Umberto Cesari Wines

The history of Umberto Cesari is the history of its founder, a stubborn man who, poor in means but rich in passion, has dedicated his life to his local corner of earth and to great Sangiovese wines.

Although Umberto Cesari is not from a winegrowing family, wine always played a prominent role in the Cesari household, since his father owned one of Bologna’s historic osterie. But instead of a career of selling wine,

Umberto Cesari decided to invest all of his efforts into making the highest-quality Sangiovese he could.

In the 1960s, high quality was still not a characteristic associated with the wines of Emilia-Romagna, and Umberto Cesari was a pioneer in this regard, one of the very first who was convinced that the Sangiovese could make a truly outstanding local wine.

In 1967, he purchased a small vineyard in the hills of Castel San Pietro and founded the winery that today bears his name.

From those initial 20 hectares of vines Umberto Cesari grew steadily, until it gained its current position of one of the few Romagna producers capable of combining substantial production with impressive quality.

The vineyards have expanded to 120 hectares, and Umberto Cesari has become one of the benchmarks in Italian and international wine production.

Umberto Cesari and his winery reached an unprecedented milestone when Tauleto, both in its 2003 and 2007 vintages, emerged the absolute winner in its category at the International Wine & Spirit Competition; beting the many other Italian and international Sangiovese producers.

Umberto Cesari winery is located in Castel San Pietro Terme, in the heart of Italy’s Emilia-Romagna, a region world renowned for its superb food products.

The vineyards lie on hillslopes at elevations ranging from 300 to 450 metres. Behind the hills is a circlet of calanchi, or badlands, known as the Calanchi Azzurri for their bluish hue. Their bulk helps to keep the climate mild. These conditions, plus good ventilation and strongly delineated seasons, render this area particularly favourable to high-quality Sangiovese.

I am happy to sell his top wines on the Swedish market and please contact me for a tasting session.

Kosta Boda Art Hotel is great

KOSTA BODA ART HOTEL is located in the small village of Kosta that are famous for the Orrefors glass design and the heart of glass manufacture in Sweden.

The hotel that is built some years ago by the owner Torsten Jansson who hade the idea of a great place to show all the design and to use as showroom for the best glass designers that Sweden have today.

The Hotel is a masterpiece in Swedish design and you can stroll around the hotel and you will find one of a kind pieces that are truly mind blowing and extremely rare.

The pool is made of tailed glass and show some great pieces on the bottom of the pool and are changed on regular basis to showcase something new all the time.

The exclusive Spa and guest facilities are wonderfully made and on highest level in every aspect, If you ever come to Sweden this is a must place to visit for some days.

The Linnéa Art restaurant is serving excellent food in wonderful setting and serving some of the best food from around the area and the staff will do they best to fulfil all your needs.

The menu I tried are this:

Creamy soup of leek

Seared scallops with celeriac puree, pear and dill meringue

Herb coated cod medallion with 63* egg, caviar from Kalix and Sandefjord sauce

Ice shavings gin & tonic

Creation of lamb from local farmers

Swedish cheeses from Jurss dairy farm

Passion fruit parfait with brown butter cream

All the food was paired with great wine selection and I’m looking forward to visit this lovely place again very soon.

Many thanks to Bengt Sjöström and all the staff.

Sausage making

Making sausage with friends is one of the funny things in life.

We started up with all of us bringing 5 kg of meat each to the table and ended up with 60 kg (some of the guys hade what they called leftovers)

Great fun to grind the meat the different and to flavour all the mixtures in to what finally ended up as 12 varieties of classical and not so classical sausages.

After a few hours and some more beer the kitchen looks like a disaster and we have to call in some cleaning persons who swiftly solved our little problem.

Part of the meat was used to smoke in the backyard and we also BBQ some of it with great result.

Here are some pictures of our sausage night, do try at your neighbours house J

DMZ (demobilisation zone)

If you travel to Korea you have to visit the DMZ (demobilisation zone) that runs between North & South on the 38 parallel.

This is a remarkable please when you consider that in the south you have one of the worlds strongest economies and in the North are people starving to death to remember is that the line is only 2000 meter wide but the most heavily guarded piece of land on the globe.

There are many places to visit and I recommend using a good guide who knows the history and all the stories.

The known tunnels that have been found is impressive when you know that 40 000 men with field artillery could pass each hour, and this only 44 km from Seoul, scary!

The south regular army of 650 000 men are nothing when you know that north side have over one million hungry men on the other side with army training for 10 years for all the men and 7 years for all the women, this is teambuilding don’t you think?

North Korea:

 The bridge of no return

 Mines everywhere

 The new build train station thet have never been used: