Saturday night – Picking grapes – Rosh Hashanah

We decided that we wanted to visit a vu=ineyard or olive oil place today ut hadnt had much luck in finding a place. Magical Luigi managed to track down the owner of the Olive Oil museum in Bucchianico to ask her.., That place has such fantastic reviews (see here ) . as fate had it.. she was off today (Saturday).. but she kindly invited us out to her house/ air b&b / organic vineyard in Navelli about an hour away.

We pile in the Luigi-mobile for the trip.. We arrived and were welcomed by this guy

Our host today was Francesca.. She was a delightful ball of energy.. with two great kids and a great husband. They bought this place in Navelli and have made it it in to a wonderful B&B called Cantin Arte as well as a n organic wine producer. We *definitely* recommend you find a way to visit whether for a stay or a tour like we did.

Francesca introduced their operation then took us down to their eco viinyard for a few hours of grape harvesting. There were three other americans with us.. nice talkign to them as well.

We also learned a little about saffron harvesting whihc was pretty cool.. Francesca has even Zsold bulbs to someone in Burlington VT. We learned it takes about 200,000 ‘threads’ to make a kilogram of saffron !

The vineyard was beautiful.. and the grapes were deliviosu despite it being a hard year here due to weather. We each collected about a crate of grapes.. which was about 30-40 pounds I think.

It was fun work.. the sun was hot so we were happy when it was tiem to go up for a light lunch

Francesca put Luigi to work helping to cut tomatoes.. they were an old heritage type.. a little funky looking.. but soooo delicious !

Francesca served us cut tomaties with olive oil on fresh made bread and soem of their whomeade organic wine. all delicious !

From there wqe went and took a look at the wine proudction process. THey we’rent expressing juice until later in the afternoon, but we got a good idea of the process. all the equipment was brand new..

but the building had been an old winemaking place complete with a pressing floor for barefoot squishing ala Lucy ! THe squished grape joice flowwed through a small hole in the floor into a big cistern

There was som other very old winne making stuff around like this vat

Diego showed us the yeast culture that they make from the natureal yeast on the grapes. How cool is that ?!?!

Then it was time to go.. it was truly hard to leave.. Francesca and Diego were so nice.. and their place was so beautiful ! But we had to head back !

We drove a few towns over to Bominaco for a (second) lunch.. We split a plate of saffron ravioli… so good !

We took a walk from the resturant up the hill.. because we saw some folks all dressed up walkign that way. It turned out to be a wedding at a a church from the 12th century (I think)