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Sunday, December 23, 2007
Traveling the wine route of Italy, Part II
A Venetian ‘street scene’ (Photo by Gary Porter)
Uncorked reader and guest columnist Niki Foor gave us Despite gender bias, Italy sparkles last month, and this month, she shares Part II of her adventures on the Italian wine route to help get us through the holidays in style. So travel to Venice with Niki and friends, at no cost to you — well, other than the click of the mouse button …
Italian Wine Adventures - Second Stop, Venezia!
By Niki Foor
On a sunny Weds morning in early October, we boarded the Eurostar train at Termini Station in Roma headed for Venezia (Venice, in English). The train traveled through Tuscany on the way to the City of Bridges and left us longing to visit the beautiful hill towns we passed. It was fun to ride by cities such as Orvieto in southern Umbria, knowing that we’d drunk wines made there. For me, that was one of the consistent joys of Italy; it seems almost every little town has a distinctive wine of origin.
The Veneto wine region in northern Italy ranges from Lake Garda in the west to the Adriatic Sea in the east. The Veneto produces more varieties of wines than any other wine region of Italy, with over 80 different authorized grape types. Some of the most popular Veneto wines include Soave, Prosecco, Amarone, and Valpolicella.
We stayed in a small apartment in Venice, off the Via Garibaldi, in the southeastern part of the city called Arsenale. Our first evening, we wandered around the neighborhood, marveling at the beauty of this ancient city, and watching the sun set over the lagoon. I’ve heard Venice described as a dream, and it seemed dream-like, with soft mists and beautiful old building rising out of the water. As we wandered, we stopped in a few enotecas for a glass of wine. In most of the enotecas, the house white appeared to be Prosecco, and the house reds seemed to be mostly Bardolino, which actually appears more rose-like due to its translucent red color. We also indulged in what the Venetians call “Cecchi”, which are little snacks served with the wine, similar to tapas. Usually, they were pieces of bread topped with a bit of salumi, tuna pate, or cheese. After a few glasses of wine and some nibbles, we elected to buy food to cook for our first evening. We found a lovely produce stand right down the street and bought fennel and onions to roast with olive oil then toss with steamed green beans. Those, and a salad with “tonno”, tuna belly canned in olive oil, were lovely with a 2006 Il Greto Tocai Fruiliano that we bought for 3.5 Euros in a corner store. That was another consistent joy of Italy; the retail wine prices were ridiculously low compared to what we pay in Ohio!
We spent the next day walking through the city and seeing many of usual tourist sites. Even on a weekday in October, the Piazza San Marco and the Renaldo Bridge were crammed with tourists. After spending the day in such close proximity to strangers, we again decided to cook dinner. That evening we bought delicious veal at a little corner grocery, along with fresh gnocchi from a little pasta shop. I made a quick tomato and onion sauce for the gnocchi and prepared veal scaloppini with fresh mushrooms, garlic, and lemon, and tossed another salad. We also steamed an interesting green vegetable which looked and tasted a lot like broccoflower but had pointed florets. We had this meal with a NV Prosecco di Valdobbiadne, the La Gioiosa Et Amorosa, which means “Joyful and Amorous” and pretty well described our mood for the evening.
Our last full day in Venice we took the waterbus to Murano, the glass-blowers island. We wandered the galleries looking at gorgeous creations that rivaled the Chihuly exhibit we’d seen at the Dayton Art Institute a few years ago. We stopped for lunch at a place whose name I failed to note, but had a lovely seafood fritto misto and a salad, accompanied by a carafe of the house white, which again appeared to be either Prosecco or a very similar, slightly frizzante crisp white. Our last evening, we again wandered the city, pausing again to watch the sunset over the water, and stopping here and there for wine and cecchi. Later, we had a typical Venetian dinner in another small place whose name I didn’t note. A typical Venetian dinner, by the way, is antipasti of fried anchovies, followed by a primi, or first course, of spaghetti in black squid ink, and a secondi, or entrée, of liver and onions. We chose a glass of limoncello, the wonderful lemon flavored liqueur, in lieu of dessert, and toasted our eventual return to this beautiful city.
The streets of Venice. (Photo by Niki Foor)Tweet
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