Welcome to a delicious culinary and cultural event hosted by Marilì Mustilli.  Together with her husband Leonardo and their two daughters, Anna Chiara and Paola, her family runs the prestigious Mustilli Winery, set in the medieval town of S. Agata dei Goti and perched on a spectacular tufa outcrop. Under Marilì’s expert supervision you will learn traditional dishes of Campania, including hand-made pasta and vegetable pasta sauce, a meat or cheese dish and a dessert. All the ingredients and herbs used are seasonal and are grown locally.

Program
10:30am - Arrival at S. Agata dei Goti
Cooking Menu:
Home-made pasta (cavatielli) and a pasta sauce using seasonal and locally-grown vegetables.
Involtino (stuffed escalope) or Cotoletta di Provola (Provola Cheese Cutlet if you prefer vegetarian)
Torta di Nocciola (Hazelnut Cake)

Lunch will include all the food you have cooked in addition to the renowned Falanghina and Aglianico wines produced by the Mustilli family.

After lunch you will visit the ancient underground wine cellars that were hewn into tufa rock in the 16th century and your guide will take you on a walking tour of the ancient town.

Price: 100,00 euro per person (4 people or more)
150,00 euro per person (2-3 people)

includes: cooking course, wine tasting, visit to the wine cellars, tour of the town and your own personal guide and interpreter.

The area around present-day Vairano has been inhabited since prehistoric times: first by the Oscans, the Etruscans and then the Samnites.  In 290 B.C. the territory was conquered by the Romans.

After the fall of the Empire the region was overrun by a series of barbarian tribes. The Longobards lived here in the 6th century and were themselves conquered by the Normans in the 11th.  These in turn built a fortress designed to defend them from Saracens invaders. In 1191 the fortress was given as a gift to the Abbot of Montecassino by Henry VI of Hohenstaufen.

In 1590 Vairano was purchased by Baron Mormile who turned the military fortress into a residential castle where generations of his family lived for over two hundred years until the year 1806.
In nearby Teano the treaty of the Unification of Italy between Garibaldi and Victor Emmanuel II was ratified in 1860.

Housed in what was originally the manor built into the battlements of the ancient fortress, the restaurant overlooks the medieval town of Vairano Patenora and its fertile green fields.

Restaurant owner and chef Antonio Ruggiero is a well-known expert on wines and oils and offers creative renderings of traditional dishes.

Program
10:30am - Arrival at Vairano Patenora
Sample Menu (recipes will vary depending on the vegetables that are in season)
Ravioli made with borage and stuffed with meat, mozzarella and tomato concassé
Black Casertan Pig with pappacelle (pickled peppers)
Baked Sheep Ricotta
Diced oranges with citrus-flavoured bavarian cream and extra-virgin olive-oil sauce

After lunch you will visit the Franciscan Monastery at Roccamonfina.

Price: 120,00 euro per person (4 people or more)
200,00 euro per person (2-3 people)

price includes: cooking course, ‘Oil Apèritif’, meal, wine, personal guide and interpreter

It is possible to visit a mozzarella cheese producer early in the morning.

by Gretchen Bloom (for Italian Notebook)

Sant’Agata dei Goti, founded by the Goths in the 6th century, boasts some of the deepest cantine (basements) in Italy. Its location on a rock spur between two streams made the old town virtually impregnable…and thanks to the cantine, villagers could store supplies for quite a while. One story speaks of a nine-year siege, in 1038, survived by all!

To understand these cantine dug into the volcanic stone (tuff), one can visit the Mustilli wine cellar, 15 meters deep (45 ft.) and 13 degrees C (57 F) at its deepest point. When the Mustilli purchased the property in the 18th century the cantina was not lit nor was there any proper flooring. Then before the electrical lighting added in the ‘60s, Leonardo Mustilli (pictured below) removed layers of debris with the light from a gas lamp… and found nine deeper holes, presumably for grain storage. He has left one untouched for further archaeological research.

In the old days, the wine was brought up to the neighboring hosteria through an underground tunnel… cleverly avoiding the road tax! During WWII, when the town was bombed, villagers also took refuge in the cantine. Fortunately, the Mustilli daughters Paola and Anna Chiara now use them once again for their original and ideal purpose, storing and aging wine.

An Italian Notebook original article.

“First impressions are so important. And in Naples it’s the vegetable antipasti that belt our a trumpet fanfare for the dishes that follow.

“The bright and shiny skins of tomatoes from northern Europe promise much but deliver only bland and wooly interiors.  Instead, make a food pilgrimage to Vesuvian soil and savor the pomodorini grown in Campania.  What’s so special? The siren song of volcanic minerals in every local vegetable.

“If not bruschetta, or a platter of eggplant, carrots or zucchini presented under a film of olio al peproncino (chili oil), choose a plump, delicately-scented mozzarella combined with prosciutto.  The local white wine. Falanghina, provides essential counterpoint.

Or order any vegetable antipasto della casa, most often a self-serve buffet affair, and brace yourself for a veritable Hallelujah Chorus to set before you!”

Just when you think the heat has taken its final toll on the countryside, when the trees are wilting with thirst, when the high grasses are nothing but a tinderbox, when you can’t stand another day of brutal sunshine, the rain finally arrives.  Soft and gentle, it soothes and cools and relieves your anxiety, giving way to a physical feeling of release and renewal.   People here describe it as sense of grace.  When you live in southern Italy it’s easy to see the ties between the people, their land and livelihood, natural and supernatural phenomena, and religion.  Events that are promoted by the Church are often tinged with a little paganism, such as in the food festivals that take place throughout the year: there is the cherry and apple sagre at S. Agata dei Goti, the wheat festival at Foglianise, even the mushrooms are feted at Cusano Mutri; all these crops are anxiously awaited and their bounty celebrated.  A case in point is the Festa dell’Uva at Solopaca.

Solopaca is a small town (population just over 4000) located at the base of the Taburno Mountain and has been known for its wines since the 12th century although its origins date back to pre-history. Like many towns in Campania, it was invaded by the Normans after the fall of the Roman Empire.  In the 15th and 16th centuries it came under the rule of feudal families such as the Monsori, the Lagonesse and the Caraccoioli.

Grapes and wines represent the mainstays of the local economy, so this is a really important event.  Mayors from all over the region are seated on a raised platform strategically placed before the main church, accompanied by the city’s police force carrying their colorful municipal banners.  Solopacan’s parade along the main street in period costumes, solemly pacing ahead of the sbandieratori (flag throwers). There are brigands and pulcinellas, peasants playing the putipù, kings, queens and damsels, gayly defying the brooding clouds that are gathering over the mountain tops.

Hundreds of people line the streets, young and old, eating sausages, broiled corn and ice cream, waiting to see the giant floats as they pass by (which will then procede to Naples to be displayed the following day).   But they all have one thing in common: they are completely covered and carefully inlaid with grapes: green, gold and black.  First come the various wine producers with their logos interpreted as mosaics of grapes.  Then comes the triumphant Madonna, elegantly cloaked in black and gold (grapes).

Then follow the bigger floats with subjects running from political satire to television shows.  My favorite had a sign boasting, “Non farti prendere dal panico, futtite ‘na bottiglia e Aglianico” (”Don’t get yourself into a panico, relax and drink a bottle of Aglianico”).

I enjoy participating in these events where the sacred and profane intermingle quite naturally.  A nun strolls with a woman in excruciatingly tight pants; priests and politicians pose amicably in front of the church. Life is too damn short and everyone wants to enjoy the last summer sun… as Winter is just around the corner.