:00

This is a rare opportunity to own a piece of a Burgundy vineyard. We happened upon an interesting add, by chance as we were looking on the internet for a vineyard to buy. We came across this innovative idea that allows for multiple owners of an already well-established Burgundy vineyard. I am talking about Burgundy, France...home of some of the most desired wines in the world.
About 3 km as the crow flies from Nuits St. Georges is the tiny hamlet of Villars Fontaine, where an historic vineyard is selling off plots of land for 6.100 euros/parcel. The parcels are 200 sq. metres each, defined by the average amount of grapes one person can pick in a day. As the owner of one such parcel, I would like to tell you about the wine, and the benefits of becoming involved in this unique partnership/co-ownership.
We have been co-owners for the past two years, have received a slight revenue for the rental of our land, and are able to bring home (we are Canadian, but we presently live in Italy), 100 bottles of AOC Burgundy wine, at cost + 20% once a year. This is a rare opportunity as Burgundy vineyards seldom change hands. Because of this wine's ability to age beyond 20 years (there are some Burgundy whites still on sale today dating back to the 1850's), we view this as an investment.

In 1973, Bernard Hudelot, a native of Villars Fontaine and professor of oenology at Université de Bourgogne, purchased and replanted the vineyard that had originally been planted in the 11 century by the monks of St-Denis, under the protection of the Sirs de Vergy family. While historically the vines planted at this elevation didn’t obtain the ripeness of other more favorable spots in the Côtes d’Or, Bernard Hudelot feels that climate change, as observed over the past 15 years, has now placed these vines at an optimum elevation. To illustrate this point, M. Hudelot’s literature on the state of his vineyard is filled with references from renowned climatologists and enologists on how climate change is affecting the state of the vines and wines in Burgundy. In an article written by Franck Bassoleil, a journalist for a local Burgundy newspaper, Le Bien Public, the author outlines that in 2003, vineyard owners harvested their grapes by the unprecedented date of 19th of August. He references the statistical work of Dr. Lavalle, published in 1855 that indicates that the earliest date ever for grape harvesting would have been 26 of August 1420. For the moment, these references are isolated and remain inconclusive as to whether or not climate change, in the near future will have a real impact on the quality of the vines and wines in Burgundy. It is clear that Bernard Hudelot would like to think so.

The evidence that I would like to put forth to you that this is a good investment is in the quality of the wine itself. These are wines that will age 20 to 30 years without loosing their structure and freshness. The reds are aged from between 30 to 48 months in new oak. They are bottled without filtration using egg-whites as a fining agent. The wines begin to come into themselves after about 10 years for the reds. It is the Chardonnays at this point that are of exceptional quality. After spending 18 months in new oak they have a life that will see them through to at least 30 years. They are derived from excellent white marl soils and have recently won a blind taste test over Bâtard-Montrachet, Montrachet and Corton Charlemagne for the 1990 vintage. We brought home the 2002 vintage and so convinced am I of the quality of these wines, that I am willing to send you a bottle to try for yourself, should you be seriously interested in purchasing a plot of land, as long as it doesn't cost me an arm and a leg to get it to you(while my quantities last).
Bernard Hudelot has recently purchased the Château “Le Pré aux Dames” that was originally part of the estate. He has sold over 500 parcels and it is his intention to sell off all remaining 400 or so plots. A professional paid staff, who are also co-owners currently maintain the vines and create the wines of this estate. They are also co-managers. There is a meeting of all partner/owners once a year in May where we review the results of the previous year’s harvest. In principal each partner/owner has the opportunity to buy 100 bottles per parcels owned of Burgundy from that year’s harvest at cost + 20%. The 20% covers all the costs involved in operating this vineyard. Earlier years are also availabe for purchase at a reduced price to the co-owners. M. Hudelot also offers his cellars for the cellaring of your wine, should you wish to let them age on location. In 2010 all management of this vineyard will be relinquished in its entirety to the co/owner-partners.
M. Hudelot is hopeful that he will sell the remaining 400 parcels.
Such transactions are legal in Bourgogne and are done under the supervision of the law firm Nourissat et Misserey in Dijon. This type of ownership is called G.F.A or Groupement Foncier Agricole.
The Appelation Hautes Côtes des Nuits was awarded in 1961 over an area that covers about 2.500 hectares and I own a piece of it.
For my tasting notes on the 2002 Chardonnay from this estate, please see the first entry in this blog.
I would be happy to answer any questions that you might have regarding this wine or becoming a partner/co-owner.

