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 were all hiding in the shade because it was so hot out! This photo is courtesy of Daniela (pictured in the blue top sitting on the yellow box. Then we enjoyed a little parade through the center. These girls are so cute. One of my favorites from the trip. Crazy tambourine guy! Then we waited for the grape stomping competition. Basically pro stompers come and press as many grapes as they can by feet and win! It looked like so much fun I told Giovanni I wanted to do it. But apparently you have to be super special. It looked like hard word! They mustve been pressing for 20 minutes or something. In the evening while Giovanni and Lisa went to their fancy tasting again, Giovanni's friends and I spent some good quality time together. We went to another tasting that Corrado got us tickets for. It was in a beautiful stone building. I sampled the red wine with some salami platter. The others tried the dessert wine. And if I had known it was going to be presented so fancy, I would've ordered that too! Apparently the flower inside was soaked in some sort of sweetness. I guessed simple syrup, and they were encouraged to eat the flower...apparently wasn't that bad...Our server was delightful and even brought us some extra tasty treats. Italian people are just so amazing. I love the body language and the use of hands. I've noticed I use my hands a lot more when I'm talking here. So on into the night we adventured. My new friends Roberto and Stefania had some great times laughing and teaching each other the other language. Even though we couldn't understand eachother half the time it was still hilarious. I loved their sense of humor. They kept teaching me all the slang/bad words in italian. It was hilarious. The opener, Bandabardo, go the crowd moving. This great video shows how crazy the place was. The headliner tonight (A band called Rio) was alright...some songs I liked, others I really didn't like at all. And then what was most strangely ironic is that after the concert was over, the background music was "That's amore"...I laughed so hard because that was the last song I expected to hear in Italy. It was just so stereotypical Italy! The second part that was entertaining was a very drunk girl came up to Giovanni and I singing "That's Amore!" very loudly and was pushing us together. I cracked up. Last topper of the night was what I think was a bachelorette party moving through the crowd. Note the phalic balloon near the stage: The best part of the night I didn't even photograph....blame my inability to do any night time photography. We all came back to the house around 3 a.m. and since the music was still going, we just grabbed some bottles of wine that were left over from the fancy tasting Giovanni and Lisa were at and grabbed chairs and sat on the patio. The sky was crystal clear and you could see stars forever stretching over the valley. It was quite the sight. We even managed to scrounge up some energy for random patio dancing. My favorite memory from the trip. That's all I need. Good people and beautiful scenery.

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 short but still enjoyed. I love this photo. I captured it when I saw the man poking his head out to fix his door as we were walking around town.

Then it turns out Corrado got us a private wine tour of Colonnara, a cooperative regional winery. Meaning multiple farmers give their grapes and the winery produces wine under one name. Then the farmers get a portion of the profit based on the grapes that are used. Colonnara, it turns out, makes the best sparkling wine in the region. It recently one some type of award, I can't remember what it was but it was fairly significant. Anywho, the winery was beautiful. And large. Very much Chateau St. Michelle -esque. Everything was big and in large quanities. The highlight of the tour was the cellar where they kept the sparkling wine to let it age properly. Some of the bottles sit for 5 years before they are ready to sell. They also showed us a cool machine that froze the tips of the bottles, where the yeast is, so they can pop it out and top it off before bottling it.

It was very interesting and informative. Luigi, our guide, is from Cupramontana and spent some time studying in Finland. So he is fluent in Italian, and then when he speaks English is sounds very british. It was very entertaining. We ended the tour with a tasting. Which was a great way to wet our pallets for lunch!

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 the windows above). Not sure what that brick building is but I went up the stairs and the top is a patio with a cool looking clay oven then. It's seperate from the house.

So 20 hours after my first take off from Sea-Tac...I made it. Barely. For some reason my last plane cancelled my reservation (pretty wonky considering I checked in 19 hours earlier...). So they weren't going to let me on but after a whole lot of angry Italians a frantic stewardess let me on. I felt pretty cool being shuttled to my small plane where I got to walk up the stairs into the plane. It was almost like my private jet. I can pretend anyway. The above picture is a plane view of Ancona, the coastal city I flew into (about 20 minutes from the winery).

My hosts, Corrado and Valeria, are a beautiful Italian couple I would guess in their late twenties or early thirties. They have two beautiful children, Jackeau (I know I totally butchered that, I'll figure the spelling out later, age 5) and Julia (age 2). I am pretty sure the only thing that seeing those children kind of makes me want to have children. Obviously not now, but 2 little kids with curly sandy blonde hair speaking Italian is seriously the CUTEST thing ever.

So Valeria was so sweet, she picked me up at the airport. We drove home into the sunset...pretty phenomonal. And we pulled into La Distesa. It is exactly how I imagined it would be. Straight out of Under the Tuscan Sun. This gorgeous quirky home is sort of set apart like a duplex. Corrado and Valeria live upstairs towards the back and the apartments for WWOOFers is up another set of stairs facing the entrance of the winery. We have a shared bathroom and kitchen to ourselves. Which by the way, the kitchen is the cutest thing on earth. It has a stone fireplace with a cast iron pot. It basically reminds me of what Cinderella lived in.Turns out this vineyard used to belong to Corrado's parents. He and Valeria moved out here 10 years ago to take care of the place and produce wine. They mostly produce white wine, and some olive groves. I just found out I will probably be able to help with the olive harvesting as well so I am really excited for that. I thought I would miss out on it because it's normally done during the winter months. But apparently it has been unusually warm this year. And Cupramontana, the town we are in is well known for the wines that are produced. I am so excited to learn more.

I learned there will be two more WWOOFers joining me tomorrow, both are also American. Valeria and Corrado speak great english, but I am really excited to start learning some Italian. The children are so precious, the little boy wants to learn English so I am sure we are going to have some good times coming up.

I had my first homemade Italian dinner. It was perfect. I also learned that apparently they eat their meals backwards from us. Sort of. We started with some simple spaghetti noodles with olive olive, peppers and garlic. Then had some sort of sauteed pork with an assortment of veggies which included some kind of mushroom that apparently grows in the wild that you can go forge. Might have to try that before I leave. Then came the salad and then came the dessert (which was a pie crust like thing with a fig like jam on top. We of course had some wine. I laughed with Corrado asked me if I liked wine. It was a delicious white wine that he produced. I'll have to get the name of it....Everything is in Italian so it's hard to remember. I didn't take photos because I didn't want to creep out my hosts right away. But hopefully soon!

I am having a wonderful time already. I can't imagine what is in store for me next!