Touring is the smash of all happiness! There’s no taking a look at a constructing after seeing Italy. — Fanny Burney
Nel vino cè la verità [In wine there is truth] — Outdated Italian proverb
Earlier than I proceed our harvest story with the primary a part of our journey to Italy, I need to beg your forgiveness for the latest irregular scheduling of this text. One of many hazards of writing about winemaking, significantly round harvest season, is the hazard of tumbling down each rabbit gap encountered within the telling of your story.
There’s merely an excessive amount of occurring and it’s too simple to need to clarify all of it—if solely to get the chaos down on paper, and search some order to the pandemonium. Sadly, that can lead to the story you initially got down to inform by no means getting instructed. An exasperating author’s block units in and you discover it simpler to procrastinate, to easily watch for the confusion to abate (i.e., not write in any respect) fairly than apply the laborious work and self-discipline mandatory to search out readability. To borrow from Lao Tzu, “Muddy water let stand, will clear.”
Anybody who reads my missives is aware of that I’m perpetually responsible of this sort of digression. It’s my literary equal of tasting every little thing on the buffet desk, in all places, suddenly. So, working my method via recounting the 2023 harvest season goes to be that method, simply telling you now. Mea culpa.
On November 2nd my last two out of 11 fermentations this season went dry and I pressed the should into holding tanks to accept a day or two earlier than barreling. You’ll hear extra about this in an upcoming publish, however such was the superb size of this 12 months’s harvest. So, on November third, feeling smug, very exhausted, and really relieved to have the final of all the 10 tons of grapes I had picked lastly previous that time, I attended a wine tasting.
“A wine tasting?” you may ask. “Did you not get sufficient wine over the earlier two months?” However I don’t drink that a lot throughout harvest season. Absolutely having fun with a bottle of wine is simply too powerful on this ageing physique, particularly the morning after when all I’m making an attempt to do is solely survive the physicality of the job. I do style so much, nevertheless, however not in the best way you might be considering. And I virtually by no means swallow. I style wine “within the making”—recent grape juice, fermenting wine at each stage, press fractions of wine, one-day previous wine, one-week previous wine, wine going via MLF, wine earlier than racking, wine after racking, wine whereas mixing—all of which is hardly the identical factor, or as pleasurable, as say, sitting out on the patio at Gundlach Bundschu and reveling in a Mountain Cuvée.
However on November third, the fiftieth day of my 2023 harvest season, I used to be prepared to actually style wine. And so, I went to the most effective wine tasting occasion of the season.
I’ve written about Ken Wornick, my “wine guru” many instances over the previous three years, virtually from my very first e-newsletter. I met him in 2018 after I made the Tiny Vineyards documentary (wherein he was portrayed), and he’s really the only most influential motive I turned a winemaker.
Ken has been making wine, largely behind the scenes for personal shoppers, for almost 30 years, and he has shared his huge expertise and know-how with me, generously and unfailingly, each time I requested. This 12 months he lastly realized a long-held dream of constructing his personal vineyard, to make his personal wine, beneath his personal label, from his personal uncommon and really particular Sagrantino grapes, grown in his personal winery, on his personal land.
It was to the inaugural wine tasting, vineyard opening, and model unveiling of this wine of Ken’s, this Sonocaia, that I made my method on November third. And I used to be hardly disillusioned! Concentrate wine world, that is actually one thing. And also you, pricey reader, can solely profit from the revelations you’ll be afforded at sonocaia.com
And this simply in! Friday’s Sonoma Index Tribune simply featured Ken in an enormous, two-page story saying the opening of his vineyard. Test it out!
Lastly, I simply must shortly acknowledge how visually sensational the top of the season was right here in Sonoma Valley. In my earlier 5 autumns in wine nation, I’ve by no means seen such shade within the vineyards, particularly the reds. Vineyards in all places appeared to actually glow on hearth when backlit by the afternoon solar.
Sadly, pink leaves in a winery within the autumn may very well be, properly… a pink herring. It isn’t at all times the identical course of or as predictable because the well-known fall colours of New England, the breathtaking hardwood palette of the Ozarks, or the blazing yellow of aspen altering in Colorado. The traditional leaf shade development for wholesome grapevines as they offer up their grapes at harvest and put together to go dormant is inexperienced, yellow, orange, brown… gone. And infrequently these orange and brown levels barely get began earlier than the leaves fall off.
