Tag Archives: Verona

Opera Wine

OW2016_gruppo_02We came to Verona on this visit to experience VinItaly, Italy’s biggest and most important wine expo that takes place annually in this northern Italian gem of a city. Housed under many roofs, thousands of exhibitors show off their wines to importers, distributors and retailers. Until this year the show was open to the public for at least one day but the incredible crush of the mass public on those open days caused VinItaly’s organizers to rethink this policy and this year it was open only to “trade” members. Thank you Via Umbria for giving us this modicum of credibility in order to snag a credential and an entry ticket.

IMG_0595But if VinItaly is becoming more exclusive, even more exclusive yet is Opera Wine, which we had the honor of attending on the eve of VinItaly’s opening. Organized by VinItaly in conjunction with the Wine Spectator, Opera Wine is an exhibition within an exhibition, showcasing what Wine Spectator has deemed to be Italy’s “best 100 wines.” Our good friends Giampaolo Tabarrini and Daniele Sassi from Giampaolo’s Tabarrini winery were honorees this year and our meal ticket. When Daniele offered us an entry ticket some months ago, we couldn’t miss the opportunity to sample these A List wines and meet their charismatic proprietors, even if it meant having to don a coat and tie.

Catching a glimpse of Giampaolo Tabarrini in formal dress is about as common as seeing Bigfoot at the Met. But upon entering the Palazzo della Gran Guardia we headed to the Tabarrini table so we could see it for ourselves. And Giampaolo did not disappoint. Among a sea of short, tight fitting fashionable blue jackets with narrow lapels, elegant silk neckties and stylish shoes, Giampaolo stood out in his garish red blazer and Italian tricolore flag bowtie.   But it wasn’t just his attire that made him stand out. The man’s gas tank is filled with nitro while others are running on unleaded. A blur of activity with a perpetual smile and a twinkle in his eye that is visible from the next galaxy, Giampaolo tirelessly worked the room after room of producers, buyers and press, laughing, hugging and befriending everyone he could lay eyes or hands on. The secret to his ability to connect? It’s genuine.

IMG_0742After exchanging our hugs with Giampaolo and Daniele the former gave us some great advice that we took to heart for the next two hours. “Don’t miss out on drinking the wines from Piemonte. They are beautiful!” And indeed they were. Barolos mostly, from the biggest names in the business. We tasted and savored, met some of the owners and reacquainted ourselves with some we had met before. We recognized a few labels that we carry at Via Umbria and introduced ourselves, only to find, in the case of Bisol, that their rep had already spent an afternoon in our Georgetown store.

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TV cameras lit up, interviews flowed like wine and wine flowed like wine. And for two hours we truly were in another world, one inhabited by what Wine Spectator believes are the 100 best wines in Italy. Some may take issue with their particular list, but one thing is undeniable. To enter Opera Wine is to enter a truly special world, inhabited by truly special winemakers and their truly special wines. And it is a place that one truly does not want to leave.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy

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An exhibition showcasing Italy’s best wines Read more

We came to Verona on this visit to experience VinItaly, Italy’s biggest and most important wine expo that takes place annually in ...

A Matter of Factory

The Matilde Vicenzi factory in San Giovanni Lupatoto, on the outskirts of Verona.
The Matilde Vicenzi factory in San Giovanni Lupatoto, on the outskirts of Verona.

It wasn’t until Suzy and I began importing and selling Italian products that I even came across the word artisanal.   But over the years it has proven to be the best way to describe the special quality of so many of the products we are privileged to carry and the artisans whom we have been privileged to get to know. Whether it is a bottle of extravirgin olive oil produced from lovingly tended trees or Gerardo’s ceramic works of art, artisanal denotes something handcrafted, produced by someone (an artisan) who doesn’t just clock in for his or her shift, but who invests and leaves a little piece of him or herself in every piece produced.

Such is the case with the artisans we met at the Matilde Vicenzi dolciaria. Our first stop in Italy (after checking into our hotel in Verona and grabbing lunch) was to this beloved producer of cookies, located in the outskirts of Verona. Arriving in the factory’s parking lot late on a Friday afternoon, we were prepared for anything but an artisanal experience. But that is precisely what we got.

Giuseppe Vicenzi, president and chief cookie baker.
Giuseppe Vicenzi, president and chief cookie baker.

Upon arrival we were greeted by Anna DeBattisti, the company’s general counsel who escorted us into the office of Giuseppe Vicenzi, president of the company and grandson of the founder Matilde Vicenzi. Now in his 80’s we did not have the fortune to meet Giuseppe, who was busy in meetings. That meeting must wait until our next visit. But for half an hour Anna regaled us with stories about the Matilde Vicenzi, who founded the company in 1905, her grandson Giuseppe, the history of the company, its four factories, their incredible line of cookies, puff pastries and ladyfingers and the company’s domestic and global reach.

Then, for the next hour Anna, joined by her colleagues Monica and Giulia who manage production and export duties, escorted us through the sprawling cookie factory. And what a sight and experience it was. Enormous conveyor belts slathered with dough snaked through ovens thirty meters long, where puff pastry was baked at four hundred degrees, resulting in delicate, crispy layers of lightly sweet goodness. Savoiardi or ladyfingers, the company’s signature product, were produced by the hundreds in the most important production line, dough squirted into molds, molds assembled together, the whole armada baked to golden deliciousness before being removed from the molds and packaged in a symphony of moving arms, boxes, labels and shrink wrapping.

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Dressed for factory tour success!
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Breaking into a box of Grisbi, chocolate filled wafers given as a sample.

But lest you think this is simply automation run amok, think again. Joined by the floor supervisor we were witness to the thousands of acts of human intervention, the testing of dough, the calibration of timing of machinery and, most of all, the testing of quality control. Each biscuit, cookie and ladyfinger is examined for flaws before being handed back to the machines for packaging, with boxes of rejects leaving us longing to take them home. Once packaged, automated hoists hauled the boxes hundreds of feet into the air onto shelves where they would be warehoused until shipped to the fortunate and hungry were to receive them.

To call it a cookie factory would be to do a disservice to Vicenzi. In our two hours with a handful of employees of this €100 million/year company we witnessed the same passion and attention to detail that we see when Gerardo paints a peacock feather on a dish or Carlo awaits for the season’s first extravirgin olive oil to trickle from his mill. It’s what we’ve learned to call artisanal. And it is well deserved for the people of Matilde Vicenzi.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy

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Visiting an artisanal cookie factory in Italy Read more

It wasn’t until Suzy and I began importing and selling Italian products that I even came across the word artisanal.   But over ...

Camera Oscura

Greetings from Italy, where today we offer a brief lesson in physics. Today’s subject is the so called observer effect, which posits that the act of observation itself will necessarily effect a change on a phenomenon being observed. Suzy’s version of this principal is that attempting to record an Italian experience, to photograph it, to video it, rather than simply enjoying the moment, inevitably alters one’s experience. And always for the negative.  She’s right, as usual.

Despite knowing that by snapping photos or videos of a unique experience I remove myself from the experience itself, I repeatedly make this same, bonehead mistake. Experiencing Italy takes some discipline, to put away the camera or the GoPro, to actually relax and take it all in. It is a lesson worth learning.

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Nothing like being in the moment!

And so we arrived in Italy nearly a week ago, primed to blog and share our experiences with you. But also commited to truly living those experiences, rather than simply rebroadcasting them in diretta (live). It has been a good lesson, well learned.

We arrived on the peninsula on Friday morning after an overnight flight from New York. Milan greeted us with a little bit of overcast skies but cool, spring temperatures that promised to warm as the land of dolce vita shook off its winter slumber. There is a wonderful cool freshness you feel when you visit Italy in the spring and we felt it as we began our journey eastward to Verona. It was good to be back home.

Verona Arena

There in Verona we spent three days enjoying this remarkable Roman city in the company of three friends from America. Our hotel, located in the city center, boasted as its neighbor the hauntingly beautiful Roman arena, which was the first building we would see in the morning and the last one we would see at night, thus ensuring our dreams were appropriately Romanized. It is impossible to describe the sheer delight of being in Verona – its beauty, its history and its culture are so easy to absorb, to savor – that you simply don’t want to leave. But we were in Verona on a mission, to attend the 50th edition of VinItaly, the country’s most important wine expo. We did that and more, including a visit to meet the people behind the Matilde Vicenzi biscotteria, one of the newer additions to Via Umbria’s lineup of cookies, cakes and confections. And we had a special invitation to Opera Wine, a kind of expo within an expo, showcasing the 100 best wines of Italy. But most of all we were able to catch up with old friends who had come to Verona to show off their wares. We did that against the backdrop of Verona, one of the loveliest cities in the Italian north, before heading to our more familiar Umbria.

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Now nearly a week into our visit we’ll look back and share some of the memorable moments that we have enjoyed. Just don’t expect much real time accounts. We’re planning to savor these experiences as they come. Pull up a chair and pour yourself a nice glass of wine. And enjoy those experiences with us.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy

Sharing memorable moments from Italy Read more

Greetings from Italy, where today we offer a brief lesson in physics. Today’s subject is the so called observer effect, which posits ...