Things we love right now:
Cloudy Montefalco spring days that break way to sun, small cantinas, DiFilippo wine, being treated like a local.
The week is just beginning. Vinopalooza 2015 is gonna be good.
Things we love right now: Cloudy Montefalco spring days that break way to sun, small cantinas, DiFilippo wine, being treated like a local. The ...
One of the things we have found so appealing about Italy and the Italians throughout the years is their ability to slow down and enjoy the life that is right before their eyes, noses, ears, tongues and fingers. Often summed up in the phrase la dolce vita, we have built our business and our lives around spreading the gospel of slow. And we even sum it up in Via Umbria’s tagline – Discover | Savor | Share.
Italians don’t just pay lip service to savoring life, they simply cannot ignore this genetic predisposition, ingrained as it is in their DNA. More than once when involved in business negotiations or getting to know a new supplier we would break for lunch and rather than continuing the negotiations over the meal all talk of business would be banished until the last grappa was consumed. Usually three or four hours later
But despite being ambassadors for this way of life, we have always had a difficult time walking the walk. Anyone who has travelled on one of our tours and who has gotten to take a peek behind the curtain knows that in organizing these apparently carefree experiences, the reality is anything but. It’s not just that the candle is burnt on both ends, the leftover wax is literally doused in lighter fluid and until the table itself is set aflame and the house afire.
And so as we returned to Italy last week, the first five days to be shared with both our daughter and one of our sons, we resolved to be truly Italian. To slow down and put aside all thoughts of work or business, anything that would distract from enjoying the here and now of being with our family. And despite not just a mountain, but a whole range of Everests that demanded our attention – more than you, dear reader will ever know – we did a pretty good job of staying focused on the things that matter. Family. Friends. Connections.
And what a memorable and meaningful five days it was.
Five short days with family. But when you slow down and savor each moment as we did this week, it seems like a blessed eternity. The Italians definitely have gotten something dead on right.
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
Italian Way to Enjoy Family Time Read more
One of the things we have found so appealing about Italy and the Italians throughout the years is their ability to slow ...
How cute are these little white goats!? Bill and and son Teddy and daughter Lindsey, along with Via Umbria favorite Simone Proietti-Pesci, got a chance to visit the goats last week when they stopped by the farm of local cheesemaker and winemaker Diego Calcabrina. Diego is well known and respected in the area for making goat cheese, alongside small batches of hand crafted Sagrantino wine. He is very passionate about his work as a farmer and a winemaker. He holds himself out as a biodynamic farmer, which means he practices organic farming, as well as many other strictures about following the phases of the moon and getting in touch with nature’s natural rhythms.
The Menard family visited Diego for the first time last fall, and Lindsey, Teddy and Bill (along with Simone) revisited on the first day of their current trip. Cheese first.
And just how difficult is it to make goat cheese? The process is not too complicated but requires completely clean and unadulterated goat’s milk, which is an art in itself. Those goats are not always the most cleanly, or easy, to milk. And it requires a cheesemaker’s niche knowledge of the right feel of curd, and the correct temperatures during the different stages of the cheese process.
But you should try it at home. Goat cheese is best when ultra-fresh. You can still taste the…goats…which most of the time is a good thing. Yours may not end up as good as Diego’s, but you can always drop by Via Umbria and pick up a bottle of Sagrantino to wash it down.
Simply follow these few steps:
In a medium saucepan, we heat the fresh goat milk until it reaches about 180 degrees.
Then we remove from heat and stir in lemon juice. This separates the curds (the fat and protein, which becomes cheese), from the whey (the liquid).
We shake the little curds into their cheese containers, and place them on a tray that allows the excess whey to run off into the pail. One the desired amount of liquid has come off, the curds all set in their containers, making a solid block of cheese.
Ci Vediamo!
– Via Umbria
Meet our new friends! Read more
How cute are these little white goats!? Bill and and son Teddy and daughter Lindsey, along with Via Umbria favorite Simone Proietti-Pesci, got ...
As February gives way to March (and aren’t we all looking forward to the prospect of non-Arctic March temperatures?) I can’t help but reflect that this young new year has for me featured a heavy dose of wine. January was spent with Chef Simone crisscrossing the continent doing a series of promotional dinners that featured food/wine pairing nearly as much as the food itself. February saw a return visit of our friend Daniele Sassi from the Tabarrini winery for a special winemaker’s dinner at DC hotspot Casa Luca. And just a week ago we said our goodbyes to our friend Roberto DiFilippo, owner of DiFilippo and Plani Arche wineries who spent five days hosting winemaker dinners at Via Umbria and tasting events at the store. Playing apprentice to and spending time around the table (always with glass in hand) with these professionals surely upped my wine game. It was pretty darn enjoyable, too.
