Greetings from the capital of chicken curry!

From the yesterday's London International Wine Fair conference the following three conclusions can be made. Wine industry is in structural crisis. Professional wine critics are like panda bears - it's only a matter of time for them to be extinct. Only Twitter can save us.

Bear with me and more Wine Industry Insights will follow today.

Isn't spring lovely?

There's a cherry tree next to the winery building. We were afraid that the tree, being really close to the winery, would not survive the construction mess but the good news is that not only did it survive but there's also hope for abundance of cherries.


The first photo was taken on Saturday and the second today 5 minutes ago. Isn't spring wonderful? Cherries ripening in a matter of days...



And speaking of spring, grapes are blossoming as well. Not the kind of cheery fluffy white stuff you'd see on cherry trees but definitely beautiful in its minimalistic form. Grape blossoms are to the blossom world what Jil Sander is to the fashion world. Cherry blossoms are definitely Moschino.
Who said winery blog has to be only about wine?

Updated look

The winery is beginning to look more like a winery and less like a construction site.

Greetings from the city of (unhappy) love!

So, today we are in Verona - the city of Romeo and Juliet - at Vinitaly wine fair.

Today seems pretty quiet here, so A. paid a quick visit to the Tuscany and Sardinia halls and came back steaming with envy. In case you haven't been to Vinitaly, the fair is divided into halls based on the wine regions of Italy. Usually Tuscany has a huge hall, twice as big as other regions. Whereas Abruzzo (being the chronically underdeveloped South as one wine atlas presented it) shares the hall with some other underdogs, for example this year with Val d'Aosta and Liguria. Contrary to Abruzzo hall's quietly meditative atmosphere, in Tuscany area there seems to be a real rock festival taking place and according to A. it's so packed with people that resembles London underground during the days of Christmas shopping.

We've got our own small attraction here - we take photos of people who want to try out the long-haired Italian look and afterwards end this small souvenir to them via e-mail. On this photo G is trying out the Italian look. His own hair look more-or-less the same, so no big difference :)

The last blog post about the roof (I promise!)

While I'm typing here, we've got some rather heavy thunder and rain outside. So, it's especially nice to know that the roof is ready and everything's safe and dry inside.

Now we can officially move from the roof topic to more earthly matters such as windows and doors. As of now we have the metal structure in place for the windows and now I'm eagerly looking forward to sharing with you photos about the developments when I'm back from my travels next week.

The other earthly matter I wanted to share with you is an absolutely incredible and original fish soup of Lido Esperia, run by a very nice couple Miriam and Vicenzo. Their fish soup is so unique that it has been also on Italian national TV.
We had the opportunity to taste this famous soup at the dinner of the aspirant sommeliers. So, first of all you get this huuuuuge hot plate right from the owen, then the waiter removes the lid and a 2-hour struggle with the soup can start :) Usually you're supposed to first eat the fish and whatever other marine life forms that have been caught in the morning. When you think you've almost managed to eat all, you get chitarra pasta (served on seashells) to put inside the delicious tomato sauce. Oh, almost forgot, this soup is one of the dishes that fits remarkably well with Cerasuolo wine.

The Lavazza factor

Interesting. Since we've had the coffee-machine in the winery the roof guys started to show up almost every day and now... the roof is ready! I'd like to think that the coffee machine changed things here. Anyway, the roof guys were so nice. I'll miss them.

Our roof seems to have become quite well-known in Tollo. When people talk about the location of Vigneti Radica winery, then usually it goes something like this: "Have you seen that building with the big wooden roof? Ok, good. This is Vigneti Radica."

On a more vinuous note, we're currently "preparing the reds" as our enologist says. There's a nice aroma of wine in the air. Not as strong as during the harvest but a kind of delicate hint. Yep, these days we're doing the malolactic fermentation for the reds.

Below a few words to those of you who'd appreciate an overview of malolactic fermentation (a very simplified one).

What is malolactic fermentation?
To explain this we need to look at the acids that are present in wine. There are many different acids but right now we are interested in malic acid and lactic acid. Higher quantity of malic acid means that wine has more pungent taste, whereas higher quantity of lactic acid gives a softer and fuller taste. Malolactic fermentation means that malic acid is turned to lactic acid, in order to soften the taste of the wine.

How does it work?
Malolactic fermentation is something that can occur naturally during the fermentation process or can be triggered by introducing special bacteria. It's better to trigger it because spontaneous malolactic fermentation can produce weird results.
Also, malolactic fermentation is good for red wine, because this is where we look for more soft, round taste and therefore need to reduce malic acid. On the other hand, to white wine malolactic fermentation is a very bad enemy, because it makes the wine lose its freshness.

The weekly DIY column

Working for a small family company is a completely different experience compared to working for a multinational. The key difference being that you get to learn number of new things for which in multinationals there are special departments in India or Poland or 'the other building somewhere across the town'.

So, in the past weeks I have learned the following:
Not all modems are wireless by default.
Printers have cartridges that have to be replaced once-in-a-while. I also learned that you can send the old cartridge back to HP and then learned by calling HP that in Italy this system is not in place yet.
Transport documents are a whole different world. In fact, a kind of underworld. With their own language and rules.
Ricevuta bancaria is quite a clever thing to avoid fraudulent customers.
Wine can be delivered overnight to some thousands of kilometres away but this will come at the cost of 2 nights' stay in a 5 star hotel or a medium-size Ferragamo bag

The last but not least - humanity still uses fax machines! Jesus.... I've SO grown to despise this Olivetti monstrum together with its error messages and the useless user manual!

In the meantime, fax machines aside, we are experiencing huge progress here in the winery. The roof is being completed, slowly but surely. The roof is already 7 months past the deadline, so observing the progress is kind of like watching the seasons pass...
Yesterday we had a very important milestone - the Lavazza coffee machine arrived. The roof-builders were especially happy with the coffee machine, so hopefully now that they have constant supply of coffee, they'll come to work more often.
Where there was a hole in the entrance is now a kind of iron cover, so no more risk of someone falling inside the hole.
And since last week the bathrooms have the windows. Quite nice achievement, especially in cold weather as it is these days.
Today I made order for the doors, so by the end of the month we should have the doors for the office and the bathrooms. By the way, who would have thought there are so many different kinds of door handles to choose from? Casting the door handles took me ages this morning...

That's it for now. Thank you for the attention. Oh, and please send us emails instead of faxes.