About 20 minutes from the factory in the Bologna hills is the beautiful Fedrizzi winery. It's located on a slope and close to a castle that recently sold for 2 million euros.
The winery is run by winemaker Alessandro Fedrizzi who was ranked as #7 winemaker in Italy under 40. At 29 years of age, he already has 12 vintages under his belt. Not too shabby!
We all sat around a table sampling wine with prosciutto and salami. And Italian "sample" pours are what we call a glass of wine in the states.
The first wine we tried was a sparkling pignoletto, very light bubbles and delightfully light. It's a "get ya to dinner" kind of wine.
We next tried still pignoletto, then Barbera and finally a Cab Franc/Barbera blend. Each wine was very good, especially the first and last.
Our next and final stop was this balsamic vinegar maker in the country.
Once inside, we saw this fancy tractor. Do you recognize the manufacturer?
The long and short of making balsamic vinegar is it takes a looooong time. Basically the vinegar eats the wood of the oak barrel over time. It is also DOP quality controlled by the govt and is either qualified as 12 or 25 years aged. So if your vinegar is 80 years old, it's still marked as 25 years. Here's the rub: you can only use a specific bottle (designed by one of Ferrari's car designers) and it must be purchased from the govt for $20 euro each. Talk about a racket!
Once we walked into the aging room, the smell was heavenly!
Time for tasting! Ricardo showed our group how to open a bottle of Lambrusco with a sabar...
...then we had another three rounds of food with the yummy aged balsamic and more Lambrusco!
It was a great day! Luckily we got back at 3:30 and had plenty of time to rest up for a yummy dinner at Trattoria Battibecco.
Geez we were stuffed!! We took a nice after dinner stroll, then hit the sack!
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