Truffle Hunting, Wine Tasting, and Olive Oil
Our friends Dick & Victoria Lister from San Antonio visited us in Siena. Dick & I worked together at the same law firm in the early 1980s and he reminded me that he was the first person outside of family to see Laura when she was born 35 years ago as he visited me in the hospital shortly after she was born. We have remained friends through his moves to San Diego and Texas.
While they were here, we scheduled a truffle hunt, as fall is the season for truffles. We had a choice between searching for white truffles (rarer and costlier) or black truffles. We settled on the black truffles because hunting for white truffles required us to have boots, water proof clothes and other serious gear, which none of us considered bringing to Italy. (Most likely, living in San Antonio and Southern California, none of us even own such gear.)
Our Sienese landlady, Francesca, came along as interpreter for the truffle guide who did not speak English. Gary decided not to come at the last minute because he had been sick, so Dick, Victoria, Francesca and I set off to meet our truffle hunter-guide, named Francesco.
We drove to a forested area outside of Siena and began hiking through the woods and shortly the dogs, two Lagotto Romangnolo dogs, an Italian breed often used for hunting truffles, were let loose.
People think pigs are used for hunting truffles and perhaps in some Eastern European countries they still are. But pigs were outlawed for truffle hunting years ago in Italy because they cause severe damage to the environment. I read that pigs can detect truffles 3 meters deep and will start digging; dogs usually can detect only to a depth of slightly more than a meter and tend not to eat vegetation on the forest floor as pigs might.
However, the dogs will eat the truffles if you are not quick enough to get them first. We left that to Francesco. Whenever the dogs started digging or signaled, they found something (and there were false alarms) he would run to them and try to get the truffle before they did. At times he snatched truffles right out of their mouths.
We were in a beautiful and calm cypress forest. We got to keep the truffles that were found and in the space of a couple hours we each ended up with about four or five truffles.
We had arranged for Francesca’s chef-husband, Francesco, to prepare a truffle lunch for us in our apartment after the hunt; he used his truffles, not ours. Laura and her friend Emily were here at the time, so they joined us for lunch. We had bruschetta with a truffle spread, cheese with truffle honey, pasta with truffle sauce, eggs with truffles and a truffle dessert. All accompanied by good wine, of course.
Dick and Victoria were leaving for home two days after the hunt and they stowed their truffles in their checked baggage and used them when they returned home.
I used ours to make truffle risotto — bury the truffle in a jar with risotto for two or three days and then cook the risotto and grate or slice the truffle in it. I also made pasta with truffle sauce, eggs with truffles and we generally grated our truffles on anything we could find as they only keep for about 10 days (wrapped in a paper towel and sealed in a jar in the refrigerator. A truffle shop has opened in the old city, selling black and white truffles, truffle honey, truffle spreads and a wide variety of truffle products. We are headed there today.
Wine Tasting
Our daughter Laura and her college roommate, Emily were here on November 1, Laura’s 35th birthday. We arranged a wine-tasting tour of the Chianti region as a birthday gift.
I am no wine expert; I know what I like when I taste it. Nonetheless, I will try to relate what I remember from our tours, although I may not have remembered everything correctly. Chianti wine here is not like the cheap stuff we tend to buy and drink in the United States. Top-quality Chianti must meet strict requirements and is identified by the black rooster on the wine bottle. That rooster means the grapes are 100 per cent Sangiovese grapes grown south of Florence and north of Siena, the Chianti region. It also means the grapes were grown without irrigation, only rain water, and were hand-, not machine-picked. If there is not a black rooster on the label, but a regional notation — D.O.C.G. — that means that the grapes are at least 85 per cent Sangiovese and the wine can still be called Chianti. We were told that the so-called “Tuscan reds” are blends developed for American tastes as Americans are not accustomed to the tastes of the pure Chiantis.
We visited two wineries. One was a newer winery — the facility was only three years old, although the winemaker has been making wines longer. It is a modern facility very similar to wineries we see along the central coast in California. We toured the winery and sampled five or six wines along with very generous bruschetta and salumi plates. When our guide, Erica, learned it was Laura’s birthday, she brought out a sparkling wine for us to toast Laura.
