Early Saturday morning, drag yourself out of bed, put on
suit (battledress all day as no time to change before tonight’s dinner),
struggle to café for breakfast, feel refreshed (just), move on, find seat and
ask yourself if you want to sleep or do a tasting of 46 wines?
But then…start with a pinot gris from the Valle d’Aosta and
wow! where did that come from? Then a red made from the well known fumin grape
(?) and the next thing you know you’re happily smiling as you taste one more
new grape after another…
Old and well known such as trebbiano but being made into
really good wines then new to me varieties such as schioppettino, tintilia,
centesimino, mantonico, magliocco, timorasso, croatina, frappato, carricante
and many more. I blame Jancis – it’s obviously a plot to sell more copies of
J3… we all wanted to dip into it during the tasting!
Some stunning wines – centesimono is a red wine that
basically tastes like gewürztraminer and there are only 20 Ha planted. Somebody
found this old vine many years back and planted cuttings. A few other growers
did the same and then got it DNA tested, discovering that it’s unique. Not
knowing what it was they called it after the guy who first found it and whose
nickname was “centesimono”!
Eventually, struggle back to the auditorium but enlivened
and uplifted – what a revelatory tasting. You may be tired but when you get
real quality allied to interesting and unknown wines the effect is amazing.
Tiredness dissolves and happiness evolves…
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