Schoolhouse Recipes: Apartment Wine-Making

Speak like an American, make wine like an Italian.
This is one for the record books.
Apartment wine.

Among the many nicknames I have for my husband, a favorite is "Flavi Tuttofare"...which would roughly translate to "Flavi Does It-All". I mean the man can.do.anything.

I often joke that he lives his life in themes. Periods even, if you will. Over the last couple of years alone I can recall--
-the vegan period
-the vegetarian period
-the raw food period
-the photography period
-the I'll only eat it if I kill it and skin it myself period
-the alternative medicine period (that one is everlasting)
-the falegname period (working with wood--also everlasting)
-Moroccan cuisine
-a stint in studying Chinese medicine (and taking lessons with our Chinese doctor)
-food

The last one is like his second wife. It's in his soul and spirit like I've never seen in anyone else. We've been married nearly six years, and it is the gospel truth when I tell you that it's a shame he doesn't have his own restaurant. Anyone who's eaten at our home can back me up on that.

So it's September and the grapes in Italy are being harvested. Flavi made his own wine a couple of years back at his grandparents' home, but this year he wanted to try something different...making it our apartment. In Rome. With our two small children.

He contacted our friends at Campagna Amica (where we buy our organic groceries straight from the source every weekend) and ordered his grapes. We picked them up early in the afternoon yesterday.

There were 6 of these crates.

I'm from Texas and Flavi is from this area of Rome called Castelli Romani. We both grew up with backyards. We both feel sad to some extent that our children have a balcony and not this huge open space outside of our home where they can run around and make mud pies and be filthy every day. I mean, sometimes the park just ain't gonna cut it. But I think ideas like this are a step in the right direction...there are so many things you can still do, even though the space is small and you're not outside.

The details of how to make apartment wine will soon come via Flaviano--his new life theme is blogging. He already has one about fish--yesterday he informed me he's starting one about wine.

I'll just leave you with this bit to get you started.
You'll need a huge tub.
And clean feet. Clean little feet that are still stinky after washing them.

I'll let you know where to go for the rest of it when Flavi gets it done. 

He always does.