2009
Ma che bella e’ stato il mercato! Gosh I’m so glad I skimped on sleep to go. There were so many great things to look at. They had a section for clothes, then part where shoes were sold, house stuff, moroccan things, books, antiques, weeeee! In the end within an hour and a half I’d bought a fabulous pair of Antica Fiorentina black leather boots at a bargain price from the normal retail. Also three wooden small pictures of the alcoholic beverages Campari, Aperol and Cinzano in the poster design I like, and an old Babushka to add to my collection.
After the successful outing at the market we packed our things into the Subaru and said farewell to Zia Chrstina and made our way to the area of Monto Porzio Catone for the wine tsating/show of San Pellegrini’s wines. We arrived and made our way to the table which only had room for one person behind the line so really, Greta and I were not going to required today. On our table was also Mariagrazia of Icardi wines in Piemonte. I’d recognised her face from my Piemonte book I got last year and throughout the day we had a good chat about the Rivetti’s (whom I worked for last year) as she knows them all quite well.
The area here is rather nice and looks over Rome in the distance. Again the weather was immaculate. I also spoke to Silvia from Elio Altare (his daughter) and she had funnily enough worked in Australia once so was happy to chat with me. There was an area outside dedicated to tasting some formaggio, cured meats and beer which were delicious.
For most of the day I think I helped Giorgio out once whilst he went to get a coffee, but instead I went around and tasted the wines that took my fancy and chatted with some people then ultimately crashed under a tree with Greta and Francesca and read and chatted to pass the time. It was a long day! 10am-7pm. At one stage I met the director of the event and he thought I was French so when I passed him he called out, “Escusemoi mademoiselle” haha. He beckoned me over and I played a wine guessing game where it’s in a black glass. You had to guess everything right down to the name of the vineyard. Bit of a joke really, but all you knew was that it was a wine that you could try at any one table today. Big help. I could tell by the nose it was a white wine and thought it was a blend of Chard and Sauv so wrote it was one of Icardi’s. I was wrong. In the end it was a white blend but had Malvasia in it instead. Whoops.
After the event we all headed off to this restaurant ‘Il Monticello’ for a feast of Romany goodness. It’s difficult for me to recall it all as there were a plethora of dishes all in small quantities. So I’ll be really general: there was lamb, tripe in a tomato sauce that I actually liked, pasta with porcini, chickpea nibblies. Mamma mia thank goodness the food was well-portioned! Wines to drink were from the event and we had some delicious ones from Sicily too. I had the ‘tall-version of Richard Gere’ director from before sitting opposite me and around us we had good conversations and I was understanding most of what was going on. It’s when the men start talking dirty that I can’t make out all the slang words, but you get the gist really…men are all the same it seems!
By 11pm the last meal arrived, the dessert, zabaglione with a plum sauce on top…mmmm!
Francesca and I got in the back of the car and slept whilst Greta stayed up with Giorgio to keep him company. What a great weekend though, busy and not much time to relax on Saturday, nevertheless it was time well spent and nice to have a break from work for a bit!
La Donna del Vino 
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