Siamo Pientini! (We Are Pientini)

Carol and Roger first came to Pienza in 1999.  We've been back more than a dozen times since.


Since 2013, when we stayed for three months, we've been talking about the possibility of purchasing an apartment here.

A week ago, we mentioned the idea to some friends, and one couple said they knew of a place for sale that we might like.

After that, things moved pretty fast.


We always wanted to live inside the old walled city, and this place was just outside...but it was close.

The apartment is just one block outside the walls (see the red marker in the upper-left corner of the map)...a four minute walk to the main piazza and right around the corner from the town's best gelateria.

So we made an offer, never really expecting it would be accepted.

Today, we got word, it was!

Siamo Pientini.  

Now we are Pientini.

This is the building.  It contains four apartments.  Ours is the upper left, where the windows are shuttered.

This room is called the soggiorno.  It's a combination kitchen, living room, dining room...normal for an Italian home.

(These photos were taken in the springtime before the house was put on the market...and came from the realtor's web site.)

The other side of the same room.

The bedrooms are normally not much bigger than the bed, and ours is no exception.

The third room will have a small office and sofa bed.  With luck, it will all fit.

Perhaps the best feature is the small terrazzo overlooking an overgrown garden out back.  It's big enough for a tiny table and chairs...a great place to have coffee in the morning.

There's so much to do!  Just the closing paperwork, dealing with the notary, bank and utilities will take a full week of Carol's time in January. Italy's ability to generate bureaucratic paperwork is legendary and mind-boggling.



Next up....season tickets for Pienza calcio!

In Search of the World's Most Expensive Food

The sun had not yet risen when the battered SUV pulled up near our apartment.



Roger jumped in and was trundled off down rutted strade bianche (gravel roads) deep into the Tuscan backcountry.



This day's adventure was a search for il tartufo (the truffle)...the world's most expensive food.


The car parked just as the sun cleared the horizon.










Roger's guide this day was Giancarlo Scroccaro, father of a friend who owns the local butcher shop.


In France, they use pigs to hunt truffles...but not in Italy.

Here, it's dogs.


This day, Zara, Jaka, and Koka would be the stars of the show.

The dogs hopped out the back of the SUV, bounded across a vineyard that  looked naked with its leaves fallen to the ground, and headed into the woods.

Truffle hunters are famous for being very secretive about the best places to find their fungi.


No secrets this day.  The woods they tramped was an officially-designated truffle reserve.

Giancarlo lead the dogs down a rugged wooded path along side a stream.


He explained truffles grow best where the ground stays damp but there's enough sun to warm the earth a bit.


Truffles are an underground fungus that thrive near tree roots.  If they are harvested too early, they are small, not very flavorful, and have not yet spread their spores to cultivate a new generation of offspring.


The French have had limited success cultivating truffles.  In Italy, almost all truffles are harvested in the wild.

The dogs spread out across the rugged terrain in search of the distinct aroma of truffles.

Truffle hunters use dogs because of their acute sense of smell.  They can find their prey even when it's buried six inches underground.

The dogs were easily distracted by all the other scents in the forest.  Several times they went chasing off after what Giancarlo said was the smell of deer.  But when he made a soft clicking noise, the dogs returned to the task at hand.

After about a half hour of bush-whacking along a stream bed, the dogs went into a frenzy.


Giancarlo had to pull them out of the holes they were digging.  He told Roger there were no truffles.  He pointed to about a dozen burrows in the dirt and said the cinghiale (wild boars) had been in the area the night before and had cleaned out all the truffles.

The smell remained, and that's what had gotten the dogs so excited.

The hunting party trudged up and down several different stream beds without success.


The humans adjourned at 9:00am for a slice of pizza and glass of wine.

The dogs stayed in the SUV.


Then they all went back at it.

After the break, the dogs had a bit more luck.



They scrambled and dug madly.  Giancarlo had to distract them with treats long enough to remove.....

...this truffle out of the ground.



That seemed to change their luck.












A few minutes later the dogs struck gold again.

This time it was one big enough to take notice of...about 60 grams in weight (2 oz)...and worth about $75 on the open market.



All in all...














.....it turned out to be a pretty successful day.

And everybody went home happy... 

photo courtesy: Cin Cin

....hopefully to a piping hot plate of tagliatelle with truffle sauce.

After The Pestilence

Across the olive-lined hillside from the picturesque village of Castelmuzio lies our friend Valerio Truffelli's olive orchard.

In November of 2013, Roger helped Valerio with his olive harvest and posted a long story on this blog about the harvest and how olives are turned into oil.

