Photos

Photos of our trip so far are up at photos.pley.net.

Caves, graves, and really old stuff

After a rather long day of travel, we finally made it from Tuscany to Sardinia. We were on a packed, late flight from Pisa to Alghero, but fortunately the car rental place and the B&B we had wisely booked ahead were still expecting us and open at 11 at night.

After a wonderful night's sleep we made our way into downtown Alghero today to explore the ancient town and see what all the fuss is about. As it unexpectedly turns out, Sunday is an excellent day to explore. Enough of the shops and restaurants were open to be able to shop and munch, but there were not a lot of tourists about. Hanging out in large single-sex groups were elderly men and elderly women, sitting, drinking coffee, catching up, and watching the world go by. Oh, and EVERYONE here has a small yappy dog.

After seeing the old town and making plans for dinner, we decided to head back to our car and go explore the greater Alghero area. We made our way up to the Northeast corner of the country to explore the Grotto de Nettune, which is essentially a cave that you can either access by boat or by 656 steps down (and back!) The cave tour was moderately interesting and the cave itself was pretty cool, but the hike down was far more beautiful and stunning. The water here is incredbly blue and clear and it makes you want to just dive right in.

After making it back up all of those steps, we stopped for the best beer ever and then headed out towards the other main tourist attraction in the area, the nuraghe, which is a really, really old village (15th century BC old) that has ruins in remarkable shape. We have pictures and I promise that they will be up eventually! I found the whole thing fascinating and kept finding myself pondering both how short the people were back then and how much my parents would love to see this. Very cool stuff.

Included with the ticket to the nuraghe was a ticket to the necropolis nearby. These were a bunch of graves createdbetween 2700 and 3300 BC. They were pretty much a lot of holes in the ground that were lined with stone and were really interesting. There are still visible images on the wall. You can seriously get right down in there and explore around, though we skipped that part as we were lacking a flashlight and grave diving in a dress was not high on my list of things to do today.

We are about to head to dinner at a restaurant suggested to us by the owners of the Sardinian restaurant in San Francisco. We checked it out earlier and it looks wonderful. It's been a long day, so I'm off!

"Full Bodied..."

Last time, on Roaming Nobles:

Castles, bridges, cannibals.

Giovanni di Verrazzano never made it back to Castello Verrazzano, having been eaten by the unfriendly natives of the Bahamas. We, however, did.

The foundations of the castle are over 1200 years old, and remain in perfect condition; the castle, not so much. It was destroyed by the forces of Siena when, after a long and protracted battle with Florence, Siena finally emerged victorious and began a methodical campaign of retrebition against all who had come to the aid of Florence. Seriously, they had a book. Castello Verrazzano was on page 163, written in pink, sparkly ink just above "Suzie Henderson in Homeroom". (Don't cross the Sienese. They will remember.)

As the Tuscans say, "when life gives you grape skins, make grappa." So the Verrazzanos built a expansive villa on the foundations of the old castle, where they continued to live untill the late 1800's. When the last Verrazzano died leaving no heirs, the castle reverted ownership to the state, from which it was purchased by some other noble family.

The castle has been producing wine for its entire 1200 year history, which was until recently an entirely manual process. For example, in order to fully ferment red wine, the skins--which are prone to floating--must be continuously pushed down into the fermenting wine. Men working over these large fermentation vats would occasionally succumb to the wine's vapors and fall in, from which comes the term, "full bodied wine."

Nowadays that job falls to robots, who constantly regulate the young wine's temperature and circulate the grape skins (all while plotting, plotting, waiting, waiting). Between the robots, the men who service them, the rocky soil, the Tuscan sun, and the cool castle cellars, Castello Verrazzano produces a fine array of wines. They also produce: grappa from grape skins remaining after all flavor has been removed from them by the fermentation process, olive oil from the groves of olive trees which surround the vinyard, and salami and prosciutto from their own "wild" boar.

All of this and more was recounted to us by Gillian, our unexpectedly British host, when we visited Castello Verrazzano for a 5-wine, 5-
course, paired tasting lunch extraveganza and tour.

First course, antipasta: Salami and prosciutto. Paired with Verrazzano Rosso (table wine).

Second course, pasta: Fusilli with tomato sauce, sprinkled with a mixture of red pepper, dried parsley, dried garlic, and Parmesan cheese. Paired with Verrazzano Chianti Classico (DOCG).

Third course, meat: white beans with olive oil, boar bacon (for lack of a better word) and boar liver. Paired with Verrazzano Chianti Classico Riserva (DOCG).

Fourth course, dessert: almond cantucci (aka, biscotti). Paired with Verrazzani Vin Santo (dessert wine, DOCG).

Fifth course, coffee: coffee. Paired with Verrazzano Grappa.

Impressions:

* First, a note: Italian wine has four grades (actually, three grading systems and "ungraded") of increasing quality and restrictiveness: IHT, least restrictive and lowest standards; DOC, restrictions on recipes and ingredients, high quality standards; DOCG, restrictions on recipes, ingredients, additives, processes, and extremely high quality standards.

The Rosso table wine was very good for its price--about €6,50. Because the DOC/DOCG stamps impose almost fascist restrictions on a vintner's recipes in the name of the "classics", this wine is ungraded. Its recipe is relatively modern--at least when compared to the centuries-old recipe for Chianti. Very flavorful, this wine is best served with spicy foods, which would threaten to overwhelm a more mild wine.

The salami and prosciutto were fantastic.

