Apologies & The Last Big Thing

Sorry for not posting more frequently, everyone. I was kinda busy.

Last weekend was our village of Montisi's festival celebrating the first pressings of the new olive oil. For me this represents the peak of the harvest season around here and invokes 5 little words that really get me salivating: Chestnuts, Mushrooms, Oil, Wine and Truffles. Today, let's talk about oil. Extra virgin. Green gold as Homer called it.

Harvesting and milling the olives from our 90 oil producing trees was the last big thing I had on my list of projects for this year. It's a lot of work and usually Sally, I, and our friends Russell and Momo can only manage about half the trees in one long weekend. But this year, thanks to our newest friends, Swiss cheese makers Ulisse and Sandra of agrotorismo Podere Il Casale and their WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) volunteers, we got every olive hand picked in 4 smart days.

But first, Sally and I harvested our 3 trees of meatier green curing olives which I like to treat in lye baths. In two weeks we and our lucky friends will be enjoying them as appetizers. The smaller salt-cured olives (black) will take about a month before I'm using them in savory lemon chicken in brodo and in tagines.

On Saturday, Sally and I scooted off to the village piazza for a lunch of polenta and faro soup while Swiss harvesters Christina, Louise, and Minh (who is part Vietnamese), Americans Jake and Ben of Wisconsin, and Italian Adriana of Castelmuzio, the next village over, carried on. By 4:30 they were finishing up and I was hauling the 40 pound crates of olives, six at a time down the hill in the motorized mule of my Ape, grateful to each of them for their diligent work because a big storm front was moving in.

I had gotten our nets folded and put away and was sipping a glass of wine on the front bench savoring what was supposed to be the last of the rays of sun we’d see for 4 or 5 days, when Sally hollered down from upstairs. “What is that in the field?” I hurried to the edge of the terrace to look and a 300 or 400 pound cinghiale (wild boar) sauntering across the field. It moved, with its black bristle razorback, like a wildebeast or gnu crossing the African savannah. It's unusual to see a boar so casual in broad daylight and in an open field. We tracked it a long while with the binoculars we shared. It felt like a some kind of omen. If of nothing else, that the weather was about to change.

One Good Year

I realize, after going over my blog archive, that it has been one year since I started this blog and publicly engaged in the three promises of its subhead. And to be honest, I have succeeded and I have failed at each.

The house: It's built! Sally and I are living in it! But I still have a little work to do on the floors, and we need doors on the bedroom and bath. Otherwise, the rest is cosmetic (light sconces to install, a dab of paint here and there). I'd say I have succeeded handsomely, and the fact that 14 months after groundbreaking the house was habitable in a country where most things good and bad take twice as long as you think they should is a true triumph. Thanks Paulo & Claudio & Fruzico Brandini (our builders)! Thanks Daniele (our surveyor/architect)! Thanks Simone and Cesare (our plumbers)! Thanks Stefano and Cesare (our electricians)! Thanks Piannigianni, Alvaro and Oreste (our excavators)! Thanks Stefania (our translator and roustabout)! Thanks Pasquale (our blacksmith) Thanks Gianni, Arnaldo, and Milena (our neighbor farmers who've helped in many small ways)! Thanks Russell & Eileen (our friends, cheering squad, hosts, and transportation for the last 3 years)! Thanks Momo Brubeck (who showed us the property and helped me clear a good part of it). Thanks Gatto, Matteo, Gabriele, and the other guys who pitched in for the initial vineyard cleanup. And thanks Carlo Roberti of Toscana PhotoWorkshop for inviting us to Italy and introducing us to this place all those years ago.

The wine: Going back to my September posts, I see I succeeded in getting not one, but 3 kinds of wine fermenting by Sept 26. But because they’re still bubbling away on a nice, slow, low temperature, non-fruit-killing schedule in the pregnant bellies of the 54 liter glass demijohns. I can't really say that it's made. Still, given everything I was up against just to resurrect the dying vineyard and wrestle enough organic fruit from all the pests and disease of this year, the fact anything at all is fermenting is a real triumph. Thank you Elisabetta and Giancarlo for offering the grapevines that gave us the volume we needed to fill the vats.

Becoming Italian: Ah, well, in this I must admit defeat. I have learned only enough Italian to listen and nod politely at the dinner table and throw in a word or two here and there. I have succeeded in cooking pasta to the satisfaction of my Italian friends, but I have not grown a photo-worthy tomato in my garden (here they pass around pictures of vegetables like Americans do snapshots of their children). I now speak with my hands a lot more, but they have said some rather embarrassing things inadvertently. I’d give myself a D grade (with a B+ for effort). But isn't the point really the journey toward Italianita’? Like perfection or the horizon, it’s a goal I can never really reach. At least I've gotten a good start.

I suppose I should re-head the blog: One more year to finish a home, One more year to finish a wine, and One more year to become more Italian. But I think I’ll just attach a small addendum.

