Chef David's Culinary Tour: Day Seven

 We started off today without quite knowing what to do. It seems there is so much to take in here. We began with breakfast downstairs and it looked like they had cleared out their entire kitchen cabinet for us. As we are both trying to eat healthy, I opted for an innocent looking orange on the table. To my surprise it was a blood orange! I have had them before from places like Wegman's and Whole Foods, but the inside looked more like fruit punch, or a grape fruit. This blood orange was so deeply red, it really looked like animal blood, or red meat. It was kinda gross to some extent, but wonderfully tasty at the same time. I guess the color is something you get over quickly.

On our way to the our first destination we stopped at a wine Co-op for Vinchio growers (I think I spelled it Vinchino yesterday, wrong). The co-op processes and bottles wine for it's 200 members. About 50 are large enough to have their own vintages, while the rest combine their crops to make the wine. 40 percent of the wine from Vinchio is made for export.

Afterwards, Lauren and I decided to visit the city of Asti. Asti is a region in Italy, but also a city. We figured there might be some great culinary treasures and markets to  be discovered, wrong. Well, OK, we did go to one cool shop called "Eataly," which was like an Italian Williams-Sonoma. We bought some pasta made by Gragnano, we have been told that's Italy's best dry pasta. I bought some jarred pesto, and some Amoretti cookies as well.  I think there is a bigger Eataly store in Torino (Turin), but we wanted to avoid the big city.

Because Asti didn't seem to offer us anything, we quickly ate lunch and then left for Alba. Alba is south of Asti and is the truffle capital of Italy. In October they have a bug truffle festival as it is the season for the White truffles they are known for. Right now there are summer truffles, but apparently they are not important to the Italians. Alba didn't have much going on at this time, so we decided to drive through the countryside in search of good wine.

The country side is scattered with vineyards, probably 80% of the land is covered in vines. Everywhere you go, you're driving either up or down huge bowls with tiny little roads with no guardrails. It's impressive that they are able to farm such steep terrain. If you go to this region to taste wine, you need to make appointments with the vineyards--it's not like Napa where you can taste anything, anytime, and leave with souvenirs and wine. Most of the vineyards are looking to sell to exporters and brokers, not to tourists driving up to their houses. I think this is mostly because the owners are out working in the fields, and because of the number of vineyards. But if you can manage an appointment or two, you will find they are most hospitable, and love to tell you anything they can about Italian wines.

 We visited the Tintero Vineyards, where the owner there was thrilled to have us taste his wine. He told us that most of is wine is exported to the USA. We asked him about the differences between Italian DOCG, and DOC wines, and he told us about the difficulties he faces trying to consistently produce great wine.  He told us nature controls 70 percent, and he can manage the rest.

After finding our way back to where we were staying, and having to do some off-roading to get there, we went out to a Pizzeria about 15 minutes away. The pizza was cooked in a wood-fired pizza oven, as is all the pizza we have seen here. The crust tasted more buttery and flakier than I've had, but other than that it was like a good old New York/New Jersey Pizza. It was a nice way to end a long day of driving around in our Citroen.

Best,

David