When pink turns into the dominant shade in a winery, viticulturists start on the lookout for detrimental biotic causes like viruses, micro organism, or fungus, or abiotic influences like nutrient deficiencies, chilly harm, or injury to root methods. Nevertheless, it’s extremely unlikely that just about each winery within the area this 12 months was all of a sudden and concurrently affected by pink blotch virus or leaf roll illness, or is poor in magnesium or potassium.
So, possibly what we loved seeing this fall was only a extra vibrant expression of that last orange/brown stage because of such a protracted, sluggish harvest season with no hostile climate occasions to knock the leaves off early. That’s an excessive rarity in itself round right here. Regardless of the trigger, it certain was lovely.
Now, let’s get on to Italy.
It looks like everybody you discuss to has been to Italy. In truth, it looks like everybody simply obtained again from Italy, or goes but someday quickly. No less than that’s the impression I obtained from speaking about Italy in a small wine-centric city like Sonoma. In fact, it might simply be that folk in all places have felt cooped up for thus lengthy, what with the pandemic and all, that lastly the world simply unilaterally determined that it was as soon as once more secure to journey, and Italy was a popular vacation spot. I don’t know. Doesn’t fairly make sense actually, in the event you recall that Italy was one of many nations hardest hit by Covid.
And on prime of that, 2023 has been one in all Italy’s hottest years on report, with a median of 11 excessive climate occasions per day for the primary seven months of the 12 months. The Italian authorities issued a pink alert for 23 of the nation’s 27 fundamental cities and shut down many common points of interest. Hundreds of vacationers flocked to hospitals with signs of warmth stroke and different heat-related diseases, and lots of died.
Nonetheless, the world descended on Italy in report numbers. In line with the market analysis institute Demoskopika, the nation will set a brand new vacationer report in 2023. The variety of guests is anticipated to achieve 68 million folks — virtually 3 million greater than earlier than the pandemic in 2019.
And Deb and I had been to be someplace in that rely.
The European heatwaves had been a priority after we first began eager about sneaking a visit in earlier than harvest, however we figured the warmth must break by September. The sheer variety of vacationers was laborious to place in context, so we merely ignored the potential affect of that. And the concept of any continued threat from Covid was additionally illusionary. People round right here haven’t worn masks in months and no person appeared to be getting sick anymore. For many people, Covid was so yesterday.
So, to catch as much as the place I left off in my final publish, we bid everybody on the wedding ceremony arrivederci! and made our strategy to Pittsburg Worldwide Airport for our night continuous to London and connection on to Venice.
Wait a minute now. I simply felt the room shift. There was a perceptible temper change amongst you, loyal readers, on the thought that you simply had been duped by the basic, “Do you need to see slides from my Italian trip?” trope. And sure, we did take a couple of hundred (okay, possibly thousand) iPhone pics and digital photos on my Nikon Z7 as we made our method from Venice to Cinque Terre to Florence to Tuscany and at last to Rome. And we wrote journals and drew sketches. And we noticed each sight one sees on such an itinerary.
However wait, don’t delete this e mail! I promise I gained’t bore you with snapshots of belongings you’ve in all probability seen in particular person, or on-line numerous time, or with an limitless, rambling travelogue. As an alternative, I hope to move you with only a few cultural photos to set the scene, and some extra meals and wine pictures to pique your curiosity, and possibly even your urge for food.
I noticed most of the well-known sights in Italy for the primary time over fifty years in the past, after which once more, half my lifetime in the past. However apart from a mountain climbing journey alongside the Swiss border, this was Deb’s first journey to Italy and so this immersive itinerary was hers. It didn’t harm that we might be deep within the coronary heart of a number of Italian wine areas, as my give attention to this journey, after tagging together with Deb for the good things, was the meals and wine. Apart from to look at Deb smile and shake her head in amazement at what she was seeing, I went to Italy to be impressed for my very own winemaking.
And so, that’s how I shall current it right here, in image kind, together with a couple of easy journal notes which are all just about wine or meals associated. When you’re nonetheless stifling a yawn, maybe breaking out a glass of Ribolla Gialla or Amaroni would assist as an angle adjuster.
Sunday, September 3 – Flew from Pittsburgh to London, in a single day continuous on British Airways. Uneventful red-eye with even a budget seats moderately comfy, however back-of-the-bus British airline meals is hardly the best way to begin a culinary-focused journey!
