For 10 euro you get a wine glass and 8 samplings of any wine of your choice. Not wanting to drink quite that much wine, I decide instead to observe what other people are drinking and hope to find something special to take back home to the States with me. The first one I try already seems to be a good choice. I swirl around the deep red wine in the glass and observe how the legs form and smoothly drip down, then I stick my nose in the top of the glass and take a deep breath, inhaling the rich aroma of the wine and getting a feel for the make-up of it. Finally, taking a small amount into my mouth, I swish it around a bit and let it settle on my palette before swallowing it down. This one is fairly light, stable, with a hint of fruit and a nice, almost peppery aftertaste. Good for a romantic dinner or a New Year's toast but perhaps too spicey for a late summer/early fall dinner wine. I have found that I actually have a very sensitive palette for these things. Now I will be the first to admit that I don't know a heck of a lot about different wines, but I can still easily detect different flavors and "punctuation marks" (my own term) in the wine that many other people dont really notice. I don't actually drink wine very often,(usually only on special occasions) but perhaps this fact actually increases my sesitivity to all its various flavors, I don't know. One notable wine I tasted today is called "La Futura." It is a very robust, deep red wine that's rather hard to describe in terms of what they put in it. As Tom Mills (a wonderful RISD drawing teacher who is here on sebbatical for the next year and a half) rather aptly put it: "It's like drinking the blood of the cow." And indeed, it really does have an almost bloody taste to it, kind of like eating a rare steak, and just as pricey at 40 euro($60) a bottle. I try other rich wines that are quite good, fruity, but a little dry for my liking, and one which has a rather surprising taste to it that is remakably different than any other red wine I've ever had. I don't quite know how I feel about it and others in my group are quite divided in their likings to it as well, some liking it so much that they purchase a bottle for themselves and others hateing it so much that they grimice and say it's the worst Chianti they've ever had. Another variety, which I had never seen before and am sorry I didn't get the chance to taste for myself, is an bright amber colored wine that is apparently made from honey, though I am told that, while it does have a very strong honey flavor, it isn't actually very sweet like I would have thought it would be. One of the last wines I tasted is also quite good (I only remember that it was a #44 Chianti) and I immediatly got the sense that it was the type of wine that would perfectly complement some fancy pre-dinner bread and cheese. Deciding that this would be a good type to bring home at Christmas time for my family to try, (for surely my Grandparents will be visiting and they never seem to fail in bringing some excellent breads and cheeses for us to try) I set about trying to find a store in town that was selling it. Alas, after searching store after store, including the quite large Greve Museo di Vino, I could not find this particular wine model and I settled on a lesser quality, but still comparable Chianti. I will continue to look for this model elsewhere in hopes of finding a bottle sometime before I leave Italy.
Earlier, we had gone to Cortona, a small town in the moutains just south of Greve, to see the Museo Diocesano, which holds a small collection of paintings, with a few true Renaissance masterpieces. Sadly, this is just one more beautiful little town with a rich history that seems to exist purely through tourism, although they are quite well known for the high quality leather products that come from there, as well as their own special way of curing prosciutto (ham). Before leaving Cortona I stopped by a little antique store where the antique dealer, a nice old man, was more than happy to converse with me about all of his various treasures, and I was happy to further work on my Italian speaking skills since he didn't seem to understand a word of English.
Though it had been drizzling fairly all day, this did not dampen our spirits and the cool moutain air was a welcome reprieve from the heat and humidity we have endured in Rome. Now coming down from Greve, the sun is just peeking out of the coulds and a deep fog is rising from the valley, enhancing depth perception beautifully, while at the same time diffusing light and masking parts of the landscape. As the writer Goeth so nicely puts it: "Even when one object is only a few steps further away than another, the difference in depth is clearly distinguished by a different tint of light blue. . . . I no longer saw Nature, but pictures; it was as if some very skillful painter had applied glaze to secure a proper gradation of tone." Snaking around the hills and valleys of vineyards, these "earth clouds" produce a most enchanting effect, I don't believe I've ever seen anything else quite like it and I hope that it is not the last time I get to enjoy such a sight. It all just takes my breath away.
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