Un po' di vino

We’re going to take a little break from sightseeing now, since the next two sights were churches, and you’ve probably had enough of churches for a while.  We’re going to a wine tasting.

The wine tasting took place the following afternoon, on our way back to Florence, after spending far too little time in Siena (I wasn’t the only person to feel this way).  As always, hurry hurry hurry to get on to the next place.

The place we visited was Tenuta Torciano Vineyard and Winery.  Checking Tripadvisor after I got home, I found that it generally gets very high marks.  I did find most of the wines good, as well as the balsamic vinegar they had us dipping our bread into at the end.  But the tasting went on far too long – I would say a good hour longer than it should have – mainly because our host, Pierluigi, the charming and humorous owner, was dividing his time between our group, out on the covered patio, and another group in the main dining room.  So he was back and forth, leaving us alone sometimes for too long.

Indeed, at the very beginning, most of us didn’t know what to do.  Young serving girls were coming around, pouring wine into our glasses, and setting little plates of cheese, salami, and bits of lettuce in front of us.  We had just finished lunch in Siena, so the food was not particularly appealing.  But initially we didn’t know if we were supposed to eat it, like an antipasto -- which it wasn't, quite -- or just drink the wine and wait for instructions about the food (but why would they put food in front of you, if they didn’t want you to eat it?), or wait for instructions on both counts.  Eventually most of us sipped at our wine and picked at the food, at which point Pierluigi came out and told us: try the wine with a bit of cheese, then a piece of sausage, then a bit of salad, and see which one goes best with the wine.  Aha!  This did prove to be an interesting experiment.  And we repeated the experiment with the later wines.  Diana, one of the women at our table who had been to other wine tastings, said they would be giving us a clean glass for each wine, but that didn’t happen.  One of the young women wordlessly showed us how to dump any leftover wine into a ceramic bowl, and we simply used the same glass for all the wines, which put Diana’s nose somewhat out of joint. (“How can you clear your palate?”)

I really liked the Baldessare red, which was a tiny bit less dry than the chianti (which I also liked), which was much less dry than the chianti classico, which was almost astringent.  I didn’t bother trying the dessert wine because I do not like sweet wine – have never been able to understand why you would serve a sweet wine with a sweet dessert.  Poor Pat didn't really care for any of the wines, as she is a white wine person.

My big problem was that I can no longer drink too much wine -- at least not unless accompanied by a full meal -- or I not only get impossibly sleepy, but develop a sugar-induced headache.  Thus, while everyone else was pretty much downing everything that went into their glasses, I really did just taste.  A few sips, along with a few bites of the food supplied, that was it.  But around me, the sound level got higher and higher as the amount of wine consumed increased.  Patricia and I were at the quiet table (as we usually were), rather than the boisterous one, which got very boisterous indeed.  Even at our table, the rather demure Gloria, one of the women traveling alone, eventually became shrill, as she became more and more inebriated.  She had a rather annoying voice anyway, that always sounded a bit as though she were whining, but when oiled with wine, it became positively shrieking, especially after she broke a glass, which she found both embarrassing and hilarious.  I actually liked Gloria, who was a pleasant, friendly lady and, as I learned when we made the long day trip to Pompeii together, she was very interested in history, including ancient history (as am I), people in general, and the stories that were their lives.   She was a widow from New York (and one of the things that made her voice unfortunate was that pronounced New York accent), who worked part-time in a social work capacity, which I found admirable.  

But in the present situation, I found myself eventually just wanting to get away from her; indeed, from all the raucous noise.  This was one of those times in my life when I felt acutely how un-group-oriented I am.  I availed myself of trips to the bathroom three times, only one of which was actually spent in the toilet.  The other two were spent out on the back step of this old farmhouse-turned-restaurant, staring around at the small garden to the left of me, the open patio to the right of me (where they have dining all’aperto, when they don’t have on-again-off-again rain, as they did that afternoon), and at the tall hedge in front of me, that separated the building from the country road, along which an occasional car would pass.   

They were now into the selling phase of the afternoon – “We can ship anywhere in the United States!” – and in this I had absolutely no interest.   So I went for a walk around the back garden, which was pretty, if wet.  Found a pen of animals in a far corner, and suspected that these game birds, that rabbit, even this goat were probably not pets, but destined for dinner in the restaurant at some point.

For many people on the tour this was one of the highlights of the trip.  For both Pat and me, it was a moderately interesting, but ultimately boring, experience.  Except for Kelly from Kentucky, who was in the early stages of pregnancy, and could not drink at all, I was the soberest person on the bus trip home.  But now I’d been to an Italian wine tasting.