Who doesn’t love a good plate of pasta? Or an antipasti with
cheeses, meats and vegetables? I know, those aren’t legitimate questions
because the answer is “Everyone!”
Italian dishes rank high on the short list of favorite food.
A good Italian restaurant is a treasure in any neighborhood.
Recently I attended Savor Italy Los Angeles. The event was
devoted not to a tasting of restaurant dishes but of products available for the
home.
The one-day event was hosted by
the
IACCW (Italy-America Chamber of Commerce West) to promote imported Italian
food and wine. For the 30+ purveyors, the event was an opportunity to interact
with distributors and consumers. Most offered a tasting of their wines, olives
oils, charcuterie and packaged baked goods.
With wine glass in hand, I joined the
crowds at the Santa Monica Bay Woman’s Club waking past rows of tables. Many of the companies had local
distributors, but not all as the signs on their tables said, “Looking for
Distributors.”
A catered buffet lunch was another way to shine a spotlight
on Italian products with large platters of charcuterie, cheeses, olives,
crackers, breads and olive oil catered by the attentive Elisabetta Ciardullo
Criel of
Think Italian Events. I filled my plate with Italian ham, mortadella,
paper-thin flat breads, Gorgonzola, burrata and Castelvetrano Green olives while I looked for a nice glass of wine to go with my lunch-snack.
The fun of the event was not only in sampling wines and snacking
on Italian taste treats but in talking with the people who were there to represent their products.
It was early in the day so I thanked Gian Mario Travella for the offer to taste his Freccianera Prosecco. Near closing time I did return to sample the amber colored, barrel-aged Grappa Invecchiato. Very delicious.
With a smile Andrea Grondona offered a taste of
Grondona Pasticceria’s pan dolce (sweetened bread with bits of fruit) and the Baci di
Dama (chocolate ganache filled cookies). Full of flavor and moist, I was
impressed that packaged baked goods could taste so fresh.
A few steps away, Leo Melgar and Giancarlo Rosito stood
behind the
Rosito Bisani table with machines used in an Italian restaurant
kitchen--a panini press, deli slicer, hard cheese grater for Parmesan and a
pasta extruder. They had one home machine, The Reale 1 Compact Espresso Machine.
With a butter cookie in hand, a last gift from
Andrea Grondona, I explained how happy I would be to have an espresso to go with
my cookie. Being a good Italian with a love of hosting, Rosito led me upstairs
where the Reale was set up. His strong cup of espresso was the
perfect accompaniment for my butter cookie.
Upstairs from the downstairs
A mezzanine meeting room was set aside for presentations
about Italian wine, olive oil and balsamic vinegar. In that quiet room, speakers
talked about the terroir that gave their products their unique qualities.
Smartly dressed wait staff poured samples as speakers talked
through their Power Point presentations.
“Ready for bubbles?”
I arrived as
Laura Donadoni was describing the terroir and techniques of the
Franciacorta winery
located in the north of Italy. As a server poured a tasting of the La Valle
“Primum” Brut (75 % Chardonnay; 20% Pinot Noire; 5% Pinot Blanc), I settled in
behind a flight of six wine glasses.
Donadoni asked us to raise our glasses so we could
appreciate the fine bubbles streaming from the bottom of the sparkling wine
flute.
She regaled the gathered group of aficionados with details of weather, soil quality and harvest particulars that created the distinctive qualities of half a dozen Franciacorta wines.
When I returned for the 6:00pm wine tasting, Laura
Donadoni had returned to introduce wines from Lugana. Very different from the
morning’s sparkling wines, I liked the 2013 Lugana Doc Vendemmia Tardiva, a
light dessert white wine. With its ginger, lemon zest
notes, for Donadoni, the wine would be perfect at the end of a meal with cheese or with a dessert
like panna cotta.
After we had a sip of the Lugana Doc Riserva, Donadoni
polled the gathered group, “What do you taste? What notes?” With noses in their
glasses and swirling before tasting, people called out, “Watermelon” and
“Jasmine.”
