I just went to Italy for 5 days. Actually, it was more like
4 days. In that time, my family and I stayed in 4 different hotels in 4
different cities. We couldn’t spend a ton of time in any one city, and I think
I barely saw any of Milan despite flying in and out of it. Sure, this sounds
like a trip on a whim, but when you get together two siblings both working, it
is hard to free up time to take off together. In fact, this was our first
family vacation out of the US since 2010, not counting our trip to India for my
cousin’s wedding in Dec., 2011. We took advantage of a splendid 2-for-1 deal
that Emirates was giving for their 5th-Freedom flight to Milan from
JFK, getting there and back for a scant ~$350 each. Like a modern family, we
took separate methods to reach the airport this past Wednesday, and then took
two different flights back home (my parents are staying an extra day). Still,
it was four days together, which was great, and gave me a good look at a little
sub-set of Italia.
It started in Milan, but Milan is not a ‘sub-set’ city, it
is a main city, the largest financial center in Italy, and the most
cosmopolitan and modern city in the country, a hub of current day commerce.
Then again, we barely spent time in Milan. We arrived about 1:00 PM, and only got
to the hotel in central Milan at 3:00. The only bit of sightseeing I did in
Milan was visit the San Siro, home of AC Milan and Inter Milan. Much like the
tour of the Santiago Bernabeu in Madrid, the tour of the San Siro involves
trips to the locker room of both teams (oddly, both right next to each other),
the tunnel to the field, the side of the field, and the stands. All were open
and well maintained, though the Inter Milan locker-room is downright dingy
compared to the AC Milan room.
The stadium is giant, yet small considering the 80,000
people that can fit there. Apparently, given their relative standing in the
current Seria A (8th and 9th at the date of our visit),
they rarely fill it 50% at the moment. The stadium is beautiful, a monumental
pitch given the history that has taken place there over the years, the museum
with all the greats proving that. We left the stadium and headed back to Milan
for a happy hour with appetizers at our hotel and then went for a lovely
Milanese dinner, fill of various pastas, meats (fowl and veal), and an
interesting appetizer of ‘nerves’ and octopus. We went back early to the hotel
that night, needing to leave the next morning at 8 AM, all the while fighting
off limited jet lag. When we did get up at 8:30 or so, and left around 9:00,
the real trip began:
The Country Side
(I’m splitting this up to two different parts, mainly
because there were really two distinct parts of the trip. However, that removes
any sense of chronologicality to this review. Anyway, try to keep up.)
The first place we visited on the trip, and the reason we
had to leave Milan at 8:30, was for a tour of the Cheese Factory in the
country-side in Parma, home of the famous Parmiggianno-Reggianno Cheeses
(basically, Parmesan cheese, but real type). The factory tour really showed a
couple things, first how simple the process seems, but also just how much
effing cheese this little factory can produce. The process is basically mixing
milk from special cows, with the leftover whey from the previous day, in a
giant mixing bowl (or 12), first spinning around with added enzymes, then
mixing to separate the whey from the cheese underneath. Within 20-25 minutes,
the cheese has separated underneath. They then leave the cheese to sit for an
hour, during which time we were sifted through first the salting room, where
wheels of cheese are kept for 14 days in a salt-brine, then the holding room,
and finally the storage room, with literally walls of cheese 20 feet high and
40 feet long, and there were about 20 of those. All those cheese wheels in one
room, some 2-3 years old. I really wondered if I just walked away with one,
would they even know?
We then returned to the main cheese making area to see them
move the cheese sitting in the bottom of the mixing bowl into a large mound of
cheese, and then cutting it. We really saw the end-to-end one day process, but
so much more time goes into it. That said, their set-up is amazingly
simplistic:
The next tour we went to right after was a visit to a
Balsamic Vinegar factory in a town called Modena. Like the cheese, it was part
of a consortium of balsamic vinegar factories, but ‘factory’ in this sense is
basically a big house. The house as areas where the vinegar is put into
barrels, and transferred from barrel to barrel over the course of 6-12-25 years
(they offer vinegar at those year intervals). At the end, we got a tasting of
the different vinegars, which were all excellent. The 12 and 25 year versions
are basically a vinegar-y syrup, pointedly strong and amazing, really. They
also had a jelly, which I bought, and they gave us, kind of funnily, a tasting
of store-bought vinegar as a comparison. The tour was over in about an hour,
and then the congenial Italian owner and runner of the factory gave us a nice
lunch location about a 200 meters away. This really is a small town in Italy in
the Parma region, and this place had an extensive spread of local treats, with
a nice cheese and cured meat appetizer buffet. The small towns still had great
service, spread and a lot of customers. We left the vinegar factory for Parma,
which is big enough to be in the next section.
The next morning, I woke up in a daze and was ushered to a
breakfast I barely got through and we left for wine country. I am not the
biggest wine fan, and I’ll get to an awful little development with my
relationship with wine in the next area, but both my Dad and my sister are. My
sister is a huge win aficionado, though I guess that’s a big enough and intense
world that she may not be happy with her calling her one. She had picked two
Piedmontese (area of Piedmont, Italy) wineries that were recommended for a
local wine-shop proprietor in Princeton (Corkscrew), who imports from various
mid-size wineries across Europe. The two wineries were Ettore Germano and Elio
Grasso. Both were mid-size, between 75,000-100,000 bottles a year, specializing
in the Nebiollo grape that produces Barollo wine. By the end of two wineries,
it was clear that it had been a wine-derful day.
The first winery was Ettore Germano, situated nicely in the
Hills of the Piedmont. The building was under an expansive renovation, so the
gregarious Italian winemaker, Sergio, apologized for the cramped conditions
inside. In one of the most intense wine tasting experience was paired with one
of the most impersonal, as Sergio regaled us with story after story; almost
like a conversation that also included tasting some excellent wines. After the
drinks, he took us for a quick tour of his place, including trips down to the
basement with the giant GIANT barrels. Finally, he took us to a view of the
winery behind his house, an expansive look of rolling hills and neatly catered
rows and rows of grape plants. It was stunning, it was beautiful, it was nice
enough to make a windy, cloudy day seem amazing.
The second winery was a little larger, and a little more
upscale. Elio Grasso had only three wines to taste, all Barollo’s of different
vintages. The real treat with them was the tour of their wine-making facility,
including a massive underground tunnel that first contained scores and scores
of barrels, and then the second half of the U-shaped tunnel containing hundreds
and hundreds of bottles, each waiting to be assessed and labeled. The whole
underground tunnel was an amazing bit of simplistic brilliance in wine-making.
The wines themselves were fine, but the setting, the ingenuity and the beauty
of rural, mountainous area near Alba.