Hungarian Tokaji - 3 puttonyos

2009-03-21T10:04:00.002+01:00

Hungary
Date: March 21st, 2009
Crown Tokaji Aszú
3 puttonyos
2001
Tokaj Kereskedohaz Zrt.
13%

The wine I’m about to describe is one that I think illustrates harmony and balance in a wine. Two weeks ago at my sommelier course, I learned how Hungarian Tokaji is made. The following Sunday, as luck would have it, I was served this wine for the first time while having Sunday lunch at my friend’s home. I was thrilled to be able to use my fresh knowledge to enlighten my hosts whether they wanted it or not.
The color of this Tokaji in the glass was a brilliant, medium amber with golden yellow hues. The color itself was a beauty to behold. Its consistency was viscous with slow, thick tears. The nose is intense and complex with the first scent being alcohol, followed by peach, caramel and a fresh citrus smell. I did not expect the smell to be so fresh. I was curious as to what this wine would taste like, and I expected sweet because of the addition of 3 “puttonyos” of botrytised grapes.
The taste is sweet, but counterbalanced with an unexpected fresh acidity. Surprisingly it is not a wine that coats the palate with sweetness, but leaves it feeling clean. It is smooth and full-bodied, fairly intense in the mouth and somewhat persistent with the warmth of the alcohol, and the sweet/sour sensations. It was a wine in perfect balance, with a freshness that will allow it to age for some time.
We had this wine with a typical dessert from Sorrento – Le Delizie di Sorrento. The lemon in the dessert was also in perfect harmony with the wine, and the freshness of the wine cleansed the palate from the creaminess of the dessert.
Le Delizie di Sorrento and Crown Tokaji Aszú make a lovely couple.

