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Published: February 23rd 2010
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all of us on the bus... ready to tour the winery!At four o clock we all met in the lobby to go to the Soave winery and the Madame di Lords church which is on a very high hill in Verona overlooking the entire city. To kill the time before then I plan the trips to Sienna with the gang and go to the gym. Much improvement is needed regarding the whole converting kilograms to pounds thing. I picked up two 40 kg dumbbells assuming it was around 60-65 pounds… nope. Turns out 1 kg is 2.2 pounds, so that perfectly explains why there was an epic fail at dumbbell bench pressing the 40 kg weights… in front of the entire Italian crowd at the gym. Is humiliating an understatement? Yes… yes it is. Anyway, we meet down in the lobby and head outside the residence only to find this really nice charter bus waiting for us. It is our escort to the winery. I risk looking nerdy and bring my notepad with me assuming that I will find the info we learn at this winery fascinating which turned out to be a good move. Martin tells us on the bus that we are headed to a place that exports more
wine than anywhere else in Europe, even France. The Soave winery specializes in white wine wherease the Valpolicella (another famous winery near Verona) specializes in Red wine. An 8 euro bottle of wine here (about 11 dollars) would be worth about 50 dollars in the states, so that’s the kind of quality we are talking here! Before the winery though, martin takes us to the Madonna di Lourdes, originally an Austrian fort, then a Nazi torture chamber, but now a church, which is perched atop a very high hill that overlooks the entire city. The view is breathtaking and to my delight, there is a small coffee shop right next to it. A local city bus that we can access with our passes will get us there; so I have found what will be an regular basis night trip to catch the sunset… so pumped! From the church we head to the winery and Martin fills us in on a little history as we drive there. He prepares us for the incredible meal and wine tasting we will experience there as well and my mouth is watering at this point. On our drive Martin points out the very distinct, Italian
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outside the winery wine country cedar trees, that resemble green upside down icicles or really skinny Christmas trees. He says this is the farthest north that they grow. They dot the horizon and add to the European feel of the landscape, he says to the Italians they symbolize death and the afterworld. We pull up to the Soave winery and there is this castle like wall with towers that head up the hills right by the building we are about to go in. Martin tells a quick story about a vicious captain that used to oversee these towers, he would have people over to eat with him but if they displeased him in any way or if he didn’t meet his standards of a courteous or enjoyable guest, he would sercretly lure them to a part on top of the tower where a trap door awaited, and a long fall with razors all along the way would lead to these guest’s demise. They found the skeletons later all throughout the abyss! So we head into the winery and meet our tour guide. She begins telling us all about the winery and I write down as many facts as I can. Soave is one
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the Residence we are staying at of the oldest wineries in Italy (maybe the oldest, not sure though) and exports 30 million bottles of wine a year, 3 plants make up the winery and it produces 5% wine, which is apparently the highest quality. She leads us throughout the corridors and hundreds of these huge oak wood barrels line up along the walls and form a path as we walk throughout. Each barrel is numbered so they can track the wine making process easier and make sure that every step is followed correctly. We eventually come to a window with these large metal vats and she begins to explain the wine making and grape picking process. Every grape is hand selected by one of the 120 members. 42 different types of grapes are used in the various wines, they differ based on the soil and temperatures they are grown in. After the vat section we head to what is called the grotto. This place is probably my favorite. A long long corridor is seen on our left as we round the corner, we end up not walking all the way down it. But the walls at this point look earthy, and our guide explains that they
dug into the ground at this point in order to better maintain the temperature and humidity (70%) so the wine stays in top notch condition. There are more than 1000 barrels in this corridor alone, and at the very end, a little stream trickling out of the earthy walls landing in a pool of water can be seen. From the grotto we head to the conveyer belt room, which can be seen through a large glass window. Here the wine is put into the bottles. Though the belt is capable of processing up to 8000 bottles per hour they have it set to 1000… so you can see how they export 30 million a year now! Our last stop before the meal is a conference room, where 140 meetings are held a year, I guess to discuss wine and business tactics. The climax of the night is the 7 course meal which contains (and I borrowed the menu from Martin afterwards to get all this, because there is no way I would have remembered!) Ascolana olives (fried black olives… so good!), Grissini with row ham (A crunchy cracker like roll, surrounded by thin ham), crouton with tomato and basil, tortelli
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some local parks where kids play soccer. with asparagus, veal roast with mushrooms (the main course), grilled vegetables, fruit, brownies, espresso, and three types of wine: Soave Classic Superior Castelcerino Rocca Sveva (white wine), Valpolicella Superior Ripasso Rocca Sveva, and a sweet wine (very sweet might I add) to go with desert. It was a great conclusion to the night… I’m out for now, will blog again tomorrow!
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Mom and Dad
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