I am in Verona and Vicenza often, let’s try.
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Sure, I think we need to ask @Richard.Dane if he can kindly get us in touch privately.
I visited Fattoria La Vialla near Arezzo in Tuscany today.
It is an Eco- sustainable, biodynamic family-run farm of 1500 hectares which produces wine, olive oil, pasta, sauces and Pecarino cheeses.
It serves its delicious wines, and lunches with coffee and home made cantucci biscotti. They do excellent tours of the estate ,huge wine cellar (with tasting) and olive oil production facility.
They will send gift ideas, hampers and wine orders from Tuscany directly to your home, on sale at La Vialla or online.
A superb day out and good value too. Highly recommended.
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That reminds me of my Italy trip before last, when we joined an olive oil information day where we learned about olive oil, its characteristics, production and uses including a tutored tasting session, a meal and a tour of a historic olive oil production facility in Chieti (Abruzzo), to where we cycled from the place we were staying. It was a great day, surprising, interesting, educational and most enjoyable - I commend it to anyone who has not done.
A few days later, armed with that knowledge and experience, we decided to seek out a small producer where we could do olive oil tasting and buy direct from the grower, much as we do with wine.
So having identified a possible farm we parked in what appeared to be someone’s home driveway, found the door round the back and knocked. An elderly lady answered, who we found knew no English, while our knowledge of Italian was both rudimentary and poorly pronounced, making for an interesting non-conversation. She called her husband, whose command of English was equally good, then suddenly after several minutes of puzzlement they suddenly understood my attempt to say degustazione, which I remembered poorly and I think I was saying more like an Anglicised version of the French equivalent. All was smiles as he then led us round the back, past a ramshacle wooden warehouse to a small room at the end, where sat a couple of stainless steel vats and a table. He proceeded to run about 50ml of olive oil direct from one of the vats into each of two shallow bowls, gave us some hunks of bread, and sat down to watch - possibly to be surprised as we appeared to know how to taste (not using the bread, at least until we felt obliged finish most of the oil, also finding the bread to be rather good). The oil was superb.
We bought a couple of cans of the oil which he filled directly from the vat, and he then offered us a tour of his production plant which we accepted. Clearly passionate about it, he described everything - and thiugh the words were mostly unintelligible to us, we recognised everything as the modern stainless steel and electrically powered equivalent of the ancient wooden and stone, horse powered plant we had seen a couple of days earlier.
Lots of smiles and joy, the language barrier not a barrier at all, and I like to think they remembers with equal fondness the visit of an odd English couple in a campervan, who delighted in his oil and his passion for it.
I feel that experiences like that, with joyful interaction with local people, really make a holiday, and we have had many on our visits to Italy. (Note to self: I really have to try and improve my Italian, notwithstanding thatmy language ability is absolutely appalling other than my own.)
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Naim for me has been a lot about the soul of jazz and its faithful reproduction, and Perugia right now - all music and jazz! Amazing place and atmosphere.
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I love Italy. I have been there many times on holiday and it will probably not be long before my wife and I have to go back. Unfortunately, many tourists are destroying places in Italy. Trastevere is a horror example of what happens when mass tourism moves in. It is almost all chain restaurants and I have heard that 50% of the apartments are Airbnb. The locals are being forced out and local businesses are disappearing. Some call central Rome a funfair. I have been recommended to try new and lesser-known neighbourhoods in Rome.
I was most recently in Bari and I don’t think I have ever eaten so much octopus. Apart from Alberobello, which is a tourist hell with a lot of junk for sale, I had a lovely trip with my wife.
I’ve been to the Perugia jazz festival twice, first time stumbilng across it when in the area - great atmosphere so back next day to enjoy property. Second time a few years later and aware of ot we went specially. But fortunately they had they music on in the town, as I can’t stand jazz!! We only attended the free outdoor performances..
