A day of wine tasting in Tuscany

Friday, July 4th, 2008

Today is all about tasting Brunello de Montalcino. We head out in the morning after breakfast in the hotel—more good coffee and bread, pastries—and banana yogurt! We travel about an hour to Montalcino. It is absolutely beautiful countryside. Tuscany is exactly as it’s pictured in the calendars and postcards. My photos certainly can’t do it justice.

The first winery on our tour was at Cal d’Orcia. I really loved it. The winemaker and owner both made presentations, and were extremely knowledgeable. Owner Francesco Marona Cinzano presented on “Wine marketing.” We tasted a 2006 Rosso di Montalcino and a 2003 Brunello di Mantalcino, then a 2005 Banditeila, the single vineyard red wine that was the most California style of them all. I appreciated the professionalism of both the owner and the winemaker. The winery and grounds were beautiful and the winery was pretty clean. The owner is 15th generation—and a great salesman.

Next we went to Fattoria dei Barbi and the Wine Museum on their site. It was quite rainy when we got off the bus. So we had to make a run for it. I enjoyed the museum-mostly because I was able to find a map of Montalcino and find out the age of each of the wineries we were visiting and where they were located on the map of the area.

Fattoria dei Barbi was the oldest of the three we were to visit. We had a long tour of the winery “museum” and saw mainly the storage rooms with barrels—our guide shared that the production area was not a part of the tour…too bad…I’m not sure he understood that we were all wine students. While the casks were beautiful, mold was very apparent in the rooms, and it started taking its toll on me after awhile. By the time we got to the tasting area—which had a great set up of breads, bread w/olive oil, meats and cheeses (I’m really loving pecorino and truffle infused cheese) I was pretty well saturated. I did not really enjoy the wines as a result. Afterwards I did try their single vineyard Brunello “Vigna del Fiore” which I thought was fantastic.

Our final winery of the tour was Case Basse di Gianfranco Soldera. Mark and I did some research prior to coming and were pretty excited to meet this man. He is a legend in the industry and sells his wine anywhere from $150/bottle to $350/bottle. Needless to say we were honored to have the opportunity to meet him. Gianfranco is a hoot. He’s a little old Italian man who had us all laughing despite the fact that we had no idea what he was saying. He led us into his new winery which was finished in 2001. Case Basse had existed before as a winery and the vineyards were planted from nothing by him in 1972. Gianfranco shared many of his opinions on winemaking—mostly that it’s an art rather than a science…that you need to do most of the work in the vineyards (90%) and only 10% is the winery. He does all of the punch downs himself, which all of us were impressed by. He said he starts at 6am and works until 1am the next day. No time to waste during harvest!

The building is underground, and the walls are solely 1 meter thick of rocks held in place with a metal mesh. When it rains, "water comes in through the walls and the ceiling". Very interesting concept, although not sure I'd be interested in the water.

After our last winery, we were all pretty pooped, but I enjoyed the scenery once again while we traveled back to Siena. Mark and I relaxed a while once back at the hotel and headed out around 8:30 for dinner. The streets in the market were packed with fans of the winning Contrada—it appeared they were having a celebratory dinner together. I really wanted to watch the sun set in the Piazza where the Palio took place, and had my sites set on a restaurant we’d seen yesterday. When we arrived we were pleasantly surprised to see Professor Nuri, Nicole and Andrew and Jennai. They were just finishing, but ended up hanging out while we ate. Mark took some “postcard-quality” photos. Once we finished—we had a fantastic dinner: papperadelli with wild boar sauce, pizza with spicy sauce, bacon and mascarpone cheese, Crème Brule and chocolate lava cake with cappuccinos—ooh la la, quite yummy.

We all walked to the fountain in the square to make wishes—it’s rumored that a wish will result in a quick return to Italy! We were happy to make a wish. On our way back to the hotel, we had to stop for gelato (of course) and ran into a massive crowd of “porquipinos” leaving the square and most likely headed for the Piazza.

Happy Fourth of July everyone!

