Andiamo a Roma- Degustazione alla Galleria Alessandra Bonomo

VINO

GALLERIA ALESSANDRA BONOMO

Via del Gesu’ 62 cortile B, Roma

degustazione: venerdì, 18 maggio ore 17-20

www.bonomogallery.com / www.potentino.com

Andiamo a Roma- Dinner 18th May 2012

POTENTINO a ROMA

venerdì, 18 maggio, 2012

INVITO CENA SU PRENOTAZIONE

Ex Osteria 41, Viale Ostiense 41 - Ore 20:30

Castello di Potentino tra Maremma,

vino e Cucina Romana

Venerdì, 18 Maggio, 2012

Evento Roma

Nel cuore della Maremma toscana ... Charlotte Horton, vignaiola ed enologa

dei suoi vini, ha trasformato Castello di Potentino in un vero e proprio centro

culturale della Maremma. Le battaglie di Charlotte per la salvaguardia del

territorio, segnalate anche nella guida Slowine , saranno al centro di una cena

dove la DOC Montecucco sarà abbinata alla cucina romana di Alberto Albanesi. 

Antipasti misti della casa:
Salumi,formaggi e mozzarelle di bufala -

bruschette miste -Cocci alla romana: coratella, pajata e trippa

Primi
Tonnarelli cacio e pepe -Paccheri con cicoria, guanciale e pecorino

Secondo e contorni
Petto di vitello alla fornara -Verdure di stagione

Dolce della Casa

In abbinamento:
LYNCURIO 2010, PIROPO 2008, Balaxus 2008 e

Sacromonte 2007 e 2008.

Ex Osteria 41, Viale Ostiense 41, Roma  Soci 35€ - non soci 40€

www.potentino.com

www.slowfoodroma.it/news/castello-di-potentino-tra-maremma-vino-e-cucinaromana

www.lacantinadimarco.com/1/

CENA

venerdì, 18 maggio, ore 8.30pm

prenotazioni & info : Andrea Petrini 377.1615140

www.exosteria41.com

Ex Osteria 41, Viale Ostiense 41, Roma

Contatti & ulteriori informazioni

Charlotte Horton

Castello diPotentino

–

348 288 1638

charlotte.horton@potentino.com

Potentino Goes to Ireland 29th February-2nd March 2012

So... Charlotte and I are off to the Emerald Isle for a whistlestop tour with Stuart of Fromvineyardsdirect Ireland. If you know of any potential Potentino fans in Ireland, do spread the word!

Wednesday 29th February

Sebastian Guinness Gallery, Dublin

6:30pm onwards

Tasting with Fabio's Amiata Salami and Aldo and Angela's Unpateurised Pecorino Cheese

Address:

42 Dawson Street,

Dublin 2

Thursday 1st March

 The Hunt Museum, Rutland Street, Limerick

7pm

Dinner

€46 (including three glasses of wine, one of each)

Please book via FVD's website here

Friday 2nd March

The Science Gallery, Pearse Street, Dublin 2

6pm

Dinner

€50 (including three glasses of wine, one of each)

with a talk from Charlotte

Please book via the Gallery's website here

Dinner Menu

Pasta with Bottarga Pesto (served with Piropo)

*

A tasting of the new season olive oil

*

Sausages cooked in wine, Fave e Foglie (broad beans and bitter greens) (served with Sacromonte)

*

Unpasteurised Cheese from Angela and Aldo's flock of sheep raised on Monte Amiata (with Lyncurio)

*

Chocolate pots with Maldon Salt and Lavender and Potentino Olive oil. 

All our ingredients will come from Italy or sourced locally in Ireland.

If you can't make it... but would like to buy some wine...

Charlotte's wines can be ordered from From Vineyards Direct Ireland or UK.

Ireland

Please click here for the Piropo and here for the Sacromonte. Delivery is free. The Lyncurio is also now available too.

UK

Please click here for the Piropo and here for the Sacromonte. Delivery is free. The Lyncurio is also now available too.

Snowy Potentino

We are in the midst of a week of proper wintery weather. Minerva, the Great Dane is loving the snow. I thought I would post some photographs. Mini really didn't know what to make of Robi's snowman... she hid...

Wildflower and Foraging at Potentino

It is hard to imagine, given that it is snowing outside here at Potentino, that in 4 months time, we will be sorrounded in a green paradise of orchids and wildflowers and that we will be foraging for some of the wild plants to eat.

One of the most extraordinary things about our valley, owing to its lack of modern agricultural practices, is that we have an amazing variety of flora here- along with wonderful insect life and birds. The orchids are so prolific that at times you have to tiptoe through the fields. We even have the very rare lizard orchid.

May is a great moment to come and visit - picnics in the olive groves, walks along the valley and trips to some of the local sites will be organised.  We will have a wildflower  and foraging expert on hand to help you find and identify plants and to give you guidance on what to pick to eat. Charlotte and I will then cook foraged ingredients for your dinner. One of our favourite dishes in May is the first feathery sprouts of wild fennel: lightly cooked with anchovies and a little garlic and olive oil they make a delicious pasta sauce. For the foodies, I am sure there will be even more treats in store.

Other highlights include:
A visit to the wonderful gardens at La Foce,  the renaissance jewel of Pienza and to the local monastery at Sant' Antimo.

The Details
The course will run from 16th-22nd May and costs £1,100.
The cost will include your stay and all food and wine at Potentino for 6 nights. It does not include flights or any meals outside of Potentino (during the day trip away).

Booking
Please book by sending me an e-mail at alexander.greene@potentino.com

Getting to PotentinoFlights to Pisa Airport are easiest, although one can fly to Rome or Florence and hire a car. We will be collecting people from Pisa prices to be confirmed depending on numbers.

We have written directions for those who wish to hire a car.

The wine is in the vats...

And has now been bubbling away for while so while the olive nets are being repaired and things calm down, I thought I would say a few things about harvesting grapes.

As an annoying younger brother, I tend to ask questions of my sister about the whole winemaking process- this is my first full year of production so I have a lot of questions and one of them was why we do so much by hand...

So this is what Charlotte adds:
Many estates use machines to remove leaves.  This is often done without observation of the particular conditions of individual plants or consideration of the weather. Forecasting what the seasons will bring is a core part of winemaking and fine-tuning in the vineyard can improve or save a harvest. Working robot-like to a standardised calendar has created many problems including the spread of fungal infections of the vines and is not kind to the vines.

This year has been a very difficult year for most of the vineyards in Italy- a cold, wet July followed by a very hot and dry August lead to grapes that in some vineyards resembled raisins rather than fresh grapes as the vines were sucking back all the water back into the plant to save themselves. Not ideal- we widely hear reports that quantities are down by more than 30%- the vine equivalent of the Great Depression...

But we have managed to avoid the raisin issue completely by leaving a lot of leaves on the vines this year providing extra cover. This wouldn't be possible if we didn't work by hand. The result is that we have actually produced the same amount as last year and we are very happy with the quality as well.

Look at these

When it comes to picking the grapes, the mechanical harvester is incredibly violent, potentially damaging to the vines and to the grapes both, which leads to wounded vines and fermentation before the grapes reach the cantina. But perhaps more important, it takes out that human element of selection- particularly important for the pinot noir where there are a lot of  small secondary bunches of grapes that aren't as sweet or as ripe at harvest time- that leaves out all but the healthiest grapes.

I leave you with a clip of video of a mechanical harvest- I certainly wouldn't want to be a vine in their vineyard...

And one at Chandon in France- done alarmingly fast by hand!

Bread and Games Review of the Pop-up at Black's

A wonderful review of our recent pop-up at Black's- it has me blushing....

http://breadandgames.co.uk/tag/castello-di-potentino/

Full Moon Pop-up at Potentino 11th-13th November

Full Moon Pop-up at Potentino 11th-13th November

Come to the source. Meet Coco, Minerva, the vines and the olive trees. We have been going on about reproducing the Potentino atmosphere in London so come and experience it in situ.

