Wine Tasting in Avellino

Today we went wine tasting with Aldo today in Avellino! The tour started at base and headed up the mountains towards Avellino. They made a stop at a rest area for café! My favorite!

 It didn't take too long to get up to the winery. The name was Colli Di Castelfranci. Castlefranci is a small village in the heart of Irpinia which is in the Province of Avellino. This logo on the wall their son created. He seemed pretty young and was the one who has started to take over production of the place. Grandpa and dad still lived there and worked but the son did most of it.

 The winery is very organic and they try to use all natural everything when they can. They even reuse willow tree branches and things like that for ways to hold up the vines or to tie things together instead of using plastic or metal objects. Aldo is holding some dried branches that when you soak in water they become soft enough to tie into a knot.

Inside is where they store the wine in huge oak barrels. Aldo told us that we had to be quite because the wine is sensitive to noise. He said that his voice was to deep and loud and the vibrations of his voice weren't good for the wine. I guess a lot of wineries play music for their wine to help keep it calm. Its like the grapes are people! Aldo also told us that people have to get inside these barrels to clean them and that theres a certain way to crawl inside the small hole to clean the inside. 

After the tour we went upstairs for the tasting. They had bread, cheese and meats ready for us to eat with the wine.

The first wine we tasted was a Rose and it was the first one that the son made all by himself. He was very proud of it and it was fantastic! We bought some bottles of that to bring home later.

They showed us this root that was like a hybrid root where the roots were American and the vine is European. I guess they had bought roots from America and had them shipped over to Europe to start their process.

They also make their own olive oil there and it was fantastic! We could have sat there and had bread and olive oil all day!

They own a lot of land at this winery!! They are also constantly building too. This place that they were making was going to be for storage of the wine bottles and other supplies. 

 It was beautiful out like it has been all week but up in the mountains it was windy! Still the sun was warm and we loved the views!

 The aftermath of the wine tasting and some of their bottles. The son designed the labels. 

After the wine tasting we went down the road a bit to this restaurant where we proceeded to eat twice our weight! This first plate was just the appetizer!

Then they brought out the pasta. I thought that the 3 plates they put on the table was it but no they then brought out 3 more dishes of pastas so there were 6 pasta dishes total. That wasn't it though! 

 Next was the meat plate. This thing was loaded of all types of meat on a skillet. By then we were stuffed and taking things off our plate and putting them in a foil tin to take home. There was so much food. I thought people always make fun of Americans and how we eat too much but really its the Italians who eat a lot! 

 Lastly was the dessert which I was too full to take a photo of but they brought out a huge goblet for everyone full to the top of strawberries. I was in heaven. Then they had another dessert dish that was mini cakes, coconut and nutella and a lemon one. They had espressos and lemoncello ready for everyone at the bar on the way out. Needless to say the bus was very quite on the ride home.

We met some interesting people though. The group of three men next to me were all dentists two were retired and one Kyle thought was a Captain, which kinda is a big deal. One of them was from Maryland and they were talking to Kyle about his transfer and told us of this crab place we have to try when he gets out there. Apparently its down this road that looks like you are about to get lost then this crab house pops up and you are in a food coma heaven.

Then next to them, across from us were this cute couple from New York and Hawaii. The husband was from NY and the wife was from HI. He told us that when they got married they had a cute little court house wedding in New York and then a full blown wedding in Hawaii. What a story to tell about how you were married! I love it. They were talking to me about New York a lot and the man said that he still had a MetroCard from the last time he was out (which is the way you pay for the public transportation in NYC) and he gave it to me and said that theres still some money left on it and that I would use it before he would. That was so nice of him!

This trip made me realize even more that I like people who are retired in the Navy more than the young sailors. They all are so interesting and have good stories to tell, usually are very polite and nice where the kids are sometimes just crazy party boys who don't appreciate a lot of what they have. There was one guy on the trip that we really didn't like who was just like this. His whole goal for the trip was to drink as much as he possibly could, which isn't the point of a wine tasting at all. I was happy that the retired people were there to talk to. Kyle made fun of me later saying that I gravitate towards that kind of person more than I do the younger generation, which is true!

We are full to the top and don't want to eat until Tuesday!

♥ Mae