Unable to sleep, I reluctantly broke out our Rick Steves’ Italy guidebook, which I had just about prevented to date with a “Who me? I don’t want no stinkin’ guidebook. I can determine it out.” world traveler snobbishness. I admit it, I’ve obtained an angle. I’ve been extraordinarily lucky to have traveled broadly in my varied pursuits, and I’ve at all times made it a behavior to strike out alone and check out to not seem like your common American vacationer. That in fact smacks of elitism—and is definitely fairly laborious to tug off!—as nothing stands out extra in a crowd than the aforementioned caricature.
However an hour with the guidebook and I used to be deeply humbled. It was apparent that Steves, the self-made but undisputed excessive priest of journey to Italy, had finished a exceptional job and his guidebook can be indispensable for our journey. I say “can be” after I actually ought to be saying “already had been,” as Deb had already been referring to the tome (and a favourite web site, earthtrekkers.com) for a number of months as she deliberate our journey. It was now festooned with coloured sticky notes, annotated all through in her handwriting, and torn aside and rebound into sections protecting the areas we might go to. With my conceit squelched, all I might hope for was that we wouldn’t see too many different vacationers blatantly referring to this bible in public. Sadly, even that wouldn’t be the case.
Monday, September 4 – Flew from London to Venice after navigating Heathrow. Whole time-suck after they make you reprocess via safety despite the fact that you’re a connecting passenger in the identical terminal. Barely made our flight.
As soon as on the bottom in Italy we adopted indicators from Vincenza airport to the Blue Line water taxi offering vaporetto rides to Venice, and hopped on the subsequent boat. It’s now doable to take a practice immediately into and out of Venice, however it hardly offers the normal, centuries previous method by water. Jetlagged and giddy, we leapt off at our cease and plunged into the labyrinth of complicated passageways and canals that kind the islands of Venice.
It’s a ceremony of passage to get misplaced in Venice, and it’ll occur a number of instances. Humorous factor, the GPS in your telephone works there, however solely form of. As a result of peak of buildings constructed upon buildings and the extraordinarily slim lanes between them, it’s fairly simple to your Google maps to be off by a “avenue” or two as we found on the lookout for our lodging on Calle Sartori.
As soon as we discovered our Airbnb (livable, however nothing particular) alongside a passageway so slim solely two folks might stroll abreast, we headed for dinner on the Puppa Bar. It was a reasonable dive off the crushed path, favored by college students for its low cost native meals and wine. Good! We had an enormous plate of Spaghetti Al Nero Di Seppie (squid ink pasta) with a salad, tiramisu for dessert, and glasses of native Ribolla Gialla and Valpolicella. The meals was scrumptious and the wines superb, particularly the extremely recent and crisp Ribolla Galla.
Tuesday, September 5 – I’m a espresso man. Gotta have it very first thing within the morning, ideally with a easy pastry of some sort. And I don’t thoughts slightly ritual to go alongside, like getting ready it in the identical method day by day, or visiting a favourite espresso store. We discovered all that in spades in Italy, as espresso and the follow of consuming it’s a faith there. Our first cease each morning in Venice was Bar Stella Polare for creamy cappuccino, tea for Deb, and croissants baked with orange marmalade filling.
We spent our first morning on a three-hour lengthy guided tour of Saint Mark’s Sq. and Basilica, and the Doge’s Palace—the cultural plethora of which held me in rapt consideration from the primary minute to the final. Wow!
Lunch was at some unnamed bar alongside the stroll again to our Airbnb. We made the error of consuming too far into the vacationer zone the place usually the costs are larger and the standard decrease. This place no less than had intentions of culinary creativity serving cuttlefish ravioli with smoked salmon paste, a Caprese salad, and chilly glasses of a neighborhood Sauvignon Blanc and Soave, the really endemic white wine of this a part of Italy. It may need been as a result of we had been nonetheless jet-lagged, however every little thing was simply form of bleh, apart from the Soave, which was really scrumptious however added to my sleepiness.
Upon arrival again at our Airbnb we collapsed into that different time-honored custom of Italy—Riposo or siesta. Fai un buon pisolino!
We woke from our naps within the early night, nonetheless drunk on the afternoon sleep and the surplus of the day, however restored from our journey malaise. Venturing out for what in Sonoma is likely to be known as a late dinner, we discovered ourselves the primary two patrons at Hosteria Bacanera, and dined on their outdoors tables in Capiello de la Cason sq..
