So, I admit it: I haven’t even finished telling you about all the cantine I visited in my first week in Italy. But I realized that I’ve officially entered my third (and final!) week at La Spinetta - and in Piemonte, for that matter - and it’d be an awfully long blog entry if I dared to squeeze everything into one posting! (Keep in mind, these first entries were mere day trips!) Not to mention, I'm dying to talk about moscato harvest - check out Suzanne & her multi-cluster! They were so intertwined that she had to cut all 3 bunches just to get the fruit off!
Before I launch into that, though, I’m also inclined to apologize, because with such a lengthy stay here I figured no need to play Japanese tourist like I did in the Valle d’Aosta and have my index finger glued to the shutter button on my camera. No, there’d be plenty of time for photos… except, now I fear I made a terrible error.
For one thing, most of the harvesting that I will do is done. The nebbiolo will be picked after I depart. (At least I got some good shots of Suzanne & I picking moscato our first day - see the album below.) But what’s really too bad is that the weather has drastically changed each week that I’ve been here, and it looks like my final week is going to be cold and cloudy with some rain. Alas, the views I took in of rolling hills of vigneti drenched in the late summer sun as I whipped around the narrow, twisting roads will have to live in my mind. Now the sky is bleak, the wind is chilly, and amazingly the leaves are already beginning to show that the colors will change soon. I can’t believe how quickly it went by, or that my first week all that anyone could do was wipe their sweaty brow and proclaim, “Fa Caldo!” (It’s hot!)
All the same, it’s been an amazing experience thus far working at La Spinetta. Every single person has been incredibly warm and welcoming and done their best to help me understand everything going on around me… albeit in a foreign language :) Granted, I was lucky that Giorgio and his wife, Anja, both speak English, and also Giorgio’s neice, Manuella, so I had some language relief (plus Suzanne came back for the first weekend!) But the person I’ve worked with most is a guy named Stefano who’s actually half French – born and raised there, so his Italian has a bit of a French accent. He’s been so patient and has managed to explain things to me in such an easy manner that sometimes I forget we don’t speak the same language! Occasionally I get tired of speaking in a foreign tongue and just start talking to him in English. The blank stare I get in return is all the entertainment (and motivation) I need to convince myself back into Italian for awhile. But little by little, he’s learning some English!
(Sadly, what I keep trying to teach him are American sayings or phrases, and by the time I’ve figured out a way to correctly translate and explain it the humor is long gone. The good news is that we’ve got the swears down :)
The first two days I was in the vineyards helping to clip grappoli (grape bunches) from the vines. Suzanne was with me the first day, and we helped to pick moscato in the morning from the Biancospino vineyard, and in the afternoon we picked Chardonnay. Since both of these varietals produce white wines the grapes are green (or sometimes yellow) in color… meaning they blend in with the foliage quite well. From the start Suzanne and I were commenting on how hard it was to see where the bunches were, and even then what we were doing as they were mainly deeply nestled amongst the sturdy leaves. Well, a mere hour into work there came a sudden gasp/cry from Suzanne – yep, she’d just snipped right into her thumb. Luckily it wasn’t too bad, and I secretly thanked her for being the one to prove that the clippers were definitely sharp enough to cut flesh. Fortunately, that afternoon - working alongside the experienced - we realized that they were ripping the leaves away so that they could see where the grape bunches were and, more importantly, where they were cutting. Good to know!
The fruit itself was perfect in form, and ranged from a vibrant lime-green color to golden yellow in places where the grapes had had more exposure to the sun (usually at the top of a hill, and more often than not at the end of a row.) These grapes with more sun exposure were definitely sweeter and not as firm as grapes that came from deep within the foliage, which were tarter (more acidic). But, as Giovanna explained, it’s good to have both as they balance each other out in the end. Also interesting was the general difference between handling moscato grapes in the morning and chardonnay that afternoon. Both the foliage and the grape clusters (not the individual grapes) for the moscato were softer, more pliable, whereas the chardonnay foliage was much scrubbier and tough, and the fruit seemed even more structured… kind of like the wines!
By the end of my first week I was working mainly in the cantina. My main tasks have included: helping unload the bins of grapes arriving from the vineyards (Moscato, Chardonnay, Sauvignon and Barbera) into the de-stemming machine, and a lot of hauling hoses around, turning on & off pumps when I’m told to, and constant cleaning. You don’t really think about all the extra pulp, seeds, lees (dead yeast cells from post fermentation) and just general muck that is a natural by-product of wine. While the most solid version (usually from the grape press) is distilled into grappa, there’s a ton more, called the “fundo”, which gets removed from a series of movements from tank to tank (or tank to barrel). See picture :)
Each of these “movements” or “decantings” is a process unto itself, and requires everything to be cleaned afterward… the tank, all the valves, the hoses, and sometimes the barrels. Then there’s the “jimmy-ing” effect of what to do when there’s a little more wine than there is room in the tank… Or when you realize that the new botte have to be broken down because they’re too tall to get through the doorway of the cellar… Or how to react when a hose springs a leak (happened today – a BIG leak at that! Italian curses flowing and half the room spray painted in barbera. Talk about excitement!)
Anyway, I’m sure you have a good mental picture of what goes on in the cantina. The next installment will focus a little more on my life here and some of the fun events I’ve been lucky enough to take part in (like some great dinner parties thrown by Giorgio!) Also, if they’ll let me document them, some pics of the guys I spend my days working alongside and some shots of the actual cantina. Then, I promise, I will bang out the other couple of places I visited (Antoniolo, Cantalupo, Ferrando, La Morra, and now even a weekend in Liguria…) as soon as I possibly can. It’s unfortunate, but all these amazing little wine towns in Piemonte are not exactly internet hotspots – as they probably shouldn’t be, but, hey, it IS invisible – no one has to know that my wi-fi card gets a signal! At least this weekend in Liguria I was able to hideout in my hotel room with hours of blissful internet. Oh technology, what have you done to me?
Signing off. And, in case you’re wondering, I definitely have opted for the Doogie Howser approach to this blog from here on out: Computer Diary awaiting internet upload when possible. It doesn’t get much geekier, and that part has nothing to do with wine!
