Lago del Fiastrone and Lame Rosse hike

25 Ottobre
My guests departed around 9:30 this morning and Bacco and I immediately followed them out the door to try a new hike.  I was hoping for peak Fall color, but wait until next week if you want to see the trees all turned.   This is an easy stroll which ends up in a place which will remind one of Zion National Park in Utah.

A view of Montalto Marche on the road to the trailhead

The dam which has formed the lake is the easiest place to start the trail, but if you want to walk along the lake as well, you can start up the road at the town (add an hour each way)

A view of Lago di Fiastro or Lago del Fiastrone from the dam with the tail end of the Sibillini mountains in the distance

The canyon below the dam

Your first view of the Lame Rosse, red blades after an easy 35-60 minute walk depending on your pace

Looks from here like a castle

Bacco walking through the martian terra

more spires

you can also explore little troughs which scale the heights to the left, if you don't bring your 33kg dog who can't climb 6 foot walls

With enough imagination you can see 2 eyes watching you from the hill behind to the left.  As you can see, we need another week or more to get the trees all turning.

Finally,  the lame rosse from the other side of the canyon where the road will take you home.

It is a nice and easy hike and you can get there from Umbria by taking the road for Macerata or from us by heading towards Sarnano, then up this canyon towards Fiastra

100% extra virgin, Marche organic olive oil in pictures, 2011

18 Ottobre

Up at dawn to pick, not!  Just to walk the dog and get the work done in the winery before the olive harvesting.

Alessandro and Raffaele beating up on an olive tree to get the olives to drop into the net

The olives are put into plastic containers which hold about 20 kg.

The beater has rotating little fingers which cause the olives to fall off their branches and is telescopic, reaching into the heights of the trees up to about 20 feet if your arms are long.

I delivered my olives in the van, but people come in station wagons, trucks, tractors, you name it and the olives are placed into large bins and weighed. You pay by the weight of the olives, not by the oil which you make

They are then loaded into a big hopper and the conveyor belt takes them into the machine which will blow aways sticks and leaves and then wash the olives

Here they are freefalling into their bath/leaf blowing zone

Ready to be washed and then go to the initial grind

After the initial grind, the paste arrives in with these blades and gets cut and pressed to mush

The off to the centrifuge which separates oil from water and solids

my oil exiting the centrifuge

Tiziano pumping the oil into my 50 L container. Normally, you get about 12% yield from the weight of the olives eg 100kg would give you 12 liters.  With the dry year we had, this year the olives were less hydrated and the oil yield was over 16%

Here's where the waste solids go, to be spread later on their fields as humus

Bacco making a new friend outside the olive press

And I finished in time to enjoy a cloud free, blue sky day!

New olive oil, Happy 53rd bro, Rock climbing Mt. Rosara, wine update

14 ottobre
Happy birthday to my brother today!  The new oil arrived at the b&b last night in time to give a liter to my climbing guests who were leaving today for Rome.  This year's oil is much greener and a bit harsher than last year's, so it will need a couple of months to get a bit softer before you pour it all over your salad.
Below you can see the difference in color between 2011 and 2010 and the oil really won't change color much over its life.

Ok, I'm back having done a side by side bruschetta tasting between these 2 and they are different, but both good with the new one having that fresh olive smell you only get right after pressing.

My Seattle guests were avid climbers and had hauled all their climbing gear to Spain and Italy, so it was up to me to try and find climbing places where the bolts had already been placed (I didn't know there were these special places all over the world).  As I am quite ignorant of this sport having limited my climbing experience to olive trees, it took a bit of googling and talking with my bike shop friend Brian, but I found a great place for them at Monte Rosara and they enjoyed scaling the limestone outcropping there.

This was a sport I wanted to try when I was 14 and vacationing with my folks in Colorado, but I never got to try, just a bit in scouts.

The wines are pretty much all resting from the strain of fermentation and now it is about time to think about clarifying, just a tiny bit, my Pecorino and get it in bottles with a Reserve sticker.  The Montepulciano is staying on its skins for another week and then will be pressed. It has notes of mature fruit which comes from the dry, hot last 2 months we experienced before harvest.  The pH of all the wines is quite high and to stabilize the wines for bottling will be adjusted slightly lower with tartaric acid, the acid most prevalent in grapes.  At least the alcohol level of the Syrah, Petit Verdot and Cabernet Sauvignon were all at or below 15%.  What a year!

