Mount Etna

It doesn’t surprise me at all that among the beautiful places Italy has to offer for a wine fair, that I would end up in the foothills of Mount Etna, Europe’s most active volcano. Located on the east coast of Sicily, 3,329 meters (10,922 feet) high, Etna is the largest active volcano in Italy. Because …

Planting New Vines

There is no rest for the strong here! Once we completed pruning the vines, we moved straight onto digging up dead vines and planting new ones. Some of the young vines planted last year didn’t quite make it, so we marked them earlier in the fall when they were still green. That way we knew …

Winter in Italia

Brr. It is flat out cold here these days. Ironically enough, it seemed warmer in the Himalayas than it has been here, in Cupramontana. With the steep and rolling hillsides, it’s been interesting to see the diverse climates around the lands. Our work varies depending on the weather, but we’ve mostly been finishing the winter pruning. This …

Valeria’s Wine Bread in 5 easy steps

For lack of a better description, we’ve dubbed Valeria’s recent breads as “Wine Bread”. We call it wine bread because it’s made with yeast collected from wine. I know you’re probably confused, so read this short previous entry about the process. Now that you have your mother yeast, when you are ready to bake all …

Creating a “mother yeast” (natural yeast) for baking

Did you know you can bake bread without commercial yeasts? You can cultivate your very own yeast at home, and it’s easier than you think! They call it Pasta Madre, which at first translated sounds like Mother Pasta. But Valeria calls it a Mother Yeast, a natural yeast base created by combining collecting the must …

Sagra Dell’uva Round 2

Experiencing my second wine festival was for lack of better words: great. Having Jordan around gave me a chance to really show someone from home all the wonderfulness I love about Italy. Jordan decided to drive a motorcycle from Rome to Cupramontana, which sounded like a great experience, but like all Italian travel experiences, it came …

Vendemmia 2012

This year’s harvest was much different than last year’s. With a hot summer, we began the harvest much earlier this year (before the end of August). And while we had a couple long haul days, overall we kept to a regular day schedule. The weather was MUCH cooler than last year’s so we didn’t get …

Sagra della Sangria

Sangria festival – man they really have festivals for EVERYTHING around here. Giovanni and I randomly discovered there was a sangria festival not too far from us, so we wandered down for some drinks and dinner. Located in between Jesi and Osima…the small festival was held in a town called Casenouve. Along the way we …

Open Cellars

A weekend of beach time, pizza, truffles, and gelato wasn’t enough for us. To top off the weekend, we stopped a couple cellars on the way back from Fano since it was the weekend of “Cantine Aperte” (Open Cellars). Basically most of the major wineries in Le Marche offer free tastings. You pay 5 euros …

Bye Bye Wine

I forgot to mention that Hillary left yesterday morning. It’s been a nice reprieve for me so far…after living by yourself for 2 years, having a roommate that you also work with was overwhelming for me. I sorted my belongings and finally really feel officially settled in my apartment. I’m also really excited to start focusing more …

Spring work in the vineyard

Wrapping up my first three weeks here and the work has been a mixture of working in teh garden and working in the vineyard. At first the rainy was pretty iffy so we spent much of our time boxing, but eventually we started some serious work on the vines. This included taking small plastic cones …

Wine festival day 4

Closing day. We were all a bit tired. I slept pretty awful because I switched rooms and the music went all night and then the cleaning began and the garbage trucks and the beeping and then the band practice across the street and then the band playing in a parade…I gave up on trying to …

Wine festival day 3

Giovanni’s friends from Milan came down so this day was really fun. It was nice to itneract with fresh new faces. Plus they were SO nice! They all had some understanding of english. Some spoke better english than others but they were all so sweet! Here we are on the porch in the morning. We …

Wine Festival day 2

My first morning in Daniela’s house was wonderful. Being an early riser, I was up and about around 8…I grabbed the guitar I saw in the rec room and brought it onto the patio. I haven’t played in weeks so it felt really good to find something to strum. I’m not very good, so it …

Wine Festival day 1

So here we go. After work, we packed a few things and “moved” to Daniela’s house for the weekend. We got there just in time for the opening ceremony, which included the mayor (who they call the “major”), talking and kids from the local schools presenting this year’s wine. After all that mumbo jumbo, the …

Day 16: Bottling

I finally felt like I was coming around when we started bottling today. We harvested, we pressed, we analyzed, we moved wine, we bottled, labeled, boxed, and shipped the wine out! The only thing I felt like I was missing was pruning the vines and weeding! But there’s always a chance I could come back …

Day 15: Making Passito (dessert wine)

One of the vineyards I haven’t shared with you yet is Specia. Specia is a gorgeous small vineyard that Corrado rescued 4 years ago. I heard him talking about the soil and how it was basically “gold” for the vines, rich with nurtients, not dry and crumbling. I wish I had gotten a photo of …

Day 12: Colonnara Wine Tour

So what we thought would be a work day turned into a great exploration day. Corrado dropped us off in the village to explore and have a second breakfast while he went to the cellar to do a little bit of work with Giovanni. We enjoyed the town…it was quite small so the exploration was …

Day 11: Randomness

This week has been pretty uneventful. It rained Monday and Tuesday, so we couldn’t harvest. Instead we were stuck inside labeling bottles…and labeling 500 million bottles can be very monotonous. I think Hillary got high from the rubbing alcohol from cleaning the bottles. So I spent many hours humming songs and playing some great music …

Day 7: Catch up time

Yesterday we went to the Adriatic Sea. Giovanni, Lisa, Hillary, and Corrado’s family all went to the beach. It was great. HOT…relaxing…salty. We went to a beach in between Senigallia and Ancona. It sort of reminded me of Malibu or Venice Beach minus the douchebags. I mostly enjoyed spending time with Corrado’s children, Julia and …

Day 5: End of my first work week

Well it’s certainly been a busy week here. I’ve made some journal entries for myself to remind me of everything I am experiencing, but I’ll sum it up for you here: I’ve been starting my work days at 7 a.m. here. Each sunrise is just as breath taking as the last. As much as I …

Italy Adventure: Day 1 – Arrival

Ciao from Italy! Right now I’m relaxing in my little bed listening to crickets and the occasional bell chimes in the distance. It’s about 10ish p.m. My apartment has a view of the surrounding valleys and wineries, it’s beyond beautiful. I really can’t describe how amazing it is to be here (view from both of …

It’s official! – Italy here I come!

Hello! So some exciting news…after a few e-mails and correspondence, I’ve been chosen and accepted a farm in Italy to stay and work at for just over 3 weeks. Behold, La Distesa, located not too far from the city of Ancona, an east coast city of Italy. This place was a fit for me schedule …