Stay tuned for Found In Tuscany -- Year 2!

Leaping Lizards!

Known here as lacerta, this emerald lady was sunning on the woodpile. She's over a foot long.

Bragging Rights

Besides enough grapes to make wine (200-plus vines), and the 93 olive trees from which we will draw the world's best oil, I have single-handedly, sometimes with one hand tied behind my back (or at least in a sling), cleared and pruned back to health a cornucopia of fruit and nut trees. Here's the list:

22 prune trees

12 peach trees (10 white, 2 yellow)

4 cherry trees (3 bing type, 1 pie type)

3 fig trees (green outside, red inside)

3 walnut trees

2 yellow plum trees

1 pear tree

1 gooseberry bush

All heirloom and all certifiably organic!

"It's paradise!" remarked a visitor from Croatia when he saw Tana Lepre early in the clean-up process. I'd agree without hesitation, except that Adam didn't have to do any work there. On the other hand, Adam never knew the bone-deep, in-your-sleep soddisfazione (satisfaction) of actually accomplishing anything in Eden. And that's a real pity.

Here are some of our prunes. They are an antique domesticated wild variety locals call Coscia di Monaca -- Monaca's Thigh -- because of their shape. They are beyond savory, nothing like store prunes or plums. In fact, everything here is an antique, renaissance heirloom variety.

Here are Monaca's thighs pruning in the sun.

And here is a jar of them transformed into prune marmalata by our friend, Nicola Sgarbi at Laboratorio Buon Gusto.

It can't get more local. This is the barter system at its best. Nicola comes and harvests all the prunes he wants and a few weeks later he hands me a case of prune preserve con chiodi di garofano (with nails of clove). He also makes an incredible apricot and saffron spread. Perfect with toast and coffee!

Sally!

Actually, Sally is in Positano at the moment, shooting a villa and a swank hotel for the Italian equivalent of House and Garden. I'm left here alone to concoct pesto from what might be the season's last basil and the exceptional walnuts (toasted of course) from our trees.

A friend recently asked why there are so many pictures of me on my blog. The truth is Sally is the photographer and I'm doing most of the work when she takes my picture. And hey, it's my blog about me being me. But here she is for those who miss her, doing one of the many things she does best, photographing the landscape.

Actually, this is high in the Alps. After a long hike in the rain. And the snow. To a glacier. Way the hell up there.

It's not easy finding new ways to photograph a photographer.

Pressing Matters

Adesso, sono un garagista! (Now I am a garagista!).

Yesterday (day 6 of the wine fermenting "on the skins"), I pressed the must, wringing every drop of savory juice I could from the skins and pulp with my trusty second hand torchio (wine press).

Now the fermenting wine is safely fizzing away in 54 liter (14 gallon) glass demigianne (demijohns). From right to left are: The "frivolous" rosato; the elegant day 5 salasso (drawn-off) rosso; the serious day 6 free run (unpressed) red, and the nearly black day 6 press wine red -- about 189 liters (50 gallons) of fermenting wine!

Going back over projections I jotted down last winter, I see that I originally planned on about 27 gallons of red and 7 gallons of white wine (about a bottle per vine) or a total of 128 liters. Despite the oidio, birds, deer, and hare damage, and thanks to the back-up grapes Elisabetta offered from ancient Pieve San Stefano, we overshot by 30%! Rather than the miserable 20% yield (37 liters) I was expecting, we threw a ton of grapes to the ground and selected only the best bunches and still have 236 bottles of wine (about 20 cases if every drop makes it) bubbling away! At least as far as quantity goes, I'd call that snatching victory from the jaws of defeat.

What remains to be seen, or rather tasted, is the ultimate quality of my product. For now, I am happy to report that the juice that oozed through the slats of the press basket yesterday was a delicious explosion of cherries, with chewy but not bitter tannins, and reasonably bright acids. And of course the taste of yeast one expects in fermenting wine.

What kind of wine do I most want to craft? I would love to create an elegant, fruit-forward, terroir-driven wine that tastes like you've just kissed a pirate who's eaten a fistful of blackberries, with dark notes of violet, wolf pelt, and female musk sprinkled in. But more importantly, I want it to be a pure expression of this place and the effort I've spent here. I want it to show just how much of myself I am willing to pour into the task at hand.

Punchdown!

Known as pigeage in French and follatura in Italian, punching down the cap of floating skins, seeds and stems that rise to the top of the fermenting must, at least twice a day, is crucial for leaching every drop of vital flavors and polyphenols and keeping unwanted nasty molds from growing. I do it 4 times a day, very very gently to keep the whole grapes, which are undergoing a different kind of enzyme driven fermentation (carbonic maceration), from breaking apart.

The first shot was day 1. Here is what it looks like on day 5 of being "on the skins."

It's kind of fun, like playing with your food or making mud pies. My arm gets all purple. And the room fills with the headiest aroma of yeast and grapes and cherries!

Nice color extraction!