Autum at the castle - there will be chestnuts, fantastic seasonal food, music, new oil and bruschetta by the fire. Plus olive picking and picnics in the groves. In other words, Potentino Life.

The weekend will include a tour of the estate, cantina and castle - a visit to the etruscan wine making stones. How do we do it all? See the land where the wine and oil actually comes from.

Special gala show case - Davy Lyons from Wexford, Ireland has been coming as a volunteer for a few years now and is the most talented and extraordinary singer and will be playing during the weekend.  His singing is so sweet it makes people cry every time.  He is a star.

There will be special culinary surprises and maybe a kitchen disco.

Come for the weekend or stay longer...

Booking

Please book by sending me an e-mail at potentino.bookings@me.com

€120 per day for a shared room.  €150 per day single occupancy.  Meals and wine included within reason.

Full Moon gratis.

Getting to Potentino

Flights to Pisa Airport are easiest, although one can fly to Rome or Florence and hire a car. We will be collecting people from Pisa at 16:00 on the Friday- prices to be confirmed depending on numbers. We will co-ordinate with anyone who is interested- once we know more about how long people want to stay (Sunday or Monday or longer), we will try to coordinate transport to Pisa.

We have written directions for those who wish to hire a car.

If you can't make it... but would like to buy some wine...

Charlotte's wines can be ordered from From Vineyards Direct. Please click here for the Piropo and here for the Sacromonte. Delivery is free. The Lyncurio is also now available too.

Future Dates and Other Events

To be confirmed!

Photo of Coco and Minerva by Malachi Rempen http://www.mmrempen.com/

Photo of Davy and sunset by Alexander Atwater www.alexanderatwater.co.uk

The double-edged rain

It has been raining here for much of the week- a nice break from the sun and needed to help the vines grow, but in Italy it doesn't rain lightly and every rain storm brings with it the risk of hail... each sudden downpour has me fingers-crossed hoping that it isn't going to hail. The hail would rip through the vine leaves destroying everything. A few years ago the hail stones were so big that the local FIAT garage had to sell off its entire stock at a discount because the car bonnets were peppered with dents- apparently the hailstones were the size of lemons. A local bar has one in its freezer still to show the unbelieving.
E' cosi la vita Italiana...

New Zealand Herald Article about WWOOFing!

A lovely article about last year's olive harvest! Charlotte the super-bitch...

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10681586

http://www.qt.com.au/story/2010/10/21/pick-your-way-through-italy/

Mushroom Madness 7th November @ Frontline

 
It has been more than a month of harvesting for Charlotte, both in the vineyard - where she has just finished picking the sangiovese, which is beautifully healthy and ripe and now bubbling away in the barrels next to the Pinot Noir that we picked in September: 2010 looks to be a good year - but also reaping some wonderful reviews in the press... the release of the 2011 wine guides has lead to a fantastic 5 stars in the Guida Espresso for the Sacromonte; we are in the inaugural Guida Slow Wine, awarded a Slow Wine rosette;  and for the first time we are in Hugh Johnson's Pocket Wine Book. Exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure, the olive harvest is next so that we have some delicious new oil for the November pop-up....

Lunch 1pm for 1:30pm and Dinner 7:30 for 8pm £30 a head
Wild Mushroom Soup with Borlotti Beans, Bruschetta with new oil
Roasted mushrooms with Animelle, Chestnut polenta and Ricotta
Green Salad with Secret Potentino Dressing
Schiaccia dei Morti
Coffee is included

All our ingredients will come from Italy or sourced locally in England.

If you can't make it... but would like to buy some wine...
Charlotte's wines can be ordered from From Vineyards Direct. Please click here for the Piropo and here for the Sacromonte. Delivery is free. The Lyncurio is also now available too.

Opening Hours
The bar will be open all day from 11:30am-10:30pm- any left-overs will be served.

Booking
Please book by sending me an e-mail at potentino.bookings@me.com
People will be seated together. If you would prefer to have a table to yourselves, please let me know and I will try to accommodate you.

