Guy from Hong Kong: I love this (he’s got his very serious looking camera out and is snapping away with abandon).

Me: Yeah, it’s great, but you must have better fish markets in Hong Kong selling every imaginable fish known to man.

GFHK:  Bigger, yes. Better no. Everybody is yelling here, I love it.

GFHK has a point and here is a video to back up that premise:

In sociology they talk about how those studying people have an effect on how the studied people act. For example, if a sociologist goes into the field to study, say the fishmongers in Catania, those fishmongers will change their way of acting because they know they are being watched. Probably true in most cases, but not here at the Catania fish market. These guys positively ignored me even though I stuck my camera right up into the action.

You have got to have a look at how this guy cleans the squid while completely disregarding my presence (not to be seen if you’re about to eat some fish you have just acquired at an open-air market).

Here’s a link to the site of a guy (online alias Peter Parkoor) who I met in Catania and has some nice photos of the fish market.

Heading up towards Etna's peak, 11 April 2012

Despite the dodgy weather and the occasionally extreme conditions, it was an excellent walk almost entirely through hard-packed snow. Even from my close up view from right under the peak for several hours yesterday, the peak remained obscured the whole time by cloud cover giving the illusion that I was at the top of the mountain. Today, of course, it has been clear with Etna’s peak visible from Catania. In the late afternoon a huge plume of smoke emerged from one of the top craters in what is sixth eruption this year.

Etna, 12 April 2012, compliments of Catania Today

It is with a bit of regret that I read the eruption is not expected to cancel any flights out of Catania today. Guess the volcano tour is really over. I will update with a link when my article is published.

Stromboli...those are not clouds, that's steam and other gasses coming out of the volcano.

I’m here touring Italy’s active volcanoes on assignment so no more details on them for now. That is except to say that after Stromboli I stopped off in Vulcano, yes, an island actually called “Volcano” where I hiked another volcano that though smaller is equally interesting.

Staring down into Vulcano's volcano.

After Vulcano I got another boat to Sicily where today if everything works out I’ll be heading up Etna, the mother of all Italian (and European) volcanoes.

And not just any island as this happens to be Stromboli, a speck in the Mediterranean that is completely dominated by one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

I’ve come to climb the volcano, only allowed if you’re accompanied by a guide, but clouds covered said volcano yesterday causing my guide to cancel with the explanation that going up with cloud cover makes no sense because you won’t be able to see the spewing of lava that happens like clockwork every 15-20 minutes. A storm with strong winds and driving rain is lashing the island as I write washing out  any chance we could go today.

And so it is that I sip very hot tea in a café at Stromboli’s mini-port contemplating life on this Easter Sunday.

Hydrofoil connections to the other Aeolian Islands and the mainland have been cancelled due to the choppy sea so there’s no escaping even if I wanted (maybe I am marooned after all).

I’ve got no intention of going anywhere anyway. I’m not leaving this island until I’ve looked down into Stromboli’s crater and with the weather forecast to improve tomorrow I just might manage…

That was just part of the more than 100 wines being poured at a tasting over the weekend in Verona ahead of the Vinitaly, the city’s annual trade dedicated to Italian wine that is being held through Wednesday. The event is a collaboration between Operawine (a joint venture between Vinitaly and the Verona trade fair) and Wine Spectator, which helped pick the producers. The list is supposed to give a good cross section of what Italian grapes have to offer the world though clearly there was an emphasis on the big names.

But it wasn’t only about Italy’s well-known, full-bodied reds and its increasingly well-respected traditional method (how champagne is made) sparklers. There were also rich and fruity structured whites, not customarily thought of as an Italian strong point, that seemed like something you’d expect to be produced on the other side of the Alps.

I tasted 28 wines, not nearly as many as I had planned, but with only two hours and huge crowds that was the best my tasting companions and I could manage. I was accompanied by English journalist Michael Day, the Milan correspondent for The Independent; Maarten Veeger, a Dutch journalist making a video on the event for the La Stampa website; and Susannah Gold, a wine consultant who writes prolifically on the subject.

We started with the aforementioned sparkling wines with all of us particularly struck by Giulio Ferrari 2001 produced by Ferrari of Trento. Straw color with a rich perlage, it immediately hits you with its aromas of fresh white citrus, specifically grapefruit, followed by that distinctive yeast touch that is present on the best traditional method sparkling wines. On the palate you get long lasting flavors of flowers and almonds with, perhaps, at the end a hint of vanilla.

