High Class

When we were traveling in Italy, we did a lot of eating and drinking of wine. We tried our hardest to eat and drink whatever was the local specialty.

When we were in Siena, we found a nice little wine shop. The old man inside spoke no English, but he took a liking to us and was opening bottles for us to taste. We were able to determine that he and his family had a small vineyard where they were starting to produce their own wines. The quality was pretty good and the bottles pretty cheap, so we ended up drinking a decent amount of his wine while we were in Siena.

Since they had started making their own wines, they were converting their shop to sell their own wines and were trying to get rid of everything else. In the corner of the store was a 'Everything for 18 €uro' shelf, so I went to investigate while Kimberly and family talked to our new friend. I noticed that there were some pretty nice looking wines, including one of the Italian B wines (in Italy, they have Brunello, Barolo, and Barbaresco wines, which are all of high quality. They rank in a certain order, from most bestest to least best, but I can never remember that order; I just know they're all supposed to be pretty good). There was one that had a price tag on it for 7o €.

Not really understanding the situation, I confirmed with him that everything, and I stressed the everything, on the shelf was 18 €, even if marked with a different price. He said that, yes indeed, all the wine was 18 €.

Since I had never tasted one of the Italian B wines, and since this one seemed to be on sale at an amazingly reduced rate, I decided to spend the money (18€ = ~ $25) and try it out. Kimberly's mom and sister, who were traveling with us at the time, actually carried the wine back to the US for us. I am their debt for this task.

Anyways, last night we decided to open the bottle, since we were having some baked pasta. We figured a nice, Italian red would go perfect.

We opened the bottle and were blown away. The wine was pretty amazing.

After dinner, while savoring the rest of the bottle, we decided to do a little research on the bottle. It turns out the wine was definitely worth the 18€. We could have bought half a plane ticket with that bottle of wine.

Sometimes, you just stumble on a good deal. And fortunately for our taste buds, we jumped at the chance.

Shaky Hands make for Blurry Pictures. The label says:
Poggio all Oro
Brunello di Montalcino
Castello Banfi
Riserva 1995