Chef Simone listens in at the Tabbarini Dinner at Casa Luca. 
The first Tabbarini white wine is poured. 
I am happily in a wine – induced haze after the first course. 
Daniele meets with guests to personally talk about his Sagrantino wine.
Suzy of Via Umbria gazes at the second course.
And so it was with heightened interest that I read Wednesday’s Washington Post’s Food section article on terroir (“You can’t define terroir, but you can taste it,” Wash Post 25 Feb. 2015, p. E5). In the article Wine columnist Dave McIntyre noted that terroir “is a word with almost mystical charms for wine lovers,” holding that wine shows terroir “if it tastes like it came from somewhere.” Wine exhibiting terroir contrasts with most wines, which McIntyre rightly points out taste “as if they could have come from anywhere.” McIntyre opines that wine enthusiasts love the idea of terroir and wines that taste as though they could have only come from where they actually came from. If love of terroir makes one a wine enthusiast, send us our membership cards.
Our relatively recent journey into the world of wines has been heavily influenced and shaped by the concept of terroir because the wines we have come of age with are wines that define the term terroir – Umbrian wines and in more cases (no pun intended) than not, wines from the tiny D.O.C. wine region of Montefalco. Look up the word terroir in the dictionary and it wouldn’t be a stretch to think you might find a map of Italy with Umbria highlighted in red.
In Umbria and in Montefalco a number of factors – relative isolation, local consumption and a fierce pride in local culture (which includes their food and wine) – have led wine makers to produce traditional wines that represent the region, that utilize indigenous grapes (so long, cabernet sauvignon) and that pair sublimely with the region’s food. Put simply, the wines of Umbria taste as though they could have only come from Umbria. What a wonderful attribute for a wine to have!
If, like Suzy and me, you cut your wine teeth in a deep dive of a particular region’s wine (e.g., Bordeaux, Napa, Australia) your wine chops are highly developed but only with respect to a small sliver of the universe of wine. This has truly been the case for us, and our next challenge in this relatively unusual situation has been to transfer and apply our Umbrian wine knowledge more generally to other regions. And so we have been working to learn and appreciate the wines of California, of Washington State, of France. It is a pretty good challenge to face.
Aside from the blessing of terroir, our Umbrian wine experience has offered us the blessing of accessible winemakers. In Umbria winemaking has not been mystified and deified. It is a simple act carried out by real people. And these real people – farmers – don’t intimidate and try to make what they do into something it isn’t. Instead they gladly invite you into their world, show you the grapes in their fields, talk to you about how they entice the best fruit possible from the vine. They let you put your head in a stainless steel vessel to see grapes fermenting, to smell the yeast and the offed gasses. They pour you a glass of cherry red juice that is still two to three years away from maturity, explaining how a winemaker can judge how this awful liquid will transform itself into sublime beauty.
Roberto Di Filippo discusses his Grechetto with a guest.
Roberto speaks from the head of the table in the Via Umbria Galleria. 
Terroir paired with access to real people, wine people. It is something that sets Umbria and Umbrian wine apart in our minds, something that has made our journey along the strada dei vini unique. And it has made the new year a truly enjoyable one.
We can’t wait to see how the next months unfold.
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
If you are interested in experiencing Umbrian terroir and Umbrian winemakers at their source, join Bill and Suzy on their first annual Vinopalooza wine tour, March 26-April 1, 2015. For more information click here or call Suzy at (202) 957-3811.
As February gives way to March (and aren’t we all looking forward to the prospect of non-Arctic March temperatures?) I can’t help ...
We begin a new series, where we try to embrace slow Sundays, Italian-style.
This Sunday I had the delight of seeing the Piero di Cosimo exhibition at the National Gallery of Art here in Washington, DC. When I was in Piero di Cosimo’s hometown of Florence, I tried to visit churches with important artworks on Sundays, to continue my living art history education even if the museums were shuttered. Once, I went into SS. Annunziata on a Sunday, which had a Piero di Cosimo’s Incarnation, only to find myself in the middle of an open casket private wake. I left without seeing the painting.
This exhibition had allowed far simpler access to the artwork. The retrospective of his work groups his best paintings for the first time in history.
The creator of the most secular artwork of his time (perhaps tied with Botticceli), di Cosimo worked during the Renaissance with an eye for the mythological.
My favorite tidbit about di Cosimo (from the ever reliable and never exaggerating Vasari), claimed that he would boil many eggs at a time and then subsist solely on them for weeks! Vasari connected di Cosimo’s odd eating and living habits (he was not a very social or tidy man) to his odd and inventive artwork. Vasari could forgive the compulsive egg-eating upon seeing di Cosimo’s Liberation of Andromeda, c. 1510–1513. Vasari lauded him, saying “…Piero never made a more lovely or more highly finished picture than this one, seeing that it is not possible to find a more bizarre or more fantastic sea-monster than that which Piero imagined and painted, or a fiercer attitude than that of Perseus, who is raising his sword in the air to smite the beast.”