We shared a plate of great gnocchi with goose, duck, and rabbit ragu, and a pistachio mousse for dessert. I requested the very pleasant sommelier for a superb native pink wine and he introduced me a bottle of Manzone Rosso, a really cheap pink mix of Barbera and Dolcetto grapes from close by Barolo in Piedmont. The wine was medium-bodied with a superb acidity, tender tannins, and aromas of pink fruit, together with a touch of herbs and spices. It went very well with our meal. I beloved it!
Wednesday, September 6 – Breakfast once more at Bar Stella Polare, the place else? Then we set off on a enjoyable self-guided exploration of the middle of Venice, the superb fish market, the Grand Canal, and a Leonardo da Vinci exhibit of innovations in an previous church. By mid-morning we had been hungry once more—go determine!—so we acted like Italians and stood up at a bar to munch a snack of small ham and cheese sandwiches. And, I had my first Apernol spritz, a shortly habit-forming, bitter however refreshing cocktail of Apernol, prosecco, soda water, and a slice of orange. Created in Venice in 1919, Apernol itself is made with an infusion of orange, rhubarb and a secret mixture of herbs and roots. Apernol spritzes have been the craze in Italy for many years, and right here within the States for simply the previous couple of years.
Strolling the streets of Venice is an indulgence in visible and historic overload. Fairly actually, in all places you look is {a photograph}, from the canals to the traditional buildings, all frozen very purposely in time from lengthy earlier than there was even movie. Deb is an artist along with her iPhone digicam and each time I begin taking a look at her photos of Venice I’m transported again to the time of Napoleon, and far earlier. There are nonetheless buildings within the metropolis relationship again 800 years.
Earlier than we knew it lunchtime had rolled round and we shared a unbelievable tuna/tomato/mozzarella salad adopted by a macchiatoni (an espresso with a small quantity of foamed milk) at Bar Foscarini, slightly below the Ponte Dell’Accademia. Then a vaporetto water taxi on the Grand Canal again to Rialto Bridge, and a brief stroll house for our every day riposo.
This was our final night time in Venice so we splurged slightly for dinner at Vecia Cavana, a higher-end native’s ristorante close to “our” a part of city. It requires a reservation, which in fact we hadn’t remembered to safe, and we truly solely obtained in as a result of as soon as once more we ate earlier than civilized Venetians would even take into account sitting down for dinner. We had conventional plates of marinated sardines with onions and raisins, and a easy pasta with wild mushrooms. Completely chic.
I ordered a half-bottle of Amaroni della Vallpolicella for greater than the price of all of the wine I had drunk to date on this journey mixed. A full bottle of their finest classic was 650 Euros or about $700. Amaroni della Vallpolicellai is taken into account essentially the most prized (if not essentially the most highly effective) expression of the wines of Valpolicella. It’s really ambrosial, and is made so via a course of known as appassimento, which is the pure partial dehydration of the grapes to provide a higher focus of colours, aromas and flavors within the wine. I can attest, the result’s orgasmic.
We ended our night with a nighttime gondola experience. Yeah, a bit touristy however nonetheless romantic, and lots of enjoyable!
Thursday, September 7 – Early the subsequent day, we took a vaporetto water taxi to the Venice practice station, a quick practice to Florence, a quick practice to La Spezia, and a regional practice to Monterosso in Parco Nazionale della Cinque Terre—some of the picturesque and distant coastal stretches of Italy. Few roads, fewer vehicles and virtually all journey finished by practice or boat, or by strolling on trails alongside the steep shoreline.
Earlier than we left the States Deb and I had every determined to channel our early vagabond days and journey to Italy with only a wheeled carry-on bag and a small backpack. This made us extraordinarily free and cell, and by no means beneath the specter of misplaced baggage. And, regardless of the limitation on what we might pack, I nonetheless obtained house with garments I by no means wore. This could all turn into fairly useful as we now entered essentially the most train-transported and heavy-walking part of our journey.
Arriving in Monterosso we walked up the steep fundamental avenue to verify in on the Resort Memento. I beloved this place. Simply what I imagined a small vacationer lodge tucked into the hillside ought to be, previous however working accompaniments, a snug mattress, massive toilet, and home windows that opened absolutely to a cooling sea breeze.
