Italian Beer Bust and Good News on the Homefront

Hi all,

I am sad to report that not only have I failed to find and drink any good beer here in Italy, but I don’t think I’ve even had any beer since arriving here.  Though, given the first situation (no good beer), I can’t say I’m too disappointed about the second situation (no beer at all), since Moretti and Peroni don’t have a whole lot going for them.

I’m traveling with my family (a group of six) in a ginganto-van that could fit nine if necessary, and which barely fits on Italian roads.  Getting it in and out of the parking garage at the first hotel required about a 17-point turn, all of which had to be executed with motos zipping around in front and behind the van, and Florentine city buses backing up behind the van and shaking their fists at my dad.

I am not eager to take that thing for a spin, trying to navigate it around Italian streets that change names on each block, around roundabouts that follow no rhyme or reason, and trying to find my way home after a beer or two.  No thanks.

So… what’s a beer hunter to do when there’s no breweries within reach?  Tour wineries of course!  We’ve visited two in the last two days out in the Tuscan countryside around Montalcino.  Each one was at least as fun an experience as most of the brewery tours I’ve been on.

We went to the ‘Salvioni winery’ the first day, only to find that this was little more (in size, not reputation) than an elaborate homebrew shop.  At a building that we swore could not possibly be the right place, an ancient (medieval almost) stone apartment in residential Montalcino, Mr. Salvioni himself opened the door and welcomed us in.  To the left was his home, to the right the former-garage-turned-winery.  Inside were six or seven large oak fermenting casks (each 16 to 20 Hectoliters, which is about 420 to 530 gallons).  This was it!  Downstairs was the ’shipping department, a large closet sized space in the stone cellar with a few cardboard boxes and other packing materials, and the ‘packaging department’ where his daughter glues on the labels by hand with a paintbrush.  In this tiny space, he puts out 15,000 bottles a year of award winning wines.  The tour was a blast, especially considering that his English was about half-serviceable and declined in proportion to the amount of Italian he spoke as the tour went on, so that by the end the tour was almost entire in Italian and we’d just guess at what he meant from his hand motions and the occasional cognates.

Yesterday, we went to Soldera, another family operation.  Their winery sits in the middle of a multi-acre botanical garden that the family planted themselves.  There were lush native plants blooming left and right, over 1,000 varieties of roses, and a crab apple orchard with little fruits weighing down every branch and carpeting the ground.  The winery is entirely natural (no pesticides, fertilizers, etc.), and they grow the garden to enrich the natural ecosystem and promote the growth of plants and local animals, including oversize porcupines apparently.  The winery itself was fourteen meters underground in a space that was only 55 F degrees, without air conditioning, despite the 90 F degree weather outside.  Unlike almost all other wine makers around, they wild ferment their wines with the yeast that lives on the grapes and in the air.  When we tasted it, there was just a bit of funk or tang that I thought might be the result of the wild fermentation, but considering how little I know about wine, it could have been an inherent characteristic of the san giovese grape, or just about any other part of the wine making process.

So, Italy has been a beer bust and a wine bounty, but this has less to do with the Italian beer scene per se, than my modes of transportation and the priorities of my traveling companions.  I leave today for London, where I will attend the Great British Beer Festival tomorrow, so I’ll be back off the beer wagon.

In the meantime, back home on the range, the Toronado 21st Anniversary Celebration is going on tomorrow night (Saturday, August 9th, from 11:30am until close).  I would never miss this if I were back in the states, so please, head on over and drink one for me.  Their press release lists the following bers as special features of the event:

• Bear Republic – Black Mamba – Dark Belgian style wheat beer.
• Deschutes – Black Butte XX Anniversary – Imperial porter (11%)
• Full Sail – Prodigal Sun IPA
• New Belgium Brewing – Foedre 3 – Sour, wood aged barrel selection
• Moonlight – Of Legal Age – A dark lager aged with pinot noir grapes
• Oud Beersel – Framboise – Belgian lambic aged in wood with raspberries
• Ommegang Grand Cru Rouge – From West Flanders, Belgium, spontaneously fermented and aged in wood.
• Port Brewing – 2nd Anniversary Imperial IPA (9.5%)
• Schneider – Aventinus Eisbock (12%)
• Stone – 12th Anniversary Bitter Chocolate Oatmeal Stout (9.2%)
• Russian River – Beatification – Oak aged sour beer from Vinnie

They also list limited cellar release of special bottles (available to go), including:

• Lost Abbey Cable Car
• Russian River Temptation
• Russian River Supplication
• Russian River Beatification
• Toronado 20th Anniversary

I’m dying a little out of envy for those back home, but will be sure to taste around at the GBBF to make up for it!