Today is our long awaited tour with Gina from Casa Mia Food & Wine Tours
We met Gina last year as she was the food & wine expert on our Scooteroma tour.
We are met by Gina outside our apartment and driven in an air conditioned car (sheer luxury!) to Olevano Romano, a hill town about an hours drive from Rome.
We are heading to the vineyard belonging to Damiano Ciolli, a delightful young man who inherited the vines from his father. He decided to concentrate on quality over quantity and now produces two Cesanese wines named after local wild flowers - Cirsium and Silene.
We walk through the vineyard and soon realise the amount of hard work and passion that goes into each vintage.
These vines are 64 years old
After learning about the different elements that make up the character of a wine we move on to the Cantina where the wine is made.
This is also where we get to taste the wine. What can I say.....sitting overlooking the vines , chatting with Damiano & Gina and drinking lovely wine....just a perfect moment. Honestly, tears spring forth every time I think of it.
More is still to come. We are driven a short way in to town to Sora Maria e Arcangelo. This restaurant is everything you imagine an Italian ristorante to be.
Fabulous views from the table.
Lovely local wine, made by a couple who had given up the 'rat race' and bought a vineyard (he worked for Italian TV company RAI , she designed the beautiful label)
And the food......OMG!!
Suppli
Il Fiore di Zucca
Polpette
Fettucine
Cannelloni
Conigilio (rabbit)
Vitello (veal)
I hasten to add that the three of us shared the above dishes - but we each had our own dessert!
Dining with Gina is like lunching with a (very knowledgeable) friend - the Casa Mia philosophy
One last lingering look back at the town as we leave.....
Then back to our apartment to collapse in a heap.....but we rallied much later for a drink in our new favourite local bar, Café Bohemian Libreria
We picked up pizza from Alle Carette 'to go', then back to the balcony to enjoy our wine from the vineyard.