When we returned a year later, Roger asked if he could help again, but Valerio said there would be no harvest that year.

This gal was the culprit...the olive fruit fly.  Previously unknown north of Rome, this fly swept into Toscana two years ago and decimated the olive crop.

Last year, the crop rebounded a bit but was still much smaller than normal.

Olives trees are like grape vines.

The same grapes grown on two different hills...or even the bottom or top of the same hill....produce wines with very different tastes, year in and year out.

Each individual grove of Tuscan olives produces oil with a distinct taste, because of differences in soil, drainage, and sunlight.

So it was with a great deal of curiosity that Roger returned to Valerio's trees to see what the olives looked like.


This year, much had changed.

Valerio is very old school.  He had always eschewed modern harvesting techniques in favor of picking olives by hand...the old fashioned way.

But last year one of his friends who was helping with the harvest fell out of a tree and broke his leg.

...so this year, his wife Tina used a mechanical vibrating pitchfork to shake the olives out of the trees.

When we finished the first tree, things looked a bit sparse.


Three years ago, this net would have been covered with a plush carpet of olives.

Three years ago, the harvest from one mature tree would have filled this tub.



This year...take a look for yourself.


Seventy-five kilometers north of us, near Florence, our friends Brett and Piero got no oil at all from their trees.

Harvesting olives is not rocket science...which is why Valerio allows Roger to help.

Much more tricky is laying the nets out on the steep hillsides in a way that keeps the olives from rolling off.

Black olives, the mature ones, produce the most oil.  But the green ones give the fresh oil a sharp peppery taste unlike anything you can find in the best gourmet food shop.





In three days of work, we harvested 440 lbs of olives.

They went to the press in nearby Castelmuzio...

...and the next day emerged as 35 liters of fresh oil.



A harvest much smaller than hoped for.



Enough to keep Valerio's family in oil for the year, but none of the normal surplus to trade for wine or meat.

And Carol can attest, there's nothing like the taste of fresh-pressed Tuscan olive oil.


The Tuscan model for making olive oil would never work in the United States.  In the states, some big firm would buy the entire olive harvest from all the small farmers in the area, mix all the olives together to produce an oil with consistent flavor, then market it under its own brand.

Even for Valerio, producing his own olive oil makes no economic sense.


He could buy 35 liters of cold-pressed, extra virgin, premium olive oil for far less money than three days of lost business in his leather shop, plus tool rental and processing costs.


So Roger asked him why he did it.

He said, "Wealth is not the amount of money you have in the bank but the richness of your life."

Revival

It's wonderful to be back in Pienza again...to see our old friends and to make a few new ones.

It's fall, and that means it's calcio season (Actually, in Italy, every season is calcio season.)

Let's get a few things straight about calcio in Pienza.

This is not the big leagues.  The Pietini are to Serie A soccer what the Everett Aquasox are to the Seattle Mariners.

courtesy: Talksport

Serie A stars like Gonzalo Higuan make salaries in the millions of Euros.  The Pientini have to hold down day jobs, so they can afford to play on the weekends.

courtesy: Wikiwand

Serie A teams play in sports palaces.

The stadium in Pienza is...shall we say...a bit more modest.


The history of soccer in Pienza is not crowned in glory.


Three years ago they finished dead last in their division of Serie D...the lowest league in the country.  The Pientini had half the points of the team just ahead of them, and that team finished in 17th place.

Not even the proximity of Santa Caterina church...50 meters from the stadium...was much help in bringing victories to the home team.

But, my, how things have changed.

There's a new coach (in red) prowling the sidelines....

A pair of new players have stiffened up a leaky defense.

The Pientini have become an affiliate of the Serie A team from Verona...infusing some spirit (and perhaps some cash) into the operation.



The result:

After six weeks, the Pientini stand in second place, strongly positioned for the playoffs.

As always, winning has done wonders for attendance.


So, it was with a good deal of optimism that Roger headed for last Sunday's match.

Our friend Arnoldo, who manages the sports complex, made sure the field was groomed to perfection.

The opposing team was from Torrenieri...a town more noted for its excellent pastry shop than for its soccer prowess.

So, when the local youngsters escorted the Pientini onto the pitch, there was anticipation in the stands that good things were about to happen.




But alas, it was not to be.

The weaker Torrinieri team shut down the passing lanes.  The Pientini were not able to sustain any offense.

In the first half, they had only one shot on goal...and it hit the post.

The game ended in a scoreless tie, and the Pientini dropped down one place in the standings.


Disappointing, naturally.



But then there are still 9 matches left to play.