PANICALE, Umbria, Italy–At Easter, I often like to ponder which came first: the Bunny or the Egg. I was almost starting to make headway on that abstract chocolate-based concept, when from out of the clear blue day-after-Easter-sky comes: Cheese Rolling. What could the seasonal tie-in be? Panicalesi are known to eat cheese; but, as far as I know, they don’t make any of it. Wine, yes. Olive oil, yes. The sport itself seems to be the slightly demented offspring of the marriage of bowling and golf. Not a very wide spread sport, it may be only practiced in the Umbrian hilltown of Panicale, for all I know. What I do know is that it takes place every year on the Monday after Easter, Pasquetta (little Easter), and is called by the locals “Ruzzolone” or The Big Wheel.
There is a course (of course, of course) laid out in the streets around the village walls. Whoever “bowls” their Big Wheel O’ Cheese around the course in the fewest “strokes” wins. The gioccatori (sounds like jokers, but means players) wrap leather straps with wood handles around the cheese and send a perfectly good nine pounds of round cheese lurching wildly down the curving street with somewhat of a yo-yo and string effect. The cheese rolls, the crowd runs along side of it and someone marks where it wobbles to a stop with bit of chalk on the street. That is, when it stops on the street. Being cheese, it is a bit hard to control and the pecorino often wheels off the course and starts bouncing off down the hillside, through the olives, local officials in hot pursuit like kids chasing after the Gingerbread Man. Or, the unwieldly wheel of pecorino will stay on the road, whew, but get wedged, rats, under the one Fiat Uno that didn’t get the No Parking message. The winner takes the wheel of Pecorino home our friend Francesco tells us. Not that I know what someone would want with a cheese that has really “been around” like these have. As Francesco says “maybe they should give it to the losers”! If the cheese hits one of the village’s stout stone walls wrong, then the game and the cheese are all over, anyway. Si Mangia! Pecorino is local cheese made from sheep’s milk. Milking a sheep. Can you picture that?
Regardless, long before our first outdoor cheese race had concluded, the crowd had heard the band “music” off in the piazza and had wandered that direction for the milling about, for the free wine and for the ever popular, post game hard boiled eggs, all being served by the apt sounding Pro Loco. I know it means Local Promotion Group, plus or minus, but doesn’t Pro Loco look like it could mean Pro Crazy? Curiously, as soon as the music started, no one seemed to know or care if the annual cheese rolling contest had a winner or not. And what a sight the band was! Reminiscent of the finest Fellini. The band we saw was named “Bandaccia” (Bad Band) and pots and pans and car horns and stuffed animals were involved, as you can see in the photo above. In spite of their name, they weren’t actually all that bad, but quite loud and festive – in a Spike Jones sort of way! Even though we’re going to miss the festivities this year by a few days, we’re happy to know that somewhere there is something this dizzy and whimsical signaling the happy start of spring. I know all our friends in Panicale are counting the days till this year’s Running of the Cheeses. Happy Pasquetta to all!
See you in Italy!
Stew Vreeland
The view from the hilltop frantoio was resort quality. Lake in distance, Cortona beyond that, very romantic. Inside the mill everything was all business, all chrome and spankyclean, industrial blue, high-tech-looking Italian olive oil pressing machines. You can wax as poetic as you want to. But basically, your hard fought olives go in here and the oil comes out there. In your polished metal can at the other end of the system. I came, I saw, I got it. Fine, ok, lets eat. As best as I can tell, anything potentially interesting is happening inside those machines and they’ll tell you all about it if you ask. People were asking. The answers sounded like machine noise to me. And heck, I’ll take their word for it about how it all happens. My attention wavered in oh, about ten minutes.
MONTEPULCIANO, Tuscany– OK the calendar says Fall. Late Fall. I checked. And the lazy November sun was punching in later and checking out earlier – every day. But! When that sun is out and about, so are we. We spend our days strolling about in short sleeves. And our nights sleeping with the windows wide open. And according to my Plant Diary, it was exactly like this last year at this same time. In Maine, the colors have run away and left us with shades of grey. But here in Umbria? Things are just starting to get their autumnal glow. When we got to Umbria on the 24th of October, I noted the left behind vines of recently harvested grapes were still rather green. The next week they went momentarily golden and now they are turning nut browns and drifting down to the still warm ground.
Today we are blessing Montepulciano with our presence and buying a few Christmas presents while we are at it. The town is abuzz and people are in their Sunday best. Which is maybe as it should be since it is Sunday after all. Looks like there are more than a handful of End of Summer neighborhood festivals, a chestnut festival, public dinners (you can hear and smell the sizzle of sausages being grilled, mid-day bells ringing, there is accordion music in the air outside one festival. Way too many stores are open so our progress is slow as we roam up and down the steep, stone streets. We dropped in the Osteria di Borgo that Paulette spoke of in glowing terms, and it is way up at the apex of the town. The better to see your view, Montepulciano. One of a million vantage points with panoramic vistas here in this crows’ nest of a town. After awhile, incredibly, you just start to take the fabulous overlooks in Montepulciano for granted. An embarrassment of Tuscan riches? Yes, indeed. 
HUGS AND KISSES
