Giorgio & Paola's house in Monti-in-Chianti

The truffle dinners are now in full swing and going very nicely, but I wanted to provide a brief wrap-up of this year’s trip to Italy.

Monti-in-Chianti, about 10 miles north of Siena, has been the center of my activities since I began traveling to Italy (over ten years ago) to get truffles, and Giorgio Sacchini and his family have been my friends and guides from the beginning.

This was an extraordinary truffle year, including the truffle cleaning party.  It took six of us about four hours to clean the truffles. In addition to Giorgio, we were joined by his wife Paola and daughter Denise, and a terribly sweet couple from Vienna, Margit and Peter Demuth, also joined in.  Afterwards, we had a typical Giorgio dinner: crostini with chicken livers and black truffles, crostini with hazelnuts and black truffles, Paola’s preserved hot peppers and potatoes, cured tuna, and as always cinghaile or wild boar.  In fact, in standard Giorgio-fashion, just after the cheese course and before dessert, Giorgio stepped outside for a moment, and shot two wild boar right from his back porch.  I’d never seen that before.

Of course not every moment on the truffle trail was a joyous, life-affirming affair.  No, sometimes you hit a snag.

I had just taken my seat for the first leg of my return-flight home from Florence to Munich on Air Dolomiti (a “partner” of Lufthansa), and started to write my final truffle report– Coming Home: “We’re on the plane, me and the truffles…”  Before even finishing the first sentence, a flight-attendant asked me to the rear door of the plane (a medium, twin turbo-prop).  Sitting on the tarmac below I saw my truffle case, my fragrant treasure all by its lonesome on a barren expanse of concrete.

While the plane had an assigned luggage compartment it was not sealed from the passengers, and the pilot determined that the fragrance from my truffle case, though not significant, was undesirable, and ordered it off the plane.  So I was booted off the flight!  I was already exhausted beyond my limits, and this created a very difficult circumstance.   I was set to arrive home on Monday night at 7:00 PM, cutting it close for our first truffle dinner on Tuesday night, but, you know, the truffles have to be fresh for the dinners.

I drove a couple of hours north to Bologna, and checked into the Sheraton Bologna Airport Inn.  Thankfully, the chef allowed me to stow the truffle case in his walk-in.  I got up at 4 AM, for a 5:45 flight to Frankfurt, and arrived at SFO at 12:30 Tuesday afternoon. The truffles were at Oliveto by 2:30 PM just in time for dinner that night, and I was just so tired.  Lufthansa and I are in discussions.

Finally, here are Giorgio’s new truffle puppies, now seven weeks old:

Until next year…

Catania Fish Market, Sicily

It’s Thursday night here, and all the truffles for Oliveto’s truffle dinners are still in the ground; collection begins tomorrow morning. It’s cold, there’s been a good amount of rain, and the local truffle fairs have ended. Now, the truffles are for us. Truffle Dinners at Oliveto are booking up, so we’ve decided to extend them through Saturday, November 21st. I’ll bring home more truffles than originally anticipated to last us into the weekend. [see menu]

The second item on the agenda for this trip was to gather video of some of our Italian wine producers, and food producers, for our soon-to-launch Oliveto Wine Journal.  A complementary offering to the Oliveto Community Journal and a fresh approach to wine information.

Some highlights from this trip:
My 26 hours in Catania, Sicily were exceptional.  Guest of Mount Etna winemaker Ciro Biondi and his wife Stef Pollock, I was picked up as soon as the ferry docked and taken to the Catania Fish Market to follow Chef Carmelo Chiramonte as he shopped for our vineyard lunch.  Carmelo is the real deal.

Standing in their vineyards you are at an altitude of 800 meters, with the sea below you, on black volcanic sand sloped at 45 degrees, and an active volcano at your back. Beautiful, exciting, and unique.  While the vineyards are centuries-old, the area has only been considered a fine wine region in the last 20 years.  Wild soil, wilder weather, truly exciting company, wine, and a lunch of perfectly grilled fish and vegetables—all in all, a gorgeous day.

I was able to score a ticket to the LaScala-like opera house, Teatro Bellini, built in 1890.

In the morning, I flew to Torino.   Alitalia lost my luggage at the stop in Rome, but recovered it 2 days later.   Perhaps payback for having too good of a time in Catania.

Sent from my iPhone

Truffles are just now coming on, I encountered my first exceptional truffles last night, at the back door of Ristorante Antine in Barbaresco–I didn’t have to put my nose to it, it overwhelmed me from across the kitchen.  Prices remain very low, we won’t be able to set the price for Oliveto Truffle dinners until we actually acquire them, but they should be a bargain.

Truffle Dinners at Oliveto are always a great excuse to pull out some older bottles of wine from our cellar.  I talked with Aldo Vacca of Produttori del Barbaresco and asked him to recommend some Produttori vintages that are drinking great right now and would pair well with truffles.

It’s still ten days or so before I move from the “just looking” phase into truffle acquisition, but here’s what we know so far: the truffles this year are very good, but not plentiful.  Despite fewer truffles, prices are dramatically lower than they have been in recent years due to less demand and also many truffles coming from outside Italy.  This is not a new phenomenon, over 12 years ago the joke going around ended with, “those are Alba…anian truffles.”

We had a good soaking recently and more rain coming.  All good news.

Today is a travel day for me.  I’m currently on a train to Naples, and will take a ferry to Catania later tonight where I’ll be visiting Biondi, a winery on Mount Etna.  They have a wonderful day planned for me & I’ll be taking some video as well.

Bob
Sent from my iPhone

Here are some of Giorgio’s new recruits, five-week-old truffle dogs.   They are already being given bits of truffle treats and seem to like it.

Dinner my first night here in Tuscany at Giorgio and Paola’s home:

Tortellini in brodo

Fried egg with black truffle

Fried egg with white truffle

Wild chicories

Minced black truffle and hazelnut bruschetta

Georgio's eggs with white truffles

Actual truffle collection for the Oliveto Truffle Dinners won’t begin for another two weeks.  So I’ve been busy video-taping wine producers in the region for a new project in conjunction with the Oliveto Community Journal: a Wine Journal.  The first day in Chianti, Roberto Stucchi and I went to Fontodi in Panzano to tape a segment with Giovanni Menetti.   He showed us the vineyards, his massive compost heaps (Fontodi wines are now organic), and his herd of twenty-four Chianina (large white cattle with beautiful black eyes).

That led us to see Dario Cecchini, the beyond colorful Panzano butcher, for a visit and a terrific lunch of mostly meat.

The next day I visited Felsina in Castelnuovo Berandenga, and on Saturday I visited our Brunello producer in Montalcino, Canalicchio di Sopra.

More soon.  And Truffle Dinners beginning on November 17th!

Bob

Sent from my iPhone

I’ll be leaving for Italy in late October and returning on November 16th, I presume, with a load of fine truffles to be served during our annual Truffles Dinners (November 17 – November 20, 2009).  This trip is always filled with wonderful twists and turns and we plan on posting brief reports along the way here on the Oliveto Community Journal. 

From the memory-lane-archives we’ve compiled a brief reel of Oliveto truffle stories covered by local and national television news networks over the past twelve years.  Giorgio, the truffle hunter featured in many of the clips, has been a constant companion from the beginning.  His knowledge and good humor, along with the hospitality and the warmth of his family, make this trip about much more than finding truffles and are the real reason I return year after year.  Also of note: the six-week-old truffle pup shown in my pocket licking a truffle was named “Piccolo Bob”.  Could there be a greater honor?

Truffle Dinners 2009

November 17th – November 20th

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