The Agriturismo and Cantina 3: Fattoria Colleallodole
Sorry for the hiatus! Time to get back to Italy. We left the second cantina on our way to an agriturismo for lunch in Montefalco, which is this medieval city and even has their city wall still in tact.
This was the first time any of us had eaten in an agriturismo. I’ve been using that word a lot and I guess it’s time that I defined it. It’s basically a “farm house” resort for vacationers to go to and enjoy sustainable agriculture. Everything (at least 98% or more I would say) that you eat or drink is grown on the property. It’s a huge meal consisting of some antipasto, an appetizer, main course and the dessert. Lets just say we didn’t go hungry while in Italy. You get all this food from anywhere between 25-35 Euros. Amazing and it’s all farm fresh.
The first appetizer, which was some sort of frittata with spinach and sausage.
Fresh pasta with tomato, basil and lemon zest. The lemon zest took the dish to a whole other level.
Our main dish of beef with potatoes and roasted peppers.
The molten chocolate cake with coconut gelato.
After our delicious lunch, we went on to our third and final cantina of the day, Fattoria Colleallodole. Like the other places, this one was tiny, but had an award-winning red that we all got to try and bought. We also tried their white, rosso and sagrantino and passito. Rialto was still my favorite, but this place’s award-winning wine was amazing. It still needs to age for another year or two to be perfect and it’s from 2006.
They spray a diluted copper as a pesticide. That’s where the blue color comes from.
Dr. Awesome and yours truly.
Unfortunately, we had to make our way back to the villa. I was lucky and got to sit shot gun (well, maybe not so much lucky considering how I was feeling earlier in the day) and was able to take some photos of the beautiful scenery we passed by. We had a good hour and change ride back.
Olive trees are cut that way so that the olives in the center of the tree can get the same amount of sun and grow at the same rate as the ones on the outer part of the branch.
Of course, drinking wine all day is hard, so not everyone got to enjoy the scenery.
We got back to the villa around 5/5:30 and said our goodbyes. Mark gave us all Gusto Wine Tour shirts, which was awesome. We really had to thank Dr. Awesome’s mom for setting this all up for us. It was a great experience and we got to see a part of Umbria that we wouldn’t have otherwise (as I said in my previous post). I think it’s great that Mark took us around to places that weren’t as well known, in order to show that you don’t have to get good, complex wine from your run of the mill, huge winery. He basically taught us that wine from Umbria is just as good, if not better, than wine from Tuscany. The reason why he took us so far away was that his company is about a year old and he wasn’t too familiar with wineries in Orvieto. I’m glad that we were able to branch out. What’s the point in traveling if you’re not going to explore?
That night we ended up grilling the rest of the meats we had leftover from the other day for dinner. The next day, we went back into Orvieto, but went to visit the Duomo and the underground tunnels in the city. Next post 🙂
On a totally different note: Thanks to all who came out to the Market on 10/10/10! We had a beautiful day and sold lots of cheese! Even got to meet the great people from Fleisher‘s who gave us the ultimate score in grass-fed and organic meat. We even got to meet their little boy who was a huge fan of our stand. That post will be coming soon as well.
I YUM New York 