Family Winery at Mount Etna in Italy

 At the Island Wines Summit in Tenerife, the Canary Islands, I saw several dormant and active volcanoes.

I met a young man from, Italy, second generation of a vineyard family. He had the word ETNA tattooed on his wrist.

I asked him, 'is it an active volcano?'

''Yes.'

I gasped, 'Aren't you afraid of an active volcano?'

He shook his head and smiled. 'No, I am not afraid of an active volcano. I'm more afraid of people.'

His family winery is in my husband's book about island wines, Isle Drink, by Trevor Sharot. Which you can buy online from Amazon.

His name is Andrea Foti, and the winery is I Vigneri.

Website 

www.ivigneri.it

He is one of the up and coming new generation of winemakers. He was a panellist who spoke at the conference.

He gave me a tee-shirt in lovely blue.

The message is minus arrogante, Italian for arrogance, meaning less arrogance. 

And plus, carricante, more of the local grape called carricante. You can see a picture of the white carricante bunches of grapes on their website, and their black grapes.

Their website is in Italian or English. You can learn from the website about their soil, philosophy (no plastic), and where to buy the wines in Italy and how to book a tour to taste five or seven wines and tour the vineyard and old and new cellars, with containers of three types.

Websites 

The Winery near Etna

www.ivigneri.it

Tracking volcanoes

https://volcanoes-earthquakes.appwesome.com/

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More On IO Italian Osteria Restaurant and Etna

What's Osteria? Hostelry, same word.


Etna - what's mount Etna? A Volcano. A friend tells me: "Sicily wouldn't exist without Etna. It's a volcano island." That explain a lot.

Service
Everybody rushes around. A bit confusing as two people may try to take your order and you want to be careful not to order twice. Another confusion was that we wanted a quarter bottle and one glass, not two glasses of wine but one empty glasses, and one glass of white wine.

Anna Borrasi a jolly lady, is Partner / Chief Operations Officer.
IO
#02-01-hillV2
Hillview Rise
website: io-osteria.com
IO Osteria@Hillview
Phone: 671071050
Two other restaurants on one of their business cards:
Etnaitalianrestaurant.com

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Wine club's wine from Mount Etna with ash on the gritty label!

At the Bellavita Italian food and beverage show at the Business Design Centre, Angel, Islington, I stopped at a stand promoting wine grown on Mount Etna. The first surprise was that you could grow vines in volcanic soil. 

(My second double take was at the idea that anybody would want to risk working on the hillside, or risking their business, crop and workers. OK - just a passing thought. I didn't mention that, and nor did the man on the stand. The next surprise was that you could get decent tasting grapes. Or that you could operate machinery without throwing up ash or walk around in your boots without getting ash on your hands or sliding down the mountains.)

However, as one who delights in unusual stories, I was intrigued to taste the wine. (Since I like sweet sparkling wines, of which my favourite is Prosecco, I am not one to judge a red wine, unless it is sweet and fruity sickly aromatic, which most are not.) Yup - it was a dry red.

However, the final amusement was the label. They take the grey ash and add it to the label. It isn't just a grey colour. When you feel it, your fingertips or nails find bought surface like an emery board. If you want a talking point at a party, or something for the person who has everything, here's a novelty.

More about unusual and limited availability wines from the Bat and Bottle wine club.

Bat and Bottle

18D Oakham Enterprise Park

Oak well Road

Oakham

Rutland

LE15 7TU

email emma@batwinel.co.uk

Call 01572 759 735

Membership is free. Members receive a quarterly newsletter. They have two clubs Conspirators and Vini Curiosity. Members are offered

Conspirators - Cases costing £150 consisting of 4 different wines, (3 bottles of each). Members can choose from mixed, red or white.

Vini Curiosity Cases cost £159 and are made up of 6 different wines.

If a case consists of 12 bottles, you can see that each bottle is in the £10plus range, plus post and packing? If you are interested, call them or email them.

That seems to work out at £12.50 a bottle for the first case of 12. I don't know if that includes VAT and customs and post and packing.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Follow my blogs, link to me on LinkedIn, befriend me on Facebook, check out my books and buy them from Amazon and lulu.com

Want to climb a volcano? Vesuvius? Italy. Easy.

Hikers in Indonesia Java Lava, often hike up to the tops of volcanoes and take photos out and in. I thought volcanoes were all dangerous because of the rising gas, not to mention the heat. Or the danger of another eruption. But hiking up volcanoes worldwide seems a very popular pastime.

(Not, perhaps amongst us sewers, knitters, myopic former stamp collectors and retired armchair travellers.) However, even if you are interested in only armchair travelling, you might still like to take a look, shake your head and tut-tut at what the rest of the world gets up to. (As if there weren't enough dangers.)

Seems pretty well organised for tourists. Last reckoning was 5 Euros for parking and 8 Euros for entry and you can hire a walking stick.

Last erupted 1944. That's a bit recent for my liking. Not within my lifetime but within the last century, in my parents and grandparents lifetime.

This is the famous volcano which destroyed Pompeii in Roman times and whose after effects killed Pliny the elder, whose memoirs you might like to read, recorded by his nephew Pliny the younger.

Another famous Italian one is Etna on Sicily.

Millions living nearby. Plans prepared to evacuate, within seven days. (And what if it erupts before the seven days are up?)

Don't forget to:
Pack your camera.
Write your will.
Many a true word spoken in jest.

hippos://globeriders.wordpress.com/tag/climb/

Dormant or extinct? What's the difference? As far as I can tell, one is sleeping and hasn't been a threat for some time and is not thought likely to erupt. The other has shown no signs of life so you are much safer. But please check: latest definitions; and classifications for a particular place.

Kilimanjaro, in means mountain of light, maybe, according to one of various theories. Kilimanjaro has three volcanic cones.
In Tanzania.

Others in Indonesia are: S e m e r u in Java' Anak, (means child) ,Krakatoa, Tambora, Rinjani in Indonesia, Kerinci.
In Bali, mount Agung volcano is g u n u n g in Bahasa Indonesia (Indonesian language), G u l u n g B a t u r.  (Marapi exploded in Java, Indonesia before my family could get to it. )

If spell checker has made a nonsense of the proper names or any words after I have careful checked and confidently left the page, please look for the nearest spelling to identify what I meant.

Angela Lansbury
Travel writer and photographer, author, speaker.