chili cheese fries, spiderwebs of nascondiglio di bacco

17 nov. 2009
The sheep have returned to our area to graze and Bacco has proudly brought 2 skinned lambs up to the B and B. I am hoping they were gifted by the shepherd!
Yesterday, I finally felt up to pruning after catching a rhinovirus from all the trains, planes, trams and buses I rode to get to, from and around Prague. The H1N1 hype is also here in Italy although I am not sure it can find Le Marche.
I had some old and new friends visit over the weekend before they took off for an Adriatic and Mediterranean cruise: the Prices and Crows. I was able to show them around a bit although 2 days is too short to see a lot. We had beautiful weather and views from Ripatransone, Offida's Santa Maria della Rocca and right here at Nascondiglio di Bacco. They tried olive all'ascolane and saw Ascoli Piceno before heading back up to Venice.
This morning and last night were densely foggy, which interfered with my Leonid meteor shower viewing, but left our spider webs glistening with water droplets. A good enough exchange.
Raffaele just got back from a visit to Tuscany with friends and he was excited to have shared lunch with the Fonz! There are myriad pix, filmettes and who knows what else and you can find them on the www.nascondigliodibacco.blogspot.com blog.
More pruning ahead as I need to finish up the 100 trees before I return to the states.
The next few days we will have Dustin Hoffman in the area doing a publicity tour for our region. I hope in some way the ads get to the states.
Finally, I introduced Raffaele to some good old comfort food from the USA. I made homemade fries to go under my chili with some smoked cheese on top. It makes me hungry again today just to look at my pic.
The other pictures are this mornings arachnid art show including one of the artist protaginists and our new ovine neighbors in the distance.
d

Prague, our yards, Happy St. Martin's and Veteran's days

11/11/09
Happy St. Martin's day to everyone. Here it is the day to celebrate "novello" wine which is Italy's answer to beaujolais nouveau. We are heading over to our friends at Aurora vineyard to experience their observance of the festival.
I went to Prague for a long weekend and can attest to its beauty and charms. It was my 1st time travelling to an ex soviet bloc country and appropriately, it was the observance of their 20th anniversary of freedom. I can scarcely believe it has been so long ago. I still remember getting in the tuck position under our desks in school practicing for those nuclear missiles which might arrive any minute. Now, Prague looks like it has been totally westernized with everything from TGIF, Starbucks and McDonalds to the Gap, Prada and YSL. Despite the commercialism, the city is truly a gem and I would have to rank it as one of the prettiest I have visited. It is well worth a 3-4 day visit as you can stay busy visiting castles, medieval towers, museums (Mucha, Kafka, etc.) and the old Jewish quarter which Hitler and his minions were going to leave intact as a reminder of the race they exterminated.
Back at the B&B, we are looking forward to hosting some old friends from the greater KC area including a doctor I worked with in the Belton Harrisonville area. The grass hasn't quit growing, which is good and bad. The good is the grass growing in the vineyard after all the work I performed to plant the nearly 1600 lbs of seed. The bad is I had to mow today around Nascondiglio.
The final olive oil total was 160 liters which was a bit more than last year, although we did trade some last year to pay the mill. Bill Ross is the 1st to bring the new oil back to the states, but I plan on bringing at least 5 liters when I come back next month.
We had some pest problems this year with a troublesome fly and lost almost all of our "tenere" variety, but the others were more resistant and we found an organic spray which helped some with prevention. At any rate, there is no noticeable defect in the oil when I tasted it, which is the important thing.
Happy Veteran's Day to all who served or lost loved ones.
Here is the Prague slide show; just copy and paste
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qJi1c8uTVA
The pictures show before and after the grass started growing, a shot of our scenery and various Prague fotos including the memorial for the student who set himself on fire in 1969 to protest soviet rule and who bacame a catalyst for the movement for independence. There is also the miracle producing baby jesus doll who has elegant outfits donated from all over the world. I won't say more.
dds

Olive harvest accomplished, excursion in the Monti della Laga national park, autumn colors

2 November
I slept through halloween after harvesting 990 lbs of olives saturday, to finish the last of our trees. The olives were all of a type called frantoio which makes a really good mono-variety oil, our "reserve" if you will. It looks like we will have harvested close to 1300 kg this year compared to 1500 last year.
Yesterday after regaining my strength, I took Bacco up into the national park at the border of the Marche and Abruzzo, Monti della Laga and hiked a bit and took some pix of the fall foliage. Check out the link above for the slide show. Put some peaceful music on and relax. The day was perfect with cool, not cold temperatures, full sun and empty trails.
We have had some guests intermittently recently from the US and Italy and are getting requests for New Year's Eve. The busy season is over, however. Fall has advantages in that the people are mostly gone, new wines and oils are ready to taste and it is time for fall festivals and chestnuts.
I am off to the beautiful city of Prague on Thursday for a weekend of sightseeing. I hear it is a wonderful place and it seems to be in the guidebook I bought in italian. That will leave Vienna and Barcelona as my top 2-to see cities in europe.
The grass is slowly growing in the vineyard. It looks a bit like my own hair right now, rather sparse, but hopefully with some minoxidil rain, it will fill up a bit.
For those who don't have 4+ minutes for the slideshow on you tube above, here are some examples of yesterday's pix. The 1st two pictures are from here at Nascondiglio, then Abruzzo and finally Bacco.
d