Siena

Thursday, July 3, 2008

This morning we checked out of the hotel, had breakfast and boarded the bus to ISVEA, a research facility in Poggibonsi. We had several presentations and a tour of the facility in addition to a simple snack of sandwiches and focaccia bread. Afterwards Sherri finished her presentation from yesterday on Prohibition, which the foreign students were very interested in hearing about.

Next destination—Siena & the beautiful Tuscany. Last night we watched a crazy horse race on TV, and the importance of this race to the history of Siena became clear today. We are so fortunate to be staying in this city. We got our rooms and I took brief nap—for some reason I’m pretty tired. Feeling refreshed after the nap, Mark and I had some Limoncello and headed out to explore the city. We are completely free to explore the city on our own until we have dinner with the group at 8:30pm.

It turns out to be a great afternoon and evening. Mark and I run into Sherri, the professor from Cal Poly. We all are a bit hungry, so we get a slice of pizza that we can eat while we walk around. As it turns out our celebration from last night’s crazy horse race is just getting started. We see men of all ages dressed in brightly colored clothes and about a half an hour later we watch a parade begin that will still be going on at midnight.

We are amazed at the beauty of this city. The architecture, the alleys where shops and homes are tucked away are all captivating. There are no cars (at least not many) and people are either walking or riding scooters. It’s a pretty charged atmosphere. We find a great store where we buy some wine. The victory parade passes us again and we wonder about the pacifiers they’re all wearing around their necks. We cross paths with Rally who tells us about the cathedral, so we decide to try and find it. But first we find the giant piazza http://www.ilpalio.org/palioenglish.htm where the horse race (called the Palio) was run last night. It is breathtaking and huge. We feel so small walking through the center. It’s hard to imagine that the night prior a huge race had taken place here.

Moving on, and deciding to come back later, we walk up a few steep alleys and find our way to the cathedral, which again is beyond our ability to describe. We know that pictures won’t do it justice either. It is breathtaking. The funniest thing about the place is that its striped—we later learn its green and white, but to us right now it looks black and white, like a zebra. But that doesn’t reduce its beauty. Wow. We pay the $3 Euros to look inside and explore. Many famous artists have worked on this cathedral. The sculptures are all by Michelangelo, and we are amazed. We wonder how he found the time to do all that he did in his lifetime, but are glad to have the chance to see his work. http://www.sacred-destinations.com/italy/siena-cathedral-duomo-di-santa-maria.htm

After the cathedral, we decide to head back to the square and have some beers while we take it all in. We pick a patio right across from the church and tower and just relax. The beers are good, the temperature is cooler due to the shade, and we’re all happy. Later some of the Cal Poly folks join us and we move on to do some more exploring. We see more beautiful streets, another passing of the parade, and see a few of the rival Contrada’s colors flying as they get ready to celebrate themselves. As we walk, we start seeing others from the group, and we realize it’s getting close to dinner time.

Our Italian Guide, Dr. Valeria Mazzoleni, introduces us to our host for the evening. We dine outside at a location within the Crontrada of the Turtle, della Tartuca d’Orto dei Tolomei. Our host is gracious and Mark and I sit with him at dinner—outside overlooking the Southern part of Siena—and ask a lot of questions about the history of Siena, the Contrada, and the Palio. We felt honored to have the opportunity to learn so much from him. What a beautiful night.

Tuscany at last--Fierenze and Poggibonsi

Wednesday, July 2, 2008

This morning we packed our bags and headed for Tuscany. Yeah—back to the mountains. As nice as our visit to Fraciacorta and the lake, we are all missing the beautiful mountains. Our visit today was to the University of Fierenze (Azienda Agricola Monepalde). Dr. Valentina Canuti, a doctoral student at the University, gave a presentation on the Tuscany region. We enjoyed her talk despite the blistering heat and humidity. Cal Poly professor Sherrie Niku went next and spoke on the history of winemaking in California.

