Producers

It’s not just a glass of Chianti in the sunset

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Quick! When you think of Italy and its food and drink, what springs to mind? Pasta, sure. Pizza, definitely. Maybe gelato, and of course, a glass of wine to go with the meal. In fact, Italy is the biggest wine producer in the world, flooding shops and supermarkets globally with gallons of Prosecco, mass market Pinot Grigio, and fine reds and minerally whites.

But Italians are also beer drinkers. It’s not to the extent that Germans, Brits or Americans are—you don’t see Italians having keggers, and they tend not to wander around the cities in a beer-drunk haze. But historically, people here drink beer when it’s hot, or if they’re having a pizza night out.

Up until recently, mass market beers ruled Italian supermarket shelves and restaurant menus. But the micro/artisanal brew trend came to Italy too, and people appreciative of good beer have a wide selection of often local, interesting brews to choose from. Restaurateurs have picked up on the trend, too. Not from our house is a place called Umami Beer, whose owner has scanned the world for interesting brews for his patrons. The menu is eclectic too, with a wide selection of snacks, burgers and more traditional local dishes. It’s all part of the general loosening up of the culture, as more Italians travel abroad and acquire a taste for a wider palette of flavors.

The taproom of Staten Island’s finest

Before leaving New York, I paid a visit to one of Staten Island’s two local small breweries, Flagship. The good people there like to name their brews after local places and people. The island’s population is about 37 percent Italian-American, so in recognition of that, they named a Pilsener-style beer (popular here) Birra Locale. (You should be able to figure it out, but if not, it means “local beer.”) My slightly perverse mind thought it would be fun to bring that Birra Locale to an Italian artisanal brewery.

My target: the brewers of Birra Flea. In this case, “flea” is not the pesky little bug infesting the cat and your carpets. The name derives from a local river. I thought it might refer to a family, but no. I took minutes—minutes, I tell you!—of intense online research to learn this. The beer is definitely one of the shining lights of artisanal brews. The big Coop supermarket here places it in its cantina of good wines and small-producer beer, and Roman celebrity chef Max Mariola drinks it regularly as he shows his YouTube following another recipe. Flea comes from Gualdo Tadino, a town about a half-hour from our house that nestles in the foothills of the Apennine Mountain chain.

OFF I WENT THIS MORNING. Flea’s headquarters and brewery is located outside Gualdo on an isolated road. I had serious doubts that anything except a farm might can exist there. But I asked a couple on the road if I was on the right track and they assured me that the brewery was, in fact, down the road. Of course, it ended up being hard to miss, a modern charcoal gray-to-black edifice dominating the area. To emphasize its importance, the outside sign reads “Universo Flea.” I thought, well, this is more than a folksy little brewery.

However imposing the building is, the reception was the typical friendly greeting that’s pretty universal in this part of Italy. As soon as I stepped through the doors, they knew who I was and why I was there. (It wasn’t a mystery; you reserve a tour and sampling on Flea’s website.) The decor is modern yet warm. And for some reason, they have a historic red (what else?) Ferrari parked near the reception desk.

Sara poses with a birra that is definitely not locale.

My handler Sara soon greeted me. I won’t bore you with the details of brewing, but I can say that I was impressed by the tranquil atmosphere, not to mention the huge fermentation tanks. Trashing a stereotype a lot of people have about Italy and artisans, Flea’s operation is decidedly high tech and as sustainable as it can be. They grow a lot of their own malt at a farm not far from where I live. The farm animals that came with the land supply them with milk, which they’ve turned into a cheesemaking operation. I’ve been fascinated by production lines ever since I was a little kid, and the bottling, tapping and packing machinery gave me tons to stare at and admire.

I’ll confess that I love conscientious food and drink producers. And breweries have a special scent, the sweet malt that perfumes the place. It kind of humanizes the assembly lines and the high-tech fermentation tanks. Beer, like wine, has a long history. Sara told me stuff I had no idea about, like how hops isn’t there just for flavor, but also acts as a natural preservative. And centuries ago, nuns figured out how it preserves but also balances the flavor. Before then, most beer was sweet, a natural result of the yeast reacting with the malt or other grain used to brew the beer.