Check out Amy and Corrado's blog, 1980 petrus

This is a link to the beautiful prose and photos of my friend Amy who came to visit with her new husband Corrado and his family. As it is miles better than what I do, here is that treat. It is all written in Amy's wonderful italian. Enjoy!
http://mattoniepavimenti.blogspot.com/2009/10/nascondiglio-di-bacco.html
They are in the process of restructuring and old farm house up in Emilia and I hope you all will go visit next year for a stay or dinner when they are in business.
Here at NdB, we have survived another rainy period which interrupted our olive harvest. We have harvested a third of the trees and have about 55 liters of new oil in our tanks. Another 70 or so trees to finish up.
My friend Bill is here from KC for a visit, so in light of the rain we have been forced! to visit wineries and artisans instead of work outside.
I am seeing the beginnings of grass sprouts in the vineyard after my long labor to seed the entire 6 hectares. 700 kg of seeds which I hope will start growing and choking the life out of the unwelcome weeds.
Today, we gained an hour and it is sunny, so it will be off to Castignano for the fall festival. For dinner, tenderloin of beef to be served with Bill's generous gift of a 1980 Petrus and my meager offering of a 1978 Pichon Lalande.
The pictures are from Bill and show an above cloud view from Ripatransone, Santa Maria della Rocca church in Offida and our visit to Le Caniette to try out a couple of the best Marche wines. Then, some photos of Bacco in the portrait studio, dinner for tonight in prep and our "spider wall".
dds

more modern winemaking photos and Our Organic Olive Oil, 2009

21 Ottobre
Fall has arrived here with some cold fronts to remind us what awaits. The "Piedi Rossi" wines are reposing in barrel and stainless steel tank, so our attention has turned to the olives. It started out a very rainy year until mid July when the faucet turned off for 7 weeks. In the last 2 weeks, we have received enough rain to plump up the suffering olives which were taking on raisin characteristics during the dry period. We started out with a load of 230 kg, from which we obtained only 12 liters of oil and then yesterday, you can see in the photos, the fruits of our labor-350 kg of lechino olives and we don't know exactly what was extracted yet as we left them in the hands of our neighbor at the mill.
I have also posted some photos of Raffaele and Gianfelice stomping the 2nd batch of grapes, which were syrah and petit verdot varieties.
Last weekend we hosted our old tutor Corrado and his new bride Amy, who was my roommate for a short time during the master program. They brought 12 family members and we had a great couple of days with cooking, shopping, sightseeing, etc. They bought 9 pairs of shoes from my new "find", the shoemaker of Force, so he will be my friend when I visit him again.
Up next, my broker Bill is on his way to visit and we still have another 70 or so olive trees to harvest. I am curious to see if the oil this year is better with the low yield. I stayed up thinking about how much it costs to make a liter of oil with our treatments, my pruning and renting of the mechanical harvester and the mill cost and we are selling our oil for cost. Aii! farming is tough
d

Sagrantino excursions, Spello and Assisi

Another wonderful outing with Brenda in the sagrantino region of Umbria was enjoyed by my MO guests. We started off on the road early to see Assisi, then on to Spello to meet up with our CA tour guide who has now lived in Italy for 10 years. We started with a great lunch at Fongoli winery, then on to another tasting before exploring the artisans of Spello and the city.
Jim, Fred and Jan had a great day and then spent a few days exploring the coast, Ascoli Piceno, Civitella del Tronto and Offida.
They headed off on the train yesterday to explore Tuscany. As often happens, their train was late, so they missed their connection in Bologna. Luckily, there is always another coming along to take you where you want to go.
We are in a rainy period right now and although I got 100 kg of olives picked before the precipitation, you need 300 kg to go to the frantoio to make your oil. Hopefully, things will clear up soon and as it is cool, the olives picked should stay unoxidized for a couple of more days.
The stomped grapes got destemmed day before yesterday and the wine is now reposing in the old wooden barrel and the stainless steel tank. We will keep a close eye on the 225 Liters in the barrique as we had a bad experience with our 2007 which saw the inside of the same barrel. I am hoping the wood is more seasoned and coated and we won't pick up the harsh tannins of before.
d

Black truffle hunting in the Sibillini mts, fresh egg pasta and more

Friends from Missouri came to visit, so I tried to fill their week with fun activities. We headed off one day to the nearby Sibillini mountains where we went truffle hunting with a cute little dog who found 3 healthy black truffles. Back at the agriturismo, the owner's mother showed us how to make egg pasta and let those with interest help roll out the pasta in sheets. We had the truffles for lunch and then headed on to Force where we visited a great shoe manufacturer and the copper artisans who are dying out like the lace makers of Offida.
I finished planting the 700 kg of grass seed in the vineyard just in time for the Fall rainy season and the 1st shoots came up today in the yard.
d