Buongiorno from Italia!

I am so sorry it has been a while since I wrote, but this trip has been go go go. ..I am writing this post about my time so far and the food I’ve tasted. I am not including much wine because there is SO much to include. When I am finished with the trip I will go back and review the wines I really enjoyed (and maybe ones that I didn’t-however-there are not many!)

Finally we made it to Italy around 3 pm on August 6th, and our first stop was the Giustiniana Estate. First of all it was so beautiful from the old architecture to the rolling hills in the distance. You could see the town of Gavi from the estate. This was my very first time visiting a vineyard and seeing exactly how the wine is made. Everything I learned in ISG all came together seeing it in person.

The Giustinana Estate

The vineyards at Giustiniana

In front of the beautiful estate

The estate is over 1000 years old and was bought by Giustinana in the 17th century. It is very interesting because half the vineyards are made up of red soil and the other half are made up of white soil. They make a few different wines, but the most popular are the Gavi Lugarara and the Gavi Montessora. The Lugarara is made from the white sandy soil, which is made up of mostly limestone. The Montessora is made from the red soil, which is mostly clay. The red soil is rich, which creates the wine to have more acidity and a longer mouth feel. The sandy soil has less water in the soil where as the clay retains a lot of water. The Montessora has a floral bouquet and is a bit more floral on the palate.

There are three very important concepts for making Gavi: climate, soil, and the clones of the grape. Giustiniana searched out for the perfect soil and clones before buying the estate. The climate is microclimate and is perfect for the grapes, it also is the ideal soil for the grapes, and right now they are experimenting with 12 different clones.

More Gavi vineyards

The town of Gavi off in the distance

Christian-the winemaker gave us a tour of the vineyards, and the winery. It was very interesting to see how everything was done. Giustinana does not buy any grapes, they use all of their own grapes for their wines. All of the roots are grafted and they have about 8 hectares of Montessora, and 25 hectares of Lugarara. The vineyards have their own man made barrier made up of woods which helps keep pests out. This helps them to be a very natural and organic winery since they do not use any pesticides or harmful products.

Christian the winemaker at Giustinana

Stainless steel tanks for fermenting

Cortese grapes

We then proceeded to the room in the house for appetizers and wine. They had salame made from Gavi, fried sage, spinach and egg frittata, Lardo (small pieces of fat on crispy bread), delicious Italian bread, and something I wasn’t too fond of-a meat made from ground up pig head. All the food was salty and really interesting. My favorite was the fried sage. This was my first time, but oh my gosh was it good. So airy and doughy, and the soft pillows roll across your tongue with a vibrant sage taste. So comforting!!!

Salame of Gavi

Fried sage

Lardo

We also got to enjoy lots and lots of wine!

Enrico the Estate manager

The set up for dinner overlooking the vineyards

I got to watch this

Beautiful sunset

while I was eating this

Risotto-the main food of the region

and this.

The meal was light and just perfect for our first night. We stayed in a hotel in Barbaresco DOCG, which is so quaint and cute. Today we traveled to 2 more wineries in Barolo. I took a ton of pictures, but my camera is charging. The food today was out of this world at the Lodali winery. OUT OF THIS WORLD! I will hopefully get time tomorrow to blog more about today. Tomorrow we are off to Verona. Tried so many wines so far and will blog about all of them later. This was just to give you a taste of what I am seeing and learning.

Ciao!

Tagged as: cortese, Fried Anchovies, Fried Sage, La Giustiniana Gavi, Risotto, Salame, Sunset, vineyards