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The past 4 weeks of our trip has been spent living on an Olive Growing & oil making farm near Castellina in Chianti. The owners Franco & Lia Lombardi have been growing olives and making oil for the past 15 years. Prior to this time Franco was a engineer and project manager throughout the Middle East and North Africa.
Since moving to Pornanino Franco has become passionate about olive oil. He conducts talks and information sessions on his farm for tourists and also travells to America to give presentations and sell his oil. 95% of his 5,000 bottles of oil are sold into the US, the remainder are sold in Japan, Australia and China.
Franco is 69 and a real doer, he is always full steam an action man-not unlike Helen's dad Domenic. During our stay Franco almoust burnt himself to a crisp! He lit an empty drum of what he thought was diesel but was in fact petrol, the petrol exploded and burnt his face and hair. The burns were 1,2 &3 level burns and for a week all we could see of his head was Franco's eyes, nostrils and mouth. He has now full recovered and is
once again full steam ahead.
The farm is run as along organic principals with no chemicals used in the growing of the olives and making of the oil. The countryside is very hilly and rocky and the siol isn't particularly good, however Franco & Lia's TLC appears to get the best out of Pornanino.
On the farm there are 3 houses, the main house (Franco & Lia's), a 2bedroom Cottage, sleeps 4 and a 1 bedroom cottage for couples. In reality the rental of the Cottages probably makes more financially than the olive oil, but it is easy to see what they are most passionate about. It was good having the smaller cottage next to us as we met the other renters and they were great people who we could swap travel stories with. They were mostly older than Helen & I and they all fell in love with our girls. We now have numerous places to visit in the US.
Next to the farm are another two houses, one has Francesca (Franco & Lia's daughter), her husband Mataeo and children Veronica 11 & Beatrice 9, the other has there son and wife and their 2yr old
son Etore.
Francesca is a travel agent of sorts she books villas and farm holidays throughout Italy and is very helpful in organising travel plans.
During our stay Beatrice made her First Holy Communion and we were privilaged to be asked to the lunch that followed.
Castellina is a beautiful town situated high up in the Chianti hills, it's part of the great Chianti Classico wine growing region.
We attemped to taste wine from all the local wineries but even for seasoned drinker like Helen & I this was a feat to great to achieve. However we were impressed by the Chianti Classico wine, if you get a chance to try it go for the Chianti Classico Reserva level and I'm sure you will be pleasantly suprised. There is another side effect of this Italian wine and that is it doesn't give a hangover like the Australian equivelant, I think it doesn't have the preservatives that our wine does.
Highlights of Castellina in Chianti were the Saturday markets, the Bar for caffe & bierra, the butcher and the great deli's/fruit shops. We also became friendly with Lucia, who has a ceramics studio and shop that
makes the most beautiful, elegant/stylish and simple ceramics, not the bold, bright over the top plates etc you associate with Italy. I've now worked out how to get a great coffee and it goes something like this
"un caffe lungo, trazza grande, per favore" this usually gets me a black coffee something between a espresso and a long black, I'm hoping it will work in Calabria & Sicily!
All in all we had a great time at Pornanino and it was a great base to have for visiting Tuscany and the noth of Italy.
Ciao Marco
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