Getting There
The Frontline Club is in 13 Norfolk Place, Paddington, W2 1QJ.
The building is on the corner of Norfolk Place and St. Michael's Street. Norfolk Place runs between Sussex Gardens and Praed Street and is just opposite the entrance to St. Mary's Hospital.
Closest Tube Station: Paddington

The Potentino Pop-up will be in the Clubroom on the 1st floor and downstairs in the Restaurant too.

All billing will be done through the Frontline Club. A discretionary 12.5% Service charge will be added to your bill.

Future Dates and Other Events
Pop-ups at Frontline (1st Sundays):
5th December
Book now if you would like to ensure a place.

Pop-up Future Dates

We have two dates organised for 2010 after the October Pop-up-
Sunday 7th November and Sunday 5th December.
I hope you can make it!
Alexander

Chestnut Festival at Frontline 3rd October

Charlotte, Rohan and I are back at Frontline in Paddington on Sunday 3rd October with a feast of Chestnuts and Wild Boar. The Pop-ups have been so much fun, we are hoping we can continue to do them on the first Sunday of each month.

I was in Italy last weekend for the harvest of the Pinot Noir- the grapes were wonderfully healthy. We made some delicious grape schiaccia which is made with the wine grapes and is deliciously sticky but quite savoury. I hope we can make some for the 3rd. I have added some photos at the bottom...

Lunch 1pm for 1:30pm and Dinner 7:30 for 8pm £30 a head (£25 for Vegetarians)
Quince and Amiata Chestnut Soup
Wild Boar Stew, Roasted Pumpkin and Onions with Wild Pears, Salad with Potentino Dressing
Pecorino and Mostarda
Chestnuts cooked with wild fennel
Coffee is included. 

All our ingredients will come from Italy or sourced locally in England.

If you can't make it... but would like to buy some wine...
Charlotte's wines can be ordered from From Vineyards Direct. Please click here for the Piropo and here for the Sacromonte. Delivery is free. The Lyncurio is also now available too.

Opening Hours
The bar will be open all day from 11:30am-10:30pm- any left-overs will be served.

Booking
Please book by sending me an e-mail at potentino.bookings@me.com
People will be seated together. If you would prefer to have a table to yourselves, please let me know and I will try to accommodate you.

Getting There
The Frontline Club is in 13 Norfolk Place, Paddington, W2 1QJ.
The building is on the corner of Norfolk Place and St. Michael's Street. Norfolk Place runs between Sussex Gardens and Praed Street and is just opposite the entrance to St. Mary's Hospital.
Closest Tube Station: Paddington

The Potentino Pop-up will be in the Clubroom on the 1st floor and downstairs in the Restaurant too.

All billing will be done through the Frontline Club. A discretionary 12.5% Service charge will be added to your bill.

Future Dates and Other Events
Pop-ups at Frontline (1st Sundays):
7th November
5th December
Book now if you would like to ensure a place.

Backs, Feet and Etruscan Wine at Potentino 11th-17th October
Sarah Key will be in residence at Potentino 11th-17th October helping people to understand their backs and Charlotte will be making some house wine the Etruscan way.

Jack giving the grape skins a very light pressing.

Waiting for some lunch after picking the Pinot Noir

   Grape Schiaccia made with some Malvasia Nera grapes

At war under Tuscan Skies

A very good article about Tuscany and the slow destruction of the environment... quite terrible and very very sad...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/italy/tuscany/7955548/At-war-under-Tuscan-skies.html

Vinicide

Our neighbours' vineyard has been cut down- nearly 3,000 vines cut below the graft.

Some of the local coverage shows what a blow this is- 6 years of growth destroyed in one night...

http://enoclubsiena.blogspot.com/

http://www.youtube.com/tv9telemaremma

A Summer Fish Extravaganza At Frontline 1st August!

Charlotte, Cesare, Rohan and I are back at Frontline in Paddington on Sunday 1st August with a fish extravaganza- so if you aren't on holiday, come and join us! Or forward this on to a friend... We love new people...

