Day 21, Calabria Day 6

Day 21:  Calabria, Day 6

Quote of the Day: Insert THB's concession speech into the official records

Weather: On the warm side, too hot for THB to walk the vineyard

Breakfast

7 minute workout and breakfast on the deck. Half the tour takes a tractor hay ride with the head of the farm estate, translated by Rosetta. Grapes right off the vine, a view of some of the many hectares, and a meet-up with a colony of black pigs. No  cheese demo, the shepherd is ill.

Hay ride

Glamping

Black pigs

The rest of the tour is awaiting us as we are late getting back. Time to rustle up those horses and head ‘em up and and roll ‘em out. Our first stop is another hilltop old town. OOOOOOOOPS, though our leaders were told that a bus could make it up the hill, it’s a no go. Lots of help and advice and still a no go. 20-25 minutes later we take the 10-15 slow walking tour up to our only winery of the day.

The key fork in the road

Damn, this car is parked in just the spot to keep the bus from making the turn

Strategy conference

A second car is now in a key spot

Flag man in rear

Front helper...doesn't work for long. The bus gets past this roadblock and immediately hits another impossible turn. Bus backs down into the other fork, we get out and walk into the old town

The local wine is a sauterne-like very labor intensive sweet wine. THB is some skeptical (what’s new) that each grape is finger pressed individually. Nobody offers up an appropriate job title. Instead of tasting the wines of this house, we head back through the old town to a small place converted into a wine tasting site. Chiara leads us through the description of the process and as we’re settling down to start the tasting some idiot on the tour asks if we are going to be ranking the five wines? (Yes, of course, it’s THB as if any of you had a single doubt).

This vine is growing out of small rectangle planter where you cannot see any soil, and still produces grapes (and is a support for laundry?)

We're in the old town part of Saracena

Two locals helping to bring tourism back to Saracena

Grapes on the rack, either laying down or hanging off hooks

The winery

The wines

Slow Food subsidized the local wineries using the old methods. These methods are unique in Italy, so unique they can't really get recognized as a DOC

Mr Viola, the owner/winemaker (Chiara is translating)

The tasting layout

The winner of the blind tasting of five wines: the wine from the house we had just visited! Good news: at least one of our tour had already bought 2 bottles of the winner…she’s a winner! Orders are taken and the wines are delivered to the bus for distribution and payment…looks a lot like a duty free event as you board your international flight.

Just by happenstance, the winner, #2, is made by Mr Viola. THB spits out his tastes into the while paper cup at top. It does appear several members of the tour managed to drink quite a lot of this high alcohol wine

Volunteers are making our lunch, served in the street.

Hand rolled on wire, then slid off

Unwelcome entertainment for great-grandpa

After the tasting we mosey in the old town for 5 minutes or so and find we are having lunch in the street. Two tables of 10 are set up and four of the local women are making pasta by hand, and prepping another gargantuan meal. The food is excellent, Chiara has found some unreleased bulk red and a few other bottles for us to taste (way better than the average). Much frivolity watched over by a great-grandfather like figure in his underwear (he’s not used to this much going on in his street). This goes on for at least 3 hours, maybe more.

The usual starters, well done by the volunteers, note red pepper flower arrangement

The final product with Parmesan and we add spicy red peppers from the flower arrangement

Very unusual to have a street party

Another unusual dish: meet balls and short ribs, a bowl this size for each table. Even if everyone in the hood joined us, there would be leftovers 

The back entrance to the place at one side of our block party

Dessert: sort of a roll with texture of churros, maybe not yeast, could be baking powder

The volunteers with daughter and mom and Coco the tour dog

The bus heads to the next old town where there is a church to see (and a wedding going on). THB and DB decide to linger at a café where the bus parks and skip the church. About 1 and ¾ hours to ourselves, tonic and water $3. And a big surprise: Castroville is having a car and scooter show in the parking lot:

Just like the California Castroville car show

It’s a short ride to the Hotel Barbieri for dinner. If THB and DB had known it was this close we would’ve had the bus take us over. So it goes on the road.  And, wouldn’t you know it, we’ve got a lovely table overlooking the pool…and…a giant wedding with 100s of guests and an extremely loud band. How loud was it? After the fireworks and desserts down below, a DJ replaces the R&B band and it gets so bad that THB retreats into the hotel, then into the front of the hotel, and if he had remembered where the bus was, he would have retreated to the bus. No conversation possible except when the band got quiet while people were eating.

Seating chart for wedding is hanging outside the main entrance, the tables represented by different paintings; the first guest must be related to the Statti Winery, the first stop on our Calabria tour oh those many days ago

Art in hotel appears to be by same artist

This is getting to be a thing: weddings and parties outside at night wherever we go. Not good for a guy that already has tinnitus. THB wishes they would’ve moved us inside though then we wouldn’t have been able to watch the wedding by hanging over the rail.

We're dining above a "Kardashian" style wedding

The pre-dessert band....LOUD

Fried bread

The entire can was dumped in the fryer

A crasher: she helps herself to our tour's appetizers; she must be staying at hotel because she eats by herself near our table

Time for dessert, the fireworks go off

And off

And off

And on

And on

The announced 15-20 minute ride back to the Castello takes 50 minutes, the bus takes the route that baffled our driver and leaders yesterday, today in the dark it works fine.