What a fun day and probably favorite so far. We had a full day filled with visiting a cheese farm, wine bank, and ended with free time in Cuneo. A short ride out of the main city we visited Piedmont farm. Here the owner and chef gave a wonderful tour around his factory and showed us the production of his cheese from start to finish. He explained a few of the processes in detail for example the drunken cheese method which is basically how it sounds.
You get the fresh cheese and soak it in barrels of their finest wine in Cuneo and he sells it vacuum sealed with pieces of the remaining grapes from the barrel. It almost looks and tastes like it had a blueberry rind. He showed us around his farm and then we proceeded to enjoy a 10 course meal he had his chef's make us.
I will try and get each course right from what I remember so bare with me:
Cured bacon with Salami
Veal with tuna cream sauce
Robiola cheese, celery, walnut, Olive juice, lemon juice , salt, pepper
Quiche with cheese, Rascheta cheese
Mini flan - Caselmano cheese, grass like green similar to spinach
Gnocchi, butter cheese cream sauce.
Blin - Vegetable and beef/pork meat
Braised beef in a wine sauce, roasted rosemary potatoes
Cheese sampler plate that to be honest I do not remember the names but I can tell you that they were amazing. A lot of classmates did not care too much for most of them as they tend to be on the dryer side but being half Colombian I have had my share of dry and stinky cheese so it was good to me.
Lava cake with raspberry jelly, vanilla cream sauce
Another short bus ride away we arrived and toured the Banco de Vino - wine bank and we sampled a few wines from all over Italy and the world.
A favorite I enjoyed and brought a bottle home was of the Barbera red wine. Some other students didn't care too much for the wine as it was more on the dry side and they preferred sweeter wines and sparkling wines like Prosecco which was served with almost every meal.
Later after all the fun we arrived back at the hotel and headed back out into the city. A handful of us went exploring to find a pub for some local beer. Venturing off we found a really nice small pub that served good beer and snacks like bread and sandwiches that were complementary with our drinks.
I love anything free and it was good so I was pretty happy not to mention the delicious beer.
We headed back towards the central to that cute restaurant and bar Gali and had a drink there but the atmosphere was different since it was now a Weekend night so people didn't care too much for the group of Americans coming in on their turf. So, from my experience so far I will next time try and be in a smaller group because who likes tourists. Stayed tuned for the next post.
Stay Blessed!
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