After breakfast at our B&B, Casale le Lucrezie, we drove north along the wine road to Montefalco. There we tasted at two wineries, one a small boutique, the other a large producer with a beautiful new tasting facility, somewhat like Mondavi in Napa. The boutique winery is Paolo Bea, dating back to the 1500's. They are organic, and aspire to be biodynamic, picking grapes by the stage of the moon. A little astrology here, and they probably have a cow's horn filled with manure planted somewhere on the property. Their wines are made only from Italian varieties, such as Sangiovese and Sargentino for red, and Garchetto for white. They produce some 56,000 bottles a year. The reserve Sargantino wines are wonderful, and at 40-50 Euros a bottle they should be, but need 15-20 years aging. Don't know that I can wait that long!
The large producer is Arnaldo Caprei, producing some 750,000 bottles a year. They produce wines from most of the same grapes, from the same area, but mostly with less attention to detail. Thus lower cost, most being in the 5-15 Euro range, but their better wines are very nice and command a higher price. Their best Sargantino reserva sells for 60 Euros, and again needs 20 years for aging.
Returning to Casale de Lucrezie, for dinner the last two nights we had simple but robust regional cooking - roasted chicken breast with crispy skin, veal stew,a grilled pork steak, stir fried beef strips with arugula and tomatoes, tortellini with white truffles, spinach ravioli in a red sauce, grilled eggplant, and much more. All was served with the house wine, white or red, from crockery pitchers. Perhaps short on bouquet and distinctiveness, but pleasant and delightful with the food. What a wine should be. And included in the modest price for the meal.
Among our sightseeing adventures, a visit to Assisi where we got lost, had to turn around twice, and found ourselves driving down a narrow cobblestone road from 1000 AD, through an arched gate that would barely accommodate a wheelbarrow. And the pedestrians thought nothing of hugging the wall, trusting that I knew what I was doing!
We had lunch in Montefalco, a working man's lunch of freshly baked sausage pizza, hot from the oven, served on a paper plate with no frills and eat it outside, please, for 2.40 Euros - about $3.50. It was great, and like the workmen, we were back on the road in 15 minutes.
Wednesday we leave for San Gimignano, but not without regret. Some area we wish we could have seen - Norcia, pig capital of Italy; Narni, inspiration for C. S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia;
Orvieto, built on volcanic rock; and a much deeper tour of the towns we did visit. Maybe there will be another visit. What we've done has been wonderful - wrong turns and all!
Didn't know the two of you were such wine Connoisseurs. See if you can sample some grappa too while you're in Italy. Andy introduced us to real grappa one Thanksgiving, having learned about it in Italy. Then we went to the grappa museum last summer. We found it to be a little like the Romanian tcuica though with a bit less of a punch.
ReplyDeleteAnd don't you love it that Italian wines have no sulfites? Hence no headaches.