bottled poetry.

Last night I went to a wine tasting for my Italian Culture Class. It was such a good time!

My teacher for my culture class took a new job last week, thus we currently have no teacher until after spring break! It will make for an interesting midterm on Thursday. When we got to the tasting, the teacher whose taking over the class was there, and I think I'm going to like her a lot better than my old teacher. But, back to the vino!

We did the tasting at a wine bar by the Coliseum, called Bibenda. It was a very cute store. We started the evening with Apertivo, which included meats, cheese, bread, and these AMAZING crackers! There was about a 15 minute presentation by the sommelier, and then we got to try some wine for ourselves.

The first wine was a white from the Lazio region. It is called "Est! Est!! Est!!!" and was my favorite out of the three we tried. The story behind this wine is about a priest and bishop on their way to Rome. The bishop sent the priest to go ahead and write "Est," which is "Here it is" in Latin, on the door of places with good wine. When the priest tried this wine he wrote Est! Est!! Est!!! Rumor has it that the bishop never made it to Rome, because this wine was so good! The wine was indeed very good! :) It had aromas of apple and blossoms.

The second wine was a sauvignon blanc from the Friuli Venezia Giulia region of Italy. It was called "La Buse Dal Lof," which means the den of the wolf. I liked this wine but it had a much more salty and tart taste than the first. Also, the sommelier informed us that almost all sauvignons have the distinct aroma of tomato leaves and cat pee! Isn't that just lovely?

The third wine we had was a deep red wine from the South, more specifically in Sicily. It was called "Nero d'avola." The grapes for this wine are almost exclusively grown in Sicily, and the grapes in our wine were grown on the side of a volcano. You could actually smell some of the ash/mineral component.

All in all it was a great night! The end of her presentation had the quote, "Wine is bottled poetry." It just shows how much wine is embedded in the culture here. In fact, Italy is the number one consumer and producer of wine in the world!

I stole this photo from Clara.

Now it's back to studying! 2 down, 3 to go! 4 days until the family arrives! :)