Wines of 2011 update

8 Ottobre
Today, I started at 7 AM and got the Petit Verdot pressed and tanked; the 1/2 of the Pecorino from 2010, also heretofore known jokingly as "my Pecorino"  has exited its wooden encasement and is now safely back in stainless steel with its twin brother which has always lived in stainless.  I now have 2000 liters of Pecorino, half of which has spent 6 months in 3-220 liter barrels and 1-500 liter tonneau mixed with the other half which has been in a 1000 liter stainless tank.  It will be lightly fined with an inert material called PVPP to take away a bit of bitterness and darkness of color and will probably be bottled as Aurai-Riserva, 2010.  It is tasting pretty good mixed together!

Montepulciano tank

The Syrah from 2011 has been transferred to 2 barrels and a 1000 liter stainless tank, the Cabernet Franc was transferred to a tonneau and a barrel, the Passito was taken off its dirty lees and replaced in its small stainless container and the Cabernet Sauvignon was also racked off its lees for the 2nd time.  The reds will spend the winter in stainless and then change places with the 2010 wines as they come out of their barrels and tonneau in the spring.
We still lack a lot of rainfall for the latter part of the year which may arrive tomorrow and then I am hoping to harvest olives next Wednesday or Thursday.  The poor olive trees need a bit of rain before picking, I think.

Leccino olives

Frantoio olives

Carboncillo olives

More american guests arrive tomorrow, so I have made bread and am making a grape and wine cake with the Petit Verdot wine and grape skins which I stole before the pressing.

Last of the harvests with new and old friends and a small inauguration of the tasting room, BBQ at 1900 meters in Abruzzo with the best arrosticini!

3 Ottobre,

Somehow, the last harvest of the year came around just in time for my friends from England, Australia, Verbania, Latina, Ascoli Piceno and Caserta, Italy,  France, and finally a combo from Italy/India/Kent.

Will, Julia, Ema, Raffa, Fabio at the duomo of Ascoli

(England x 2, Australia, France and Italy/India/Kent)

Dining al fresco at Il Desco, my favorite restaurant in Ascoli, with a very well behaved dog!

 We were quite the international crowd picking the Montepulciano grapes which had reached 24 Brix, 7.2 Total Acidity and a pH of 3.5 or nearly perfect with all brown seeds and reasonable, not aggressive tannins.  While the yield was much lower this year, the grapes were all healthy and we finished in a single day.  As a reward for their fine labor, I treated everyone to a meal/festa in the newly finished tasting room with its great views under a great autumn sky with only the  peace and quiet you find here as an accompaniment.

Giorgio lighting the votives

 The ladies set up votive candles all around the winery inside and out and it was really a fitting closure to what has been a truly tough year of work and stress and worry about the weather.
The next day we headed into Abruzzo to Campo Imperatore under the Camicia mountains where films such as Ladyhawke, Krull, The American and others were filmed and where Mussolini was kept a prisoner after Italy surrendered in WWII and before the Germans broke him out of his hotel/jail.

Mt. Camicia, 2590 meters

Emma, Will's fiancee 

Matteo, one of Italy's most decorated young sommelier and classmate from my slow food master

Its nickname is Italy's little Tibet and it is a huge plateau and home to a bunch of shepherds, one of whom has capitalized on the suggestive scenery and built an abattoir for sheep with a large grouping of bbq grills suitable for ribs, cutlets and the specialty, arrostocini abruzzese which are little skewers of the best mutton you will ever eat!

My group with the family

another

the Nonni!

Raffa from the Rhone valley with his prized arrostocini

One of the cooks, Valentina handing out the last one

We joined Fabio's sister Nisha's in-laws who treated us to a feast unequalled in my life for this type of meat!  The spices were subtle and perfect, the meat was perfectly cooked and there was non of the flavor I associate with older sheep/mutton.  The area looked a little like something out of Mad Max, to be honest, but was a true "italian experience".  I can't imagine this type of thing anywhere else in the world and the place was packed on a Sunday with daytrippers and campers.

Father and son enjoying the wide open spaces of Campo Imperatore

Bacco digesting all the bones and sausages given him by the folks

BBQ Abruzzo style

Arrostocini!

Bacco found one on the ground and took advantage

Raffa from France, Silvia from Latina and our masters and Silvano, our great host/cook

The best arrostocini in the world

Right our of Mad Max, lighting the charcoal with a huge propane tank