I Love Italian Wine and Food - The Latium Region

Latium is located in the central western part of Italy on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. It includes the Apennines mountains, fertile foothills and valleys. There are four groups of ancient volcanoes, each with crater lakes. This area was once the center of the world, and remains an international center of art, politics, religion, and trade. Its population is 5.2 million, making it the third most populous region of Italy.

Latium, also called Lazio, was settled by Indo-European tribes during the 2nd millennium B. C. Later it became Etruscran. When the Etruscans were driven out by the Romans, the area became impoverished and remained so for centuries.

Food abounds, you name it and its probably grown in the region. The regions most special vegetable is the artichoke. It may surprise you to learn that Latium is a center of kiwi production. It is also known for seafood, fish, and shark. Meat raised here includes beef, lamb, pork, and veal. The regions most famous cheese is Mozzarella di Bufala Campana, Mozzarella made from the milk of water buffalo. According to the popular local legend, Julius Caesar sent Marc Anthony to Egypt, where he fell in love with Cleopatra and this cheese. He sent water buffalo back home and local residents have been enjoying this Mozzarella ever since. Whether or not this legend is true, Mozzarella di Bufala Campana cheese has been popular for centuries. Latium once produced Falernian, which was considered the best wine in the Classical World.

Latiums major city is Rome, the capital of Italy. As the Italian writer Silvio Negro said, Roma, non basta una vita, Rome, a lifetime is not enough. Ancient Rome was a center of wine production and of amprhorae, clay wine jugs. The area still produces wine. A short Internet search revealed an 18th Century villa for rent 35 minutes from the heart of Rome, surrounded by 30 acres of vineyards and olive groves.

Latium devotes three hundred thousand acres to grapevines, it ranks 7th among the 20 Italian regions. Its total annual wine production is about 78 million gallons, also giving it a 7th place. About 16% of the wine production is red or ros, leaving 84% for white. The region produces 25 DOC wines. DOC stands for Denominazione di Origine Controllata, which may be translated as Denomination of Controlled Origin, presumably a high-quality wine. Only 6.5% of Latium wine carries the DOC designation. Latium is home to three dozen major and secondary grape varieties, half white and half red.

Widely grown international white grape varieties include Malvasia, Chardonnay, Trebbiano, and. Sauvignon Blanc. The best known strictly Italian white varieties are subvarieties of Trebbiano, the yellow Trebbiano Giallo, the green Trebbiano Verde, and Trebbiano Toscano.

Widely grown international red grape varieties include Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon. and Merlot. The best known strictly Italian red variety is Cesane. Also popular is Sangiovese, an Italian grape now found elsewhere including in California.

Before we reviewing the Latium wine and cheese that we were lucky enough to purchase at a local wine store and a local Italian food store, here are a few suggestions of what to eat with indigenous wines when touring this beautiful region.

Start with Spaghetti alla Carbonara, Spaghetti with Cream, Pancetta (Italian bacon), and Egg.

Then try Luccio Brodettato alla Romana, Pike in an Egg-Lemon Sauce.

For dessert indulge yourself with Pizza di Polenta e Ricotta, not a pizza, but Sweet Polenta Ricotta Cake.

OUR WINE REVIEW POLICY While we have communicated with well over a thousand Italian wine producers and merchants to help prepare these articles, our policy is clear. All wines that we taste and review are purchased at the full retail price.

Wine Reviewed

Tenuta Gasperini Vigneti VillaFranca Castelli Romani Rosso DOC 2002 13.5% alcohol about $13

This wine was produced about 20 kilometers south of Rome. It is a 50/50 blend of Sangiovese and Montepulciano, two popular Italian red varieties. I found it a bit acidic and relatively tasteless at first. I tried it with kube also called kibbe, a Middle-Eastern specialty, balls of ground rice filled with ground meat. They were cooked overnight with potatoes in a somewhat spicy tomato sauce. The wine tasted a bit of cherries and tobacco. In a meal of chicken burgers and zucchini in a bland tomato and onion sauce, the tobacco taste was stronger than previously. The marketing materials for this wine mentioned raspberry, plum jam, leather, sweet spice, and tomato leaf. When looking for them I found plum jam and leather, but not the other elements. The distributor recommends this wine with baked pasta or veal medallions in a red wine sauce. Maybe.

Pecorino Toscano is a sheeps milk cheese made in Tuscany and neighboring Umbria for thousands of years. It is also produced in Latium. Soft Pecorino Toscano is white with a tinge of yellow, while semi-hard Pecorino Toscano is pale yellow. This cheese is moderately strong smelling and has a complex nutty flavor. I tried this wine with sliced soft Pecorino Toscano on toast with a somewhat spicy Moroccan tomato and pimento based dip. The flavors blended well, and the wine wasnt thin. However, in the final analysis I would not buy this wine again. It seems overpriced and cannot compete with many other wines that I have tasted in this series.

Levi Reiss has authored or co-authored ten books on computers and the Internet, but to be honest, he would rather just drink fine Italian or other wine, accompanied by the right foods. He teaches classes in computers at an Ontario French-language community college. His wine website is http://www.theworldwidewine.com. You can reach him at ital@mail.theworldwidewine.com.

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Prepaid Cell Phones and Emergency Service

Everybody is familiar with 9-1-1 service, which allows you to easily contact emergency services from your home phone. But what about your cell? Emergencies can happen when you're away from home. And even while you're at home, more households are moving towards a single-line solution, replacing their landline phones with mobile.

The FCC requires all cellular carriers to put through all 9-1-1 calls, even when the phone does not have an active service contract. Individuals who have medical conditions may do well to carry an emergency cell phone, even if they do not use a cell phone on a regular basis. It is also an ideal solution for the elderly, who may be at risk while out and about. Keeping an emergency cell phone in the car's glove compartment, along with a portable charger, can help avert a disaster in case of a breakdown or accident in a remote area.

The so-called E911 (enhanced 911) service, mandated by the FCC, also requires carriers to implement a system that tells emergency dispatchers the location of the caller. This has been a part of landline emergency services for several years, and when you call 9-1-1 from your home phone, the dispatcher automatically knows your callback number and your fixed location. But on a mobile phone, there are some technological challenges. Fortunately, the cell phone companies stepped up to the plate and came up with a solution. In Phase I of the FCC mandate, carriers had to create a system that would tell dispatchers the cell phone number of the caller, as well as the location of the cell tower, which would provide at least an approximate geographic location. More sophisticated location detection technology uses GPS-enabled cell phones to determine the location of the caller in an emergency.

Phase II, scheduled to be fully implemented by the end of 2005, goes a step further by providing Automatic Location Identification (ALI), with precise latitude and longitude of the caller, to the emergency dispatcher. This capability has been incorporated into many newer cell phones, but there are still older cell phones still in use. If you plan to use your cell phone as an emergency backup, make sure you have a newer "location-sensitive" phone that is equipped to handle this service.

There is no charge for calling 9-1-1 from a cell phone; the E911 infrastructure is paid for with a small surcharge on normal cell phone services.

Tom Spelling is a contributing editor to http://www.prepaidreviews.com/ which reviews prepaid cell phone plan providers and rates them according to service factors and customer feedback. The site offers reviews on Verizon Prepaid Wireless, Cingular GoPhone and more.

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