November 25

Breakfast at Villa Favorita.

Brioche of apples and plum marmalade both from the garden on the estate. 

Blood Orange juice fresh squeezed from the estate. 

coffee with milk

spinach fritatta

salami from parma with fresh buns

murazzano sheep cheeses with cherry, peach and hazelnut & wine grape must  marmalade?!?! Incredible. The neighbors here at the next table are from Switzerland. They are from a little mountaintop village called Graubunden, the only place in the world where Romansch is spoken. It’s the closest living language to latin. They come to Alba every year, and they tell me they eat the best anywhere in the world here in Alba this time of year, after the harvest. No wonder.

Darren was getting ready while I had breakfast. We had an appointment in a little town in the hills called Barolo. It’s famous for wine. This winery did not disappoint. Mascarello Bartolo. The patriarch of the winery passed on recently, leaving his business and legacy to his wife and to his daughter, Maria Teresa. She turned us over to a worker there who gave us a thorough tour in italian of the winery and cantina. It was up to me to translate the whole thing for Darren. Hope I didn’t bullshit too much. We enjoyed it thoroughly and during our tasting met two twins, friends of Maria Teresa’s from Montalcino down south in Sienna, the home of one of Darren’s favorite wines, the Brunello di Montalcino. They were on their way to a tasting in Milano. We became fast friends with them. As it turns out, they will be back in Montalcino when we are there. So we will get to visit their winey and taste their wines as well. They also gave us all the local references we could possibly hope for. This is by far the best way possible to travel, with insider information. They are also traveling in San Francisco in the winter, so I will maybe conduct a tour for them in Sonoma/ Napa/ San Francisco if they are interested and have the time.  

We fell in love with Maria Teresa. She and these twin friends of hers from Montalcino are part of a growing number of small independent producers concerned with stewardship of the land, biodynamics and organics and small community commerce. Fantastic counterpoint to Ceretto from the day before who probably produces over a million bottles a year and then labels wines from other producers as well. 

Here's Darren by the old concrete fermentation tank from the 20s they still use. They like the concrete. 

 The aging casks are huge. They keep the wines in here for a few years.

 This hole is barely big enough for a torso to fit through. Our guide Alessandro is the one who crawls in there to clean it out. He has to be skinny for his job!

 Here are old carrying bottles for the contadini to pick up their wines in the old cantina.

 Here we are with Alessandro. He is thin.

 Here I am with Maria Teresa, 3rd generation winemaker.

She had to grab lunch with her mom and rush off to a funeral, so she shuttled us out the door. We walked around Barolo for an hour snapping photos of the castle and the streets before settling into a sidewalk family-run restaurant (the only one opened in this tiny town) for another unforgettable meal of Truffles and pasta in a seventeenth century cantina. We have gotten into the habit of closing down every restaurant we go into. This one was no exception. The only people left to say goodbye to us were the father (cook), the daughter (waitress) and the other daughter (server). Charming people. Top notch restaurant. Barolo...Yes!

 Here's darren by the old castle foundation. Sunny day!

 This is another castle on the road in the countryside, these crop up at every turn.

 Some grapes still cling to the vine even two months after the harvest. Guess they missed 'em.

 Next we jumped in the car and drove off to the mountain-top village of La Morra where we hoped to find a multicolored chapel the nervous russian guide lady at Ceretto had told us about. The signs were completely uncomprehendible. Folllowing an arrow that seemed to point toward a small street, we walked around the village for a half hour taking in the sights. Finally defeated, we asked a woman where the chapel was. She told us we had to drive back out of La Morra to get there, that it was between La Morra and Barolo. So we drove back past the turnoff, until we wound up in another town. We pulled up to a store where I managed to scare up a very old lady from the back room behind the counter who said it’s off a small road between there and La Morra (where we came from) the chapel is “not very big”. So we drove back again, this time slower than ever (Darren doesn’t like to drive slow because he’s concerned about getting rear ended, so we double back a lot), and this time stopped at a vista point where we spent a few minutes looking out over the valley. Finally there, down below, barely visible, I spotted what looked like a small, multicolored shack. Walking back and forth for a while, we eventually decided it was impossible and started back down for Alba. 

But now, since we had spotted it, we saw it from another angle, and decided to give it one last try. 

This little chapel is so colorfully painted, almost impossible to find...almost.

 Sol Lewitt was commissioned by the Ceretto winery family to paint this tiny chapel on the grounds of their vines and old winery house. It’s cool!!

 Beautiful old coffee roaster in Alba.

Later, satisfied we had found something, we headed back to Alba for some wandering, shopping and dinner. 

Enoclub was our restaurant for the evening. Again in a vaulted, brick ceilinged, former cantina. This meal did not suck. I was still full from lunch, so only had a primo, some handmade ravioli, the smallest ravioli I had ever had, and so many of them. I could scarcely belief someone could go through all the effort to pinch ‘em. Darren had the pasta with truffles, his third time in a row, 

and lamb for a second. Notice the pool-hall concentration on the face of the waitress as she carefully shaves the truffle. Serious business. We paired it with...a bottle of Barolo! The sommelier did this amazing sort of ritual with a napkin, deep, wide- bowl wine glasses and a third glass which he used to catch run-off and coat the insides of our glasses completely before pouring, a sort-of wine ballet. This meal did not suck...at all. zzzzz.