We enjoyed the wines here and bought six bottles, intending to use three while here and bring three home. Unfortunately, we drank all of them before we could get them home.
We then toured a much different winery — located in an old castle that has been in the same family since the middle ages. We toured the castle, including the dungeon. We walked through the vineyards and learned that botanists from either the University of Perugia or Bologna (I cannot remember which) had discovered ancient indigenous varieties of grapes in some of the Tuscan hillsides and they were working with this winery to propagate and grow them again.
Our wine tasting here was accompanied by lunch and Francesca had arranged for a birthday cake for Laura. Laura and Emily bought wine to take home (not sure if their wine made it home) and we also bought new olive oil, hand creams and soaps made from the castle olives.
Near the end of our stay, our niece Casey and her husband Travis came to visit us in Siena — a stopover on their honeymoon in Italy. They wanted a day of touring in Tuscany and we agreed to drive. They decided they wanted to see San Gimignano. Before we set off Travis was looking at wineries and found one just outside San Gimignano, so we agreed to stop there for tasting.
After some misdirection from our GPS, we arrived at the Tenuta Torciano winery. It was a beautiful setting. We walked into the tasting room/restaurant and were warmly greeted by Chiara and her cousin, whose name escapes me. We had a very brief tour of the grounds and one of the aging rooms, and Casey said, “I think I have been here before.” She pulled up some photos on her phone and found a picture of Elizabeth in the aging room where we stood. She and Elizabeth took a trip to France and Italy several years ago and had taken a wine tasting tour from Florence — and it was to the Tenuta Torciano winery. Both the girls had told us several times that the best meal they had in Italy had been at the winery they visited. So, we decided to stay for lunch.
When we returned to the tasting room, four wines and a salumi plate were waiting for us and we began our tasting. As I looked at the signs and labels with the winery name, I began to think it seemed familiar. Then I remembered that Stephen had brought the name of a winery that someone had recommended he visit when he was here, but we never got there. I had kept the piece of paper he had written the winery name on, and sure enough it was Tenuta Torciano. Chiara is part of the 15th generation of her family growing and producing wine on this property. We tasted eight different wines and had a lunch of the grandmother’s lasagna with white truffle oil drizzled on top. We tasted 30-year-old balsamic vinegar and new olive oil. Chiara was an amazing wine teacher, and this was undoubtedly the best wine tasting experience I have ever had. WE were there nearly four hours and walked out satisfied and sated. We all bought wine, oil and aged balsamic.
We did finally make it to San Gimignano, where we had espresso and gelato from a world champion gelato maker and walked some of the narrow streets of the town before heading home to Siena. We are so grateful to Travis for suggesting this adventure and appreciate that they chose to spend part of their honeymoon with us.
Olive Oil
Have any of you watched the Netflix series Fat, Salt, Acid, Heat? The episode on fat talks about olive oil from Tuscany. Fall is olive season and it is when you get “nuovo olio” — new oil, freshly pressed.
The grocery stores are selling new oil in five- and ten-liter jugs, but we decided we wanted to buy from the farmer. Francesca, who seems to know all things, took us with her when she went to the farm where she buys her nuovo olio each year. Franco, the producer, presses his olives himself and bottles the oil; he ships all over the world. We saw boxes packed and ready to go out to the United States, Japan, Germany.
Olives to be pressed for oil must be picked when green, before they turn black. We were told that December used to be the month for picking and pressing, but due to climate change, they are now picked mostly in November.
The village near Franco’s farm has a community press where small growers can bring their olives to press into oil. Franco used to bring his olives there to press. There can be a long wait and he would usually wait until late at night, when the last person was done, and then clean the press himself before pressing his olives and taking his oil back home to bottle. However, he now has his own press and does everything on his farm.
We tasted two different oils — drank them straight out of a cup — and swooned. We settled on one; we bought two five-liter cans and plan to pack them in our suitcases for the trip home. Franco instructed us to store the oil in a cool, dark place and that once we opened a can, we needed to store it in a glass bottle, preferably green. I am thinking of our garage and my large iced tea dispenser used for parties.
We purchased one bottle to use while here and Franco gave us a small bottle of his other oil as a gift. We only regret that we did not purchase more to ship home.
