pic 1 from the winery site, 2 and 3 from east looking west
After a weekend full of Romans here at Nascondiglio di Bacco, we are all cleaned up and ready for Valentine's day and Carnevale at Offida and Ascoli Piceno. We hosted friends of our friend Roberto, who was celebrating a birthday in his restructured wine cellar and were happy to help him drink his wonderful wine which he makes between Offida and Apignano, while enjoying his mother's great italian cooking with a middle eastern twist. I called it a night after beating all comers save one at billiards at around midnight, but some of our hardier guests didn't turn in until 0500. Breakfast was served a bit later than normal and just as our guests left, Raffaele's friends arrived for a 4 hour lunch for 15.Today, we racked the wine from 2009 from the barrel to the stainless steel container, so we could clean out the precipitated gunk. It is surely different this year with the blend of bordeaux varietals instead of the old montepulciano grapes!
It was too cold to work in the vineyard, so after the indoor duties, I walked around and took some photos which show the vineyard and the winery site. We are probably going to decide on a contractor this week after receiving 4 bids and hopefully can dig inside a couple of weeks. I just finished a book called Napa Stories written by the chef of Tre Vigne, Michael Chiarello. It was a coffee table style book, full of great pix by Steven Rothfeld and tells the stories of many Napa vineyards and wine families. One of the things which hit me was a quote by Justin Meyer of Silver Oak Wine Cellars "There's only one way to go into the wine business and that's broke. Because then you've GOT to make it work." After the winery is built, I will be able to relate 100%.
The book reminded me of my partner Joe, who had a debilitating stroke and now is nursing home bound. He gave me the book for christmas years ago and I just got around to reading it. Ironically, there is an ER physician who quit medicine to make old vine zinfandel wines, Larry Turley. His quote: "My 1st week in the ER, I had a dentist and a chiropractor who had both just retired and had terrible strokes on the same night. It was just heartbreaking to hear the wives say, "You know, he worked so hard and saved, and we were going to do all these things." I never want to be in those shoes. I kind of overdid it for awhile, but I never want to look back and say, 'I wish I had done that.'"
My thoughts exactly!
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