What a day! The first day of our Cucinapalooza cooks tour went off smoothly even in the face of an ambitious itinerary. A day of butchering pork in Rome followed by a visit to a winery in Montefalco in Umbria followed by dinner at the villa. Add to that a series of live streaming events from the winery and the villa that we shared with an audience assembled at Bella Italia in Bethesda, Maryland and you have one great start to what is shaping up as a unique, entertaining, informative and enjoyable week.

Our group assembled for its first meeting in a residential neighborhood in Rome, at S.A.P.E.R., a company established nearly 100 years ago and which specializes in pork butchery.  Inside the cavernous facility a dozen butchers, many of whom have learned the trade as young boys an who have spent their entire adult lives producing the cuts of pork that are the lifeblood of this city and the Italian culture receive “dressed” pigs, the canvass for a show of knivery that simply amazes.  And on this day we were special guests invited inside to stand pork shoulder to pork shoulder with our butcher friends and to watch and participate in the dismantling of porcine goodness.  For nearly three hours we separated whole carcasses into the tasty bits – guanciale (pork jowl), filetto, loin chops, ribs, shoulders, skin and fat.  Along the way we witnessed the preparation of the hind leg or prosciutto into a form that will be transported to the company’s aging facility in Norcia, where it will be dried over the next 18 months to become a prosciutto di Norcia.

And we watched as 200 kilos of pork was shoveled into giant hoppers where it was mashed and grinded then mixed before being sent to a machine where the mixture was stuffed into sausage casing (consisting of pork intestines).  As was the case with the butchering, we were invited to participate, running the machinery and trying our hand at casing the sausage.

And after all the fun and games we were treated to a fabulous lunch featuring many of the pork items we had butchered, along with another of other specialties.  A grill was set up just outside the office and ribs, sausages and pork steaks were grilled to perfection.  Enjoying the fruits (or rather pork) of our labors with our newfound friends and erstwhile S.A.P.E.R colleges made for a memorable finale to a very special and unusual experience.

Along the A1 motorway, on our drive from Rome to Umbria, we (which means our friend Federico) prepared a short video montage of the butchery visit which we posted on our Experience Umbria YouTube channel – http://www.youtube.com/user/ExperienceUmbria?feature=watch.  We’ll be posting highlights of our daily adventures, so check out our channel frequently this week or subscribe to be notified when new material is posted.

And speaking of multimedia, just before 6pm we arrived at the Cantine Dionigi, one of our favorite Montefalco wineries.  The cantina, owned and operated by two generations of the DIonigi family is truly a family affair.  And entering the basement level cantina we were, as always greeted by at least a couple members of the family who manage tastings and provide hospitality that is quite irresistible.  We chose their cantina as the locale for our first ever live streaming webcast.  And within minutes of arriving we were connected to the internet and turned on our cameras, beaming our signal back to the U.S. And a few minutes after that we figured out how to turn on our microphones and truly began our first intercontinental broadcast, watched by literally tens of views, particularly to an audience gathered at Bella Italia to celebrate with us the beginning of our Cucinapalooza tour.

It was a hoot being able to raise a toast in a basement cantina just outside Cantalupo, Italy, and have a group in Bethesda simultaneous shout salute with a glass of vino from the same Dionigi winery.  I’m not sure, but I think we may be on to something here.

And so the evening went, with four hourly broadcasts, two from the cantina and two during our dinner at the villa where we were able to narrate our new video for interested viewers, give a brief tour of the villa and introduce our viewers to a villa favorite – Maria Pia.  It’s all available for offline viewing at our streaming TV channel – Bill and Suzy TV.

We’ll be going live throughout the week to keep you up to date on our goings on in Umbria.  So be sure to check out Bill and Suzy TV and sign up to follow us.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy