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The Philosophy of Olive Harvesting, a metaphor of life

13/10/2015

Don’t be daunted by the load, start.
Keep your focus on what is in front of you, don’t fret about the other side of the tree until you get to it.
Pull the branch to you and look closely to see how it is formed, giving it order will make the tree seem less tangled, tackle one small branch at a time.
Harvest what is within reach, while you figure out how to get to the awkward branches.
Make sure all your olives fall in the net.
Put your ladder on firm ground.
It’ll get easier as you go along, you’ll gradually find a method to simplify.
Sometimes using your bare hands is easier and more gratifying.
It’s not worth falling out of your ladder for just a few more olives.
If you prune your trees, it’s easier to harvest, so cut away any straggling branches at the right time.
If friends offer to help, accept.
Mind you don’t poke out your eye out just for the sake of an olive.
You can’t control the elements, so if it rains, pack up, do something else and wait for better weather.

The Bruschetta

9/10/2015

Not long now, in a few days’ time the first extra virgin olive oil of the Castelli Romani will begin to run from the cold presses. Typical olives, Rosicola, Carboncello, Leccino from century old olive trees will be harvested, I could almost say, fished, from the nets that they will be gathered in.

The farmers will start to tell their tales of miraculous amounts of yield: “i got 12, I got 15, I got 18!!!” referring obviously to the litres per quintale of olives. A lovely green gold colour where polyphenols will release intense bouquets. This is the new oil. More or less spicy but always fragrant. A slice of rustic bread, toasted, and this excellent product drizzled generously on top. Our bruschetta is to die for, because I can’t think of other foods as good as this. In a blink of an eye winter will be here and red wine and roast chestnuts are waiting for me

Morra players in Frascati

6/9/2015

The players’ dress was usually a suit, a dark one normally used as Sunday best, jacket left off and shirt sleeves rolled up. With waistcoat. They played mostly in the afternoons before dinner. Not everyone played, but often young with old, on their own or in pairs. One hand behind their backs keeping count of the score and the second hand waving around in the air.
The idea was to announce the number that would come up from the two players’ hands but all with intense rhythm, strategy, physical and mental strength, with no errors.
There were real champions who would avoid encountering each other, except for playing on grand occasions.
Their posture was similar to fencers, onlookers were competent and joyous and even though the women would chat amongst themselves they still made the most of the occasion to eye up the men.
Frascati wine was there on the tables, an aid to concentration but also fuzzing the minds of those that had too much. The morra players in Frascati were handsome, some reckon that this is where the best-ever would meet up, laughter and sweat coloured those days and they waited for the evenings to make love.

Greek Wines

10/8/2015

Where there are now, in this period of the year, alignments of umbrellas and sun-beds, set out like armed phalanxes defending Mare Nostrum just between Anzio and Nettuno, the Trojan veterans landed three thousand years ago.

Aeneas and his people found refuge in a perfumed Mediterranean thicket, with the Tusculan Hills in the background and, further down the valley, the fatal Hills of the future Roman Empire. Whether this glorious history is true or fruit of the hired-pen of Virgil, looking for noble origins for the Gens Julia, fact remains that the Greek Culture bred rough and ready races of shepherds and farmers and every time I happily drink a Malvasia Puntinata, maybe even throwing my winning ‘briscola’ ace down on the the table, it brings a smile to my face. “There, Achilles , son of Peleus, take that! Hector is getting his own back. Landlord, open another bottle…it’s on them!”

Never go back to the scene of the crime

26/7/2015

There is and old photograph, my mother, really young, keeps me happy by showing me the hens and cockerel in the pens, distracting me so I would eat. What I would give today for that lack of appetite !

That black and white of real Agfas, the pigs that grew fat along the side of the vineyards. That little lane just beyond the Roman well that took us to happy fields where we could play football matches that lasted for four or five hours, but today obscured by rooftops.

Don’t think that I’m reminiscing the usual regrets of a world that is no more. I was on the scene of the crime, where my generation killed its best years: the hopes and the illusions.

Twenty five years ago I planted some trees a long way away, that I haven’t ever seen since. With stripes of yellow and green I have constructed landscapes. I still do today, by choosing which direction I plant rows of vines, or which varieties or crops I grow.

I have in my head, the places, just as they were, are and will be.

That chicken coup, the warm egg cupped in my hand, carefully, so as not to let it break, the spoonful of my mothers feed, inspired me. I don’t care much for photographs, except for a few that I avoid ever looking at.

Salty, but not like the Dead Sea.

26/7/2015

Italian wines have always made a great impression because of their minerality. But after all, this Country immersed in the seas by impetuous volcanic activity, has many microenvironments: the soil, climate and the men characterising hundreds of grape-types creating just as many wines, giving distinctive mineral qualities to each. But the ‘saltiness’ of Frascati Wines is unique. When it is combined with that wonderful freshness and hints of fruit and flowers, aftertastes of dried figs and nuts, well… this salt can be really irresistible.