By now, you probably realize that Flea may make artisanal beer, but it’s not a hole in the wall operation. They’re looking toward the future. Much of their electricity comes from solar panels. (In fact Italy leads Europe in solar-derived energy.) And now they’re going to try to brew beer from the air; they’re experimenting with a technology that pulls humidity from the air. They’ll pilot test that water for brewing.

Who needs lunch when you’ve got this to go with the tasting?

At the end, I had a taste test. I chose three beers from their list; I tried to pick different colors and strengths. “Margherita,” a wheat beer, was crisp, not too hoppy, and just right for a hot summer day, or a nightcap. Their golden ale, dubbed Federico II, was fruity and just assertive enough. And a Belgian style ale named Violante was, just as the label said, powerful and just right for a cold night and stew. Because we’re in Italy, food soon appeared in front of me, so I didn’t have to think about lunch—the cheeses on the tray come from their cheesemaking operation.

Flea turns a decade old this weekend. If the next decade resembles the past ten years, they may have to reassess that artisanal tag. In any event, this afternoon was a great way to see a bunch of mostly young people making a terrific product in a beautiful space.

Perugia? You know, the place where the chocolates come from.

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More than 100 years ago, a woman named Luisa Spagnoli had a chocolate shop in Perugia. Spagnoli was married, had a kid, and was a successful business woman. But she wasn’t exactly faithful and carried on a longtime affair with Giovanni Buitoni of pasta-making fame. She and her paramour would send love notes to each other wrapped around chocolates. These notes, and those chocolates, became the basis for the famous chocolate and hazelnut confections known as Baci, by the company Perugina. That company is now unfortunately part of the sprawling Nestlé conglomerate. (I could go into what a disaster Nestlé has been for local employment…maybe another time. I want to keep this light.)

Perugia, Perugina, Baci, chocolates. The city became intertwined with its most famous product. Whenever people ask where we are in Italy, I’ll tell them Perugia, and if they look puzzled, I usually add “you know, where the chocolates come from” and they sort of get it. This city is also known for hosting festivals seemingly every other day, but I exaggerate, The biggest one is Umbria Jazz in the summer. “Jazz” is applied loosely here; we’ve been to concerts by REM, the P-Funk mob, and Caetano Veloso.There’s a journalism festival around Easter time. And if it’s October, it’s time for Eurochocolate. This city is not about to let a marketing opportunity go untapped.

Except when stuff like Covid-19 pandemics hit. In 2020, they were all canceled, as was the journalism festival this year. But Umbria Jazz and Eurochocolate came back in limited, socially distanced, vaccine-proofed ways. We avoided Umbria Jazz this past summer, but we couldn’t miss the chocolate bash. Instead of holding it in Perugia’s historic center, the organizers moved the show to Umbria Fiere, a convention center in the burbs. Entry was ticket-only, and it seemed that ticket sales were designed to keep crowd sizes down. Or maybe it was just because we decided to go on a Thursday?

If they had intended to hold attendance down to encourage social distancing, it sure didn’t look like it. The parking lot isn’t exactly sprawling, but the lines to get in–or I should say the space for the lines to enter–were long and wound around the building. You can see from the photo below that organizers channeled the different kinds of ticketholders into different lanes. The weird thing was you could count on one hand the number of people in each lane. And all three lanes converged so that one guy could check our “Green Pass“–proof that we’ve been fully vaccinated or had a negative Covid test within the previous 2 days.

Three goes into one at some point.

Whatever. The scene inside was crazy—seemingly every artisanal chocolate maker in Italy was present, as was the German chocolatier Lindt and, of course, Nestlé, er, sorry, Perugina. But the whole thing begged the question, how successful an experience could Eurochocolate be without its usual context. And I’d say, good try, but let’s try again next year for the real thing. It’s no fault of Perugia or Eurochocolate; Covid-19 is the culprit. Still, going out to the convention center and wallowing on chocolate wares wasn’t the worst way to spend a Thursday afternoon.

