Pasta Making in Frascati

On Thursday, July 11th, we ventured about 30 minutes outside of Rome to the small town of Frascati for a wine tasting and pasta making class that our friend Alison recommended. The class was hosted by a family that has been making wine in the region for generations. Our hosts met us and our small group at the train station and started by giving us a brief tour of the town and it's history. There is evidence in the town's main square of air raids that the US conducted during WW2, when Frascati was the home of the German headquarters in Italy.

After the tour, we moved on to the tasting of Minardi Frascati wine and some local meats and cheeses. We tried a white ("Frascatic Superiore" DOCG) that was very refreshing, and a red ("Vagnolo") that was very also good, but definitely on the dry side (it was HOT when we were in Rome, so we leaned a bit more toward the white). We learned that the DOCG classification means the Italian governmental has inspected the wine, tested the wine, analyzed the wine in terms of its chemical makeup, and guarantees that the wine type is exactly what it claims to be, and is produced in exactly the place that it claims to be made in. It also guarantees that the wine was produced according to the rules of the DOCG.

After the tasting, and with a bottle of the white wine in hand, we were ready to roll up our metaphorical sleeves and make some pasta. Neither of us had made pasta from scratch before, and it was harder than expected. Lots of rolling and kneading- we worked up a sweat. We always felt like we were using too much flour but turns out you need A LOT of flour to make pasta and we weren't using enough! Our hosts showed us the different types of pasta we could make based on the sizes. Carons ended up making fettuccine noodles and Mel tried to make tagliatelle, but what she actually made according to our hosts was pappardelle (whoops). Once we had the pasta made and cut, we let it rest, and our hosts let us choose which sauce we wanted to add to it. Carson chose a cacio e pepe and Melissa made carbonara, and we both added truffle. Turns out to make cacio e pepe as cheesy as it is, you need a lot of cheese. Better not to watch them make that one next time you want to eat it. Both dishes were some of the best food we had while in the Rome region.

Another part of this experience was visiting the old wine cellars that their family used to use. They aren't active anymore, but it was really interesting to walk around and see how everything was carved out. According to our hosts, these cellars were also used to provide shelter to people during the air raids in WW2. 

Overall, this experience was one of the best we had in Rome. It was really nice to visit the countryside for a while, learn a new skill, and get to eat something we made by hand.