Thanksgiving at Nascondiglio di Bacco

28 Nov.

Doreen with the 20 lb turkey trussed up

Yes, there was one other male presence:  Graziano

A great weekend is coming to an end after a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner here at the B&B.  We were blessed with visits from expat americans from as far away as Florence, Todi, and Spello.  Everyone pitched in with the cooking of traditional dishes like a 9 kg turkey, corn and polenta souffle, pecan pie, stuffing, mashed potatoes and a few things made from our homegrown fruit, like a quince pound cake and a persimmon upside down cake.  Wines were pouring freely and were from 3 countries with my highlight being my last bottle of 1997 Dunn Howell Mt cabernet.  Thanks Mr. Dunn for that gem!

Doreen and Naomi a tavola

Naomi from Florence

Brenda and Doreen

Brenda, Doreen and Lisa

Bacco met a new girlfriend who had her way with him as she outweighed him by 7 kg.  They had a blast playing and I don't think there will be any forthcoming puppies?

Beatrice and Bacco

I led a tour of the winery for everyone with a tank tasting and hopefully the young wines made a good impression on my sommelier friends.

Today, everyone slept in and then we lunched on turkey soup from the stock made the night before.  It was a nice touch of americana in the Marches.  Thanks to all for making the journey and making the weekend special!

Olive season is officially ended, Happy Thanksgiving

24 Novembre
Olive season 2010 is now officially ended.  I have cut 50,000 branches +/- from our 100 trees and Raffaele "Pyrolini" has been busy burning them.   The nice thing about olive trees is you can pretty much ignore them for 11 months of the year and God will take care of them for you.  A bit of rain, a lot of sunshine, not too many of the flies which lay their eggs inside the olives, a properly timed harvest and the oil just comes out pretty darn good.  Having said that, last years oil was much softer in style than this year and I couldn't tell you why.  This year the oil is just exceptional and I didn't do a thing differently.
Grazie al Dio, I only fell once during my tree climbing and no ribs were broken this year.  Once again, I highly recommend a bit of tree climbing for those of you who are baby boomers, it's a blast.
I hope everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving tomorrow!
The photos are of a recent full moon, Bacco not playing nicely with the frisbee, Bacco in the zona Sentina refuge near Porto d'Ascoli and our olive press which is all done without exposure to oxygen with the latest in modern olive smashing technology.

Potatura, pruning of the olives. random thoughts and photos

Right now is olive tree pruning time.  I have another 42 trees to go and want to finish before I come back to the US.  I am studying my enology lessons from UCD and just finished assignment 3.  I am a bit sorry the class didn't start 3 weeks earlier as I am learning stuff that would have been useful for the fermentation.  The wines are all resting quietly and without problems.  We should get our barrels of various sizes in about 3 weeks and the wine will be transferred once again when they arrive.  Above are a couple of pictures of our surrounding countryside, the B&B from the east with the vineyard in the foreground and a couple of photos I have forgotten to show of a little gem called the Tempietto in Rome inside the church of St. Pietro di Montorio.  Well worth a visit and designed by the first architects of St. Peters cathedral.  Supposedly this was built on the site where Peter was crucified.  It is a perfect little building!  Also there is a doctored pic of Rome from the Gianicolo hill at near sunset. 

I have been having a ball this autumn with all the american guests from East coast to West and a bunch of friends from around KC.  Thanks everyone for visiting!