Sunshine and Good Wine

March 17, 2024

Sunshine and good wine are true blessings… and this week was full of both.

A few girlfriends and I skipped class Monday (for educational purposes!!) to go to a natural wine tasting in Bologna. We left Piacenza pretty early, then headed to the conference at a hotel outside of town. There were hundreds of wines to try! We barely made a dent. Most producers were from Italy and France. My favorite wines were from Champagne Cristophe Dechannes (because Champagne) and Garganuda out of Veneto Italy. The most unique wines I tasted were from Slobadne, a Slovakian winery. Their wines straight up smelled like vegetables… celery, beets, and rhubarb. They had a hop wine too which was tasty! After tasting, we spent a bit of time enjoying the sun in Bologna, we ate Kebab and checked out a few vintage stores, then we headed back home.

We were exhausted Tuesday, but got up and went to school. We had a full day of classes and then a blind wine tasting in the school’s sensory analysis lab. We tried a rose made of Syrah and Sangiovese, a white Sangiovese, and a classic Rosso di Montalcino (so, another Sangiovese). It was really fun to compare the three wines, especially in a setting where we weren’t able to see the true color of the wines.

On Friday, we had a fieldtrip to Franciacorta, AKA the Champagne of Italy. We visited Ca’ del Bosco, the pioneer winery of the region. Recent spring rains made the already beautiful landscape lush and green. The architecture and attention to detail there was astounding. They had breathtaking sculptures around the production facilities—one of flowing water (or wine) hung around a giant blending tank was made by a Chinese artist, who created the whole piece out of silver Chinese characters that symbolize nature.

We headed down into their barrel and bottle storage area, which felt like walking through cozy catacombs. They had lights in empty bottles along the hallways, and their real bottles were aged in a position in a way that reflected light onto the ceiling, making it look like a sky full of stars.

They led us to a room where you could explore your senses of sight, smell, sound, and touch before you took a heavenly, golden, wine-bottle-surrounded elevator down to a room where you tasted their remarkable wine. It was an amazing experience.

Aside from all the wine tasting this week, my friends and I spent a good amount of time soaking up the sun. We ate our lunches outside all week, made a few flower crowns, went on long walks, and had copious amounts of gelato. It feels like I’m coming out of hibernation a little bit. We went out with all our new French classmates one night, we had a traditional Piacentini meal of fried bread with dips and toppings another, and we went to the market and shopped on Saturday. The only bad thing about the nice weather is I now have pigeons living on the ledge outside my window, and I can’t seem to get them to leave me alone. So, pray for my fear of birds!!

I have one more week of school and an exam before our two-week Easter break, which we will follow with a weeklong trip visiting wineries across Europe. It’s going to be a fun spring!