November 11th

Today was a wine field trip so I woke up super early to make it to the Piazza to meet with my class. I walked to the Piazza making it there with plenty of time to spare and talked with a few friends. Adrian and Freddy's marketing class was coming with our class today because their next project has something to do with wine and its production. I sat with Adrian on the bus and it was a pretty quick ride. We went to a town called Suvereto which is actually right next to a town that we had already been to for a field trip called Populonia. The name of the vineyard was Petra and it was very different than the first one that I visited.

Petra is a very modern vineyard and was actually built in the 1970's. Swiss architect Mario Botta was hired to design the cellar and it is really something amazing. In my opinion, it looks like a giant crop circle, but it is pretty cool; google it. We toured the grounds first and they were breath taking. The vineyard is trying to become very sustainable and their efforts are very obvious. In the only area of the land that was not being used by the vines, their pond, they designed a floating device that allowed them to have photovoltaic panels on the pond. The panels help to generate more power than the vineyard needs to run so they supply it to other local farmers. On our way back up to the cellar building, their pigs (which were giant) came running towards us. The guide fed them some corn and everyone pulled out their camera to take pictures. The guide thought this was funny and said, "boy it sure is too bad you aren't staying for lunch." Gross.

We toured the cellar building and went through every area of it. Another effort towards their sustainability goal is that they don't have any presses for their grapes. They load them through the top of the take and then let gravity do the pressing. It is one of those things where you wonder, "why hasn't this always been the process?" We went to the second floor of the cellar and looked down into one of the tanks which was huge. I asked how heavy the lid was and the guide allowed me to close the tank lid. SUPER cool to be able to say that I have done that. We walked around a little more and then began the wine tastings. We sampled two different types of red wine and they were pretty good. The first one we sampled I liked better because it was more fruity and less astringent.

After the wine tasting we went to their olive oil production building and sampled their olive oils. They were so good and it was really cool to taste fresh olive oil. It was very informational to find out about the process and then to find out that many EVOOs actually aren't, they just say that they are. If the percentage on the back of the bottle is less than 1.1% then it is real EVOO.

We took the bus back to Florence and it seemed to go quicker than the bus ride there which is good. When I got back to the apartment I worked on different things and then went to dinner with Courtney, one of our roommates Ellen, and two of her friends. Dinner was super delicious and I got penne strascicate alla fiorentina which was basically penne pasta in a bolognesse sauce and super delicious. I have had a really good streak lately on food and i am very thankful for that. I love food, sometimes too much.

We came home and finished the night with doing Ellen's nails and straightening her hair, it was a good girly night filled with chitchat.

Con amore, Ciao!