Fattoria Le Fonti

Isn't Chianti beautiful? The foreground is a little blurry because I took this from a moving bus. The entire ride down to the countryside looked either like this or like small villages. It makes you wonder why people live in the city at all sometimes.

Through the luck of a friend, she put me in contact with another friend who owns the Fattoria Le Fonti in Panzano in Chianti. It is about an hour and fifteen minute bus ride from Florence up there, and in Panzano Sundays are market days. This meant that I was dropped off in the square in the middle of a market, where you could get everything you might need, from toiletries to clothes to food, though the most popular stand by far was the roast chicken stand. When Vicky picked me up we stopped there to get some rotisserie chicken, fried mozzarella balls, fried vegetables, and french fries. (we skipped the fried polenta. This menu makes the place sound almost American!) While waiting for the food she was stopped at least thrice to say hi to people she knows--Panzano is that kind of small town, where everyone knows everyone else. By the fountain in the middle of the square was a gaggle of old men, who were very clearly just hanging out in the middle of the square chatting about the comings and goings of country life. My guess is that they do this every Sunday and have done so for years and years.

We beat the kids back to the house--Vicky's husband Guido had taken them into the woods for porcini hunting. However a few minutes later they did come back, albeit empty handed. The season has been too dry here too. We all sat down together for a lovely lunch which Vicky had prepared, supplemented by our items from the market. The table was chaotic and large, with Guido's parents joining for the meal. The meal was relaxing and hearty, with lots of oven-roasted things and great, simple flavors. Roasted potatoes with herbs, a caramelized onion tart, wine from their vineyard, and everything finished with a caffe, of course. The kids came and went as they pleased, making lots of noise and enjoying themselves while the adults chatted. This felt exactly like a Sunday lunch should, relaxed, cheerful, and delicious!

Just as we were cleaning up some visitors came by to say hello. The men went off to the wine presses to talk and so Guido could work, while us ladies finished cleaning up the kitchen and then went to sit outside and chat. Guido's parents had left, so it was just me, Vicky, and Katya, but we chatted in the sun together and just relaxed. The kids ran around and played, and it was a wonderful way to spend some time. (This was a theme of the entire visit.) By the way, we chatted in Italian the whole time, and I was following quite well. I took pride in this.

Soon we were invited up to the presses to see what was going on with the wines. Here is where I apologize because I'm about to use some grape and wine terms inappropriately. But the gist will be right at least. Guido was hand-pressing some grapes, mixing the must (juice, seeds, and skins in an early stage, when fermentation has just really started) of some cabernet sauvignon around. At the bottom end of the pole was a big white paddle with holes in it, and he used this to mix everything around. He pulled the paddle up and had me try a grape--it was deliciously sweet and tasted a lot like chocolate, actually. His hands were stained with the juice and looked dark purple. I stuck my head a little into the vat to smell the grapes and was hit with a very strong chemical scent, which was the CO2 the yeast produces as a byproduct of converting the sugars into alcohol.

Showing me the whole process of early winemaking, they next poured me a small glass of their rosato. As these were all wines from the harvest which just passed a few weeks ago, they were in various stages of fermentation, none of them done. As you can see, the rosato is opaque and a very bright color--the skins were just recently removed from the juice. You could smell the yeasts in the entire room, and just a hint of that same smell was in the drink, though mostly it tasted like a wonderfully complex grape juice. Actually that is an insult to this wine, as I have never had a grape juice I liked. This was delicious, sweet, sort of bubble-gum like in flavor, though that could have just been the color which made me think of it. It also was a little bubbly, another byproduct of where it was in the fermentation process. It was something that would satisfy a thirst wonderfully on a hot summer day, and I really liked it. What Vicky said was that once the weather cools down a little further they will strain the rosato and put the wine (as at that point it will have turned from juice into wine) outside to cool and finish fermenting before bottling it in February. I also got to try another wine, which had just passed into the wine stage. That one wasn't as sweet as the rosato or the fresh grapes were, and you could taste the tannins in it. It was not bad, but it definitely had a ways to go before it would be good to drink. It definitely didn't feel as alcoholic as finished red wine though, which makes sense because it still had to go through the second (malolactic) fermentation. I think. If you really want to know about all these processes, buy a book. I have mine, but I clearly haven't done the reading yet.

A recent acquisition for the farm was Salami and Prosciutto. No, they did not just stock their fridge. These are the names of their two pigs. They have a wonderful mudhole, a sturdy shed, and all the scraps from the kitchen. With three kids in the house, these scraps are pretty good pickings sometimes. Today they got potatoes, carrots, pumpkin skin, chestnuts, and some lettuce. Yum! The kids all like to take care of the pigs, and Sophia, at 20 months likes to pull up grass to take over to them. It was very cute to watch all the kids get involved with taking care of the animals, and while they had wanted to name the pigs Ferdinand or somesuch, Guido insisted they have more realistic names instead. Once winter really sets in, they will fatten up further, and will be slaughtered sometime after Christmas.

I had a wonderful day at the farm, and in a week or two I will be lucky enough to go back--this time not for wine, but for olives. The activity will be olive picking, after which we will head over to the mill with the whole day's harvest, and at the end I will have some spicy and bold Tuscan olive oil to take home, picked by my own two hands! I really can't wait to labor and enjoy the fruits of it, and I am so grateful that Vicky and Guido are so generous! I feel like I'm getting the chance to see a different, but no less important side of Italian life out there: the side of production rather than consumption. And being able to participate in it is a really eye-opening opportunity.

 

Tomorrow I head to the Villa I Tatti, Harvard's Italian research center, and the rest of the week is jam-packed with extra classes and an expedition to buy a bicycle. So I will probably (hopefully) be posting daily this week. It's great to be so busy, but it leaves me exhausted sometimes!