“Everybody, each one of us, can feel what we taste and smell
based on what we have lived in our lives. It is very individual. The difficult
part is to connect a sensation with a name. Ok, now we can drink it.” The 2015 Lugana Doc
CONCHIGLIA (Citari) had a clean flavor, light, with
more acidity than minerality. Very pleasurable.
The 2014 Lugana Doc Superiore CA LOJERA (Ca’ Lojera) was
fermented in oak barrels and that gave the wine a spiciness. We took in the
aroma and sipped as she talked about how we could taste “wood” and white clay
in the wine with a little “apple” sweetness.
While she was talking, the A/V went blank. “It is telling me, ok, Laura, time to stop.”
But with a
smile she continued because she loved the wine and its layers of flavors. “It
has a sweet lemon and almond flavors and a beautiful finish of apricot with a
touch of minerality. The wine can age another 5 years with great benefit" and with that she ended her presentation to the audience's applause.
Oil and Vinegar
The final guided tasting of the day was not about wine but “Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Balsamic Vinegar, Modena.” U.C. Davis’
Orietta Gianjorio is a juror and author,
a 3
rd
level, Advanced Sommelier, Certified Olive Oil Taster and Member of the Italian
Registry (also a 2
nd Level Honey Taster, 2
nd Level
Chocolate Taster, a Delegate for the Academia Italiana della Cucina, and author
and International Judge.) Given all her titles, you can tell that Italians take
their food very seriously!
Her tasting was not only designed to give us a flavor
experience but also to introduce us to the vocabulary we would use to describe
that experience.
The olive oil tasting sheet listed disagreeable and
agreeable qualities. DEFECTS, it said would be rancid, fusty, musty and winey.
AROMAS like green, ripe, citrus, mint, hay-straw and almond are good. And then
there was a question about BODY. We would taste for mild, medium or robust.
The same was going to be true of the balsamic vinegars she
had brought with her. Balsamic had a different set of descriptive words to
communicate quality: DENSITY (thick, fluid, inconsistent, lipid, slightly
veiled, cloudy), COLOR (light brown, dark brown, Brown, Amber, Dark Amber);
SMELL (Intensity, Persistency) with aromas of raspberries, apricots, plums,
dates, figs, prunes, raisins, cassis, black currant, blackberry and so on.
Gianjorio loves what she does and with the short time
available to her, she had much to share. “We have an hour or more but you tell
me when you are tired. I will teach you how to evaluate your palate when you
taste balsamic vinegars and olive oil. I do this every day so I am used to it.”
She explained that a taster has to have good taste buds but
also must practice tasting to be good at it.
But before we could do our tasting, she talked about
fundamentals.
Extra Virgin Olive
Oils
“Extra Virgin,” she asked, “What does that mean?” She polled
the group. After a lot of guesses, she explained that it does not mean “first
press or cold press.” Today olives are not pressed. Olives are washed,
defoliated, then ground up with hammers inside a closed container. The change from
open grinding was to prevent the olives being exposed to oxygen because once oxidation
begins, the quality of the oil decreases.
After grinding, the olive oil is “massaged” before being
placed in a centrifuge which separates the water from the oil. The water is
discarded. The oil is filtered and graded.
To be labeled “Extra Virgin” the product must be an oil that
is produced only with olives and was extracted with a mechanical not chemical
method at a specific temperature (80-86 degrees). After production, the olive
oil cannot be mixed with any other oil. And the oil must all be “new” oil not a
mixture of old and new.
But that is not the end of the story.
Before labeling, the oil must be laboratory tested for free
fatty acids because that will tell whether or not the oil was oxidized which
would give the oil a rancid taste. And, finally, the olive oil must go through
a sensory advisory panel (8 people) who certify that the olive oil is free of
defects.
So “Extra Virgin Olive Oil” is a label indicating a
manufacturing process and the quality of the product.
I soaked up every detail of her talk. I tasted the olive
oils and the balsamic vinegars and they were delicious.
At the end of the tasting, it was time to leave. Downstairs, the
last of the tables had been stacked and ready to be loaded into trucks. People pushed
brooms to sweep away the litter. Two people poured the last of a wine bottle
into their glasses and saluted each other.
I walked out into the cool night air. What
a good day spent enjoying so much great Italian food and wine.
What fun to “Savor Italy.”
