Linn's Class Trip to Italy

So, I’ve just returned from a 10-day trip to Italy with my classmates in the Vinfera program. The actual organization was pretty peculiar. This ‘intensive’ program was paid for by the European Union which evidently has money laying around for educational programs such as this as long as they meet certain criteria. The man who set up this program is a native Hungarian who is now living and teaching a viticulture and enology program in Sweden. This guy setup the program to include students from several countries: about 20 Swedes (lecturers and students) 21 of us from Montpellier, several Italian students (a Turk a few Argentines and several Italians) and about a dozen Hungarians. The group was far from cohesive to say the least.

The vinifera group left school the morning of Friday the 17^th and had to drive by bus from Montpellier to Torino (Turin) in Italy. We had one solid day in the Piedmont with lectures at the University of Torino (one of our partner schools) had some lectures on grape varietals native to the Piedmont and the different vineyard management methods and trellising techniques. In the afternoon we visited Fontana Fredda winery which is one of the largest wineries in the Piedmont. We visited the grounds, cellars and had a tasting of one of their Barolos and one of their Barbarescos.

Next day we were off to Valpiolcella where we had a great visit to Allegrini where we saw their grape drying building facilities for the Amarones that they make. We visited a couple of their vineyards and then went to the winery and tasted their Amarone and their top wine La Poja, which is from 100% Corvina. Both were excellent.

We spent only one night in Valpiolcella and then were off to Udine for six nights. We spent two days in lectures and visits to wineries and the experimental farm for the university they have commercial hemp, corn, kiwis, and loads of grapevines. The next two days we spent out at Vini Cooperative Rauscedo learning about rootstock identification, clonal selection, and grafting- I got to try my hand at omega grafting which is a method of grafting there two pieces of vine are fitted together by cutting the end of one piece of cane so as to fit it into a hole of the same shape as the other- which is in the shape of the greek omega. Seemed entertaining but since they annually produce between sixty and eighty million vines (one of many rootstocks paired with vinifera a variety) I think that it would get old quick.

Prior to our trip a classmate- Bisso- told me that there would be a big tasting of wines while we would be in Italy we were to be in Udine and the tasting was to be held in Torino… so he and I skipped class on Saturday and drove the 500 kilometers to Torino (the opposite side of the country) and he managed to swing a free ticket through his company in Moscow (he is the news editor and a journalist for a large Russian wine magazine) for me. We arrived a bit early for the tasting so we were able to briefly swing through the Slow Food fair (the slow food movement started in Italy and is still huge) and this show was enormous… easily the largest trade show ever… aisles of cheese, salumi, regional wines, eau d’vie, grappas, honey, beer and every other natural produit du terroir (as the French call it) we rushed through with an hour to go before the tasting and then moved on to the tasting.

The tasting was held by the Gambero Rosso which is one of the largest and most prestigious wine publications in Italy… tasting thousands of Italian wines each year and then rating them on a scale of one two or three glasses.  Only the best wines get three glasses and this tasting was a tasting of the wines that received that rating. The “Tre Bicchieri” is held every year in Torino in and old Fiat factory. Bisso and I hit Piedmont first trying dozens of wines that I’d never heard of or couldn’t afford, we then moved on to Tuscany which had been picked clean of the Tiganellos, Ornellaia, and Sassicaia but several great wines remained, moved on to the Amarones, and Montepulcianos, Montefalco Sagrantinos, and some southern Italian wines we finished off with the whites which were pretty picked over by then.  A few ‘best of show’ wines for me were from: Bruno Giacosa- Barolo and Barbaresco, Mario Marengo’s Barolo Brunate, Damilano’s Barolo Cannubi, Luciano Sandrone’s Cannubi Boschis, Aldo Conterno, Giacomo Conterno, and Vietti’s wines were all great. Tried two wines from Gaia and thought that they were pretty impenetrable but I suppose they ought to be. From Tuscany I liked wines from Tenuta Fontodi, Fattoria  Petrolo, and Castello de Fonterutoli’s Sepi. From the best of what’s left I tried I had a nice pinot nero from Stroblhof in Alto Adige, a very interesting wine from Nebbiolo grapes handled in an Amarone style of production: Valtellina Sforzato Albareda from Mamete Prevostini, and a great Primitivo made to taste just like a huge Zinfandel the Castello Monaci Artas. Had a nice sparkling wine from Ca Del Bosco “Franciacorta Cuvee Annamaria Clementi” which was killer. Tried a Gravner that was decent (though a bit warm) an amazing trebbiano from Valentini and an interesting wine from Feudi di San Gregario Greco Di Tufo Cutizzi.  We tasted about 80 wines in all and then headed out to spend the night in Barolo with a good friend of Bisso’s the owner/winemaker of Vietti Lucca and his wife Helena. We drove to Castiglione De Faletto where they live and had dinner in the restaurant next door which was great. We had Deutz 1996 Champagne, and two different wines from Giacomo Conterno the 2004 Cascina Francia and the 1995 Monfortina Riserva both were great. So we had a five course dinner with the three cellar workers, Lucca and his wife, Bisso and me. Afterwards we walked across the street to Lucca’s house (which is above the Vietti winery and below the town clock) and slept in their entertainment room/ guest bedroom. In the morning we had coffee with the kids and Helena and then went down to the winery- where Bisso showed me around (he worked harvest there in 07) and we tasted through all the wines fermenting in tank and then went down to the cellar and tasted through the 2006 and 2007 wines which were in the huge oak ovals or botta. Really amazing.

