Yesterday group foto with the neighbors

We spent the late afternoon drinking Vin Santo and chatting with our neighbors!

More pictures from first week in Italy

Today we drove by the local golf course to make a tee time for tomorrow and saw this incredibile sunflower field, so once again we have photos of sunflowers! Our neighbors, Roberto and Giovanna, took us on a drive into the Appennine Mountains yesterday where we saw this full rainbow! Oh, we changed our plans and instead of golf... we're going to Venezia tomorrow! Ciao! Ciao!

Linda said dinner was ready and our other neighbor gave us fresh tomatoes, basil, and zucchini, so it's time to manga!

BTW, I wanted to add that the name "rainbow" in Italian is Arco Baleno!!!

Pictures taken around our Italy house

These pictures were taken yesterday of wild berries, sunflower fields, the corn field next to our house, and of course the fried zucchini flowers filled with ricotta cheese! They were great!

I have a WiFi connection now, but it's too slow to upload videos when using it at our country house, so for now I'll be posting pictures unless I'm in the city where the signal will be stronger. Ciao!

The first days of our Tuscan vacation!

Well, once again it's just like out of the book "Under The Tuscan Sun". We arrive to our house and even though we just had a nuovo pozzo (new well) put in, the pump (pompa) would not work because it was blocked (bloccato) basically because if you don't use it you lose it! Being away for months at a time is a real problem and the house really needs to be in use or things just get messed up.

We had to wait until the next morning for a technician to come out and get it going and had to shower at our neighbors house. Next was the tankless water heater's turn to not want to work, so when the cel phone battery died, it was time to open up some wine and fruggettaboutit!

The next day we drove into Florence to pay our "ICI" taxes and to have lunch at "Il Giova", one of our favorite ristorante's in Firenze! We took pictures of the owner, Grazia, and her waitress while enjoying an incredibile lunch! Linda also took a picture of one of Grazia's desserts!

Yesterday we stayed close to home and Linda had her hair cut at Stefania's salon in Borgo San Lorenzo which is about 10 minutes from our house. Stefania was instrumental in us buying our house here as she hooked us up with a local realtor and even negotiated the price with the owner when we bought our place in Santa Maria A Vezzano. There's a front and back view of Linda's hair cut taken with Sara, Steffie's niece.

Today was another day spent close to home, but I did call and make a lunch/wine tasting at Sette Ponte, near Arezzo. This will be our 3rd visit to Sette Ponte, named after the seventh bridge over the Arno river. The owner's sister, Giovanna Moretti, is cooking us a private lunch and letting us taste their recent vintages! What a great connection this has become since Lou, from the Wine Hotel, first set up a visit to the winery.

There's also a picture of our friend, John Antonucci, taken in out kitchen in Los Angels with a Boxe Mugello pennant since he's a former boxer and a Sicilian with family in Sicily.

Ca del Sole Wine Dinner on July 23rd

On July 23rd, our wine group got together for a Wine Dinner at Ca del Sole restaurant in Toluca Lake, Ca. The wine theme was wines from Campania and we had some stellar wines!

There were 2 white wines, one was a 2007 Torre Gaia Falanghina Sannio which was very crisp with some apple and pear fruit with a nice mineral body in the style of Italy. This is what K&L Wines had to say about it:

Sannio Falanghina shows a brilliant straw yellow color and nuances of greenish yellow, very transparent. The nose reveals intense, clean, pleasing and refined aromas which start with hints of apple, pear and plum followed by aromas of pineapple, hawthorn, almond and broom. The mouth has good correspondence to the nose, a crisp attack and however balanced by alcohol, good body, intense flavors. The finish is persistent with flavors of apple, plum and pear. Sannio Falanghina ages in steel tanks.

The next white wine was one from Umbria. It broke the theme, but we brought it as it was a 2006 Grechetto from Sportoletti Assisi. This is Linda's favorite white wine and I don't think it's exported to the United States, so I brought it along with us. I believe this grape was brought from Greece a couple thousand years ago and grows well in Umbria. I think it's the only region in Italy where this varietal grows.

On to the Reds...

1. A 2004 Molettieri Taurasi Vigna Cinque Querce which Gambero Rosso describes as "simply mind blowing" and Antonio Galloni describes as "simply awesome".

2. A 2003 Montevetrano which was 70% Cabernet Sauvignon, 20% Merlot, and 10% Aglianico. We love Italian Cab/Merlot blends and this one was really nice with the Aglinico blended in along with them. A very nice wine!

3. A 2003 Naima Viticoltori de Conciliis. This wine was my favorite of the night as it was wonderfully balanced with nice fruit forward and very smooth! It still maintained the dryness of Italian wines which make them so great!

4. A 2003 Feudi di San Gregorio Irpina Serpico. This wine was super dry with stewed fruit and it needed to be decanted to really open up. After a couple of hours of decanting, it drank beautifully and really went great with the food! At 11:30 when I was settling up the bill, there was still a glass left in the decanter, so I poured the last glass and sipped it while talking with out waiter, Mikele. After 4 1/2 hours of decanting, it was so soft and wonderful! I can't remember the names of the other Reds, but all the wines were great and we all had a great time!

Included are the pics taken from the wine dinner which were taken outside on their patio. Great food, great wine, and great friends! Ciao!

Rome One More Time!

I hope you liked the videos from Rome. These were taken on last year's summer trip and we leave on August 1st for 3 weeks in Italia! Ciao! Ciao!

Even more vidoes from Roma!

I've got a couple more videos from last summer in Rome to put into a post, but for now I wanted to post this one as it's been awhile since I blogged. We leave for Italy in 3 weeks and we can't wait!