Birra Artigianale

People seldom visit Italy based on its reputation for world class beer. Wine perhaps, but not beer. In truth, however, Italy has a long history of beer brewing with mass market products such as Peroni and Moretti. Recently Italy has joined the world in a beer renaissance, following on the heels of the American microbrew revolution of the past two decades.

In the province of Lazio there are no fewer than 25 breweries. Most have opened since 2008 and there are three new ones in the first four months of 2013 alone! There are even three within a few miles of our house: Turan is 3 miles away in Bagnaia, Bai is 5 miles away in Southern Viterbo and Free Lions is 15 miles away in Tuscania. I like beer as much as the next person, so you can imagine my frustration when they announced that the Italian Beer Festival would be in Milan last February and inaccessible to me. And imagine my joy when they announced it would be coming to Rome for a 3 day run from 10-12 May! Thus, last Sunday found me boarding the train headed to beer heaven! The Italian Beer Festival was held at Atlantico, a short walk from the southern end of the Rome subway.

It featured no fewer than 22 microbreweries, but whose counting.

Admission was 8 euros and gettone (tokens) for tasting were one euro each. One gettoni got a 10cc taste while two gettone yielded 25cc. Given the number of options I settled on the small size and was happy that I did since most servers were overly generous and I was sipping half a beer at a time. I stopped by the booths for both Free Lions

and Turan and introduced myself in broken Italian. I have contact information for both and intend to hit them up with friends before we leave.

Turan debuted “Dry Hard”, a one-off batch made just for the festival. It wasn’t ready until Sunday, I was the second person at their booth and the first person outside of the brewers to give it a try – yummy! There were all styles of beer available as most birrificio had 4 or more on tap. Italians seem to gravitate toward doppia and tripels so there were many intense beers to sample. My standard operating procedure was to try something interesting, perhaps that wasn’t even available in a bottle or outside of the brewery and then to purchase something to bring home.

I am partial to dark beers, birra scura, so my haul includes mostly stouts with an occasional porter thrown in. I will be enjoying them for some time to come. As an added aside, I am part of a beer social network called Untappd. It was quite a thrill to add 4 new beers to their database including one from a brewery that they didn’t even have!

Santissimo Salvadore

Last Saturday, as we were preparing ourselves for an afternoon of adventure, the blowing of police whistles followed by a band heralded the beginning of yet another procession through Viterbo. Steve and I headed out the door and down to the Fontana Grande to view the procession of Santissimo Salvadore.

The procession was preceded by a tempo group; if I have one picture of them I have scores. If you have been following this blog you might even recognize the individuals if not the bright red and white costumes.

In addition to the typical church groups and town officials, this procession has many marchers in medieval costume.

Why all the fuss? In 1283 a farmer plowing his field uncovered a stone box containing a painted leather triptych which they carried to the Church of Maria Nuova in Viterbo. It is likely that the artwork was buried a few decades earlier when Frederick II threatened the city, but memory is short and people aren’t very bright so its discovery was a miracle. Legend has it that the oxen plowing the field knelt down and refused to go any further until the spot was dug up and the box discovered. In recognition of that a team of oxen is given the honor of hauling the triptych though the streets as part of the procession. Quite the sight. Don’t worry, the procession was trailed by a street cleaner!

The First Last

Our second and third wave of Spring visitors washed over us and has departed, ending that portion of our experience here as there are no more visitors planned. That is the first of what will be many lasts. Life has been rushing by so quickly that we have already had the last day of classes. All that remains is the mopping up before students leave late next week.

My brother, Nathan, stopped by at the tail end of a business trip to the UK. He flew over and spent the first part of his vacation week wandering Rome. It seemed like a good experience for him to be alone, but completely able to do what he wanted, walk wherever he wanted, eat whenever he felt like it and just enjoy being alive for a change. Two days after his arrival saw Amy’s best friend, Becky, arrive with her daughter in tow. Sarah hit it off with some of our students and spent a day in Rome with them while the rest of us took a trip through the countryside of northern Lazio and surroundings. We stopped for pictures at the belvedere in Montefiascone. Here are pictures of all of us with a hazy Lago di Bolsena in the background.

After that we continued on to Orvieto. Nate and Becky hit up the Duomo.

We had a great time seeing all of them, even though we were working and couldn’t spend as much time showing them around as we would have liked.

A week after their departure we hosted another of Amy’s best friends, Steve. We took him on what has become a fairly standard tour of our home region, complete with lunch at Civita di Bagnoreggio, a dip in the hot springs and dinner at Monastero. For his last day, we took the train into Rome.

While Amy and Steve wandered the city and saw the sites, I took in a local festival. More on that later.