After the presentations the program director took us on a tour of the school’s winery and we were all relieved to get a brief respite from the heat when it started raining. Sadly, it only lasted a few minutes...and then got really humid!

Our evening, and next hotel stop was in Poggibonsi, a really cute town between Florence and Siena. After checking into the hotel, we walked down the street to the center of town and found a place to have beers, do a little shopping, and purchase a bottle of Limoncello.
We found a really beautiful piazza where we had dinner. The restaurant was great, and several of our team mates ended up at the same place. It was a great meal, and afterwards we all ended our night with gelato.

Franciacorta, Italy

Tuesday, July 1, 2008
We get up early and have breakfast in the dining hall of the conference center at 8:30am. We have coffee, bread and toppings. Not bad, but right now I’m really craving eggs. After breakfast we get on the bus for our trip to Piacenza and the University. Today’s sessions focus on the “Study of different maceration parameters and their influence on red wine quality” by Dr. Milena Lambri; our second is on “Use of cork, synthetic, and screw-cap stoppers for wine: a study of their influence on wine quality”, presented by doctoral candidate Elena Grillo. Our third is on the “Impact of coating VOC’s on wine sensory characters” by Dr. Maria Daria Fumi. Our final speaker today is Cal Poly’s professor Geraldine Richie. She presented on “Sparkling wine Production in CA.” We had a sparkling wine tasting which was enjoyable…we tried Schramsberg (slightly corked), Roederer (one of Mark’s favorites), and Domaine Chandon. All in all the presentations were interesting.

After lunch we left the area and drove to Fraciacorta to visit a sparkling wine producer there called Tenuta Villa Crespia. It is a very large, beautiful facility. The director, Francesco Jacono gave a presentation on the terroir of Fraciacorta and then led us on a tour of the winery, ending with a tasting of two of his sparkling wines. The first was without dosage and the other had some sugar added—a Brut. They were both very interesting. Most people enjoyed the Brut, but I think the one without the sugar gave us the most to talk about—especially since we learned that he also had the grapes macerate on the skins for a period of time before pressing.

Our final destination for the day is a local tourist destination on the lake, Lago d’Iseo—a beautiful town on the water. We enjoyed a light dinner of wine and salads and walked along the lake to be pleasantly surprised by the town center. We found gelato—and today I decided that my favorite flavors are Stracciatella (fior di latte and chocolate) and cherry (I'll give the Italian name later if I can locate it!) I think Mark's favorite flavor is Pistachio.

Traveling to Piacenza

Monday, June 30th

We are so excited to be going to Italy. I can’t believe it! Leaving Switzerland we took a familiar route south which led us to a huge tunnel which eventually led into Italy. Wow. A 6km tunnel through a mountain—that was a trippy experience, although it’s become clear since that the Swiss are skilled bridge and tunnel builders. Our destination today: the University Cattolica del Sacro Cuore. (Istituto di Enologia E Ingegneria Alimentare)

As we drove into Italy, I was amazed at the mountains, and how beautiful it was—our bus driver even pulled over to show us the back of the Matterhorn (cool.) I noticed immediately that Italians are not as concerned with how their country looks—we saw many abandoned buildings and a lot of trash—neither of which we saw in Switzerland.

I was excited to see castles at the top of every hill and imagine they would have been fun to explore. After a few hours however, the terrain changed. We were out of the mountains and driving in a flat countryside. It looked a lot like California's central valley. We noted rice fields in addition to other crops.
It was a long bus ride.

Several hours later we arrived in Piacenza, famous for both its food and wine. The University kitchen was kind enough to hold lunch for us, and we dined on meat, a side dish, and pasta. If we liked we could have had wine out of the soda dispenser (Mark and I opted for “fizzy” water). Now, sleepy and full, we met the instructors in the program, the director of the school and listened to three presentations. We are welcomed by Valeria Mazzeni, who introduced each speaker, and translated. We would get to know her better as the week went on.