We took the long way back to Udine zigzagging across northern italy- visiting Lake Garda, Verona, and Bisso’s favorite fish restaurant that happed to be  on the way back. Another amazing meal (all manner of sealife prepared pretty much ay way you can imagine) we made it back at about midnight on Sunday to Udine- dropped off the car and were back to the hotel by about 1am. We sat through a marvelous and terribly relevant lecture on the uses of Sewage Sludge (Swedish lecturer) and another lecture on energy (Hungarian lecturer) and then headed off to Trieste for our flight to Paris and from Paris home to Montpellier. We’ve moved into our final section of our warm up section for the year- a preview of what we will see in the upcoming months. This final section in Food Science which is quite interesting so far… though there was a skull crushing lecture on fluid dynamics and another zinger on lipids this afternoon. All in all though it’s nice to be back in Montpellier.

     

J'ai vingt-six ans

Just a quick post to say thank you to everyone for all of the cards (see them behind me), emails and posts of Happy Birthday wishes. It was so nice to receive all of them. 

** The title for this post is French for "I am 26 years old" directly translated it means "I have twenty- six years" **

I had a great day and the weather managed to hold out for most of the day. Friends from my classes remembered it was my birthday from the day we had learned numbers, dates and holidays. They all wished me a Happy Birthday and one even had a gift for me. A japanese girl named Yuka who I befriended on our first day of classes gave me a gift of Japanese stationary and cute stickers for writing letters home. I was completely surprised to receive anything but it was fun to be able to open a gift on my birthday. 

Last night Linn cooked dinner for us and then we went out with a friend of mine and her boyfriend. Rachel was in my French class for the first week then was transfered to another group but we've managed to keep in touch. She is from Minnesota and is so much fun. Her boyfriend Bruno is from the greater Montpellier area, they met when he was studying in St. Paul. The four of us wound up at a British pub "The Shakespeare" for beers and it turned out to be trivia night. We stuck around for two rounds and then they had to leave as they had class early the next morning. 

Linn and I decided to go to a little wine bar we found last week "Esprit Vin." We had a great time there trying some different wines from the Languedoc region and eating delicious olives. I some how "befriended" George, an intoxicated 70-something at the bar and he and I proceeded to have a conversation in French. I looked over at Linn a couple times who looked as though he felt sorry for me but gave me the "you wanted to practice your French" eye. The man asked where we were from and after I told him he launched into his life story which started when he was 19 on a boat to New York. He told us several times than he made his way to San Francisco and loved it there. I understood some of what George said, asked him a few questions, I asked the bartender to translate a little and then I asked him to distract George :)

After our long walk back to the dorms Linn surprised me with a birthday dessert. He had purchased a chocolate mousse dessert topped with raspberry coulis and meringue from this great patisserie around the corner. I was so happy and it was the perfect end to a great day. I tried to set the timer on the camera to take a photo of both of us but couldn't figure it out so I'm toasting my tired self :)

From Linn

All right… I’ve promised to fill everyone on what I’ve been up to with my class, classmates and general geeky wine stuff.

First the school: The school is terrific. The campus is small as is the student body- I think 1200 students from what I read in a document that was written entirely in French… so my translation certainly wasn’t checked with anyone. This would make Montpellier SupAgro the smallest school that I’ve attend since Sacajawea elementary school. The campus is beautiful, there is a large bamboo grove, a two or three acre vineyard, and is about a mile from the center of town. The school was moved from far further north in the late 1800’s in order to do research on how to combat phylloxera when it was wreaking havoc. Marcia- the woman who was so much help prior to arriving is terrific- whirling around and fixing things within and without the school as she sees fit- if a student needs an official looking document helping to get a bank account or needs information on finding an apartment she is the person that can help. Alain Carbonneau is the director of education for this program as well as being the director for the IHEV.