Piero di Cosimo, Liberation of Andromeda, c. 1510–1513, oil on panel, Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence.
But I believe the Economist summed it up best in their review of the exhibition in which they conclude that “Though the term ‘surreal’ would not be coined for another four centuries, it seems completely apt for the work of this quirky genius.”
So next Sunday, put on your looking glasses and go experience the imagination of Pietro at the NGA. I promise Jesus is the only dead body.
— Elsa Bruno
Banner image from the lovely Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, which loaned the deposition as part of the exhibition. Pietro supposedly only left Florence once, to travel to Rome. He didn’t know what he was missing in his lovely regional neighbor!
Italian-style Sundays: Piero di Cosimo Read more
We begin a new series, where we try to embrace slow Sundays, Italian-style. This Sunday I had the delight of seeing the Piero ...
Did you know Mr. Valentine was an Umbrian? Saint Valentine was born in Terni, an hour drive from Cannara, where he lived and eventually died on the 14th of February. Very little is know about the actual Saint Valentine, and much of his life is shrouded in conjecture and myth.
Ideas to delight all your valentines Read more
Did you know Mr. Valentine was an Umbrian? Saint Valentine was born in Terni, an hour drive from Cannara, where he lived ...
Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made.
— Otto von Bismarck
With all due respect to the Iron Chancellor we couldn’t disagree more. Maybe he’s correct with respect to law making, but certainly not with respect to sausage making. It is better to make them yourself.
It is January, the beginning of the New Year, when thoughts turn to resolutions, diets and exercise. It is also the time of year, for the past five years, that we welcome back chef Simone Proietti-Pesci for his annual US visit. Yesterday marked the beginning of his return, a three week tour and tour de force that begins in the Napa Valley of California and will take him (and us) to Washington, DC, New York, South Florida, Boston and the Cayman Islands. We’ll chronicle Chef Simone’s daily activities here on Dolce Vita for those of you who cannot get together with him in person.
Our first activity, just hours after connecting with Simone at SFO (he having flown from Rome, we having taking the shorter trip from Washington) was to set up camp at our friend Pete’s in Napa Valley where Simone (and his able assistant Austin) will prepare an Umbrian dinner party this evening. With nothing formal on the day’s schedule (other than dinner at Bouchon) Pete suggested that we organize a sausage fest, relying on our expert Umbrian sausage maker to help make Umbrian sausage and Pete’s family recipe from his Sicilian aunt.
Much weighing of ingredients and calculations of salt percentages were made by Pete and Simone and the ingredients mixed and massaged by hand. Help was enlisted from Pete’s parents and the rest of our assembled group and then magically, from a mass of ground meat and simple spices emerged from the LEM not Neil Armstrong, but an unending array of dirigible shaped delicousness.
Including (if not especially) Wednesday, the day we started Simone’s three week US adventure.
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
Behind the Scenes of Sausage-Making Read more
Laws are like sausages. It is best not to see them being made. -- Otto von Bismarck With all due respect to the Iron ...
Friday evening marked the inaugural event in our upstairs event space at Via Umbria, a special winemaker dinner with Giampaolo Tabarrini, owner of the Tabarrini winery in Montefalco. Perhaps it was just a case of beginner’s luck, but the evening was magical.
Twenty something wine enthusiasts gathered in our ground floor retail space at 1525 Wisconsin Avenue at 7:30pm for cocktails and an opportunity to mingle and chat with the evening’s special guest. Prosecco (not Giampaolo’s) flowed and hors d’oeuvres were passed as the upstairs room was finalized and readied for the dinner by Corcoran Caterers, who would be providing the meal.
The evening’s featured wine, Giampaolo’s DOCG Sagrantino Colle Grimaldesco is part iron fist, part velvet glove. Garnering 95 points from Robert Parker it has won Gambero Rosso’s coveted Tre Bicchiere award for more than one vintage. Giampaolo led the group through a tasting of the Sagrantino as well as his unusual 100% sagrantino rose’ – Bocca di Rosa – and his justly popular Montefalco Rosso which is a blend of sangiovese, sagrantino and barbera grapes, the latter of which he argues is indigenous to Umbria, rather than it’s adopted home of the Piemonte. Each wine was matched with delectable course.
