I was in Rome, being coached on how to approach a shot glass of La Mola.
I swirled and observed its golden clarity. I sniffed its grassy aroma. I heard about the 83-year-old woman who pressed it in the Lazio region of Italy just weeks before.
"Now, warm the glass in your hands before sipping," instructed Johnny Madge, an olive oil expert from Slow Food, the eco-consortium of farmers, winemakers, restaurateurs and gourmands.
After rubbing the glass as if a genie might pop out, I gasped at the shocking, peppery green taste.
"Strong, isn't it? Not like your American grocery store olive oil," he said.
No kidding; it was more like wheatgrass juice than any olive oil I'd ever had. (I had never tasted fresh olive oil before this night. The surprise! The regret!)
"Welcome to the world of Slow Food," Madge said, finally allowing us to dip bread in the oil. (He insisted on the full effect first.) The meal that followed included pecorino cheese, traditional Roman pasta, farm-fresh lamb and wine, all from small producers in Lazio. The grand finale, crostata di ricotta, was a sublime calibration of ricotta and dark chocolate with a gleaming orb of buffalo mozzarella ice cream on the side.
If this was Slow Food, I was willing to wait for more.
Fortunately, I didn't have to. I was on the very first Brendan Vacations Slow Food Boutique Journey, a collaboration between the group travel experts at Brendan and the committed eco-foodies of Slow Food. (Launched in Italy, Slow Food now comprises 100,000 members, including 10,000 small growers worldwide.)
The next morning our group of 20 travel professionals took off for two days in stunning Tuscany, then two in Umbria, the green heart of Italy, where we met passionate foodies like Madge at every stop; heard about their love of the land and its produce; visited their farms, wineries, dairies and local markets; and, yes, tasted their totally sublime fare.
"Slow Food is good, clean and fair," explained Brendan President Nico Zenner. "And our itinerary follows suit. Along with the farms, frantoios [olive oil mills] and vineyards, all hotels and restaurants we include embrace Slow Food values."
Zenner has created six locavore adventures, four in Italy and two in France (see box below). The inaugural trip combined "Foods and Vineyards of Tuscany" with "Culinary Delights of Umbria."
The following morning we climbed to a 13th century palace in the Tuscan hilltop town of Montepulciano to taste the Vino Nobile at the Contucci vineyard. Adamo, surely the world's most charming wine master (and perhaps longest employed: he's been there 60 years), enthusiastically led us through the ancient building, instructing in the local sangiovese grape and offering a fantastic tasting. We invited him along to our next appointment, a dairy farm in San Polo, but he had wine to make.
We drove through stunning country to lunch with an organic-cheese maker, strolled a Renaissance village, then headed to our grand, apartment-style rooms at Villa il Palagio in Rignano Sull'Arno. Our delicious Tuscan feast included a squid ink pasta that I adored. (Granted, the black pasta looked weird …)
The next day began at one of the most productive olive oil makers in Chianti. The just-ripe olives were being shaken from the branches of its 22,000 trees as we arrived. (Tip for olive oil freaks: Book for early November.) A visibly tired Paolo Pruneti joined us for our tasting of the wildly grassy organic oil.
"We're currently producing 24 hours a day, because we don't allow more than four hours between the olives falling from the tree to being pressed," he explained. "We cannot stop."
Nor, sadly, could we. Our group divided onto smaller vehicles to navigate the small, winding roads of Tuscany, where we met a woman winemaker and her cheese-making cousin at the stunning Fattoria Corzano e Paterno farm, checked out another postcard-pretty village, then dined at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Not bad for the second full day.
The rest of the trip was just as rich in farms, vineyards and local markets as well as touring and shopping in gorgeous towns. At each leg of the journey we were met by a Slow Food rep full of info about local food customs, and we were never without our Italian eco-guide, Susanna Mariani, who translated and explained, taught a little Italian and even cadged recipes along the way.
At day's end, we enjoyed a meal of a lifetime for dinner. Yes, I know, that's six lifetimes in all. But it really was that kind of a trip.
Now, when traveling around Italy, one does feel a need for time visiting churches and attending lectures (brief ones!) on art. But Brendan thought of that, scheduling a morning with the Giotto murals at the Basilica of St. Francis in Assisi.
Our Umbrian hotel, Alla Posta dei Donini, had a 16th century mural. And there's still more education in the stunning architecture, the insights passed on by the Slow Food folks and simply sitting down with people devoted to a way of life that is fast receding from us all.
This trip is for anyone who wants to experience Italy, the real Italy. I'll give the (almost) last word to Devis Romanelli, who's breeding falcons to replace pesticides in his Umbrian olive groves and vineyards.
"You can't go to school for what we're doing — I tried," he said. "You just have to learn and practice and try again, like farmers always have."
That is: You can't know or taste what they're doing by reading about it or buying it at Whole Foods. Come.
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