SIENA, Tuscany—There is a pretty big Italy buzz this week, and our good friends at nearby Spannocchia (the 1,200 acre agricultural estate outside Siena) are in the center of this media beehive of activity. First, there is a huge, 10 page spread in Bon Appetit Magazine about this fabulous Sienese agri-tourismo. But the buzz does not stop there.
Midge Vreeland, who was recently named president of the Spannocchia Foundation, just found out that there is a good chance there will be a segment about Spannocchia on The Today Show tomorrow, Thursday, Jan 10th. We understand that it may be a feature about Travel+Leisure Magazine’s favorite travel destinations. You heard it here first!
If you haven’t yet heard about Spannocchia you should definitely make your way to the news stands or set your Tivo- it is such an amazing and vibrant place with a fantastic history. Their websites feature a new slide show with dozens of evocative photos. To really put you in an Italian Frame of Mind. Spannocchia’s just outside of Siena and an easy drive from two of our newest properties— Podere i Cipressi, high above Passignano and Pietrosa di Gaiche, outside Gaiche.
Happy New Year to all and hope to
See you in Italy in ’08
Stew Vreeland
Playing for Pizza first. It’s light but tasteful. Light, even by recent John Grisham standards. I rather think he’s newly discovered Italy’s fulsome charms, like so many people out there in the world. But unlike the rest of us, he’s figured out how to get his publishers to bend to his request for research time on their dime. In Italy. Sometimes his Italian connection is a stretch. The last book I read of his, The Broker, started in the U.S. President’s office and ended in the middle of Bologna. As if there wasn’t plenty of that in Washington. Fine, fine, whatever it takes. As long as the plot ends up with some trite, fairly obvious Italian words in italics sprinkled here and there, we’re good. In our house we have shelves and shelves of books of, by, or for Italians. And (gasp!) some even in Italian. Ok, those are mostly Dylan Dog comics. We had a whole small room set aside for Italian themed books in our previous house. Maybe that was extreme. Fear not, we haven’t thrown any Italian books in the dumpster, but just have all our Italian books in the same room with books on all subjects in one bigger room with more shelves. Still segregated, of course. 
That would be Alexia’s fault. She was our foreign exchange student and her family owned the Padova Saints. I still have a Saints jacket as you can see. Oh, you wish you had that. And oh, the things I learned from Riccardo, Alexia’s wild card of a dad. The main thing we had in common was that he and I both hated any boy she brought home on either side of the Atlantic. “You let her go out with HIM?” he said just a bit too loudly (but at least it was in Italian) while pointing to the insolent, bad intentioned rogue slinking through the door under the porch where we were standing. “She’s YOUR daughter” I yelled back. “YOU should have raised her to know better.” Ecco il pappa. Times two. Of course Riccardo knew full well what bad American boys were up to. Because he “owned” a bunch of them and hung out with them as much as he could. Bon vivant barely covered this mischievous, wise cracking ad guy. As soon as we got to Padova he introduced us to his friend Prosecco. By the pitcherfull. I think that bottles, what, inhibited, Riccardo? He poured us Prosecco in dives high and low as we followed him around Padovatown. Hanging on his every fast-moving word. And he had lots of them. He could, and did, tell stories ninety miles an hour in all known European languages, blisteringly funny; subtle and not so subtle jokes and story lines spilled out across Prosecco- and pizza-covered tables. Occasionally there would be a gap in the blanket of Marlborough brand smog surrounding Riccardo. That is when you would see more cat-that-ate-the-canary eye twinkle than is surely legally allowed. 
It is the typical, misty-eyed, Isn’t Italy Amazing genre. He’s clearly happy, happy, happy with his new lifestyle there. The food is fresher, the sky bluer, people friendlier, the sun sunnier, you know how it is. The usual. We liked book. My wife bought it in an airport and elbowed me awake to say “We KNOW all these people in the book”. Awake now. And it was a gas to us. We do know, at least by long term email relationship, the people who sold the author his dream house. And we are pretty sure we know the people who drove him to it. They used to own a wild B&B we visited a few times with friends of friends. Their place was so over-the-top Michael bailed out after one night even though he had paid for several nights in advance. Could totally relate. He left Tuscany with his shirt tail flapping after him and headed out across Umbria to find a place to stay. Any place just a little more Italian and a little less kitsch. And in true novel tradition, he immediately stumbled over the traditional diamond in the rough, way off the beaten path that had never been on the market and was available to him that day. And it came with a full set of built-in friends for life. 
Ciao, Ciao, Amici,
Hopefully, now, a few years later, I have gotten better at Italian. But with Jenn, there is no question. After graduating from Colby with an Art history/English double major she decided that perhaps architecture wasn’t her bag after all and that English might well be. And to go to grad school for English – you have to know two foreign languages- oh the irony! 
For me, all it took was an improvisational step outside into the verdant Vermont summer and you couldn’t help but comment. Italy has its own graces, but here the sights (green, heaving mountains), the smells (manure that makes you remember where dinner comes from), the sounds (OK, maybe bocce practice, maybe birds) gave you a sense of immediacy that I couldn’t help but think of as Italian. 
Hi Stew,
Hi again, Stew, 
Editor Stew note: this is the promised second installment of the Mel and Soren trip to Panicale. You can feel them enjoying the sunshine and basking in the little moments that make a trip worthwhile. Love the words and pictures they paint here. I think it is safe to say they are open and friendly people, and that, as usual, our “home town” responded in kind and made them feel fully at home. 
Properties in Panicale are not built on simple, level poured concrete slabs. Where foundations for a common house may involve a bit of half-hearted scraping with a digger and a couple of goes on a cement mixer, the Panicale house required huge triangular buttresses of rock and brick, sections of rock cut away here and added there, to provide what seems like a set of treads in a staircase on which they can then start building houses. This means that the upstairs and downstairs parts of a house in Panicale feel like they are in different parts of town. The lowest doors of the property at the back give out onto the street, as do the doors of the intermediate floor. What those of you not familiar with Umbrian hill towns might not grasp is that the street level of the front is about twenty feet above the street at the back. 
As well as this easy conviviality the vertiginous pavements offer a challenge to the walker. The elderly appear to have so many advantages here – the proximity and care of family and the indulgence and care of shop and bar owners to name but a couple – but surely those steep slopes must be a fighting challenge? Well no. Panicale’s streets are softened by a number of expertly positioned and sensible adaptations. The first is the little benches that occur every twenty yards or so. Noticing that progress is becoming demanding, you stop. As you sit you catch up with an old friend making the opposite journey. Rested, you make a bid for your next staging post. The bottega, which despite fighting a daily challenge to cram all their wonderful stock into their tiny shop (taking up valuable floor space) is a chair provided for the tiring walker. Here you can sit and catch up and find out Panicale’s latest news. Now that you have reached the highest point it is a gentle stroll down to Bar Gallo and more hospitality.
But this is no sad, stumbling shuffle – this dancing duet glide down with grace and style. Much in the way a metronome swings this way and that, so this couple tilt to the right as their right foot moves out, and as it is planted, their tilt is cushioned to a halt and shifted direction as now the left foot makes its step forward. So with the unnerving rhythm and certainty of a clock’s pendulum they cover the cobbles with the grace of ice-skaters. Beautiful.