I Drink, therefore I Run

Back at work on Monday, from the two superlative weeks in Le Marche, and I remembered that I had agreed to run a tasting for 12 of the team at work. One of the guys had managed to organise a room in a local hotel, so we had a suitable venue for a bit of 'oenophilic activity'. I had billed the tasting as 'the best from John's cellar', and so I picked a representative selection of the great wines of the world, most with a bit of bottle age as well, and thus not that is widely available. One of my 'fears' when presenting a selection of high quality wines is that you can get a bit blasé about what you are paying for. So, by way of setting the tone, and also to establish the 'quality factor', we kicked off with an unexceptional bottle of Campo Viejo Rioja , a fiver from Asda. Not a bad wine, however, once you take tax off, it is a £2.50 bottle. This allowed me then to talk about what you get when you do 'choose up the list' - lower yields, gra...

I shall refrain from waxing too lyrical about how lovely Le Marche still is (following last week's post) or I fear that I will totally lose your spirit! Suffice it to say that there was one very rainy day, so let that act as proof that balance in everything makes you realise how nice the good bits are. The running continued this week, and it is definitely suffering, from a combination of a) good food, b) excellent wine, c) the heat and d) just a general sense of laziness brought on by holiday. We still love the Abbadia, which is proving to be a real live wire of a place. Every morning it is full of walkers, runners, cyclists, smart suited architects holding a conference, and, occasionally, monks! No doubt in the literature it would be referred to as a ‘resource’, and I would wholeheartedly agree with that definition. On Sunday we joined the rest of the holidaymakers and Dean and Lesley to go to the Mogliano Festival, an annual three day festival that involves all the us...

Friends and readers, At last, an opportunity to stop and put pen to paper (electronically speaking) as Janet and I are taking two weeks, staying in Le Marche in central Italy. The weather is mostly sunny, with the occasional bout of downpour - well, that's how it stays so green, I suppose! The Abbadia Runningwise, the agriturismo that we are staying at (quite excellent -  Caserma Carina ) was on a steep slope, so my first run out involved a 20 minute solid climb followed by a 20 minute downhill! This was really not going to be fun! However, Caserma's owners, Dean and Lesley, recommended the Abbadia di Fiastra, a nature reserve set in the grounds of a still-functioning Cistercian abbey. This was a great idea - so, after a short drive, we used a neatly marked 2.5 mile woodland trail, along with quite a few other Italians who clearly had this place marked out for their morning constitutional. As usual in temperatures above 30 degrees, any more than about 5 miles is impossi...