A foreigner infiltrates Sommelier School in Napoli

2009-03-20T15:08:00.004+01:00

In my naiveté, I decided that I wanted to learn more about wine. My father had always made homemade wine in our basement from imported California zinfandel grapes, for most of the Italian community where I grew up in Sudbury,Ontario. I had watched the process through my entire youth, and this is where I realized that winemaking is about creativity, science and decision-making each one having an impact on your final product. So wine appreciation seemed like a good place to start learning and savoring life in Italy.
I found that there were a variety of courses to be found, but I wanted an internationally recognized program. The Associazione Italiana di Sommelier is that organization. It offers sommelier courses in all of Italy’s 21 regions, they are recognized internationally and I eagerly signed up for the Napoli course.
Remember how I said I could speak Italian? Well, when one finds oneself in a classroom of Neapolitans, speaking at auctioneering speed, one quickly realizes that another level of Italian is required other than fluent, and that would be native. Still I remained in my seat, trying to look calm all the while thinking that above my head there was a neon sign flashing “foreigner” or worse still, “imposter”. During most of those first classes, I sat there like a deer in headlights, terrified that someone might speak to me. Even if I had had a better grasp of the language, there was a whole new “wine, viticulture” vocabulary that I had to learn. I decided I would just take notes, and write down what I think I heard, and then go home and look it up later. In one lesson they kept referring to what I thought was the word “piacca”. I had never heard this word before and quickly looked it up when I got home. No such word in any dictionary. Later on that week as I trudged through my reading I realized what they were referring to. The letter “P” which is pronounced “pi” in Italian and the letter “H” which is pronounced “acca” …it was pH that they were referring to. That’s how confused I was.
I continued to attend, and between classes I spent hours reading the textbook with my trusty dictionary by my side. By lesson 6, I had relaxed and was better able to follow in class, but I still didn’t talk or look anyone in the eye.
Everyone in the class seemed serious and much more knowledgeable than myself. There were about 50 of us, of all age ranges.
As I have previously mentioned, food and wine in Italy are sacred and must be handled with reverence. So if you are studying the nectar of the gods you must know what you are talking about and therefore rigorous training is essential. AIS courses are structured over 3 years, over 3 levels: Level 1 covers an introduction to viticulture, enological practices, the techniques and vocabulary associated with wine tasting, Italian law with regards to wine labelling and the role of the sommelier. Level 2, is an exhausting tour of the 21 regions of Italy, their DOCG and DOC wines and the grape varietals from which they are made. Level 3, and I just can’t wait to get there, is all about food pairing. At every class, at every level, the second part of the course is the tasting of 3 wines served by sommeliers in their black suits, white shirts, black bow ties and their Bling (tastevin on a chain) around their neck. Each wine requires that we complete the tasting chart and give a numerical evaluation to the wine.
After level 2, I can say that I am starting to get the hang of it…no …I’m hooked. I can’t get enough of it. I was even thinking of asking if I could sit through level 1 again, just for the heck of it. The final Level 3 exam is both written and oral. If successful one is awarded the title of Sommelier, and is honored with the tastevin on a chain placed around your neck as deserving and prized as any Olympic medal. This is the point at which I picture it all falling apart for me. My Italian has improved, but can I really converse about wine, at that level in Italian? Usually before I say something to someone in class, I carefully rehearse what I have to say in my head, so that I don’t make a fool of myself with any grammar mistakes or vocabulary errors. The exam will be impromptu questioning. Yes, soon the jig might be up for me. The foreigner in the ranks might be discovered for what I really am…a foreign Italian Sommelier wannabe. I will continue to do my best. I want that BLING!

Bella Napoli

2009-03-19T21:21:00.002+01:00

Two years ago, good fortune (my husband), brought me to live in Italy, and granted me a daily view of the Mediterranean islands of Procida and Ischia. Italy also just happens to be where all of my dna originated. Italian, just so happens to be one of the languages that I speak. Italy also happens to be the country that I would have given anything to live in since I was 21. And well, here I am. So what to do with my time? I decided this was a good time to take a break from teaching and really experience, and savor life in Italy for that’s what Italians do…they savor. They savor food, they savor wine, laughter, anger and even sadness.
To give you an idea of how much the meal means to an Italian, namely a Neapolitan, let me describe the following story that I happened to witness. It was noon and I was waiting for my sons to complete their stroll through the Posillipo market, which is situated near the Public Gardens of Parco Virgilliano. I watched a man open the trunk of his car and take out a small white tablecloth, the size of a place mat and place it on the hood of his car. He reached for his recently purchased bag of fresh vegetables. He took out a flat round dark bread that he split open with a pocketknife. From his trunk, he reached for the oil…not motor oil, but olive oil, which he proceeded to drizzle on his bread. The open-faced sandwich that he made had me watering at the mouth and I couldn’t take my eyes off the red tomatoes, the green peppers, the olives, the basil and the fresh, thin slices of parmesan cheese that he flaked on top of it all. Then into a small plastic cup, he poured his homemade wine, and began to eat his lunch. He talked to people passing by. I wondered who this man could be, and pondered the peculiarity of it all. I had never seen someone take so much care, and enjoy the process quite so much, when eating off the hood of a car. He noticed me gawking, and motioned me over. He offered me some of his feast, and as much as I wanted some, I refused. I apologized for staring, but explained that I was impressed that he could make something look so appetizing from the trunk of his car. He explained that he was the head gardener in the Parco. He insisted I have a bite and a drink of wine. It is the Neapolitan way he explained…that of hospitality. It is expressed by sharing food, drink and conversation under the sun, and before shimmering blue waters and so how could I refuse. This was my introduction to Napoli, bella Napoli and its reverence for food and drink. It is a scene I shall never forget and endeared me forever to Neapolitans.