One of our favourite dishes is Cesare's seafood pasta which we only get when he is coming straight up from Grosseto Market. Silence descends on the table as we suck the juices out of the shells and mop the plate clean of all the tomato sauce. To keep things light we are having a chilled zucchini, almond and saffron soup to start and a surprise pudding...

We have decided to cut back to one lunch sitting so that things can be a little more relaxed- and once the club is full, we will add more tables downstairs.

Lunch (1pm for 1:30) and Dinner 7:30 for 8pm
Prices dependant on the Market Price (but not more than £35)
Charlotte's Zucchini, Almond and Saffron Soup
Cesare's Seafood Extravaganza with Spaghetti, Tuscan Bread
Salad with the Secret Potentino Dressing
Surprise Pudding

 

Coffee and water are included. 

We will have some of the new season olive oil as well.
All our ingredients will come from Italy or from Frontline's Farm in Norfolk. 

If you can't make it... but would like to buy some wine...It can be ordered from From Vineyards Direct. Please click here for the Piropo and here for the Sacromonte. Delivery is free. The Lyncurio is also now available too!

Opening Hours
The bar will be open all day from 11:30am-10:30pm- any left-overs will be served.

Booking
The last events sold out, so please book by sending me an e-mail atpotentino.bookings@me.com
People will be seated together. If you would prefer to have a table to yourselves, please let me know and I will try to accommodate you.

Getting There
The Frontline Club is in 13 Norfolk Place, Paddington, W2 1QJ.
The building is on the corner of Norfolk Place and St. Michael's Street. Norfolk Place runs between Sussex Gardens and Praed Street and is just opposite the entrance to St. Mary's Hospital.
Closest Tube Station: Paddington

The Potentino Pop-up will be in the Clubroom on the 1st floor and downstairs in the Restaurant too.

All billing will be done through the Frontline Club. A discretionary 12.5% Service charge will be added to your bill.

The Barabata- the harvest festival for Cerere in Bolsena- every May.

We're back at Frontline on Sunday 6th June!

Charlotte, Cesare, Rohan and I are going to be hosting our second pop-up restaurant at Frontline in Paddington on Sunday 6th June.

Charlotte and the WWOOFers are currently in the vineyard choosing the shoots on the vines that will make this year's grapes. It is amazing how vigorous the vines are and soon it will be a       constant race to keep up with the growth.

Lunch (two sittings-12:00 for 12:15pm and 2:45 for 3:00pm) £25
Dinner (one sitting, 7:00 for 8pm) £25
Pappa al Pomodoro (Tomato and Tuscan bread soup) 
Asparagus "Farrotto" (Spelt Risotto) 
Cannelli bean and Wilted Radicchio Salad with a touch of Bottarga, Sauteed Blood Oranges with Chilli and Garlic
Sicilian Lemon Tart with Mascarpone Cream

Coffee and water are included. 

We will have some of the new season olive oil as well.
All our ingredients will come from Italy or from Frontline's Farm in Norfolk. 
If you can't make it... but would like to buy some wine...
It can be ordered from From Vineyards Direct. Please click here for the Piropo and here for the Sacromonte. Delivery is free.

Opening Hours
The bar will be open all day from 11:30am-10:30pm- any left-overs will be served.
Booking
The last event sold out, so please book by sending me an e-mail at potentino.bookings@me.comPeople will be seated together. If you would prefer to have a table to yourselves, please let me know and I will try to accommodate you.
Film Screening
Frontline will be holding a screening at 4pm of Aisheen (Still Alive in Gaza). You are more than welcome to come for lunch and then stay on for the screening and come back for an early supper afterwards! If you would like to book a ticket to the screening please click here.
Getting There
The Frontline Club is in 13 Norfolk Place, Paddington, W2 1QJ.
The building is on the corner of Norfolk Place and St. Michael's Street. Norfolk Placeruns between Sussex Gardens and Praed Street and is just opposite the entrance to St. Mary's Hospital.
Closest Tube Station: Paddington
The Potentino Pop-up will be in the Clubroom on the 1st floor.