Bumpers and Blessings

Last Sunday, Jeremy and I went on a rally in Orvieto. As usual, a complete food fest. We wouldn't want to starve or anything.

We met at the bar we've used before as a meeting point. First breakfast (pay for your own). The 10 or so of us then proceeded to Orvieto together, with the "parking lot" being the piazza next to the Duomo. The organizers did an exceptional job of waving us in and making sure that we were crammed as closely together as possible...for a very good reason: There were over 160 participants coming from all over the place!

We were mostly Fiat 500s (my favorite kind of rally...none of that mixing of other makes/models), all different colors and trim levels, and all cute. The registration was surprisingly well organized. The cost for one participant was 10 euros; two went for 15 euros. Registration included breakfast (coffee and pastry) and "gadget" (their sweet misappropriation of an English word to mean "goodie bag"), as well as a winery tour and wine tasting (not to mention security for the event and so on).

The "gadget" was quite generous and really pretty nifty (as are many of the goodie bags for races and so on...although Ashley came back from a race recently with a third-place prize consisting of a bag containing dish soap, pasta, pasta sauce, tuna, coffee, water, and juice boxes): it contained wine, sausage, water, coffee, cookies, pasta, and probably another couple of items I've forgotten.

The non-500s were generally segregated

After admiring each other's cars for a while, a priest came out in alb and sneakers. Using his bound breviary, he blessed the cars using a specific formulary for vehicles and conveyances! Jeremy and I had a snicker over the fact that such a prayer existed. Very nifty.

Procession...sorry, not a good shot

Much milling around continued. Herding cats is nothing. But then the signal to set off came: it started to rain. Italians are constitutionally anti-rain and fall apart at the slightest drizzle. Everyone hopped into their cars and clearly the thing to do was to set off. But wait! First we have to have the Medieval parade! They came through with tambours, banners, and piercing woodwinds. Within 15 minutes, the piazza had cleared, and we set off to the winery.

You can see the tanks through the windows

About 20 feet tall, I guess, maybe more.

Moving to the bottling area

Filling section

Vineyard behind the winery

The colors on the way home were amazing:
green lake, dark blue-gray sky

This particular cantina was interesting because of the size: they have 550-something employees, a myriad of huge tanks, and a bottling system that will do 6000 bottles per hour. Amazing. Following a 20-minute tour, we had wine tasting (white and prosecco) and snacks. After all, they would only be going directly to lunch after that, and one wouldn't want the participants to go hungry.

Jeremy and I followed our friends to the restaurant (we didn't want to hang out for the 4-hour lunch) and then had a little toodle (with occasional rain) through the countryside. Then home!

The good news? I might get to go to another in just a few weeks, this time to a lavender oil producer!


Love,

Alexandra