The treat of the evening was the raffle. For every case of Colle Grimaldesco purchased the buyer received an entry in the evening’s raffle to win an all expense paid Via Umbria wine tour in Umbria from March 26 to April 1 next year. Calling our tour Vinopalooza, the seven day, six night itinerary includes visits to 9 wineries, dinners and lunches with Montefalco winemakers (including a visit to Tabarrini winery and dinner with Giampaolo) and local sommeliers, visits to Montefalco and Bevagna and a special cooking class with a local chef. Needless to say there was a great deal of activity and at the end of the night our new friend Sue was chosen the lucky winner, to join at least three other winners at future Tabarrini wine dinners this December.
This amazing evening, which ended with a number of guests enjoying a cigar and a nightcap of Colle Grimaldesco in the second floor courtyard was anything but the result of beginner’s luck. With a great deal of planning and hard work we established proof of concept that Via Umbria’s second floor, which will be renovated and built out after the new year to include a demo kitchen, is a great space to hold special events.
And for those who were unable to join us last Friday, mark your calendars for December 4, 5 and 6 when we will be hosting three more Tabarrini wine dinners with special guest Daniele Sassi, Tabarrini’s head of sales and marketing. Or better yet, why not head to EventBright and get your ticket for one of the dinners while there are still spaces available. And in the meantime, visit our sister site – Experience Umbria Wines and buy a bottle of the Colle Grimaldesco today!
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
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Meet the owner of Tabarrini winery! Read more
The treat of the evening was the raffle. For every case of Colle Grimaldesco purchased the buyer received an entry in the ...
I can’t exactly remember when we first met Claudio Cutuli. But I’m glad we did. Continue reading Scarfing Down Life in Bevagna
Surrounding Ourselves with Italian Culture Read more
I can’t exactly remember when we first met Claudio Cutuli. But I’m glad we did. Bevagna, the small Roman-medieval village that is a ...
Stepping out of Ristorante Perbacco briefly to take a break from our marathon cooking class with Ernesto yesterday, a flock of sheep wandered by the banks of the Topino river. The tinkling of bells around their necks created a soothing symphony punctuated by the occasional bleat. A local Cannarese boy, watching the procession from his bike just a few yards away struck up a conversation with me. When I responded to his question with non capisco he asked if I was a tourist – they don’t get many in our little village of Cannara. My Italian then kicked into gear and he smiled when I told him I was from America. He wished me a good stay and then took off on his bike and a few minutes later I was back inside Perbacco, ready to sit down and enjoy the fruits of our labors.
Just when nature gives you a punch to the gut she reminds you how sweet she can be. Life is good in Cannara. Life is good in Umbria.
Life is good.
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
Stepping out of Ristorante Perbacco briefly to take a break from our marathon cooking class with Ernesto yesterday, a flock of sheep ...
Only in Italy can you sit down to a dinner of a dozen pizzas and describe it as “a light dinner.” Welcome to pizza night at la Fattoria del Gelso.
We have enjoyed pizza all over the peninsula, from Puglia to Piemonte, from Udine to Umbria. Several years ago, joined by our friends Pete and Nancy we devoted a full two and a half days to touring every pizzeria Naples could throw our way, eating and judging our way through nearly a dozen of the world’s most highly regarded pizzerias sampling scores of margheritas, marinaras and pizze bianche.
Pizza is an Italian icon but one with many variations and many personalities. Frequently we hear spirited arguments about the virtues of a soft, fluffy crust versus a crisper, cracker-y crust. We tend to side with the former but respect the latter.
One of the favorite activities on our Food and Wine tours (as well as our weekly rentals) is pizza night with Marco. Being Umbrian, perhaps Marco is not a natural born pizza maker. But over the past couple of years he has thrown himself into the pizza making process with such gusto that today you might mistakenly think he had been born in Naples. Of particular pride is his handmade pizza dough, a recipe introduced to us by our Cannarese neighbor Jennifer McIlvaine but worked and reworked by Marco. In our simple outdoor oven Marco is able to coax a fluffy, doughy crust that has volume, substance and flavor.
Pizza night is a hands on affair, with guests participating as much or as little as they wish. Most help stretch out some of the doughs. Most help top pizzas with tomato sauce, buffalo mozzarella and assorted other ingredients available in the farmhouse kitchen, including local Cannara onions, fresh sausage from Norcia, truffle sauce, vegetables from the garden and myriad other toppings. Some of the favorites are gorgonzola, pear and nut, sausage and onion and anything with truffle.
As you can see below, pizza time is not just for our adult guests. Earlier this month Marco’s children Carlo Alberto and Viola joined him in the kitchen to make pizzas and then enjoyed them at the table along with their mother Chiara.
Welcome to pizza night at la Fattoria del Gelso. Buon appetito!
Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy
Welcome to pizza night at la Fattoria del Gelso Read more
Only in Italy can you sit down to a dinner of a dozen pizzas and describe it as “a light dinner.” Welcome ...
