Cantina Di Soave

I had another day off of class on Wednesday and had signed up for a wine tour in Soave through our school. It was an early morning for me, especially after a full day in Bologna, but I was so excited to check out the winery since Soave is such a popular wine all over Italy and the world. There was about 12 of us from the program that signed up for the trip so we had a nice private tour of Cantina di Soave (Winery of Soave) it was one of the most popular ones in Soave – given there are tons in this town – and it was byfar the coolest winery I’ve been to thus far.

The old castle and its walls surrounded the city. The Scala family (the royal family of Verona) had this castle built here and most of it still stands today. Soave is very hilly, you can see from the pictures that the main castle was on the hill and behind it were the vineyards.  

My Italian teacher went along with us and was talking about the huge wine fest they have in May and September (May for wine, and September for the harvesting of grapes). The fountains are filled with Soave wine and free for anyone to drink… How cool is that?? We also checked out a bread shop that had hundreds of different types of fresh breads. I tried chocolate chip bread and raisin bread.

Once we go to Cantina di Soave, our tour guide came out and took us through the winery. It was just remodeled ten years ago, so everything was very modern and so colorful! We walked there where they store the wine in HUGE barrels. The barrels are about 70 years old, and still used in the wine process.

We continued to the downstairs of the winery and saw where the wine was stored in the smaller barrels, which were placed in side-by-side down two extremely long hallways. Basically, they make a lot of wine. The only downside was our tour guide only spoke Italian, so it was difficult to understand all the history of Soave. We walked through the rest of the winery before going upstairs and the walls were covered in old photos, all the way back to the 1800’s.  The top of the hallway was lined with wood panels from the old barrels used over 100 years ago.

We made it up to the a private wine tasting, it was set up so beautifully. We tried three of the Rocca Sveva wines. The first was Soave Classico Castelcerino, it was a nice simple white wine that we had with potato chips. The second wine (my favorite) was Valpolicella Ripasso, a red wine that we had with crackers. The third wine was a dessert wine and was extremely sweet. It was called Recioto di Soave. Basically it tasted like apple juice with a touch of alcohol. Not too bad but I don’t think I could handle more than a glass. Afterwards we had time to shop around and I picked up a bottle of Ripasso to save for my mom and I when she visits in April!

Soave is no Tuscany, but it was such a beautiful town with so much history and lots of wine (always a plus). We lucked out and the rain held off until our bus ride back to Verona.

Bologna, Italy

It still hasn’t really settled that I’m actually living in Italy. And I mean how could it since this week we had two days off of class. Lucky me! After Monday’s Art History mid-term (and by mid-term  I mean Andrea gave us the test on Friday and told us to memorize it….) Jack, Kelly, Bree and I took a day excursion to Bologna, Italy. Home of the oldest University in the world, delicious tortellini, lasagna and cheese, it is just under two hours by train from Verona. We started exploring the city right away, the train station was right in the city center. First we saw the exterior of Parco Montagnola. It has gorgeous steps up to the actual park.

After going up, we discovered a park and a great view down the main street, Via dell’indipendenza which ended at the famous piazza Maggiore.

There were a lot of statues in the park, and it seems as it Bologna was a location where a famous battle was fought, as you can see from this statue. It was a gorgeous, warm February day and this just made everything seem ten times cooler.

Walking down Via dell’indipendenza felt just like Chicago, filled with people walking through the streets and surrounded by tall buildings. On our way we ran into the entrance to an art exhibit. It just so happened to have the famous painting “The girl with the pearl earring” so we had to check it out. There were a lot of cool paintings we saw, but of course the pearl earring painting was very cool to look at as it was the original.

We continued to Piazza Maggiore, which was such a cute piazza! It was very open and huge. We immediately saw the Fountain of Neptune, which was very cool.

Right beside it was a man playing guitar and his friend making huge bubbles! It was so tranquil so we decided to sit down for café and hang out a bit.

There was a lot of live music on the streets of Bologna, which I loved! They had a cute street that was lined with cherry blossom trees.

They also have Eataly.. in Italy. 

Our next stop was to the Two towers, or “due torri” These towers were massive, and were definitely crooked. I’m not sure if it was meant to be this way or not… but I sure would net want to be standing on the wrong side of those towers.

We grabbed dinner at a cute little place off of Via dell’indipendenza. Since we were in Bologna I knew I had to get their tortellini. I got tortelloni with cream sauce and prosciutto. It was unbelievable!! I have never had something so delicious and it went great with the house wine and free bread. YUM! We learned that tortellini is tiny noodles filled with meat, and tortelloni is big noodles filled with cheese. Interesting.

Before we left, we wanted to walk to the University of Bologna, since it was the oldest in the world. Sadly, it was pretty dark out, so none of my pictures came out but we did sneak a peak inside.

It felt like Hogwarts, very eerie, old and maybe haunted, who knows. The campus was so fun, college kids were everywhere drinking and hanging out in the courtyard and cafe’s. It made me miss U of I a bit since Verona does not have a college campus feel at all. There was some cool graffiti around campus as well. 

There were so many cool statues on our walk back to the train station, I snapped this picture of the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus, it seemed so angelic with the spot light.

Bologna was such an awesome city, filled with life and tons to do. They had so many great shops too, I may be going back with some of the girls just to have a little shopping spree :) It was a great day off and we made the most of it by checking out this famous Italian city.