Life on the Vine

In addition to the 24 books I read for the 2018 Read Harder Challenge, I've also been reading a wide-ranging selection of other books.  Twenty-six at last count.  The year isn't over yet so I'll probably get another four or five books in before New Years.  I think I can safely say I've never read this many books in a single year.  It's been an eclectic year in the reading department, and the Read Harder Challenge certainly contributed.  My additional reading has included a small number of books from my own shelves but the bulk have been borrowed from the local library system. Twenty-six is a lot of books to do in a single blog post so I figured I'd just do a handful of them today.  I'm staying home today because we're doing a blood curve check on our diabetic cat Smokey.  It's a way of checking his blood sugar levels, which were not good this morning.  I have been neglecting these checks so I'm dedicated today to Smokey.  I'm writing this...

In early March Tom and I traveled to the Valpolicella region with some friends for wine tasting.  We wrapped up the day with an olive oil tasting and tour at Antico Frantoio Bonamini in Illasi. Eight different types of olives grow in this part of the Veneto region located near Verona. (PC: P. Zaehler) We were able to see the different pieces of equipment used to process the harvest into olive oil.  The machines were not in operation though because the harvest was still another seven months away.  Our tasting included a couple different olive oils (processed the season before) and two different olive pâtés -- nere (black) and verdi (green).    Our Tasting Saturday I had a chance to revisit Bonamini and this time it was harvest time.  For two months of every year Bonamini runs 24 hours a day -- processing the fruit from their own 15,000 trees, as well as olives from many of their neighbors.  However, their neighbors have to provide at least ...

I'm sitting in my usual leather chair.  A gift my father gave Tom and I more than ten years ago when we still lived in Missouri.  Tom is out having coffee with a friend and took Colt with him.  Henry is upstairs laying in bed but just came downstairs and now sits in one of our loaner chairs.  My shoulders are tense and my upper back is sore.  This morning technology made me mad.  REALLY mad.  I frankly wanted to smash my computer against the wall.  Why is it that something that should be so easy is complicated?  The frustration over trying to transfer photos between devices ended in tears spilling down my face.  Why am I so angry?  Why isn't this working?  Why aren't the multiple "How To" sites I'm reading off the Internet providing any help? So here's what I set out to do.  Over the past year I've taken pictures at the more than 30 wineries we've visited.  Pictures of the vines, the fields, the grapes.  Pictur...

Six months ago grapes looked like this... Fattoria Le Vegre - 28 April And now they look like this... La Dole Vigna - 08 September  And the harvest has begun. What better time to do a retrospective wine blog going back to April and coming forward through August, right?  Our wine adventures this past Spring and Summer included visiting sixteen wineries (two of which we had been to before); one Vicenza Spring Bizarre, where we got to taste wine from two new wineries, and an annual wine festival where we tasted wine from twelve wineries, one of which we'd had before.  It also included a fun girls' day and a trip to Tuscany for Tom's birthday weekend.  All total we went to, or had wine from 30 wineries.  We've been busy! We started with Fattoria Le Vegre , a recommendation from my friend Nancy.  I've mentioned Nancy before.  We worked together in Germany and she lived in Vicenza while we were back home in Arizona.  She moved b...