A Weekend of Wine

This weekend I went to a wedding. My fiance is Italian, and her family is HUGE, and loud, but the most loving caring people you will ever meet. As such there are weddings to attend all over the country at any given moment in time. At the most recent wedding we went to I enjoyed a myriad of home made wines and I understood about 1/2 of what was going on (lots of thick Italian accents). Now I know what you're thinking,..home made wine,...gross. The truth is, that this wine was actually quite good.

We started off on the Friday night after arriving in town with a cab/merlot blend (13.5% alcohol, clean on the nose and taste, medium tannin, low acidity) that one of the "uncles" had been letting age for about 13 months. After about my 7th glass and us talking back and forth about wine I think he a had sized me up he deemed me worthy to view his cellar down stairs in the basement. As we walked down his tiled staircase to the basement he explained to me the wine isn't just something that Italians drink, it's a part of their life, part of who they are and it is essential at every meal. We got into his production room, which also double as a canning room for delicious fruit preserves.

Now this wine isn't made from powder or concentrate. He actually ships the grapes in and makes the wine from scratch in his 35 gallon stainless steal cask and taps them off into huge glass amphorae to age.

The truth is, this guy grew up making wine in Italy, born from the vine if you will. His passion for wine could be seen in the decorative grape vines he had growing in his back yard and the delicious blends he was making down in the basement. In fact the entire family enjoyed every aspect of the vine. After a long night night of drinking and laughing and really just enjoying wine I got taught an important lesson about how Italians view their wine. "Wine isn't about what you're drinking, it's about who you're drinking it with." And it was clear then that family is the most important aspect of these peoples lives.

I went on an enjoyed the rest of the weekend, the ceremony and reception were beautiful and the bride and groom looked so happy. Those words stuck with me though and made me realize that wine is more than just a drink that we analyze and breakdown, to pair with food, or to be written about in blogs and magazine articles. Wine brings people together. People give their lives to this drink, they toil and stress and push to create something that will uncover memories, make people laugh, cry, and sing.

I hope that all of you can experience wine in a way that I experience wine, that you all enjoy it with great food and even better people.

Look out for my next post on Chardonnay,... I swear this time its coming.