Veno

After about a 30 min walk through the city we arrived at a fortress.  The fortress sat on the edge of the city just inside the walls.  The fortress houses Enoteca Italiana.  Entoeca Italiana is a museum/wine shop/wine school that carries most of the brands of Italy.  It is the largest gallery of Italian wine in the world.  Did you know that Italy has 60,000 brands of wine and over 30,000 wineries. 

The building itself was built as a bunker during the civil war.  They stored guns and ammo.  It was a beautiful bunker made out of bricks.  Not like anything in the United States.  Now the bunker is a fortress for wine. The bunker also stores ancient artifacts.  Such as vases from 5,000 years ago.  THe vases were huge but as he explained they were actual glasses that they drank from not vases. 

Our tour guide did a very good job of speaking English, yet his thick accent was sometimes hard to understand.  As soon as we walked down into the bunker he started explain all about the different kinds of wine.  "You are in the heart of wine country, can you feel the bottles beating?" 

After the tour of the museum we got to the good part...my first wine tasting.  We had a white (Vernaccia di san gimignnao docg "Privato" 2001), red (Chianti Montespertoli Docg "I Fossili" 2009) and another red (Toscano IGT "Pax" 2009).  First he talked about the history of the region, different types of grapes, and the steps to analyze wine.  There are 350 different types of grapes in Italy.

Wine tasting:  look at color, sniff, twirl, slowly taste and enjoy.  I also learned that wine has legs.  After twirling your glass of wine there will be wine left on the side of the glass.  The slower the legs come down the richer the wine.  Also, when they want to preserve wine they put in a plastic cork because the regular cork lets the wine breath too much.

The white wine was by far my favorite.  It smelled of crisp fruits.  The third wine seemed dangerous.  As he said, "Drinking too much can end up in a very slippery situation"  It also smelled of tobacco.  It was a wine that was to be enjoyed over a nice long dinner.

After the wine tasting we went for dinner.  Where I enjoyed an assortment of cheese, nuts and honey along with a salad.  And of course a glass of wine. 

Note:  There is no drinking age in Italy.  However, there is a drinking law.  You may drink but you may not become drunk.  Drunkenness is not acceptable in Italy.