Tenuta Mazzolino

I'm now in the Lombardia region of Italy, and thanks to my friend and former Blackstone colleague, Francesco Braggiotti, am helping to finish the grape harvest at the Braggiotti family vineyard and winery, Tenuta Mazzolino (http://www.tenuta-mazzolino.com/). I spent a few days last week in Aosta, Italy (post to come), then took the train to Milan, where I spent a night and realized that pepperoni means "peppers" in Italy, then jumped on a train for Casteggio, a small town in the Lombardia region. The manager of the operation, Jean Francois, picked me up and took me to the winery, where Francesco's father set me up with some wheels (a Vespa) and showed me where I will stay for the week. Awesome doesn't describe it...I've been cruising around for the past couple of days, but get down to business tomorrow morning. I've informed Jean Francois that I don't speak any Italian, and it sounds like the entire team speaks only Italian, so we'll see what happens...I had lunch today with a group of family and friends visiting the vineyard for the day. Everyone was very welcoming, of course, but I must admit, it's a little odd being in a room where you don't understand a word that's spoken.

As I sat there I realized that understanding nothing of the content actually gave me the opportunity to hone in on the unspoken dialogue and dynamics of the conversation. Very interesting. Other than that, my use of the words "ciao" and "grazie" is getting really old I'm sure. Ok...back to learning my 3rd and 4th Italian words.