Most people in the world never have the opportunity to visit Italy, fewer have been fortunate enough to visit Cannara, and fewer still have gotten to know Ristorante Perbacco or its owner Ernesto and his wife Simona or to be won over by the smile and personality of his chef Anna Rita.  In just three days, our group has had the opportunity to eat there and to cook with Ernesto and enjoy a dinner with him at the villa.  These are indeed, a lucky few. 

Our third day together on our Food and Wine tour ended with a cooking and eating extravaganza, with Ernesto and seemingly the entire village of Cannara converting the ample kitchen at our villa into his restaurant.  It was a unique opportunity for our guests to cook with Ernesto and Anna Rita in our home, making traditional dishes from Umbria and being able to slow down and have a conversation with Ernesto about the foods he grew up cooking in his house.  Along the way we were able to talk with each other about the wines of the evening and then have Ernesto set us straight.  It was an evening of, by and for food, with a little wine thrown in, if only for the sake of balance.

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But I get ahead of myself, for before our dinner, our intrepid group covered a great deal of territory, physically, historically and culturally, along a little patch of earth between Cannara and Montefalco.

Our day started off with a visit to the Tessitura Pardi, the Pardi family weaving mill, one of our guests’ favorite visits.  There they were able to see, smell, touch and feel the handiwork of the Pardi family – high end woven linens made in traditional styles on mechanical looms in the family’s mill.  Our emcee was Augusta, “the poetry” of the Pardi family, and although she seldom spoke in rhyme, her presentation of the family’s past, its present and their passion for and expertise in producing fine fabrics was Nobel-worthy.

It is always a moment of great pleasure for us when our guests step onto the factory floor and experience for the first time the noise and boisterous activity of the looms, and then slowly realize how the beautiful linens that emerge from the machines are being assembled one thread at a time, with embossed bees, griffons and tendrils miraculously appearing on the surface, as if by magic.

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It is always a moment of great pleasure, too, when we make that certain turn on the road that skirts the city walls of Montefalco, and the Umbrian Valley reveals itself below, the moment when one realizes why Montefalco is called “the balcony of Umbria.”

And after a frenzy of shopping at Augusta’s shop in Montefalco we shift gears from linens to the other Pardi specialty – wines.  A light three hour lunch ensues, as our guests get to know the rest of the Pardi family – Alberto the patriarch, Linda, his wife and our cook for lunch, Albertino, the son who has become the public face of the family’s businesses and his older brother Gianluca who makes the trains run on time.  Over time and a number of lunches here, in addition to the Pardi family members we have come to know Roberto, an employee of the family who is considered practically a cousin and who is equally integral to the winemaking that takes place in this cantina where we have lunch, slow down and begin to experience the importance that family and time together is for Italians.

Improbably, we move from this three hour lunch and wine tasting to another wine tasting.  But as the group later agrees, a visit to the Scacciadiavoli winery is well worth the “sacrifice” they made to go.  There, not only were we treated to the company of two beautiful hosts – Liu Pambufetti, the daughter of the winery’s owner who has spent two years studying winemaking in France and her new assistant who, on her first day on the job, has been tasked with managing tours of the family’s winery – but we are treated to a fascinating tour of this most interesting winery.  Oh, and by the way, we get to taste their wines.

And what an interesting place it is.  One of, if not the oldest winery in Umbria, the architecture alone at Scacciadiavoli makes the visit worthwhile – the intentional layout of the levels of the winery to utilize gravity to do much of the work of pressing, vinifying and storing wine, the pitched floors to channel spilled wine and the enormous vats for storing and aging wine.  And then getting an opportunity to taste the family’s wines, which include the region’s only sparkling wines made from the local sagrantino grape and using the French methode champagnoise (one of the fringe benefits of having studied winemaking in France, no doubt).  Now that’s a “sacrifice” you can make, late in the afternoon after having just eaten and tasted wine.

So how to wind down from a whirlwind day like this, a day with a once in a lifetime visit to a historic weaving mill, with a three hour lunch with an Italian family, with a visit to a unique and fascinating winery?  You wind down by inviting your favorite local chef over to your house so you can make and enjoy dinner with him.  And so we did.

Our ragtag group of Americans standing shoulder to shoulder with professional Italian chefs, kneading dough, rolling it out, filling it with cheeses, veggies and baking, frying and tasting the results.  Amateur and semi-professional alike – and our group runs the gamut – had the ear of Ernesto and got to watch and learn from Anna Rita.  And so we chopped vegetables and rolled pasta.  We watched Anna Rita fry pasta dough into puffy pillows of warm goodness upon which soft, cool prosciutto was laid to make a symphonic appetizer.  We made Italian “empanadas,” made from strudel dough and filled with whatever happened to be the whim of the “chef” at the moment.  And later we were to sit down and be served delicately fried vegetables, in the most subtle tempura-style batter.  A maltagliati pasta topped with a sauce of Castelluccio lentils boiled with a little guanciale followed, the sauce so rich and satisfying yet anything but heavy.  And we marveled over braised lamb, cut into small bites on the bone, requiring some picking up and chewing, with the reward of being able to lick your fingers of the artichoke sauce that suffused and enriched this incredible dish.  A plate of local desserts, literally homemade, including a chocolate number with pine nuts and raisins rounded out the evening’s fare.  It was a meal, and even more, an experience, that would make a week’s visit to Italy worthwhile on its own.  But on a day when we rushed from one great experience to another, it made it clear why sometimes in order to slow down and smell the roses you have to rush a little.

On a day like today when you try to squeeze in four amazing experiences during the short time from when the sun rises until the head hits the pillow you realize that after your visit there will be plenty of time to relax and catch up on sleep.  Now is the time to be charging full speed ahead, to making sure that every little thing that can be experienced is. And now it’s time to say goodnight so we’ll be rested for another round tomorrow.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy