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Yoav and Orr, our Israeli friends who lived in Rome for 2 years, said we had to visit Orvieto. I took their advice, but only left a day for sightseeing and it was not nearly enough.
We started by driving to Bolsena Lake. It is a huge lake formed from volcanic activity. The town of Bolsena seems to have minimal tourist activity. The market was really a market more for locals than tourists. In one area there were stalls selling used clothing. The people at these stalls were all North African immigrants. It really struck me that 600 years ago the sellers would have been Jews. I couldn’t resist some booties for TBD and replaced the sort-of leather belt I had with me that is falling apart. The woman who made it, adjusted it for me twice because the first time it wasn’t small enough. It’s simple and a lot better quality than the junk that was for sale in the Florence market. We were back in Orvieto by lunch and at 12:45 went on a tour of the caves.
Orvieto is similar to San Gimignano and clearly has tourists, but is not wall to wall people. It was
was an Etruscan site originally, but nothing is left of their occupation. It was later occupied by locals (now Italians) that were seeking safety from hordes of barbarians. At the top of a hill with sheer cliffs it offered natural defenses, sort of like Masada, but without the tragic ending. The rock is compacted volcanic ash and relatively soft and porous. It was easy to excavate caves and process the stone into building materials with the added benefit of creating caves that were useful for all kinds of purposes. Since it was impossible to residents to build out and hard to build up, building down offered a way to gain extra space for raising livestock, storing food or creating a work room. Many of the over 1,000 caves under the small city were built between 1300 and 1600. A large number were devoted to raising pigeons. The birds will leave their nests to feed and then return to care for their young, making them a ready source of food in the event of an siege. Our apartment has its own cave that is primarily used for storage. When you buy a property in Orvieto, you buy any cave space underneath
it.
In the afternoon we went out to the Madonna du Latte vineyard. It is a small vineyard with 20,000 plants. The young man who greeted us, Leon, explained that his parents had bought the property without plants and with a house with a roof that was caved in. He had just graduated from high school and surprised his parents by deciding he wanted to make wine. After school and working in Sonoma and Australia he came home to plant grapes. He has one full-time employee and hires the retired people in the town for harvest. From May until October he spends all day most days tending to his vines. In addition to pruning, he removes small stems with leaves to give the red grapes as much sunshine as possible and leaves some of the leaves on the plants with white grapes because they are more fragile. Last the weather was wet and cold and he sold all his red grapes to a co-op because he didn't think he could make wine of a suitable quality with them. In addition, he produces 1,000 bottles of olive oil each year. Unlike big producers he takes all the olives picked in
a day to be processed each night so they oil tastes fresh. Quick tip...when you put olive oil on bread, lightly salt it and the flavor is enhanced. Olive oil should be stored at a constant temperature, ideally at the same temperature that wine is stored. We walked off with 2 bottles of olive oil, I'm carrying one and Jack is carrying the other, and ordered two cases of wine to be shipped to the US. Personally, I couldn't imagine walking around all day, day after day and trimming vines. I like to gardening, but that's more than casual gardening and more than I could bear.
The really nice thing about Orvieto is that come 5 PM when the buses with the tourists that have come for the day leave the town gets very quiet. All you hear is Italian. We ate dinner outside like all the Italians, just much earlier.
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