On Saturday, we loaded up the car and took off to Avelino, a town situated about 45minutes south of Naples, but allows you to feel like you are a world away. My friend Brandy and I had talked for a while about planning a day trip to Mastroberardino Winery, the winery that her boyfriend, Dario, works at, and we finally did it.
Brandy is a writer for an American wine website, having given up her "safe" corporate job as an Accountant, to move to Italy to pursue her passion for wine about a year ago. It was at a wine expo in Verona (close to Venice), where she met Dario, who is the CEO of Sales for Mastroberardino, the oldest wine exporter in Southern Italy. Given both Brandy and Dario's passion and knowledge for wine, we couldn't think of better 'hosts' for our winetasting weekend.
Dario and Brandy met us at our hotel on Saturday morning so that we could follow them to the winery. Wineries aren't normally open on the weekends in this area, so we had the whole winery to ourselves, as Dario led us on an amazing tour--sharing with us all of the amazing history of Mastroberardino. The archeological committee of Pompei actually approached Mastroberardino to 'recreate' the ancient winemaking process that was used in Pompei and by making a mold of the underground root system, they were able to figure out what kinds of grapes used to be grown in Pompei, and replant them, and today, if you walk through Pompei, you will see the vineyard that Mastroberardino is now responsible for--very cool!
Our tour of the winery ended in the tasting room, where Dario had 4 wines selected for us to taste. It was amazing to have Dario walk us through the flavors and uniqueness of each wine, plus be able to talk to us about the specific grapes etc. Brandy also had a lot of information about each wine that she has learned, not only from dating Dario, but through her own research and discovery of the Mastroberardino wines about 10 years ago. Mastroberardino owns all of their vineyards, with some of the grapes growing down by Vesuvius, in volcanic soil, giving it a really unique and wonderful taste.
After our amazing wine tasting and tour, we drove 1/2 hour to the Radici Resort (www.ridiciresort.com)(also owned by the winery), where we all had lunch together at the Mirabella restaurant in the main resort. It was incredible. We had the entire restaurant to ourselves, and Dario had the chef prepare a tasting menu for us, so we got to taste a bunch of small sized portions of the most amazing dishes. I wish I knew what each dish was called, but to describe a few we had : fish bites in a very light coating, mushroom surrounded in a zucchini and bean puree, artichoke ravioli, a beef that was prepared perfectly and was so tender it melted in our mouths, biscotti, warm vanilla cake 'cups' filled with custard etc. Each course was served with wine and the whole 'event' was just out of this world. We definitely felt like VIPs!
After lunch, we checked into our room, a great room overlooking the vineyards. It was so serene, and we couldn't believe we were so close to Naples. It really felt like we were in another country!
For breakfast, when we walked down to the breakfast area, we noticed that one of the tables was all set w/ linens, fresh pineapple juice, sfeggliatellis ( a popular pastry in Napoli that looks like a croissant but is made w/ ricotta cheese and orange--so good!), cereal, toast w/ marmalades and nutella, creatively carved 1/2 pineapples and other whole fruits--pears and apples, and espressos. To our surprise, they had set it up for us...that was our 'included breakfast'! Again, we felt like we were getting the royal treatment, and we couldn't have asked for a better, more fun and relaxing weekend! Thanks Dario & Brandy..it was the best!!
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