Wine is love

My first "wine lovers" bottleI’ve recently applied for the Francesco Zonin‘s (Cantine Zonin is one of the greatest Wine companies here in Italy) new marketing initiative named Wine is Love (more on this on the linked Francesco’s blog, in Italian only) where some wine lovers bloggers are going to receive premieres bottles from the wine maker just to enjoy them.

The first bottle I’ve received is a Primitivo di Manduria (note: the English version of this Wikipedia page does not exiest) produced by the Masseria Altemura (which is owned by the Zonin’s) and has layed a couple of months in my cellar waiting for the right chance to be opened. I’ve to say that I proposed to our friends on the upper floor to celebrate each of the bottles I’m going to receive with a special wine tasting dinner to give these wines the respect they deserve.

For the Altemura di Altemura we arranged a full black suite table with demi-ballons glasses, black water glasses and design cutleries.

The main course was a superbly coocked roasted guineafowl on a bed of spinaches and green beans. A bamboo cup of chinese rice boiled with garlic made the rest.

We started the evening by reading the birth of this wine from the words of its creator (I’m gonna ask permission to Francesco Zonin to have this published) while the bottle sat opened on the table for more or less half an hour; we decided not to read the organolecptic table but to desume them by ourselves (we prepared a couple of “technical” booklets where to annotate our feelings about this wine and the dinner).

Smelling (with my wife trying to make me laugh)

The wine is plenty with strawberry and mixed berries, with a round corpus and well balanced tannines (I’m absolutely not a technician in this field and my English vocabulary is lacking too many wine related words to going deep into the description :-) ); we thought it would have had a great benefit of another couple of years rest to reach complete perfection, but it was a marvellous wine indeed.

Just a final note about the last sentence we wrote down: “Immediately order a couple of dozens of these bottles“. I wasn’t able to find any ecommerce on the Zonin’s site; Francesco: can you help?

Rookie runner

I’m used to 14 hours, multi-task multi-purpose working hours; my average working day starts at 6 and a half with the first mails and web check and usually ends after mid-night; but I’m a full-formed lazy boy for everything concerned with sport activities. Yes, it’s true that I love skiing, I play tennis, I swim and try to perform in other sports too… but these are not daily activities, nothing I can say I dare to to every day. The opposite is true!

But as my business/dinner lunches grows in number and in quality as my weight has re-started growing; I needed something that, without forcing me in a diet I would never have been able to maintain in the long distance, granted me a loose in fats and – hopefully but as a side effect – could also get myself fitter.

I started by evaluating the Nintendo Wii together with the Wii fit; but as the summer approaches it’s getting harder to perform fitness activities at home; I don’t have enough spare time to dedicate at least 7 hours of my week to go to the gym (and when I tried I never been able to reach the objectives I had due to my early abandon of it).

Speed graph on Nike+ siteBut then I’ve seen a commercial of the Nike+ Men VS Women challenge; basically Nike+ is a sensor, integrated in your left shoe to track speed and distance, wirelessy (via Bluetooth, I suppose) connected to your iPod (Nano or Touch, I own the second one) to organize, measure and maintain your running activity.

That was exactly what I was looking for:

  • It’s something geeky and innovative; something that reallly excites me;
  • It has a companion web site with cool functions and intuitive UIs;
  • It gives me the chance to share my results with friends and followers in a load of ways (email, Facebook, web, etc.);
  • It let you create your own challenges (personal or VS someone), running tracks (using Google maps), and objectives (calories lost, distance, speed, etc.).

I think these qualities are keeping me on track: I’m really enjoing running and I having the first results after just five days of activities: I started on Monday with a 20mins, 2.5 Km run and ended my Running Week on Saturday with a 25mins 4,7Km performance, nearly doubling my first effort!

Here belowOn the right column you’ll find a widget that connects to the Nike+ server and let me share with you my results; hopefully you’re going to see a 10Km run in the next 30 days!

The Penzo’s Christmas Eve menu

Chocolate Christmas trees This year Christmas Eve dinner is going to be slightly atipical since we broke the tradition to spend it with parents (mine or my wife’s) and we’ll be just the 3 of us: me, my wife and my daughter.I’ve spent the whole morning buying food (fish at the market, champagne at the winery, this and that at the supermarket, etc. etc.) while the afternoon was for the cooking (and for parentally control my 3 years daughter who’s at home from school).This is going to be our menu (photos will follow):Antipasti

First course

  • Spaghetti alla chitarra with shrimps, fresh tomatoes and artichokes

Dessert

  • Hand-made Panettone

Wine

  • Brut 2002 Blanc de Blancs, Champagne, Palmer & Co

Merry Christmas to all of you!