The older girl who ran the place, even perhaps owned it, greeted us with a pleasant recitation on the place to go and what to do in Cinque Terra. Would we be mountain climbing between the 5 cities throughout the park? In that case right here’s what it’s essential to know. The place to eat? Not any of the touristy locations, most are already absolutely booked for the night. Attempt Ristorante Belvedere, a favourite gathering place for locals. It’s proper on the seashore.
And he or she was proper, Ristorante Belvedere was sensational. We had an outside desk ten toes from the wall that borders the seashore. We ordered a half-liter of Brocca, a scrumptious native pink wine made out of the hardscrabble grapes of really tiny vineyards clinging to historic terraces on the steep hillsides alongside the coast.
For dinner we feasted on native seafood—a plate of small recent sardines, filleted open and marinated in orange juice and olive oil, a platter of grilled swordfish, bronzini, scampi and squid, Trofiette pesto pasta with potatoes and inexperienced beans, and completed off with lemon sorbetto. Want I say something extra?!
Friday, September 8 – The subsequent morning, we had been handled to a unbelievable Euro breakfast unfold on the lodge—the Italian equal of an inexpensive airport motel breakfast buffet within the States, solely this could have certified as five-star wherever on the American aspect of the pond. We ate our method via a number of completely different cultures of breakfast meals and listened to the excited chatter of an older group of English and Scottish girls who had simply returned to the lodge of their moist bathing fits from their early morning swim within the Ligurian Sea. They had been nonetheless dripping moist and had been ravenous. And so they had been very humorous.
At this time was a day of reckoning. We deliberate to hike the Cinque Terre path from Monterosso to Vernazza, two-plus miles of very steep up and down via terraced vineyards and tiny farms. We’d have lunch in Vernazza after which keep on to Corniglia, an extended and even steeper second leg primarily uphill to the coastal plateau. From there the path was closed resulting from landslides, so we deliberate to take the practice from Corniglia to the ultimate city of Riomaggiore, after which catch the ferry all the best way again as much as Monterosso so we might see every little thing from the water.
What truly occurred was we made it to Vernazza—harder than anticipated—however insanely scenic. We then celebrated with an enormous lunch at Taverna del Capitano proper on the seashore in Vernazza. We drank a half-liter of an incredible no-name native white wine, and we ostensibly refueled on smoked swordfish, Trofie al Pesto pasta, and an enormous del Capitano salad. However by the point we had been completed with all of that neither one in all us might transfer, a lot much less hike, steeply uphill, for two-and-a-half extra miles.
Outwardly disillusioned, however secretly relieved, we made our stiff and painful method as much as the practice station and carried on with our itinerary to Riomaggiore. The ferry experience again up the coast to Monterosso was lovely and gave us a singular and spectacular view of 5 tiny villages carved into the steep slopes of a bygone period.
[Our Italy trip and a surprise harvest continues in my next post]
Right here’s hoping you and your family members had a tasty Thanksgiving with delicious meals and memorable wine. Deb and I truly had our conventional feast a couple of days early after which we flew proper on T-Day to Kauai to recuperate from harvest—or was it that literary procrastination setting in? Hmmm? In any occasion, it was tropical heaven!
When you had been one in all Tiny Vineyards Wine Firm’s cherished constitution prospects—and there have been so a lot of you fabulous people!—I hope you’ve lastly gotten right into a bottle of our Requisite Pink, Eclipse Malbec and/or Daniel’s Delight Chardonnay. All three are consuming extraordinarily properly, as attested to by a wave of beneficiant critiques. Thanks all to your help and sort phrases. I can’t consider that after greater than two years of nurturing our first industrial classic—alternating between angst and amazement—we’re lastly consuming the stuff. And it actually is good!
And, if you’d like some extra for these Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa celebrations, otherwise you’ve lastly determined to search out out what all of the fuss is about, go to tinyvineyards.com for particular discounted pricing and free delivery offers. Don’t neglect to use the coupon code IKNOWJOE at checkout for a further 15% off your total order of three bottles or extra!
Then, please let me know what you consider the wine. Give it to me straight, I’ve obtained thick pores and skin (yeah, proper). I understand which you could’t please everybody—particularly with wine. Totally different of us merely have completely different tastes. So, I now have just one final aim with Tiny Vineyards Wine Firm, and that’s to make the very best high quality wine doable that I personally love and need to drink, after which hope our tastes align.
To sharing a bottle. Cheers!