We followed with Marco Falluga’s Collio Disore 2008 made with tocai Friulano, pinot bianco and sauvignon blanc. A wonderful full-bodied Italian with a dominance both on the nose and the palate of rich white mature fruits. The hint of banana and honey comes later. Don’t miss this one.

There were a few more whites in here, but soon we moved onto the reds. Call us stupid.

We tried three 2007 Barolos and think we were in agreement that though intriguing they need a few more years in the bottle to tone done the aggressive tannins that are so characteristic of the nebbiolo grape. I’m not sure I agree with the decision to come to a tasting like this with such a young Barolo. Almost all the Barolos on offer were from 2007, though I did notice a 2006 and a 2008 that we didn’t manage to try.

The Brunellos were plentiful and we tried several, my favorite was Siro Pacenti 2007. Sad to say we only managed 1 amarone, terrible considering we were in Verona. It was Zenato 2007 very jammy, as the best amarones are.

The Sassicaia 2008 lives up to reputation, if not the shock caused by the very hefty sticker price. Being from California I can’t help being a sucker for a Bordeaux blend that exalts the cabernet sauvignon grape. This is as rich as they come and though ready to drink, you can’t help thinking it’ll be even better in five years. Not surprising for a cabernet-heavy Super Tuscan.

Next up was Ornellaia 2006, rich, structured, but tough to follow Sassicaia. After the Ornellaia we had a few more Super Tuscans, though those made with predominately the sangiovese grape, the same one in Brunello and the main one in Chianti. Big mistake. The sangiovese is a much subtle than cabernet sauvignon (and is really best enjoyed with food). A good Chianti makes you want to eat. I found the same thing with the sangiovese Super Tuscans (could just be that after all those wines, and only some spitting out, I was actually really in need of food). Note to self: next time don’t go from the cabernet sauvignon-dominated Super Tuscans to the sangiovese ones or else make sure you leave enough time for the palate to recover. As mentioned, time was not on our side.

And to those who might think we concentrated a little too much on the obvious choices, I agree, but defend the decision because it is not every day that I find myself with all of these wines at my fingertips.

The 10^th edition of the cheese festival, or Käse Festival in German, the tongue spoken by people up here in what was Austria until 1918, took place this past weekend with more than 10,000 visitors stopping in at the stands of 100 producers presenting almost 1,000 cheeses. Not bad for an event that started a decade ago with three producers and ten visitors. In addition to cheese from Alto Adige, the top half of the Trentino-Alto Adige region, many other regions were represented as were several foreign countries including the Netherlands with Gouda, obviously.

It all started a bit more than a decade ago with a local from the Valle Aurina, the valley where Campo Tures is located, deciding he wanted to find a way to keep formaggio grigio, a native cheese, from being lost to the onslaught of culinary standardization. Formaggio grigio, literally “gray cheese,” can be aged, semi-hard and crumbly (as it is in Valle Aurina) or soft with the consistency of ricotta. My cheese tastes revolve around mozzarella, ricotta, scamorza and other “fresh” cheeses so formaggio grigio is not my thing, but under the tent in Campo Tures (Sand in Taufers in German) I was decidedly in the minority.

At the festival you’ll also find lots of breads, Alto Adige might have the best bread in Italy, as well as sweets and speck (smoked ham). An event in Alto Adige without speck is like summer in San Francisco without fog, an intriguing idea that will never come to pass. There has most probably never been an event of any importance in Alto Adige where speck did not feature prominently. While I haven’t yet warmed up to formaggio grigio, I’m a fan of speck (as well as Frisco in the summer) and have the distinction of having taken third place at a sandwich making competition with a speck and California date panino.

And the end of the day the festival is about trying to get you to pony up for some cheese, and the aforementioned speck, but the event is also about saving local customs. As such there were people walking around in mountain attire stopping to occasionally partake in what could only be called the local version of square dancing. There is nothing like some folk dancing to fire up the crowd and get them in a cheese-buying mood.

For the first eight editions the festival was yearly, now it’s every two years (on the second weekend of March), so you have to wait until 2014 for your next shot at this intimate cheese orgy. In addition to pretty decent skiing, up here you can also burrow more than a kilometer into an old mine to breathe what is claimed to be the best air in Italy…been there, done that, more later.