I am not sure I would recommend Perugia during Umbria Jazz to someone who cannot stand jazz music :)). Even the (organised by the festival) free events are essentially all lighter entertaining jazz or young musicians. Indeed, especially in the evening, every corner becomes a stage and you can listen to very good buskers and bands play anything from Cream to GnR to classic guitar, even to Country (if that’s your thing), or the occasional violin (during the day), although I have the feeling that these are on at all times for the whole summer and not just for the festival?
Umbria Jazz is one of the most important jazz events in the world, running since the 70s and it feels just surreal that you can sit in a serene environment in the morning listening to music with no more than 40 people in a 700-800 old hall with superb acoustics
… and all this, as on this day, together with Terrence Blanchard and Ravi Coltrane who are invited for a conversation, still sleepy and leisurely trying to figure out what is being played, then hearing their thoughts about it and the artists, and all the trivia that goes with it. And if that’s not enough, then listening to these two perform at the special Arena the same evening, just after some guy called Charles Lloyd!
During daytime you can also choose to go watch a jazz documentary in a simply magical old fashioned Italian cinema, have the best espresso north of Naples, an ice cream of course, or the sweetest apricots from the local shop.
And music outdoors is virtually everywhere, all around town, in what is an open air museum.
It’s just too much to bear even for a spoiled and seasoned Naim and music enthusiast!
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Fortunately the two times I went there was free jazzless music outside in both afternoons and evening!
May be you could try bump into the Sicily festival? Not been but it’s more orchestral and with famous vocalists etc.
Thanks, but Sicily is not high on my list of places to return to having been there not many years ago, and preferring Italy! I have stumbled across various music things around Italy, and been to a number of excellent performances including an open air opera (not Verona). One year I might try the Puccini festival, but the prospect of the throngs of people rather puts me off.
If you go for the Verona one, to make it worthwhile, I would suggest make sure you get a decent, ideally more central (and definitely padded!!) seat, otherwise the distance to the stage and imperfect acoustics can make it feel a bit too disconnected.
Thanks for the tips., which fit with my thoughts when I looked into it a few years ago. I have previously thought about the Verona one but cost and their weather policy put me off! I may think about again it when next expecting to be in the vicinity. The open air performance of La Boheme that I saw was Firenze, in the grounds of Palazzo Pitti, and was a relatively small performance but no less good for that. It was interrupted by a shower, and quite a sight seeing the string instrument musicians dashing for shelter with their valuable instruments. Resumed twenty minutes later as if nothing had happened!
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It needs to be just very slightly still hard, not overcooked and soggy. You need to get the measure of it in an Italian restaurant in Italy, or find an Italian girlfriend.
I live in Reggio Emilia, in the Po valley near Bologna, which has one of Italy’s finest Opera houses.
I shot this in the town square.
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Ooh. I’m coming to near you for a week in November. 2 nights in Parma, 2 night in Ravenna and 4 nights in Bologna. Planning to eat and drink myself stupid!
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Have a great time. You have chosen three fine cities. Get down to the coast in Ravenna and find a good fish restaurant. We were there recently for Pat Metheny.
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I struggle with that tbh. Cooking tells you much more about the survival of a culture. It records the scars of oppression, colonisation, migration, climate, geography, religious values and creative resistance. Italy and pasta is a great example of that. The romantic idea of pasta representing some ancient unbroken chain of spiritual refinement and civility being largely nonsense. A quick read up on the impact of WW2 and the post war drive to romanticise soon disabuses any such ideas.
It’s as bonkers an idea as “ancient Chinese medicine” which is mostly less than 150 years old.
The Italian backlash re: how to cook pasta during Covid is accurately described. The reasons were little to do with the distant past though and everything to do with the Italian economy being so reliant on that perspective that anything which attempted to modernise or undermine etc. had to be crushed. The number of newspaper articles linking the suggestion to their famed WW2 leader and his approach to pasta was quite startling.
I don’t wish to drift into politics though. My point is that culinary arts are just as much more imposed from outside than created from within.