June 22 part 2
Jun. 24th, 2007 09:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
xiphiasSo, that was the ruined castle. Then we went on to the winery. Although Fabio is a part-owner, he's not the vintner, so he only knows the basics of how everything works: there were things about which I knew more than he did. Still, I learned a lot, especially about the business end: they have a bottling license, which is expensive, and so other local vineyards need to go to them for fermentation and bottling, and it was neat to learn about how that all worked.
In Tuscany, you DON'T need a bottling license to sell your wine in 45-liter jugs. So some taverns have local wines more-or-less on tap, or at least in unlabeled bottles that they decant the big jugs into.
We finished off with a bit of a wine-tasting, and then headed off to Fabio's father-in-law's farm, on the other side of town. He has a few cages of rabbits, some small chickens for meat, a flock of larger chickens for eggs, and some cages of turkeys. There's a kitchen-garden with vegetables and fruit (right now, their strawberries and squash are up). A few fruit trees -- peaches, plums -- some nut trees, and so forth. But the main part of the farm is vineyard (although with olive trees planted throughout -- simply because at one point, he was considering switching over to oil production instead of wine). He grows three types of grapes, and I forgot to take notes about what, specifically, they were.
He does all the work himself, except during harvest. (Although, I would suspect that his wife has a bit to do with the chores, as well. . . )
And then we went into the house to see HIS winery -- a much smaller, and entirely traditional, affair.
That was ALSO incredibly interesting, but I'll only mention one thing which I learned: how to put a cork INTO a wine bottle.
They have this machine -- you put the full bottle on a little platform, with the neck of the bottle right under this gizmo with a lever, and you put a cork in the top, and you pull the lever, and the place where the cork is irises closed, squeezing the cork, and, pulling the lever further, there's this peg on the bottom side of the lever, which pushes the cork into the bottle.
After that, we headed back home, and I now have to do some cleaning and stuff, so that's a good place to stop THIS post.
In Tuscany, you DON'T need a bottling license to sell your wine in 45-liter jugs. So some taverns have local wines more-or-less on tap, or at least in unlabeled bottles that they decant the big jugs into.
We finished off with a bit of a wine-tasting, and then headed off to Fabio's father-in-law's farm, on the other side of town. He has a few cages of rabbits, some small chickens for meat, a flock of larger chickens for eggs, and some cages of turkeys. There's a kitchen-garden with vegetables and fruit (right now, their strawberries and squash are up). A few fruit trees -- peaches, plums -- some nut trees, and so forth. But the main part of the farm is vineyard (although with olive trees planted throughout -- simply because at one point, he was considering switching over to oil production instead of wine). He grows three types of grapes, and I forgot to take notes about what, specifically, they were.
He does all the work himself, except during harvest. (Although, I would suspect that his wife has a bit to do with the chores, as well. . . )
And then we went into the house to see HIS winery -- a much smaller, and entirely traditional, affair.
That was ALSO incredibly interesting, but I'll only mention one thing which I learned: how to put a cork INTO a wine bottle.
They have this machine -- you put the full bottle on a little platform, with the neck of the bottle right under this gizmo with a lever, and you put a cork in the top, and you pull the lever, and the place where the cork is irises closed, squeezing the cork, and, pulling the lever further, there's this peg on the bottom side of the lever, which pushes the cork into the bottle.
After that, we headed back home, and I now have to do some cleaning and stuff, so that's a good place to stop THIS post.
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(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-24 08:35 pm (UTC)On the Nashoba Winery tour, they show you their fancy imported bottle-corker, which does basically that, but is automated and puts the foil on too. I don't remember if it was imported from Italy or France, but they said that when they bought it it was delivered by a corker-mechanic who showed up and hung around a few days to make sure it was calibrated and set up properly...
(no subject)
Date: 2007-06-24 09:06 pm (UTC)