Horse-drawn carriages travel through town waging war along the way

Battle is not hyperbole here, they really do battle. One look at the team names – Death, Ace of Spades, Black Panther (which its members say is “a symbol of hegemony and territorial conquest”), Devils, Mercenaries – makes clear that these people take their orange throwing seriously.

A singing tour guide shows the less violent side of Ivrea’s carnival.

Legend has it that several hundred years ago a miller’s daughter refused to spend her wedding night with the local duke, as the law required, and instead chopped off his head, which these days is represented by the oranges. This is one of those stories best told in pictures…

Out for a ride through the streets of Milan

And so it was that Friday night I found myself on the upper level of a red tour bus cruising the streets of Milan listening to phenomenally engaging trumpets, saxophones, tubas and a drummer. The Serbs time these tours to coincide with the Borsa Internazionale del Turismo – BIT, Milan’s massive trade fair dedicated to the tourism industry.

The band is called Nema Problema, “no problem” in English, and I’m told they do weddings. Too late for me, but if you are still in time I think these guys will make your party one to remember.

They do weddings

A tip if next year you find yourself on this bus: before gulping down the clear liquid you’re likely to be offered in a plastic cup at some point during your ride through town, that would be the liquid that seems to be making everybody happier, make sure you ask what it is because it’s probably not water.

Cruising Milan to Serbian tunes

The Affordable Art Fair bills itself as “the leading showcase for affordable contemporary art.”Affordable is, of course, a somewhat relative term. Here they put the cutoff at 5,000 euros, above that and the exhibitors (i.e. galleries) are not allowed to sell it.

Affordable Art Fair, Milan

So I’ve been to my share of trade fairs both for work and pleasure and they are all pretty  much the same. You walk up and down the aisles looking at the newest gadgets (hoping for a cool freebie), touching the tractors, tasting the wine. The Affordable Art Fair is no different and in a large space in Milan’s trendy Via Tortona neighborhood set up with white dividing walls you cruise the aisles looking at contemporary art, all of it on sale and all of it for less than 5,000 euros.

One of the 77 stands at Milan's AAF

The Milan edition of the fair, in its second year, is just one stop for an event that hits 14 cities around the world including London (it’s birthplace), Los Angeles, Brussels, Melbourne, Stockholm, Mexico City, Seattle and Singapore. Here’s a list of the upcoming dates – London is next (15-18 March) followed by New York in April. Italy will have a second event, this time in Rome, in October

I was just looking for a Sunday afternoon diversion and ended up going home with a print by Emanuele Luzzati, an artist and set designer from Genova known for his vibrant colors and wonderful imagination. Luzzati died in 2007, here’s a look at his life and legacy thanks to The Guardian.

Emanuele Luzzati, mine's quite a bit smaller (and cheaper)

In late December I was down in Salento again, Muro Leccese to be exact, where I took part in the olive harvest. The olive oil aficionados out there will have immediately noted that this is a very late harvest and indeed the oil that gets produced from these olives is a bit rough around the edges. It’ll be extra virgin, it’ll be good, but it’ll have a very strong, almost overpowering flavor that is a far cry from the refined stuff you get when you pick the olives by hand or shake the trees and gather the olives right away. These olives getting harvested have been on the ground for days, in some cases several weeks.

The six photos below show how the process is done: 1) olives sitting there waiting patiently to be picked up, 2) small tractor does the deed, 3&4) tractor dumps all that it picked up into a machine that separates the olives from the leaves and stones, 5) the olives get dumped into a truck, 6) getting ready to start over again. This video brings it all to life thanks to the overpowering sound of the tractor (sorry about that).

Granted I’m a little bit batty for olive trees, but I’d challenge anybody to take part in an olive harvest and not be absolutely head-over-heels for the oil that results from their labors. The majestic nature of the olive tree and its fruit is all the more remarkable when you have had this experience.

For a look at the process of how more refined extra virgin olive oils are made, this excellent video from northern Puglia is a great primer. About that part with the guy in the tractor making a sharp turn in the middle of the olive trees while talking on his cell phone (at 1’35’’)…think they could have clipped that out as Italians don’t need any encouragement as they are already always talking on their phones in the car even though it’s against the law (and dangerous for bikers like myself).