This morning we said our goodbyes to the group of six with whom we spent the last week sharing our Umbria. As is always the case, the goodbyes are tinged with sadness, an abrupt, forced severing of the bonds of friendship that grow so easily and strong here in this country. At least we have a new group arriving this afternoon to look forward to.

And another week of exploring, experiencing and discovering together to look forward to. The incoming group is our “official” Food and Wine Tour group for the fall of 2012. But in reality each of the previous three groups we have been fortunate enough to host over the past month have been “food and wine” groups. Because that’s what we do here. The idea of hosting a group and not opening their eyes to the incredible richness of the culinary and oenological life of Umbria is unimaginable. So stay tuned this week as we recount some of our adventures, usually involving a wineglass and an empty plate.

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But before we get ahead of ourselves, what about last week? I think the absence of posting tells its own story. We ourselves arrived back in Cannara a week ago, after having spent a couple of days in New York and then a quick visit to Florence and to Bologna. To say that we arrived at the villa last Saturday already somewhat spent would be an understatement.

But as seems always to be the case, the palpable excitement of our new arrivals gave us a second wind, a burst of energy that was able to carry us through the week. And as the newness of the relationships (although we were friends with two of the group from Washington, and had met a couple of the others briefly before, these were essentially new friendships) gave way to familiarity after a couple of days, we drew another type of energy. An energy borne of wanting to share the richness of Umbria with our new friends.

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So how did we spend the week? The “usuals” you might say, or at least some of them. But here the “usual,” the ordinary, are usually anything but. And if there is a sameness to making friends with Augusta Pardi, to discovering your first truffle and then tasting it, to saying a sad farewell to Simone after dinner at his restaurant, it is the sort of sameness of “Groundhog Day,” where the same day yields different results every time. It is said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.

Maybe that’s why we’re crazy for Umbria.

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How about a welcome to Umbria wine tasting at our friends the Di Filippo’s winery, with food provided by Chef Simone? Then our official welcome dinner back at the villa made by Maria Pia, the local treasure who looks after our guests and feeds them and who became the group favorite that first evening.

Truffle hunting and cooking and eating were the order of the next day in the upper Tiber valley. But on our visit to nearby Citerna, a town designated “one of the most beautiful villages in Italy,” our routine was interrupted as our host Severio was asked if we could visit the Teatro Bontempelli and he obliged by not only tracking down the keys to the theater, but rousing up the theater’s director who obliged by giving us a tour of the building himself. I know it was made up by Olive Garden, but there is something to the term “hospitaliano.”

Chocolate was the order of the day the following day, as we visited Perugina, the world’s favorite chocolate maker, or at least our favorite, a hometown industry born at the turn of the century in Perugia. Here we spent an hour at the scuola di cioccolata or chocolate making school, learning how to make truffles of a different sort, the chocolate covered, ganache filled variety, under the tutelage of a master chocolatier. It was a close call which truffles we preferred more. The ones we dug from the ground with the help of a dog the previous day or the type we dug from a gold foiled bag that we made that day with the help of Massimiliano.

Assisi and a day of discovering and appreciating the life of Saint Francis was the order of the next day.

If it’s Wednesday. . . A day with la famiglia Pardi, the Pardi family of Montefalco who are leaders in two of the area’s most important industries – winemaking and textiles – is always a treat and Wednesday was no exception. And with the addition of our good friend Lodovico, father of Marco, it was a perfect day.

Our visit to our friend Irene’s olive oil cooperative, Olio Trevi, got off to a late start as a horrible accident shut down the highway for a time, making us nearly an hour late for our tour. But this is olive harvesting season, even if it has been delayed a bit by the hot dry summer, and when we arrived the forklifts were still in motion, dropping massive crates of freshly picked olives into hoppers where the cooperative’s modern machinery separated the fruit from the stems and leaves, washed them and began the process of slowly crushing and churning the paste, releasing the “juice” inside, juice that we know as extravirgin olive oil. Outside, mountains of fresh olives were being processed as fast as possible to ensure their freshness and to retard any oxidation and spoilage that begins as soon as the fruit is separated from its life support system – the tree. Inside the pungent almost burning scent of freshly pressed olives lingered in the air, adding to our anticipation as we listened to Irene’s description of the process by which tiny fruits are converted into bottles of liquid green gold. At the end of the process, the veritable pot of gold at the end of the rainbow rewarded our patience.

Fabriano, in the neighboring region of Le Marche was our focus for the final day of our tour. Since our initial discovery of this town and its incredibly interesting Museum of Paper and Watermarks we have encouraged our guests to make the hour’s drive from Umbria to Le Marche for a visit. On our final day we did just that and were justly rewarded. “Museum of Paper” are not words that conjure up a terribly interesting day. But as our group discovered, the staff here does anything but simply mail it in. Like so much in Italy, the Museo is an opportunity for one to step back and think a while, pondering about the simplest of things and developing a great appreciation for just how important they are and how much we take them for granted.

The Museo della Carta e del Filigrano is an excellent metaphor for what makes our visits to Italy so special. When we allow ourselves to slow down and turn over a rock to find the truffle hidden below, to see not just the beauty in a piece of woven linen but to feel the years of love and commitment given to it by an entire family spanning the generations, to actually smell the grassiness in a whiff of olive oil. It is when we slow down, observe, appreciate, and as Saint Francis taught his followers more than eight hundred years ago, to give thanks for Brother Sun, Sister Moon and Sister Mother Earth, that we do more than simply have an enjoyable vacation. It is then that we have the type of experience of that Umbria is capable of providing.

Sure, we often return to the “usual” suspects during our tours here in Umbria. But here the usual can, and often is – when we let it – anything but.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy