As you all know, I was in Italy this past fall. Traveling, drinking wine, traveling, drinking more wine. Eating. The usual. A few weeks during my epic journey I was lucky enough to be joined by one of my best friends, Christina. We are two drama school pals that have both ended up in this crazy world of wine. She is (too) far away in London so whenever I travel to Europe, we always try to meet up. And wine drinking is always involved, of course. Add to that a Flip video camera- and I think you can see where this is going. I made this little “outtakes” video back in September and think it’s about time it made its BHMF debut. We had originally hoped to make a kind of homage to 3 Sheets… the female Zane Lampreys! When watching the footage all the “unplanned” and blooper clips were WAY more interesting than anything else we recorded. Lesson learned: nobody wants to hear you talk about wine. Seeing you get drunk- that’s the ticket.
No, not me. Not just yet. But about 1,000 bottles I labeled heading for California. As I sat in the warehouse applying my 832nd label sticker of the day, I thought “maybe i should document this.” If not only to be informative, then to at least momentarily cure my boredom. In a small winery, sometimes the wine is bottled and left unlabeled. When a large order comes in, the bottles are then labeled according to the country and importer. And at De Conciliis it is all done by hand. Yes people, by hand. So, here it is: a step by step peak into how a bottle gets packaged and ready for shipment.
Yesterday was a long day. But a great day. It was spent on a scooter, for the most part, as I desperately tried to find my way through the Amalfi Coast, Salerno, Avellino and Tufo. But the treacherous ride and the almost constant sense of feeling lost was worth it. And I would do it all again in a second.
I was lucky enough to have one of my very best friends Christina join me on this first leg of the journey. She also works in the business di vino (but lives way too far away from me in London.) We had 3 very different tastings in 3 different towns. We began the day with a visit to see Rosanna Petrozziello of I Favati in a little place called Cesinali.
We arrived to the cellar and tasting room and were greeted by Rosanna. Her husband is one of the Favati brothers still running the family business. They have the vineyard and she says the cellar, “it is mine.”
We started off our tasting at I Favatiwith a fantastic fiano spumante. It is yet to be released in the US, so it was a special treat. And I am freakishly obsessed with unique sparkling wines so, yes, I was excited. The grape in this wine is fiano, which is native to the region. Rosanna named this wine Cabri which is the combination of her 2 sons names. She was also kind enough to open their 2007 Fiano di Avellino white label riserva. This was a wonderful way to try two very different expressions of the grape.
This was just the beginning…more to come soon. Until then, saluti!
