Biou!

This weekend, our friends from the House of Bava are beginning grape-picking. 

In Arbois, France, where I recently spent a very happy couple of days recharging my batteries, the grape harvest is celebrated in a very special ceremony in early September every year. The first of the grapes are used to make the Biou, an enormous bunch of grapes made up of dozens of smaller ones. The Biou is paraded in the streets to general celebration, carried by four local winemakers and accompanied by two fiddles. The Biou is then hung in the ancient parish church of St-Just as an offering to God (and I suspect as a throwback to a more pagan ritual). 

Gilles Thouyard's 1988 stained glass depiction of the Biou.

Eglise St-Just, Arbois

Good luck and buon lavoro to all our friends in the wine industry who are harvesting their grapes about now. We look forward to schlepping a few cases up the hill and popping those corks in years to come!

And a good time...

...was had by all. 

The Christmas roll call was (left to right): Michel Lafarge 2007 Bourgogne Passetoutgrain; Louis Casters blanc de blanc champagne; Lafarge 2002 Bourgogne Pinot Noir; Burmester 1992 LBV Port; Lafarge 2007 Meursault; and Lafarge 1996 Vendanges Sélectionnées Volnay.  

PS After a glorious, nay, magnificent sunrise, the day is cloudy, still and frozen with the occasional sunny nanosecond.

Vineyard, Neive

In My World, a good winemaker is never very far away...

The Brothers Traversa

Warm, but raining gently. 

Last weekend to Neive, and the vineyards of the Brothers Traversa, perched picturesquely on Canova Hill in the Langhe wine region, about two hours south of Lago Maggiore. Along the winding lake road, through the holiday-season bustle of Verbania, threading through the tunnels south, south. Past the flat rice paddies of Vercelli, now flooded and reflecting the still-snow-capped Italian Alps and studded with herons out fishing. At last we found ourselves among the gentle hills of the Langhe, on the hottest day of the year so far.








We came in search of a wine we had experienced in 2004, at a restaurant in San Giulio d'Orta. Strange how sometimes a wine label stays with you, right down to the address of the vineyard...

We were greeted by Franco Traversa and his collie, Linda, who while we were tasting, taught Jakob a thing or two about doggie manners. We filled our boot with Franco's charming 2004 Arneis, a lovely vivace Barbera - called La Giovincella - which has not yet given me the headache that usually comes with the slightly fizzy reds, and a 1999 Barbaresco for weekends and other special occasions.

Conveniently, the Traversa family run a rather nice agriturismo, from which one may visit not only their own vineyards and those of Neive, but also the more famous villages of Barolo and Barbaresco, which are both within a cork's pop.

Recommended. Merrily.

PS In Cannobio, Traversa wines can be found on sale at the ever-delightful Casa Bava.

Il Sorriso della Provincia

Hot.

To Gattinara and its Chiesa di San Pietro (founded in the 11th century, with a 15th-century façade and 19th-century interior). This little chap is to be found adorning the main door, indicating one of the region's two famous products: wine. Gattinara lies in the Colline Novarese wine region, which is principally nebbiolo for reds and moscato for whites. Politically, Gattinara is in the province of Vercelli, and the town of Arborio is just down the road, so you can guess what the other local product might be.

Round the corner from the church is Gattinara's cantina sociale, where we found what seems to be a very drinkable sfuso - Gattinara 2007, a mongrel mix of nebbiolo, bonarda and vespolina grapes. At 11.5% it's not going to make Mama fall over after a couple of sips, and at 1.30 euros a litre it's not going to break the bank, even if it does break our backs getting 75 litres of the stuff up the hill.

In the entrance to the cantina sociale is a sign proclaiming, "Gattinara, sorriso della provincia". Let's hope after a few months in the cellar it will still be bringing smiles to our faces over here in this provincia too.


PS A further wildlife sighting this week : a large badger, perhaps the same one that we see shuffling about in a certain spot at least once or twice every summer.

Wisteria season at Casa Bava

Raining and cold. Ten degrees colder, in fact, than yesterday. Snow overnight on the mountains.

But let's look on the bright side...

The wisteria are in exuberant bloom all over Carmine and beyond.




And this is the most beautiful wisteria of them all, at Casa Bava, Cannobio's most celebrated wine merchant, itself celebrating the arrival of the latest (2007) vintage of its own-label wine, LagoBava.



The Bava family have been selling wine from this beautiful building for more than 100 years. Here you'll learn something about wine in general, and Piemontese wines in particular from the elegant and knowledgeable Bava brothers. And if you're lucky, you'll discover something of the history of Cannobio's fascinating lakefront in this ancient stone labyrinth of a house. You might even want to buy some wine...



Recommended.

What are you giving up for Lent?

Cold, grey and fairly foggy. Damp on the ground. Rain later.

Some years ago I spent the best part of a year in northern Nigeria, in Hausaland. Land of mud palaces, bitter poverty, fleeting moments of political power and the ever-ready muezzin with his call to prayer.

