We recently had the opportunity to spend the weekend with Jody Ness and Kevin Fox of CNBC's Wine Portfolio. Jody and Kevin are actively involved in creating Wine Portfolio, a half hour television show of wine around the world for CNBC, shown in over 40 countries worldwide and have just completed their first season to rave reviews. Jody and my husband have been friends for many years after first meeting in Jody's great Toronto, Canada restaurant called Wildfire. When we heard that Wine Portfolio would be filming in Italy after a whirlwind cruise on the Holland America cruise ship, we invited them to come stay with us in Umbria. We were excited to show Jody and Kevin a little bit of Umbria and it's wines but were not sure where to start, so we called up an expert on Umbrian wines, Mark Stafford of Gusto Wine Tours to help us plan the outing. A full day of touring Umbrian cantinas was initially planned for Saturday with Mark's help, but at the last minute plans were changed and the visit was moved up to Friday.

Cavatelli is a curved, short pasta resembling a hot dog bun with a long rolled edge which helps it to hold thicker sauces. A product of Sicily and southern Italy, these noodles are traditionally made by hand, although they are also commonly found frozen in North American Italian specialty stores. Traditionally, cavatelli is made by hand using a semolina flour dough. In North America, it is possible to find dried cavatelli shaped pasta made with semolina, as well as a softer form (often sold frozen) made from either a ricotta or potato based dough. Although cavatelli is sometimes confused with gnocchi, generally gnocchi dough is much softer than one used to make cavatelli.