After 40 years in Minnesota this is no big deal for us, after all the coldest morning was Tuesday February 7 at 10 degess F. That would be a warm day in a Minnesota winter, but around here things sure do slow down. We haven't needed our car for over a week so why bother shoveling it out, besides we don't even own a snow shovel ( a requirement for Robert to live anywhere).

The talk all over town was of these new "things" hanging off of roofs and balconies. We were asked at market this morning if we had seen them before!

By the end of the weekend the snow should be gone from the palm tree across the street from our house and all will be back to normal again.

Sunday we got 16 inches of heavy wet snow. Up until now it has been an unusually mild winter. Monday school was closed and most people stayed home from work. Now it's Tuesday and snowing again.

Our neighbor trying to get his car out on Monday.

We will never get used to seeing umbrellas used for snow, though it's the norm here.

View of Neive from Bricco San Giuliano. The snow is very good for the vines as the water melts slowly into the ground compared to rain which runs off too quickly to be absorbed deeply into the soil.

This January we finally made it to Puglia in the south of Italy. It was a completely different Italy than we have known to date. Puglia has a big Greek influence and many different landscapes to choose from. The photo above is the village of Peschici on the Promontorio Gargano in Northern Puglia. To see more photos of our trip check this out.

While we were there we had to check out some wineries. This is the Alberto Longo winery in Lucera, just north of Foggia.

Today we met up with our wine friend, Matteo, to vist a new Barolo producer, Simone Scaletta, (first vintage 2002) and learn a little bit more about vineyard work. Before going into the vineyards, we tasted the wines with Simone. He uses small barriques for most of his wines, but only a small percent new, he has a very light touch with the wood component. We liked the all his wines very much, they have character and so do the labels.

With the village of Novello on the horizon, we head into Simone's nebbiolo vineyard. It's only 2 days to January, but the sun was warm as we walked through his vineyards.

Lesson 1, pest control for the vines, plastic "houses" are placed in the vineyard to catalog possible problem bugs, mostly looking for signs of the insect Tignola, which it's larvi eats the insides of the vines, leaving them with dangerous holes or rotten inside. Thankfully, this isn't a big problem in his vineyards, but his is only being careful and watching for them.

We're glad we are not the folks who "get" to survey all the yummy goodies caught in the trap .

While explaining his winter pruning routine, Simone answered an old question of ours. The question was, why is it the next step after pruning and pulling out/down all the old vines, that the work of bending over and tying off the one remaining shoot for the upcoming year is always done in crappy weather? We learned that with the bad, foggy weather comes high humidity that allows the vine to be bent with a lot less chance of breaking. If it does break, that vine will not produce fruit in the coming year. He explained the if 1 or 2 breaks when bending, he stops and waits for more humid weather which makes the vines more pliable.

Everyone had a great time, but Cotta had the most fun of all of us running through the vineyard. We need to find some weinie boots to help with the mud caked paws!

The Christmas markets "Mercati di Natale" are happening in all the medieval hilltop villages throughout the Langhe, our town Neive's was this last Sunday.

Our town/city hall was open (rare on a Sunday in Italy) for a nativity art show in the council chambers.
The local take on making christmas wreaths is to use the pruning from grape vines.

It's not a Christmas market without some animals!