My stay spanned Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting and prayer, roughly equivalent to the Christian Lent. Ramadan was an experience. The year I was there it coincided with the hottest part of the year just before the rainy season began, and with certain political moves by the IMF that had ordinary Nigerians queueing for days (I kid not) for petrol.

It was brutal.

For everyone.

We woke before daybreak to eat a meal that had been prepared the night before and drink as much water as we could before our bodies screamed enough. Then, feeling like tanked-up camels, we would go back to bed for another few hours as the first call to prayer of the day sounded and the shutters went down on food, drink, smoking and all other bodily pleasures.

As the Koran commands, we were all sitting in our places in the evening when the muezzin called his last round of the day and as soon as prayer was finished, we broke our fast first with dates and then with a slow, full meal of unbearably hot meat stew and pounded yam. I came quickly to adore dates.

As non-Muslims, we were not required to fast, but any bending of the fasting laws we were asked to keep to ourselves. I opted to drink water during the day and would creep to the kitchen for a sly glass every so often - most often at prayer times, when everyone else was otherwise occupied. I didn't eat, but I smoked throughout.

My then-husband, though, had a worse time. I don't think he'd mind my saying that he was fairly addicted to alcohol. He found Muslim Nigeria hard enough, having to slope around in dark corners in search of a discrete beer, but at Ramadan, even the ultra-dangerous backstreet bars were closed and he went almost insane. His art, for artist he was and is, went into a manic multicolour phase to prove it.

Why am I telling you all this? Partly because it's good to reminisce. Nigeria was tough, but a very important life-experience. Partly because today is the start of Lent (if you live in Ambrosian Carmine), and I've decided I can't live without chocolate - my usual Lenten fast - and I'm going to quit alcohol instead.

I've chosen alcohol because it should be possible for me to go the whole 40 days. Easier than chocolate anyway. And a million times easier than tea, to which I am totally and unashamedly addicted.

I'm not a big drinker. In fact, anything beyond a couple of glasses of Burgundy or Barbera in any 24-hour period makes me so physically sick I've come to believe I may be allergic to alcohol. I quit drinking spirits the day I found I was pregnant with AJ and I never went back, not even when tempted with a peaty Island Malt proferred by one of London's most celebrated whisky connosseurs. I was married for seven years to someone who preferred the bottle to his wife. Happily, he went on the wagon the day I left him and has never gone back. But the experience has left me with an extreme abhorrence of drunkenness - even the 'happy drunk' variety - which means I haven't stepped into a pub in what seems like decades.

But I do enjoy a quality wine that ages nicely and doesn't give me a headache, and I'm prepared to drive all the way to Burgundy and back a couple of times a year in search of a predictably good drinking experience. Or Sizzano, or Asti. And, more to the point if you live in Carmine, I'm prepared to heft a couple of cases onto my back for the long walk up. So perhaps I will miss my mealtime tipple and my weekend aperitif after all.

If my Lent resolution is anything like my New Year's Resolution - yes, it's now March 1st and I still haven't finished January's Nobel book, let alone February's - I won't get much further than Tuesday. But we'll see how we go. And I'm going to bore you every day with a bulletin to let you know how I'm doing - perhaps shame at failing will keep me on track.

So what have you given up for Lent?

Copyright © Louise Bostock 2007, 2008, 2009. All rights reserved. Please ask first.

Two days ago : Orta and Sizzano

To Lago d'Orta and the beautiful borgo vecchio of Orta San Giulio, with its frescoed meeting-house. Amid its stone roofs and medieval alleyways we felt very much at home.

And the pretty boats tied up on the hard were perfect for tourist shots.

The inevitable pizza was consumed at Ristorante Venus (get there before midday), with a view of the beautiful island of San Giulio and its 6th-century basilica.

We didn't take the boat across - more pressing matters to attend to, including, for the six children in our charge, gelato at Arte del Gelato, on via Olina (homemade, so they say, delicious whatever).

The important business of the day was, though, cheese- and wine-shopping in the slightly-more-distant Valsesia region. Cheese from the Caseificio Franco Paltrinieri in Prato Sesia : unprepossessing premises right next to the dairy, but magnificent gorgonzola and a toma di Valsesia that will make your mouth water (choose between pasteurised and unpasteurised, old and young).

At Lorenzo Zanetta in Sizzano, we acquired a quantity of their Rosso Colline Novarese, a satisfying bonarda-nebbiolo mix. €1.50 for a litre. No 5-litre containers allowed. We staggered away (and later up the hill) with 95 litres - a stock of table wine to last about 7 months and some for a friend.

We also came home with one cold, one migraine and a case of mild heat exhaustion.

A day out

A clear day at Lago Maggiore, with the thermometer reading four degrees at 8:30am (although it feels much, much colder). Further south, among the rice fields of Vercelli there is a rising mist, and just north of the Po an all out fog (is it always like that?).

Our twin destinations were the Duomo at Casale Monferrato in hot pursuit of traces of the Knights-Templar, and the Nuova Capelleta winery in Vignale Monferrato for some bio-dynamic barbera.

Both destinations recommended. The wine also.