First, a shout out to Taylor, who's post about living in Paris and his experience with wine inspired me to write this post.
In the summer of 2011, I was living and studying in Venice, Italy. Up to that point I had mostly drunk wine at family events (usually at least halfway decent bottles), or extremely cheap crap in my freshman year at college. My wine pallet was due for significant expansion. That summer I became familiar with some of the nicer Italian styles, which have become some of my favorite since, such as Amarone, Chianti, Sangiovese, Barolo, Barbaresco, and many more. Though I tried some of these nicer wines, the truth was I had very little money for such purchases, so I drank these wines rarely. Much more common, and to some extent much more enjoyable, were my wine excursions to the local bottigleria on the island of Giudecca, a short walk from where I lived.
Bottigleria loosely translates to bottlery if such a word existed, or more easily understood, bottle shop. The bottigleria would bring in wine by the cask and unload it at the crack of dawn from small barges straight into the shop. I would love to watch the flurry of activity in the early hours of the morning, from the fruit vendors unloading their supplies into their carts and stores, to the fisherman offloading their catch to the local merchants, to the coffee shops just opening their doors to accommodate the flurry of business men and women who would be shortly inbound for Italians' favorite morning ritual.
I digress from the wine. The bottigleria would sell us the wine straight from the cask. We would bring our 1.5L water bottles that were always with us, line them up under the tap, and open it up. Filling the water bottle only cost 2 euros when I lived there. 2 euros for 1.5L of wine, what a deal! More meaningful though was how the wine tasted. It was fresh, unaged, rough, raw, and real, it came straight from the country side. It was as if you could taste the Veneto dirt in which the vines grew. Given how much wine we drank the price was an appeal too. I often think about how great the wine was and the phenomenal memories I made while drinking wine in Venice that summer. Cin Cin!
In the summer of 2011, I was living and studying in Venice, Italy. Up to that point I had mostly drunk wine at family events (usually at least halfway decent bottles), or extremely cheap crap in my freshman year at college. My wine pallet was due for significant expansion. That summer I became familiar with some of the nicer Italian styles, which have become some of my favorite since, such as Amarone, Chianti, Sangiovese, Barolo, Barbaresco, and many more. Though I tried some of these nicer wines, the truth was I had very little money for such purchases, so I drank these wines rarely. Much more common, and to some extent much more enjoyable, were my wine excursions to the local bottigleria on the island of Giudecca, a short walk from where I lived.
Bottigleria loosely translates to bottlery if such a word existed, or more easily understood, bottle shop. The bottigleria would bring in wine by the cask and unload it at the crack of dawn from small barges straight into the shop. I would love to watch the flurry of activity in the early hours of the morning, from the fruit vendors unloading their supplies into their carts and stores, to the fisherman offloading their catch to the local merchants, to the coffee shops just opening their doors to accommodate the flurry of business men and women who would be shortly inbound for Italians' favorite morning ritual.
I digress from the wine. The bottigleria would sell us the wine straight from the cask. We would bring our 1.5L water bottles that were always with us, line them up under the tap, and open it up. Filling the water bottle only cost 2 euros when I lived there. 2 euros for 1.5L of wine, what a deal! More meaningful though was how the wine tasted. It was fresh, unaged, rough, raw, and real, it came straight from the country side. It was as if you could taste the Veneto dirt in which the vines grew. Given how much wine we drank the price was an appeal too. I often think about how great the wine was and the phenomenal memories I made while drinking wine in Venice that summer. Cin Cin!
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