After the presentations, we boarded the bus again to travel 10km out of town to our hotels. We were all a little nervous about what to expect, as we’d been told we’d be sharing rooms, 4 each. As it turned out we were given our own room. We had air conditioning and a really big bathroom! We couldn’t believe it—our best accommodations yet. Sadly, no internet (the start of a trend for this week.) Bummer.

We had 30 minutes to get back to the bus and head to the center of Piacenza for dinner. At first we weren’t really impressed. Piacenza is kind of dirty, flat and hot, and the buildings are unimpressive. But the downtown area had interesting little side streets and alleys which were fun to walk down---unless you were starving and trying to find dinner. We learned right away that Italians don't usually open their restaurants for dinner until later. We were happy to find a nice pizza restaurant. The food was great, and we even had some to take home for later. The town was buzzing a bit more after we finished our meal, so all in all it was a great night.

Back at the hotel we enjoyed a nice quiet evening with air-conditioning!

Weekend Travels

Saturday, June 28th
On our own! Each weekend, we are free to spend our time as we like. Mark and I had a few ideas in mind: to see a Glacier, to visit the Medieval town of Gruyere and to tour the Museum of 5 senses across Lake Geneva in Yuoire, France. As it turned out we got up a bit late (I think the pace of the week caught up on us) and arrived at the train terminal around 10am with our friend Lauren. We learned that it was already too late to make the trip to the Glacier outside Gstaad, or visit Yvoire (to see the museum of the 5 senses), but we had plenty of time to visit Gruyere, so that’s what we did! It turned out to be an amazing day.

In essence our trip was a large loop taken by train. We took the express train out of Lausanne north to Palezieux to Gruyere and saw more amazing countryside. On our return trip we decided so to go through Montreux.

At first we weren’t too impressed with Gruyere. As soon as we got off the train we saw the fromagerie (cheese factory)—were we learned about the terroir of the area and the significant impact it has on the cheese. It felt like a sensory class because we smelled several different scents blind--many of which I never expected to smell in cheese.

Automatic cheese washing and flipping machineMilk heating kettle (beautiful)

After the tour, we walked around a bit looking for a place to have lunch but it was too late. We were going to leave when we decided to take a walk to the medieval town and look around. As it turned out, the whole town of Gruyere was at the top of the hill with the Castle!!! We had just been at the bus terminal. We felt a bit silly—and relieved that we had taken the time to hike to the top of the hill. The first thing we recognized was a gelato shop, and decided to refresh ourselves after the long hike up the hill. Afterwards we walked around a bit, and meandered towards the castle.

To our complete surprise we turned a corner and saw some giant Alien sculptures and realized that there was a museum dedicated to H. R. Giger(http://www.hrgigermuseum.com/), the artist who created Alien, Species, and Necronomicon. The artwork is dark, but it was fascinating to see, since the movie Alien is such a part of our movie history. Needless to say it made our conversations for the remainder of the day very interesting. Did we mention--that next to the museum there was a bar designed after the Alien set?? This day just kept getting better!

Due to our sidetrack visit through the museum we ended up racing through the castle, which was architecturally beautiful; being on the top of a mountain made for exciting photos.

After visiting the castle, we felt we must have a drink in the Giger Bar—mostly for the photos; when finished, we raced back to the train station and checked the schedule for a trip back through Montreux. Fortunately, we were able to jump on one of the Goldenpass panoramic trains; the views of the mountains and the lake coming down into Montreux were breathtaking. It was hot in Montreux, so we cooled our feet in the lake for a bit and wandered a lot before choosing a place to have some wine and share a pizza. The people-watching was fun—we saw our equivalent of a “booze cruise” taking off, advertising a local free magazine. After relaxing and chatting for awhile, we headed back to our hotel.

Once in Lausanne we picked up some food from the coop—bread and tomatoes to go with our cheese from Gruyere. We helped Lauren download her photos and drank some wine and ate our bounty. It was a great night.

