daily life – Vino & Velo

Surviving 2020

November 24, 2020 Michele KarlssonLeave a comment

Well, 2020 has certainly been a year to remember so far, even as most of us wish we could forget it and move on to 2021 in the hopes it has the potential to make us smile more. That wish would take away our chance to learn from this year and we think learning is the real gift we can all take away from a year of political upheaval wrapped up in a pandemic and cooked in a climate crisis.

As a small company in a huge industry we’ve always had to stay flexible and quick on our feet…I mean wheels. The reliable constant has been the stability of tourism overall. We could be Leif and Michele riding through the Italian countryside drinking wine and sharing our experiences with the people we meet along the way because tourism had a place for everyone. That illusion has been shattered this year with the arrival of the pandemic. “Now what?” is a recurring question for everyone, but for the travel industry it’s a particularly loud, repeated and immediately unanswerable question.

We’ve been in limbo since the end of February. It’s an uncomfortable place to be for any length of time. To use a travel metaphor we’ve gone from the excitement and enchantment that the first days of a vacation bring, past the comfort of the next few days as comfort grows out of repetition, and now we’re well into those last few days where living out of a suitcase is downright unbearable and restaurant food is predictable but we have no choice and we’ve run out of comfortable sitting positions to make the bus rides less tedious. If this were a vacation we’d be hoping against hope that our Instagram feed would one day make this trip feel less awful.

But we still have hope.

We also remain remarkably light on our feet. Ahem, wheels. We’re doing what we need to do to survive these awkward months where nothing is normal and no one has a clue what tomorrow brings. We have time to explore ideas and reimagine our lives and learn all kinds of new things. Instead of looking back on what we think we’ve lost we’re looking forward to what we can be and have in the future.

Leif has become a pretty darn good bike mechanic. He has always had mad roadside skills but now he can walk into a fully equipped shop and take a bike apart and put it back together. He’s always been able to make a rental bike fit the rider. Now he can talk to a rider and help them find the perfect bike to buy. His passion for cycling has a new depth. Instead of getting people on a bike for a day he has been able to help others make cycling a part of their every day. Pretty cool, huh?

Michele has turned a corner of the apartment into her painting studio. Letting her creative side dominate during the lockdown has been a blessing. Expect to see a lot of watercolors of the Tuscan countryside in the months to come.

We’re also shifting our focus a bit from the Velo to the Vino in our company name. Leif is exploring the idea of becoming a wine educator. It’s a natural progression from connoisseur to guide to teacher that he’s perfectly suited for.

Michele is diving into the world of wine in a serious way too. She’s starting classes to learn more about wine, wine growing and the business of wine. She’s always been pretty good about drinking wine; now she has a chance to understand it as well. Living in the heart of Chianti as we do wine has a place in everyday life and the more she learns about it the better she can help visitors to understand the role wine farming has played in the culture of Italy.

As hard as this year has been, we intend to be around next year and for many years to come. How we do that isn’t completely clear, but we’re going to do it. The friendships we’ve built, the special times we’ve shared, and the joy we’ve received make it impossible for us to just quit. We have so much yet to give…we just have to figure out how to do that.

To all our past guests: We treasure the time you spent with us. We have relived so many experiences during our lockdown and feel richer for having known you.

To our future guests: We can’t wait to meet you and show you what life in Italy looks, sounds, feels, smells and tastes like. It’s 1000 times better than you can imagine.

Winter Riding

November 25, 2016November 25, 2016 Michele KarlssonLeave a comment

Both Leif and I are from much colder climates; Leif is from Sweden and I’m from Minnesota in the United States. We’re used to cold and snow and weather that doesn’t invite cycling for months out of the year. This doesn’t mean cycling doesn’t happen in those climates, it just changes significantly for those who chose to ride year round. Different bikes, different clothing, different terrain. Very different mind set.

Part of the attraction of Tuscany for Leif was the longer cycling season. And if you’re from the north it truly is a year round season: It’s only the clothing and often your speed that needs to change. When I came here I didn’t cycle but really really really enjoyed what is in my experience a pretty mild winter. Now that I ride I appreciate that warmer winter season even more.

