ramandolo

A ‘vineyard-garden’, then, set up not only to make a truly superb product – and Ramandolo is a wine universally recognised as ranking alongside the most famous sweet wines on the international market – but also to link wine production with other activities within or in any case related to this sector. Such as farm tourism which, in the Nimis area, has achieved development quite impossible to foresee only a few years ago.
But what benefits are on offer to visitors staying in this corner of the ‘Colli Orientali’ in Friuli and the Vine and Wine Park? First and foremost, it should not be forgotten that Nimis is delightfully ‘set’ in a region which Ippolito Nievo rightly defined as a ‘tiny compendium of the Universe’, as if to say that this land has something of everything on offer: an area of a few dozen kilometres embraces the sea, mountains, plains and hills. And this environment was well-known to the great writer who lived in the castle at Colloredo di Monte Albano, so much so that the country hamlet of Torlano di Sopra was the landmark for one of his popular novels and the setting for ‘Conte Pecoraio’. Anyone on holiday in Nimis cannot but visit this view of undoubted beauty opening sheer over the ‘clear, fresh, sweet’ waters of the Cornappo, ‘populated’ with trout, chub and fresh-water shrimps. The two banks of the mountain stream, springing from the Gran Monte, are joined by the Bridge of Angels, a bold structure and one of the most evocative in Friuli. “Nievo’s hamlet”, practically razed to the ground by the earthquake in 1976, has since been rebuilt on the left bank.
Once in the village itself, visitors can easily reach the ancient church of Saints Gervasio and Protasio: it dominates Nimis from a small hill, just across the bridge over the stream – the same one flowing through Torlano – with its thousand-year-old tower.

The matrix of the country church at Nimis – which once extended up to Resia and is now the parish for people living in Povoletto and Taipana – dates from the XII-XIII century, but its origins go back another six-seven centuries, since it was built on the foundations of a small pagan temple. There are precious fresco cycles, restored in the early decades of the XX century by Tita Gori, the painter born precisely in the stone house opposite the church which is now home to one of the most famous osteria of the village.
And the best way to finish a meal? There are the rustic uessuz from the bakery at San Gervasio made to a Mediaeval recipe of the friars who lived in a small monastery in the shadow of the historic country church. But don’t eat them as they are, dry: they are best savoured when ‘dunked’ in ‘Ramandolo’! It is a perfect combination and their flavour will accompany you all the time you stay in the valley of Nimis – and, when you return again, you will surely delight in tasting this simple yet delicious ‘duet’ once more. And the final, magical touch? A perfumed grappa. A ‘Ramandolo’ grappa, naturally, distilled from the pressings of the grapes harvested in this ‘vineyard-garden’.

(by Giuseppe Longo - Welcome to the “vineyard-garden”)