Grape Harvest

Saturday, September 13

The month of September is a big time of the year for wineries. Its grape harvest time. Lot of the wineries will have groups come out and learn about what they do during grape harvest season and also be able to help harvest some of the grapes off of the vines.

Preston and I chose to do a grape harvest with Teresa Colors, who was amazing and she also does cooking classes for people. With this grape harvest we also got to stop at a different winery and taste/buy some of their wine. The winery was Ca Madresca, which we had never been to before. There wine is really good. One thing I thought that was really cool is they will custom paint on any bottle of wine for you and its not that expensive either. I ended up getting two bottles painted, one for my parents and one for my sister as a wedding present. Each full bottle of wine plus custom painting was only €15!

After sampling their wine, we had to drive over to the next winery for the grape harvest and lunch, which was at Agriturismo Pituello. Agriturismo Pituello is a winery, ristorante, hotel. Not to sound gross but they use their own pigs from their farm to make sausages and other delicatessen products, such as cheeses, regional wines, grappa and homemade gnocchi. Which we got to try some of their homemade food at lunch.

After getting there, the first thing we got to do was go out to the vineyards and harvest some grapes on our own.

After filling up all the orange buckets they gave us we headed back to the main building to watch what they do with the grapes next.

Outside they have a machine you stick the grapes in, yes vines are included, that somehow takes all the grapes off the vines and spits out the stems at the other end of the machine, while the grapes continue on through a long tube into the next machine. In this machine they are pressed into "grape juice" and comes out the bottle into a big container. We actually got to sample the grape juice. Both Preston and I were a little hesitant at first but turned out to be the best grape juice we have ever had.

After sampling some of the grapes we harvested, we got to go inside where all their grapes were being fermented. I think this is always really cool to go see/ hear about all the different processes there are when making wine, since no winery has it set up the same way.

Time for lunch!

We had the normal 7 course Italian meal. To start they had bread basket and wine on the table.

Next came the crepe with veggies.

Then 2 types of prosciutto with balsamic vinegar (forgot to take a picture)

Then frico. Never had or even heard of frico before, but it was amazing! As Americans would call it, a cheese crisp. It has shredded cheese with some flour, baked or fried until crisp. The cheeses usually are Montasio, Parmesan or Mozzarella. The other cheese triangle in the background I wasn't exactly sure the name. It has a spongy texture, I didn't think it tasted as good as the frico.

Main meal, meat and roasted potatoes.

No coffee or cappuccino for me but I am always down for dessert. There was a plate of 4 different desserts you could choose from. I picked tiramisu. But since there were a lot left over of course I had to try a few of the others but nothing compared to the tiramisu.

Now after being overly stuffed it was time to head back home. I'm so happy I can now say I've been done a grape harvest in Italy!