another lazy saturday here in cormons...just me and the chinese kids...
had a sad dream last night that jeff buckley came and sat on the edge of my bed and sang "lover, you should've come over" to me in french. i sat up and smiled and tried to take his hand but it was all wet, it was practically just water, from the river where he drowned. i started crying and begged him not to go back, to stay here where it was dry. he told me that he was ok, that he was better there in the river, which is why he went away in the first place. i kept crying and then realised that my tears were flooding the room with green river water and they washed him back out the window. i wasnt sad after that though, i just went back to sleep, and figured that everything was in its place.
gosh i am so lazy. i got home from the wine festival at about 10pm, went right to bed, and slept more or less until 6pm the next night. then went back to bed last night at midnight and slept till noon today. i dont know, i was just exhausted.
so! Vinitaly! met simone and gabriele at the udine train station at 6:30am. managed, miraculously, to arrive at all (had to wake up at 4:30am and run to the cormons train station in the rain), freshly showered and attired with painted nails and a pretty satin bow pinned to my blazer. simone gave me an approving look and we hopped the train to verona. was pouring rain outside, and dark and cupo (gloomy) and i slipped simone's ipod headphones into my ears and slept for the first half of the journey. woke up for a coffee and croissant (coutresy of sweet gabriele) when we changed trains in venice and after that i was good to go.
we got to verona and waited forever in the rain for the bus to the arena where vinitaly was being held. there were lines of people waiting to go through the ticket stalls when we arrived, but we walked right past them to an entrance on the other side. some guy in a lab coat came and opened the door and let us in. we were escorted through a laboratory, and simone explained that this was where the grapes went that we would harvest. we would pick them and send them here to be analyzed and made into wine. the guy in the lab coat led us through several rooms and out a side door...right into the festival! was great! the festival was set up così (like this): each region in italy got their own ginormous room in which to set up booths to display their wines. so this is like 20 rooms, and each one was decorated to represent that region specifically. so you'd walk in one room and be like "where are we" and look at the decor and it would be all orange and bright with lots of wooden booths and the people would be lounging about in button down shirts, blazers hung over the backs of chairs, sipping light red wines eating plates of olives and you could say, "well i reckon we're somewhere in the south" and it would be Calabria, etc. was great, and all day we could be like, screw this, i'm tired of Marche, lets go to Sicily! lets go back to Lombardia! etc., and it would be like a mini vacation. we started in Alto Adige, which was by far my favorite. it felt very clean there, very bright and fresh and chilly in a safe way, and the people demonstrating their wines were all nicely dressed and blue eyed and speaking italian with heavy german accents (they speak german in alto adige). we tried a couple of different booths and i sampled several of the most exquisite white wines that i have ever in my life encountered. the bouquets were like roses, like bouquet garni of mint and lavendar, of rocks and satin flower petals. one of them i just wanted to dive into, exclaiming that i would wear it as a perfume it smelled so incredible. and they tasted fantastic! lord, almighty. the best vinter i tried was called Tramin, and they use grapes called Gewurtraminer, and also Sauvignon. was unwillingly pulled away, down to tuscany, which i was not at all impressed with (too commercial), though we got to try some wine that was apparently very important (Tenuta di Sesta, Brunello di Montalcino). then on to lombardia! lombardia has a wine region called Francicorta where they make sparkling wines under that name, the sparkle called "spumante". let me tell you: proseco is out, spumante is in! this was some of the most fantastic sparkling wine that i have ever tasted, fresh and cold but it didnt burn the front of your tongue, settled instead in the back, and the little bubbles rose up in stick straight lines one after the other. was beautiful, from a vineyard called Villa Crespia, and another from a vineard called Marchesi Di Montalto (find the reisling, its flawless). it was wonderful being there with simone and gabriele, because they knew all about the grapes and the wines and which booths to try. they would explain the process for the different productions and talk with the vinters to uncover the secret details. they explained the grapes and how they were in alot of ways region specific, and why the terroir afforded the berries their flavor and chemical makeup (gabriele). the best part was that we went on thursday, so it wasnt crowded at all, was really only the people there for real business, so the vinters would stand and chat with us and tell us everything for 10, 15 minutes, let us try everything. we'd tilt our glasses and examine the colors, smell and taste and swirl and spit. was so very grown up. gabriele (who is hilarious and so very nice to me) refused to go to the Friuli room, proclaiming that we needed to move forward with our lives, that we couldnt go back, that to go back to friuli would be to die. simone, who is practically xenophobic, disagreed, and dragged me back there to try our local vinters (was hilarious, one could literally see simone get all figety and nervous in any region south of emilia-romagna; he'd say, "c'mon lets go home, this is scary, this too much"). we walked into the friuli room and i didnt know where we were. was all ugly and boxy and had this horrible shade of plastic blue decor. i asked, "what the heck boring region is this?" to which simone replied, "this is friuli." the wines, of course, were fantastic. there were some vinters who are in cormons, and simone introduced me as an anthropologist, here in italy and living in cormons to study their food and wine and culture, and everyone was so kind and excited and told me to please come by the vineyard anytime.
we left around 4, all exhausted and filled with delicious wine, and i slept more or less the whole 3 hour ride home. the whole day was just perfect, one of the greatest experiences that ive had here in this incredible country, and i wrote little letters of gratitude to the boys for letting me tag along and teaching me so much great stuff. there was a dinner party afterward at barbara's, one of the scientists who is beautiful and nice to me, but i just couldnt do it, i was too tired. as i said, i went home and slept for a lifetime.
so now is saturday. have been invited to a griliata (bar-b-q) by my cute italian boyfriend (the one who speaks no english) so i might go to that tomorrow. there will be lots of ham in customary friulian style.

other than that all is well...will make spaghetti for dinner and watch a movie...is stormy out. and thrusday...ROMA!!!