Life on the Vine

My worlds of books and wine converged in a pleasant and unexpected way last October.  A recommended winery in Greve in Chianti turned out to have a historical connection to a book that one of my college professors had used as an example of a strong opener.  This was more than twenty years ago!  The opener, we'll get to shortly.  But first, the wine.      A quick web search reveals there are more than 45-THOUSAND wineries in Italy.  Since 2017, we've visited just over 110.  Even THAT is a lot of wineries. So given the bounty of wineries, what makes a winery stand out?  The wine, of course.  The winemaker.  The family.  The origin story.  The cellar.  The labels.  The view.  The vineyard.  The tour.  The wine-food pairing experience.  All true and all things any winery can potentially offer.  But when a winery has a surprising connection to the discovery of your nation and to a book of...

It has been a very long time since I've done a wine-focused blog post.  Once again it's a holiday weekend and movement is restricted to essential travel (i.e. work, food shopping, medical, etc.).  So it seems like a good time to write a blog post and I thought it would be fun to do a wine post. My last blog post was about books keeping me sane in 2020.  Well I know one other thing that probably bonds us all in 2020 and that is alcohol.  We all probably imbibed a bit too much.  Living in Italy, I have certainly been drinking more than usual for 3.5 years.  But you toss in lockdown and the numerous challenges of 2020...I was having a drink nearly every night.  Although one of my co-workers laughed at me when I talked about how much I was drinking.  She said she was drinking a bottle every night!   So tell me...did you drink more in 2020?  Which camp were you in?  A glass a night or a bottle a night?  Inquiring minds wan...

All our favorite wineries are bringing in the harvest right now so I thought it might be perfect timing for a wine blog.  Here are some photos showing the evolution of the vine this year.  Valdobbiadene (Feb 2019) - view from Col Vetoraz The vines having a winter's nap (March 2019) - Pietro Zardini First signs of life April 2019 - Valpolicella Made Tom pull off the side of the road so I could take these pictures. Walking through Ritter de Zahony vineyards - June 2019 Great looking clusters Prosecco grapes - August 2019 Our wine adventures since February included trips to Valdobbiadene (Prosecco), Valpolicella (Ripasso, Amarone), Friuli, Piedmont (Nebbiolo, Barolo) and Croatia.  We also went to two wine festivals.  The Palio del Recioto festival in Valpolicella over Easter Sunday weekend, and the annual Vulcanei festival , which highlights wines from Italy that are grown in volcanic soil. We had some fun wine adventures with friends and ...