The Chianti Classico (~€13) and Riserva (~€26) were also very good, though I doubt the Riserva was twice as good as the Classico; buy two bottles of the Classico and be better off than with one of the Riserva.

So, you're at a mountaintop villa, being served estate wine, and they
come out with spiral pasta and red sauce, and you're like, "Pssh? Thanks, Chef Boyaredee." But try this at home: mix up one part each of crushed red pepper, dried parsley, and dried garlic. Or maybe two parts parsley. Sprinkle on pasta. Salt heavily. Delicious.

After the main course, our hosts brought out plates of Parma cheese, and instructed us to place our spoons on our plates. They then came around and poured a single spoonfull of balsamic vinegar into each. It was thick like hot maple syrup, and more sweet than sour. And at €48 per 100 ml, you could make the worlds most expensive salad dressing. (If you do, pour it over a salad of spinach, mint, strawberries, and goat cheese. Yum!)

Vin Santo is a local Tuscan desert wine, made at home to serve to guests. Apparently the Pope visited Tuscany in the 13th century and after being served the drink declared that it tasted like God's own tears. (I know what you were thinking: that he banned it for encouraging salacious thoughts. I was thinking the same thing. But no, he was an alcoholic. And probably had like 18 mistresses.) So that humble, homemade dessert wine is now served at communion in Tuscany, and called "vin santo", or "holy wine". And of course it now falls under the jurisdiction of those perfectionists at the DOCG.

Cantucci (or in English: "biscotti") is meant to be dunked in vin santo, never coffee. However, both the wine and the cookie tasted better separately. The sweetness of the cantucci inhibited the same of the vin santo, leaving only alcohol and a slight astringent flavor. However, perhaps that's your thing. In which case...

Grappa is a testament to that Italian efficiency which Elizabeth mentioned. Why throw away that stinking mass of used grape skins when you can extract more alcohol from it? After enough fermentation and distillation, you get this flavorless, astringent alcohol which is better used for disinfection or paint removal than drinking. And then you put it in your coffee! Caffé correcto: coffee which has been corrected by the addiction of grappa. Or: a method of rendering grappa slightly less offensive. Or: a low-calorie alternative to rum & coke for getting your caffinated alcohol on.

All in all, t'was a fantastic lunch.

"Well marinated..."

Yesterday we ventured just north of Greve in Chianti to the castle-cum-winery of Castello di Verrazzano, a 1200 year old hilltop castle, winery, olive oilery, and boar farm.

New Yorkers might recognize the name of Giovanni Di Verrazzano, as New York named the Staten Island Narrows bridge after the Italian who discovered New York harbor in 1527.

(Giovanni met an untimely end amongst the cannibals of the Bahamas, for whom he made a tasty Italian stew. His boat was the first to carry wine instead of beer to the New World, and was described as "well marinated.")

More later...

Tasting Notes

Eliz: "A little tart but not dry; sweet but not clingy."

Jer: "Not unlike some of my ex-es."

The hyper-efficiency of the Italians....Who knew?

Our bags arrived safely the same night we did. Unfortunately, instead of being delivered to the hotel that was about 2km from the airport, they were delivered to our villa in Tuscany. Oops. At least they turned up and it was a relief to get into clean clothes four days after we left San Francisco!

Pisa was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be. I was expecting a tourist trap (it was) with a goofy, slightly tipped over tower. It was indeed that, but it was a beautiful place and a great way to start the holiday. In the end, we did take a couple of requisite tower holding pictures and a couple other pictures of us holding up other buildings in the area. We amuse ourselves endlessly. We did a little shopping for essentials like toothpaste and deoderant and some other odds and ends and then we pretty much sat around and ate. It was lovely.

We arrived at our villa near Greve in Chianti on Saturday afternoon, rejoiced at seeing our luggage, and then headed out to explore the area. We rented an Alph Romero and Jer is having a blast driving around the narrow roads and tight turns of the Tuscan countryside. Jer wants it made very clear that this is an AR 147 turbo diesel, for those that care (Scott).

We had intended to tour around some of the wineries in the area, but have found a shop in central Greve that has over 1200 different wines and has a huge tasting set-up. The tastings are dispensed from a big robot that holds about twenty bottles of wine. You buy a smart card and then stick it in the robo-sommolier and press the button that corresponds with the wine you want to try. There is a place like this in San Francisco, but we haven't been there yet. Now that we know about the radness of wine-dispensing robots, we will have to make a trip! We probably should make it out to the countryside, but having your choice of several hundred wines at once is tough to give up.

Today we are in Sienna, which is full of lovely old buildings, churches and about a thousand annoying tourists. We, of course, are the good ones! :D This is a beautiful city with lots of narrow, steep, and windy streets and we have been losing ourselves in the back alleys. We are only here for the day, so we want to see as much of it as possible and soak up the culture.

We will add pictures as soon as we can. We forgot the camera cable today. Oops.

We Made It! Mostly....

Well, Jer and I successfully made it to Pisa, Italy last night after about 20 hours of travel. Unfortunately, our bags were not so lucky and have yet to make an appearance. We do have toothbrushes and a small change of clothes, so it is not the end of the world!

After we arrived and checked into our cute little hotel, we wandered off to explore the town a little. Pisa is very cute and very Italian and has some excellent food! I see a couple of week full of tasty pasta dishes and fine wine in our future.

For some reason, there are not a lot of tourists around, so we went and checked out the Leaning tower (it is seriously crooked!) and the accompanying cathedral. We forgot to take the camera with us, but will try to go back today and get the necessary "I'm holding up the tower!" pic. Or not.