Flavors of Northern Italy: Day 3

Monday 10/4: Olive Oil Tasting + Pasta & Tiramisu + Selva Capuzza Winery

We started the morning with an offering of items in the breakfast room: scrambled or hard boiled eggs, fresh fruit, cured meats, cereals, bread, blood orange juice, baked goods, and hot beverages. This became our daily ritual for the week, with slight variations in the sweets offerings or the time that we had to be finished and ready to go for the day. By the end of the week, the staff anticipated our orders and brought out Americanos for Mr. E and me before we even asked for them!

After breakfast, we met up at 9:30am to have an olive oil tasting with Laura. She taught us about the differences among regular olive oil, virgin olive oil, and extra virgin olive oil, and we got to taste a sample of each. 

Then we had a two-hour cooking class with friendly instructor Cinzia to make a (non-classic) tiramisu, potato gnocchi, tagliatelle pasta, and tomato sauce. We each received our own personalized apron with our name embroidered on it! All of the ingredients were already measured out and waiting for us, so we just had to mix everything appropriately, knead the dough, and let it rest. Quite convenient to have all of the prep work done before we arrived! 

I had to step out of the room during the sauce making process, as it involved smashing garlic, peeling and cutting fresh onion, and then cooking those up together to form the foundation of the sauce. The aroma from the fresh and cooking ingredients was too much for me, even with the door and windows open! Luckily, the smell eventually dissipated, so I could rejoin the group to help with the gnocchi rolling and cutting as well as the pasta pressing.

Once everything was ready to be cooked, we took a pause for some grana padana cheese with local wine jam along with a sparkling wine as a pre-lunch aperitif. Then we sat down to eat everything we’d made in the morning for our lunch! All of the food was delicious, but I definitely missed having anything green or vegetable-based aside from the tomatoes in the sauce (Cinzia made a small separate version for me with none of the offending allium items), so I ended up nibbling on some of the veggies in the rice salad that was still in our fridge after we finished lunch.

When lunch was over, we had our first field trip of the week to the Torre di San Martino della Battaglia, a nearby tower that commemorates one of the many battles and sieges that was fought in this region over the years involving the now-Italians, the French, and the Austrians.

Stefania regaled us with comprehensive historical details about how the country came to be unified and how this northern part in particular bore the brunt of being so close to Germany and Austria as the various nations and rulers battled for power. This particular tower serves to memorialize the grueling battle of 24 June 1859, and almost all of the farms nearby also host plaques to show the course of the battle and the specific events that happened in those specific sites. This battle left 40,000 dead and is considered to mark the origin of the unification of Italy, making it an extremely important date to honor and commemorate.

As expected, we all had to show our ID and vaccination cards in order to enter the historic site. Stefania distributed our “whispers” (small personal audio system) so that we could easily hear her while we climbed up to the top of the tower for a panoramic view of the surrounding countryside, including our home for the week (third picture, behind the cluster of trees).

Each level of the tower contains paintings that show parts of the battle in 1859 as well as other historic skirmishes that contributed to the formation of Italy as a unified country. On the ground level are busts of important figures and a statue of Vittorio Emmanuele II, who led the local forces against the invading troops to protect this land. His supporters used the code “Viva Verdi” to outwit the censors, employing “Verdi” as a hidden way to delineate “Vittorio Emmanuele, Re d’Italia.”

When we left the tower, we visited the adjacent museum, which includes a short documentary film about the battle (in English) and a number of objects from the battle found in the area or donated by families who were involved in the events. According to Stefania, these types of artifacts continue to be found in this region when digging in the fields. Then we had a short walk to the ossuary with the bones of many of those killed in the battle and a longer walk back to our lodging.

We had a little break time before meeting up with the group to walk through the vineyards to the winery. Laura took us through a tasting of the Selva Capuzza wines on the outdoor terrace, explaining each one and telling us about the overall production of the winery, which makes approximately 300,000 bottles per year. We then continued on to dinner at the on-site restaurant again, and this evening’s meal started with some lovely raw and cooked vegetable dishes but was capped off by an expansive array of assorted meats on two large circular platters.

Then back to our little Carpino (“beech”) suite for bedtime.