Part of the charm, if you want to call thousands of people crowding the centro storico (historic center) of Perugia to look at and taste and buy chocolate wares charming, is of the city itself as a backdrop. Baci candies are produced by a company called Perugina, and chocolates are a big part of the fabric of this place, giving it fame that it might not have otherwise. There are quite a few beautiful small cities in Italy, and they’ve gotten good at being known for one thing. Ravenna, up in Romagna, is about the same size as Perugia. And although it’s not a college town like Perugia, it’s got priceless and beautiful mosaics that attract people and keep them coming. (Below, Eurochocolate kept a small presence in Perugia to remind people that it was happening, and to sell some happy stuff.)

Umbria Fiere, the venue for this special edition, is a sprawling convention center near Assisi and only about 25 minutes away from our house. It’s in a town called Bastia Umbra, which is a fairly prosperous satellite town of Perugia’s, at least judging from the shops you see, like the French furniture seller Roche Bobois. There’s a compact center that’s okay, but there’s lots of suburban sprawl of the kind that must make romantic Brit and American Italophiles break out in hives. (I’ll save for later the subject of how the food in strip malls in such nondescript places sometimes beats what you find in more atmospheric spots.)

In any event, I made sure I had enough samples and bought a couple of artisanal chocolate things to keep me happy. The people at the stands and helping out on the floor were cheerful and helpful, and it was nice to see some Sicilian producers. Umbria chocolate makers have a real rival in the producers from my father’s island. And I probably will remember the dark hot chocolate I had at one stand (gallery below, lower left) for the rest of my life.

500 hours of solitude (give or take): All the pretty colors

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I overestimated. Those 500 hours I thought I’d spend alone seem rather less, and that’s probably a good thing. While I’m talking to myself a fair amount, it’s not any more than usual. And I keep bumping into people I know, or they or I make appointments to meet. I forgot that I have more of a social life here than in New York,

Part of the difference is location. Our house in New York is in an outer borough-—the outermost borough, in fact: Staten Island. It’s a pain to meet people for lunch when they’re in Brooklyn or Manhattan. I either have to drive over a bridge or take a ferry and probably the subway. Up here on the mountaintop, we’re only a few kilometers from the town and an easy 20-minute drive to the nearest city. Plus Italians are more spontaneous. Chances are if you say let’s have lunch or a drink, they’ll say yes. New Yorkers, and Americans in general, have to check their calendars first. It’s the cult of busy-ness. If you ain’t busy, you’re a loser.

Anyway, I was reminded of Staten Island’s outer outer borough status by a friendly gentleman who sells ceramics. He’s Ubaldo Grazia, and his family’s company has been selling this beautiful stuff for, like, forever. I met him because a friend of mine visits him every year. She comes to Perugia most winters for a few months and take a language course, but this year her visit was a short one because she and her husband just moved into a house they built. But Grace, a semi-retired lawyer from Pennsylvania, wanted to get some kitchen accent tiles, and since she and I planned to get together, she asked if I could drive her to see Ubaldo. He likes to know his visitors and asked me where I was from, in English. “New York” “But where?” “New York City.” “But where in New York City?” “Staten Island.” “You’re not from New York,”

Ubaldo at the doorway of his workshop

Yeah, right. Just listen to my accent. I think the way I write has a New York City kid accent too. But anyway I promised in the first of these posts that if I didn’t have a lot to say I’d just post pictures. So here they are. They look great on my Mac laptop, I hope the colors pop on whatever you’re using, These are all Grazia ceramics, from the capital of ceramics around here, Deruta,

That was hard work, looking at all that eye candy. So we went off to Torgiano, mostly famous these days for the Lungarotti winery/Relais & Chateau hotel. But the Lungarotti family isn’t the only game in town. Our friend Letizia, of the cooking school and bed & breakfast La Madonna del Piatto said we should try out Siro for its rootsy Umbrian food. I’m glad we did.

It still may be winter, but artichoke season is upon us here, a few weeks early. So how could we not indulge? First, some fried small ones:

And my lunch companions had this pasta, olive leaf-shaped packets of artichoke cream.

It was all washed down with a bottle of my latest favorite white wine, Trebbiano Spoletino. In particular, Adarmando from the producer Tabarrini from Montefalco. If you can find it, grab it.

