Posts Tagged ‘italy’

Life is too short to drink mediocre wines.                           J. W. Goethe

The wine is a mixture of love and light.                                G. Galilei

The harvest

The year 2011 was defined by the winemakers Year of Providence: low production and high quality. The harvest was anticipated throughout Italy for the climatic conditions that have characterized this long summer.
The phenological phases of grape-vine have been changed by high temperatures in April and May, leading to this early harvest.
The quality will be great for white wines: it is expected to decline by 5% and then a production of 44 million hectoliters, while for the red wines we will only know shortly.
The decline in the Centre-North is from 0 to -5%, while in the Center-South vary from -5% to -20%.
The most productive region is Veneto, with more than 8 million hectoliters.
The vineyard once again demonstrates its ability to adapt to climatic vagaries, unlike other agricultural crops that have been compromised.
We predict high-profile wines and this will help the positive trend in foreign sales (+11.9% in 2010), in fact in Italy it is produced the 17% of world production.

 The first Sunday in November in Italy we will celebrate the birth of the new wine,”Vino novello”, a red wine produced in all regions of Italy, but mainly in the Veneto, Trentino Alto Adige and Tuscany. The “Vino novello”, very fresh and aromatic, is the first wine of the harvest just passed, which is celebrated throughout Italy, especially combined with chestnuts.

Trulli in Apulia

You can not claim to know Italy unless you have been in Apulia.

The famous “heel of the boot” is a region particularly rich from a tourist point of view: it can offer rock coasts, small sandy beaches, beautiful cities of art characterised by the sumptuous Baroque style, small villages with their typical traditions, cheerful village festivals.

Do not forget that the regional Apulia food is full of surprises, fragrant vegetables combined with home-made pasta and fresh fish are the masters. The interior landscapes show up for their charm and they are dominated by olive trees.

In the olive groves often flashes the white of the trulli, the typical ancient rural buildings characterised by a special cone shape: below the Murgia plateau there are traces of trulli built even in the sixteenth century.

Trulli can be considered the earliest examples of green architecture: they are very cool in summer and they maintain heat during the winter as their only opening is the door and the walls are very thick. Over the past decades they have been patiently recovered and now you can even find many trulli for rent on holidays.

The best way to visit Apulia is to stay in a trullo: give it a try, discover the true Puglia!