We’re very lucky, we know this. We have many friends who have to stay inside during the winter and use a trainer because of work schedules and less daylight hours, or simply because they have a great dislike for being cold. Since we’re in the off season our schedule is super flexible and we can ride at the driest and warmest time of the day. One of the perks of our kind of work.

While I suppose this could be classified as “riding outside the season” this is the perfect time to see Tuscany in a whole new light. The cooler temperatures are a welcome respite from the melting heat of summer. Fall is the smell of wine fermenting as we ride by a farm, the chatter of workers picking olives in a grove and the swift change of colors as the vines and trees prepare for winter. Winter itself is another kind of ride. The air is scented with wood smoke from the many houses that still heat with wood. The trees may be bare but we can see the shape of the hills clearly and trace the change in soil and climate from one valley to the next. Coffee breaks take on a whole new meaning as they mean warmth inside and out. We may come home cold and wet, but we also feel incredibly alive.

For now we put on our long pants, long sleeved jerseys, warm socks and gloves and hat and head out just as much as before. When the temperatures really dip down, like into the single digits (Celsius) we’ll break out the long underwear and super warm accessories and ride a little more carefully on those wet and/or frosty roads. But we’ll still be outside riding and enjoying the warmer days with bright sunshine but also the those other days, bitterly cold wind in our faces as our toes and fingers go slowly numb…because this is the way we’ve always known winter to be.

cascine-001 — The colors are peaking right now.

The Olive Harvest

November 5, 2016 Michele KarlssonLeave a comment

We were fortunate this year to be invited to help one day with the olive harvest at Residenza Cornino near Castelina in Chianti (see their website here. The site is in Swedish, so contact them if you need info in English) . This was my first olive raccolta (harvest). Leif trained in olive groves when he first moved to Tuscany, so he was my guide alongside Gino, the owner of the trees.

This day started like most of our adventures do: We woke at the crack of dawn, rode our bikes to the train station, managed to find the bike carriage and took the train to the nearest station to our final destination, and rode our bikes the final leg of the trip in the crisp morning air of fall in Tuscany. When I say the views at the residence are panoramic and breathtaking you’ll know that the ride up the hill on a gravel road filled with switchbacks and double digit grades was tough but worth it.

Olive harvesting, like any farming, is labor intensive work. Large nets are laid under the trees to catch the olives as they fall, then the olives are moved downhill over the net and gathered into bins for transport to the olive press. The olives are picked using a variety of tools. Hands, the world’s oldest tools, are the gentlest way to harvest but this method is very slow. Gino told me that this, along with rakes, are a traditional Italian way to harvest because it’s quieter than machines and it’s possible to talk. Chiacchierare, or chatting, makes every task more pleasant! Rakes are faster than bare hands, but are still slow…the motion is kind of like combing the branches from top to bottom to remove the olives. The next step up is a stick with a motorized wheel on the end that beats the olives off the branches. It’s much faster but beats up the olives and the trees more than the other ways. It’s very physical work, this harvesting of olives. You’re either working above your head or lifting and dragging heavy nets up and down hills. Did I forget to mention that olives are planted on hillsides to maximize their exposure to the sun?

Every time I stopped to stretch my muscles my eyes wandered to the views. The absolutely spectacular view of the Tuscan countryside; undulating hills, vineyards subtly changing from green to yellow to gold, the shimmering silvery shades of olive green covering the spaces between fields of vines, all under a constantly changing sky. Cloudy, stormy and sunny skies changed our work from cool to sauna-like and back to cool again.

We finished the day with a visit to the olive press, just a short distance away. This is a modern press, far different from the old stone presses everyone used until recently (when health regulations required changes that stone simply can’t comply with). The olives are cleaned in one machine, moved to the pressing machine, then the oil is separated from the water, seed and pulp in a third machine before being moved to the centrifuge where the last water is removed and the oil is put into containers.

Of course we finished the day with the great downhill ride back to the train station. There’s something about riding in the moonlight that’s magical. It was the perfect end to a fantastic day.