The old grind

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I whined a couple of weeks ago about the dark, grey, rainy weather we’d been having and how it sent me wandering around the local Centro Commerciale (somehow “mall” sounds better that way). One of our friends here had a suggestion: She said we should visit the Antico Molino Bordoni, an old-fashioned flour mill outside Foligno, a few towns south of us. They use millstones, they’re powered by water, and their wheat and corn—for polenta—flours are better than anything you can buy in the supermarket.

Our friend, Letizia Mattiacci, was right. And she should know. Letizia is the Madonna del Piatto, a cooking school and B&B outside of Assisi. She gives great classes and puts up students, if they wish, in her beautiful old farmhouse up in the hills. She’s often quoted in the U.S. press whenever American travel writers somehow manage to wander from neighboring Tuscany to see what this little region next door is like. If you’re in Umbria and you like to cook, you should take a class from her. (In fact, you should make a special trip here to cook with her; it’s worth it.)

Of course, being my usual procrastinating self, we didn’t get around to visiting the mill until the weather turned sunny and springlike. No matter—it was a splendid way to spend President’s Day. We pointed the Renault’s nav system to the address, and off we went, dodging the usual maniacal black Audi drivers on the highway.

When we got near to the mill, we found a main road under construction. The exit we saw in real life didn’t match the exit on the navigation map; they apparently are turning a minor road into a limited access highway-type thing. So we breezed right by it. “Recalcolo percorso,” the female robot voice said. “Fate un inversione a U.” (Recalculating route…make a u-turn.) Ms. Renault was going apoplectic and I couldn’t stop giggling every time I heard “a U,” which sounds sort of like “ah-oooh!”

We doubled back, found the right way off, and drove down the street. It all looked unassuming, and we found a spot right out in front. You wouldn’t know by looking at it that there’s been a mill on this site since the 14th century. There was a little storefront with a few sample bags out on a shelf, along with a multilingual poster about the place. People were obviously at work in the workshops in back and off to the side, but it seemed like no one was taking care of the retail end. Or so we thought until the owner’s son came over to greet us. We told him that Letizia sent us, which brought a smile and an offer to show us around.

Our guide for the morning

And what a show. I loved this stuff, being a food geek and a manufacturing geek. I love watching videos of assembly lines, and my father worked for a company that made electronic connectors, and I used to love going to work with him and watching the big presses and molding machines do their thing.

“Everything is run with renewable energy,” our guide started off. Being a mill, there’s a river nearby. It used to turn the turbines that turned the stones, and it still can all work that way. But they combined new electric mills with old-fashioned, real stones, and all the power is generated by the water rushing by. They rerouted the water to run their generators–a pretty neat trick.

The real thing
A river ran through it.

They still have all the old stuff though. We walked out to the street and down a stairway that looks like your typical New York City stairs to an apartment house boiler room and found ourselves in an stone and arch wonderland. The old millstones stood by waiting for another batch of farro or red corn, and the old water channel stood mute, waiting for the river to run through it. To be honest, the place would make a terrific party or dance venue, with some decent lights.

What really impressed though, is something I’ve seen time and again here: pride in the craft. Our guide obviously buys into the whole operation; it’s provided his family’s livelihood for a century. He knew everything about the place and its history and how everything works. We learned about the difference between what they do and what big producers do, from the texture of the millstones to the grains they use. These people use strictly local grain—he had a couple of ears of dried corn to show us what goes into the polenta. It was dark red and yellow, “more nutritious than the lighter corn the mass producers use.”

That pride isn’t limited to Italy, though it seems easier to run across small producers in this part of the country that’s dominated by small producers and artisans. You see it in New York City’s greenmarkets, too. You can spend hours talking to a farmer or cheesemaker if that’s your thing. Mass produced food may be cheaper, but it’s usually less intense. I find myself adding hardly anything to vegetables I buy at the greenmarket or in the local markets here, because the food doesn’t travel far to get here, so you get a more developed flavor.

Decisions, decisions…impossible. So we bought one of each.

We bought a bunch of different flours at the mill. We’re trying the polenta tomorrow. It’s not the instant, add hot water and stir kind. I’ll be stirring for about 45 minutes. I take Letizia’s word that it’s worth it. In fact, she stopped by yesterday with some handmade treats, one of which is the most intense orange marmalade I’ve ever tasted.