 The classes started off with a general introduction, a lecture on the state of viticulture worldwide, and 15 hours of intensive French for the “debutante” level of French language students, also called “patates” which is the less romantic way to say potato and is also a way to call someone dumb.

The first week we made it out on one winery visit to Domaine l’Horteus in the Pic Saint Loup appellation in the Languedoc. We toured the vineyard with the owner/winemaker and then tasted through the wines. It was a nice introduction to the region and great to get out into the country and see something other than Montpellier for a change.

This week and last we have been working on an intensive economics of the global wine industry segment. Last week we had the top economist in EU wine markets. We had a refresher in general economics- it was nice to have the econ brush up but I felt pretty good about how familiar it seemed. We’re having lectures and tastings with Dieter Hoffmann from the University of Geisenheim in Germany who is also quite a well known wine industry economist who has spoken at length about the ins and outs of the bulk market, and the international exchange in imports, exports and consumption. There are lots of graphs involved, it’s interesting but 90 graphs a day and I start to think I’ve seen all the information in one of the other graphs.

 There is some degree of debate in the EMAVE consortium over what mobility consists of. The original idea was that there we would have to spend the whole second year in another country at one of the consortium schools in Italy, Spain, Germany, or Portugal. The French feel that there is quite a bit of mobility involved in the program as it is and if some people want to stay in France the should be able to. They have agreed that the second year can be divided… if a person stays in France for the first half of the year then they have to go abroad and work on their thesis in another country. Hypothetically I could study between the University at Bordeaux and Montpellier for the first semester next year and then work overseas (even back in the states) for the thesis. My thinking is that I’d like to do my thesis in France in which case I’ll have to spend a semester somewhere else… which is fine on face value but for maximum value it would be nice to be able to not have to learn German/ Portuguese/ Italian etc…  in one year while learning French in order to take masters level classes in enology or viticulture in that different language. There are some rumors that there will be some effort to teach classes in English... which I also feel somewhat guilty about. We don’t officially have to chose which country we have to go to until the end of the first semester, however we have to decide right now which language we want to take… which pretty much means that we all have to decide now where we want to go.  I chose Giesenheim (provisionally) which is very strong in viticulture and economics but also has a good enology program and also has an expert in sulfides in wine. There is a joint program between our sister school in Bordeaux and Geisenheim studying these compounds (both positive and negative) in wines. Since I’d probably be spending time between Montpellier and Bordeaux in the second half of the year I’d do well to get involved in studies while I was at Geisenheim. Also Giesenheim has several programs in alternative vineyard practices- organics, biodynamics and the like.

Also I’m curious about the beer in Germany since it really has a greatly different market for styles that France does… and I think that would be very interesting to see and to consume.

The people in the program are great. There are three other Americans: Trent from California (worked at Chateau St.Jean) Robert from Texas (who worked at a winery in Texas) and Rachel who worked at a winery in upstate New York. There are three Greeks- Nikos, Costas and Dimitrious all great guys all with a different link to the wine industry in Greece. There are Three Germans Matthias, Andreas and Simon all good, all Geisenheim graduates and all quite fun. The French contingent has four people and since they can speak French they have made a bit of money translating for people… Marie, Cyril, Xavier, and Pierre… they are all from different parts of France so it is fun to see the differences and hear about all the different parts of the country. There is only one Italian Paolo, and only one Spaniard Javier, both seems to be good representatives of their country- friendly and patient with the English only crew. There is a singe New Zealander- Carolyn- who is very nice- here with her boyfriend who is going to have to head out and see if he can find a job probably which will be interesting to see what happens since many of us may have to head  out and try and do the same. Driekus is the South- African, he is terrific, funny and quite business-like (similar to Jesus in the tuxedo tee shirt from taledega nights- may anyone who ever had respect for me pardon the reference.) There is also Agatha who is polish, she seems to have quite a good feel for French and is smart enough to not hang out with all of us all of the time. And last but not least is Bisso, he speaks something like 5 or 6 languages, is very smart and is an expert in the Russian wine market. He is content editor for one of Russia’s premier wine publication, organizes travel for staff for the distribution company he works for to travel to see special producers in Europe and abroad. Currently, I suppose, he is an import specialist for the growing Russian marker. He lives part time in Russia and part time in Rome and is generally speaking awesome.  He saved our bacon at the bank too since he and Allison and I all went to get our accounts at the same time and he speaks fluent French and English and the banker and Allison and I could only really manage one out of two successfully.

That’s all for now!