Sunday, June 29th, 2008

Today we started early so we could enjoy our day at Glacier 3000. Lauren decided to sleep in, so Mark and I headed out by ourselves. Our first train out of Lausanne was a historic train where we were served coffee and enjoyed a comfortable journey back in time. The travel was beautiful. Once we arrived in Gstaad, we were in the mountains, so the rest of the trip by bus was amazing. At Col-du-Pillon, we were at the base of the mountain. It took two different cable cars to get us to the top, which was approximately 9000feet. I had never seen a glacier before, so I wasn’t quite sure what to expect (so far it just looked like a mountain.)

Riding the cable car we saw many people hiking trails that were all over the area. Across the road and up some hills we saw lakes formed from water falling from the hills. Had we known we would have planned differently--a hike in that area would have been amazing. The glacier was impressive. Mark paid to ride the alpine slide—kind of a cross between a bobsled and a rollercoaster. It looked like fun, but I was too chicken to ride it, so I enjoyed taking photos of Mark riding it—which he thoroughly enjoyed.

We took the chair lift down to a section where people were hiking out to Devil’s peak. At first we thought we’d walk, but the snow was pretty slushy, and I wasn’t wearing waterproof shoes. Instead, we each paid $15 to take a Snowcat out to the point. We passed the dog sled teams, people hiking and met a group from Edinburgh having lunch at the peak. Our guide pointed out the Matterhorn, Mont Blanc, and a few other peaks. We saw the glacier, a large, slow-moving river of ice, formed from compacted layers of snow, which slowly deforms and flows in response to gravity (compliments of wikipedia.) It was impressive. We saw people hiking everywhere. After our Snowcat ride back, we climbed to the top of the observation tower and were amazed all over again.

Our final activity on the mountain was to have a beer and some lunch at 9000feet. The balcony was warm and sunny and could not have been more beautiful. We each had a beer and raclette (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raclette). After our brief respite and snack we headed down the mountain to Col-du-Pillon were we waited a few minutes for the bus taking us into Les Diablerets, a small ski resort town. Mark and I perused a cheese shop a bit and then got some ice cream. Our trip back was nice, and we’re starting to become familiar with the terrain. Luckily we caught the express train back to Lausanne through Aigle.

Final note for today-we got our first rain tonight, which actually cooled things down a bit. Yeah!

Friday - Trip to Valais Region

We got an early start today to drive to the Valais region, which is actually the upper Rhone River Valley above Lac Leman (Lake Geneva). We had a tremendous tour of a very old vineyard and winery, Domaine de Gilliard. The vineyards are accessed through a tunnel! The vineyards are very steep and highly terraced. They have an old gondola system that is quite elaborate, but now remove the grapes from the vineyard at harvest via helicopter.

We then took a long walk through vineyards and over a ridge that separates the French and German speaking regions. Very varied terrain, with some wonderful alpine rivers and small waterfalls. Broad range of wildlife and plants along the way.

The end point of the walk was the Wine and Vineyard Museum, where they are preserving the knowledge and equipment of yesterday and today, in the vineyard and the winery.
Mark wearing a modern picking basket, still used throughout Europe.

We then went to the family winery of one of the Swiss students, Madelyn, took the group to her family’s winery, Denis Mercier, in the city of Sierre. In the Valais region, Chasselas wine is called Fendant. There is a definite difference, as this region is much warmer and dryer. They use sprinkler irrigation for the vineyards.

At the winery, we had a very nice tasting. Savignan Blanc (not a typo) as a varietal was really aromatic and wonderful. This is the grape used in the Jura region of France. Next was my favorite Fendant of the trip thus far, a Pinot Noir, and a Pinot Noir – Syrah blend (I think) that was quite nice.
Madelyn and her parents (to the right)

We also had a wonderful Raclette meal for dinner. Raclette is a cheese, but also a dish prepared by heating the cheese to a boiling point, then scraping it onto some boiled potatoes with pickles and pearl onions. They purchased cheese from three local regions, and the differences amongst the cheeses were interesting to explore. This is usually a cold weather dish, but it is so important that we had it on a quite warm day.

The chefs and the cooking equipment.

A nice plate of food to enjoy with the Fendant wine.