My friend Stefano argued he can’t find any difference among wines and feels perplexed when sommeliers use all sorts of spice and fruit adjectives to describe them.
You know, wine is just grapevine juice where fermentation transformed sugar into alcool. Water, alcool and tartaric acid. This is all you need to synthetize something that’s technically 99.99% wine. The problem is, if you try tasting this fake wine you quickly discover it’s ugly, has no aroma and feels completely uninteresting. This is because the last 0.01% is what makes a wine great: hundreds of aromatic chemicals. And this is the only part you should care for. Read the rest of this entry »
Lamole di Lamole Chianti Classico is produced in Lamole, a tiny village nested into Chianti, south of Greve. It’s made mainly with classic Sangiovese grapevine, but using the specific clone selected in Lamole 3 decades ago. Has a deep and clean ruby red color. Smells of berries, cherry, spices. Feels full with good persistence, scents of wood and jam. It’s perfect with roasted beef or meatballs. You can drink a bottle and still feel you want more. I’ve had a chance to visit the winery and it’s amazing, definitely a must see. And a must taste, of course 
Two years ago I’ve been to Tel Aviv for work. While I was there, a guy called Yaron (who worked in the company I went there for) tried all the best to make me feel at home. For example he brought me to Jaffa, the Dead Sea and more amazing places. One day I’ll blog about that travel. Last week he’s come to Italy along with his wife and I’ve had the pleasure to meet them in Ferrara, my birth town. I definitely love talking with foreigners, trying to understand their culture. This is how we discover we’re different and there are things we take for granted but shouldn’t. They told me they love Italy, except it’s too expensive and crowded by tourists. They’ll come again, I’m sure
Suppose you want to collect taxes from restaurants, both legal and illegal, in a way that’s automatically enforced by customers. What do you do?
Before second world war, Italy used to be a monarchy ruled by the Savoia dynasty. After the war, on June 2nd 1946 Italians voted in a referendum and chose republic for their new government. It’s not been a large majority: republic won for just two million votes and the country was split with a republican north and a monarchic south. On June 13th, King Umberto II finally decided to leave the country, heading to Portugal. Italian parliament then enacted a law that forbade ex-Kings and their sons to enter the Italian territory. This law lasted until 2002, when it’s been removed and Prince Vittorio Emanuele, Umberto’s son, eventually had permission to return to Italy.
Last night we’ve been at Cesare’s farewell party and it’s been fun. After the party we ‘ve had even more fun girl-hunting between Piazza Duomo and Piazza Strozzi
Upstairs we have a small server room and this morning one of the UPS up there started to produce a lot of stinky, dense, toxic smoke. Everybody immediatly evacuated the office. Me and a few others tried to cut the power supply but, you know, UPS systems exist precisely because they can operate (for some time) even without the power. Smoke wasn’t stopping so Max called the firemen. You know, better safe than sorry. He’s been careful to tell them there was no fire and not to worry and everything. None the less, they arrived in 2 minutes with 3 big vehicles, as in hollywood movies! Of course, the problem has been completely solved in 5 minutes but then our internet connectivity was still down, so we’ve basically spent the rest of the morning waiting for the situation to normalize.
I love sunsets. This wonderful picture has been captured from the window next to my desk. I’m lucky enough that from my desk I can see Florence in all its glory, including Brunelleschi’s Cathedral Dome, Giotto’s Bell Tower, Palazzo Vecchio and Basilica di Santa Croce. And when this amazing landscape is completed by a such a sunset, you gotta believe me, you completely lose your breath.
I’m italian and I live in Italy, so why this blog is in english? No, I’m not a snobbish xenophile and I do care my friends can read my blog, but you know, nowadays more and more of my friends don’t speak italian while more and more of my italian friends do speak english as a second language. And I think it is a matter of fact that english is the language of the Internet, even if writing in the local language is perfectly OK. Last but not least, I like to practise my english and this blog helps me learn new words at every post. For example in this post I learnt the use of xenophile. OK OK, I don’t think I’ll ever use this mostly useless word again in my life, but then again… Now that I think to it, at work we’re adding a lot of stranger people lately. In our offices we’ve already gathered at least a dozen non-italian people and I really love to work in such a international environment!
In the last few months I studied wine tasting and today – after 3 exams – I’ve been officially sanctioned as a full blown sommelier! No, I’m not gonna make sommelier my profession, so this diploma will be mostly useless, but then again… The graduation ceremony has been to Colle Bereto, a wonderful winery farm in Radda in Chianti, at the very center of Chianti Classico, 550m over the sea. It’s amazing this winery dates back to the 11th century! They let us visit the vineyard, the cellar and explained all the wine making process down to the details. Then they gave us a diploma and taste vin. Finally, we’ve had lunch while tasting their great wines: Chianti Classico Colle Bereto, Cénno and Tocco. Fabio, who became sommelier as well, documented everything. Now I think I can get drunk and still insist it was for a serious purpose!
