Wine Stage

It has been a little longer than usually, but no worries because I have some exciting news for you. Wine stage was amazing. Well, maybe that’s not so exciting for you, but it’s exciting for me.
The first day we went to Fontanafredda and learned about their history and got a tour of the production facility. We finished the day off with a guided tasting of one of the companies Barolo wines. Fontanafredda is a very large conventional producer of red and white wines with an annual production of six million bottles. They also had an amazing meditation trail surrounding the vineyard and forest on the property. As well as two restaurants that looked beautiful, one was BBQ style, and one was French.
The next day we visited Osella, a fresh cheese producer. Odd I know since it’s wine stage, but it was still pretty cool. They also had a great lunch after the tour with their cheeses. After that we went back to the school, and had a guided wine tasting of red wines at the wine bank. This was a great experience and I learned so much about how to taste wines.
The third day was jam packed with wine tours. We started at Batasiolo with a tour of their facility. Our tour guide was the company’s sommelier and was able to tell us everything under the sun about wine and the winery. Batasiolo is also a large conventional producer of red and white wines with an annual production of about 2.5 million bottles. They took us out to lunch in Barolo which was very nice. We got to have a glass…or two, of three of the companies wines. A 08’ Roero, a 07’ Barbera, and a 04’ Barolo. Along with some company Grappa. I couldn’t have asked for a better lunch.
So after all that, we had one Moscato producer to visit. We drove to the company Saracco were we saw the vineyards that produce the Moscato grape and we saw the facility where they make it. Moscato is unlike the other wines we tasted because it is white and sweet. The wine is also not aged and is produced in metal tanks. Saracco is a smaller conventional winery with an annual production of 380,000 bottles. We even were gifted a bottle of grappa made by a friend of the winery from skins of the Moscato grapes discarded by Saracco.
The final day of the wine stage was capped off by another visit to the wine bank for a tour and tasting. The wine bank truly is a unique building created as a museum and cooperative for Italian wines. It showcases a little more than hundred wineries with thousands of wine from all over Italy. All wines are more or less given to the wine bank so they can be stored and protected as well as promoted and some sold at a little above cost. We also had a tasting of white wines that really didn’t care for, so I won’t bother talking about that.

Thanks to UNH and UNISG for setting this whole program up for us, it was a great experience for everyone.