Every town in Italy has their own specialty food, and an Italian wouldn’t be caught buying a gift other than the specialty from that area. Not only should you buy “Le Delizie di Sorrento” the specialty dessert of Sorrento when you’re in Sorrento, but there is also a specific shop that you should buy it from. As a friend recently said to me, “Well, other people make it, but it’s not real.” In Italy, food and drink are art. The meal is sacred and therefore anything that has to do with the meal is also sacred. This includes the time it takes to eat the meal, the way it is prepared, and the drink that is carefully planned to compliment the food. In order for this to happen day in and day out, meal after meal, requires that people have a level of knowledge of food and wine uncommon in other parts of the world. It also requires that they have strong opinions about it, and it requires that they let you know about them. In my dealings with Italians since I have been here, I have come to realize that many people, average every day people, can tell you the specialty wines and food of Italy’s 21 regions, as well as the prominent grape varieties in those areas. This is no small feat. In the past two years since I began my study of Italian wine, I have learned that there are hundreds of grape varieties that make up all of Italy’s wines. Campania alone has over 100 identified common grape varieties. When you compare this with the fact that the great wines of France are derived from only 30 different varieties you get the idea how complicated learning about Italian wine can be. Still, Italians remain undaunted and discuss wine as candidly and casually as they discuss football. I decided that food and wine would be my quest while I sojourn in Italy so I set out to find a school for Sommeliers.

Two French wines.

2009-03-19T18:59:00.004+01:00

Date: March 18th, 2009
Cotes du Rhone
Jean Bichier et Fils 2004
Grenache Noir and Syrah
13%
Ruby red with orange tint, nice transparency and lovely reflections of bright red light through the wine, slow regular tears along the sides of the glass. Viscous.
Fairly intense on the nose and gradually revealing more complexity to the wine over time. The first scent is herbal, though I couldn’t recognize the smell, I have read that syrah can have sandlewood and or cedar smell. In this bottle, it is somewhat of a medicinal smell. I smell damp woods, followed by alcohol infused red berry fruit with a spicy, peppery finish. On the palate it is dry, with a pleasant warm alcohol sensation that you continue to feel down to your stomach. It is smooth and silky in the mouth. It is still fresh and only slightly tannic, with a sapidity slightly higher than the acids. It is full-bodied, well-balanced, with a medium persistence. Overall, it is a good quality wine that is at this point mature and harmonious. After a while in the glass, some caramel notes emerge.

Date: March 19th, 2009
Burgundy
Chateau de Villars Fontaine
Hautes Cotes des Nuits
Chardonnay
2002
13%
I’ve just poured it in the glass and already I smell caramel. In the glass it is a crystal clear, straw yellow with golden hues. In the bottle, some particles are evident as this wine has been fined with eggs whites. Upon closer examination, I see the fine particles in the glass, but they in no way take away from its brightness. This wine looks every bit healthy, clean and young. It swirls in the glass with some consistency. The intense scent of yellow and tropical fruit assails me first, followed by still fresh spring flowers. As it warms in the glass the smell of flowers becomes stronger.The final note is definitely caramel, and maybe a touch of mineral/slate on the finish. It is dry, warm and smooth going down, complemented by fresh bright acidity and underlined by that somewhat paler nonetheless present mineral note. It is medium – bodied, well-balanced, fairly intense tasting wine with lingering vanilla, and a mouth-cleansing freshness that persists. This wine is ready to drink but still has lots of room to age. Now, I will admit my partiality….I’m one of 400 co-owners of this vineyard in Hautes Cotes des Nuits. More on that later.

Sommelier School in Napoli

2009-03-19T08:58:00.001+01:00

I have had the good fortune of being able to live in Napoli over the past couple of years. I am also fortunate in that I understand Italian very well, and can speak it well enough to be understood. As I am a teacher, I saw this as the perfect learning opportunity.