The roots of the vines delve deep into the lapilli and basalt to capture it then the Tuscan microclimate welds it there. It’s not like a sea salt, but rather light. A sensation that heeds the exclamation ‘this is a Frascati’!

Perfumes and tastes that come from deep down to make us feel at home.

La Panzanella

13/6/2015

Our first tomatoes are ready, Summer is just around the corner!
Make sure you’ve got yesterday’s loaf though.
Slightly crumbled, tomatoes rubbed hard onto the bread to make it as wet as possible, then chopped tomatoes and whatever else you want to pile on!
Onion, black olives, I love capers myself, a drizzle of extra virgin olive oil, salt, pepper, there you have it: La Panzanella, fit for a King! Even better after it’s been standing a bit, when it has soaked in all the flavours. Mind though, it’s not to be eaten in small doses, your hands and your chin need to get a bit oily, and shine, like lovers’ eyes, as you dig in. A nice glass of cold Frascati, or two even better, to clean your palate. Now who’s better off than us!

An Active Volcano, the art of Pasta making

8/6/2015

I could just about reach the height of the dark wooden table with my eyes. I waited for my mum to make a crater in the mound of white flour. It was really high and I had to hold my breath to avoid creating a Central-America type tornado.

Then she broke the eggs inside the mountain, a pinch of salt, a drop of water if needed, and a duck egg to make it more yellow and wholesome. I watched her hands create an eruption, and a rapid succession of dam-bursts and repairs, to make sure the amalgam was perfect, chasing after lava flows that tried insistently to reach my nose.

In this case woman overcame nature, the final ball was proof of her victory, the volcano defeated, the fusion a success. My mum had some wrists on her! She continued to knead like a blacksmith would beat on his anvil.

Then on the board, her rolling-pin would calibrate the thickness of the dough, she’d create a yellow sun, she’d dust it with flour, then leave it to dry a little. Not an easy task, a labour of precision and strength. In the meanwhile the kitchen was invaded with the perfume of pasta sauce.

She’d roll the dough like you’d fold a bed-sheet, then as her fingers dictated the distance, she’d neatly cut the pasta ribbons. I’d look at her proudly as she gently unfolded each little roll and without even bothering about the sharp knife, I’d reach out and steal one of the ribbons to taste, just as it was, raw. A prelude to a dish that I absolutely loved.

I’d take a glass of wine to dad in the vineyards, that was his aperitif. Then after moment, that strong voice would echo as usual , “ Is it ready?!!”. That’s when my Sunday commenced. The volcano is still alive. But I miss that voice.

A Long Life

27/5/2015

Nowadays our life has become longer, sometimes even beyond the capacity of our bones to sustain it, but Methuselahs existed and still do.
Beings capable of challenging the centuries, of remembering the two great Wars, one fought with cold weapons and the other with the Atomic bomb. The 20th Century gave us an awful temporal acceleration, launching us into this phenomenon.

Lately I’m hanging out with an octogenarian, still in quite good shape and an exceptional mental dexterity. Like all of these particular scientific cases he boasts of his mischief, flaunts an almost pathetic virility and the heterosexuality expected of his generation. But I adore him, he seems such a modern fossil! Together we make fun of the new fads and lifestyles, from vegans to the most fierce of teetotallers. It’s him, already past it, that comments “what point in life have these 80 or 90 year olds got!?”. He smokes Toscani cigars, drinks Italian wines, and rum with pestiferous toasted cocoa beans, I like to flatter him, listening to him a bit, pitying him and humouring him a bit.

But you should listen to how he talks about women! It seems as if he really knew his stuff, like Magellano would have told of Oceans. When I tell him this, he turns round and answers back insolently “my women, I had to undress them myself”.
He says it as if he really had relished in that discovery, reliving it on each different occasion. Maybe woman had loved him…

Wines of the Future

23/5/2015

Mankind, sad survivor of Worldwide economical and social wars, where every single difference and divergence of a thousand years before were still intact - of course now with new Countries in the forefront - had reached 3015. With highly advanced technologies, albeit reserved to a minority Elite, almost identifiable as Castes, heirs of the old Lobbies.

Business dinners, for the ostentation of power, were frequent and fully participated and for which invitations were highly sort after. Tele transportation meant that it was easy to receive food, mainly synthetic or of molecular cuisine, with ingredients that had become exclusive in many cases. A compote of Porchetta of Ariccia DOP was all the rage in Beijing, but the bystanders really couldn’t get their heads round some hosts beaming down bottles of wine onto the tables. Wretched winemakers, the most conservative still fermenting in wood or outdated steel! What absolute astonishment if a Frascati Superiore appeared on the table! It seems that they still trampled on grapes with rare, almost extinct, women’s feet!!