It was a few days before the Lenten season and returning home from the market, when what should appear? A fully laden delivery truck with demijohns of wine careening around the bend. Ok, maybe not careening, but it did have a bit of a sway going, whilst coming up our small road. I managed to get my camera out in time to capture him squeezing through the narrowest part of the winding road (and only road I might add) up to our house. My sister-in- law says there are 13 switchbacks in total, but I digress. Each of the demijohns hold 60 liters of wine, so he was carrying a full load that day. Fabrizio said he was doing home delivery and could be delivering from over in the Asti/Barolo region on an annual trek for the valley's orders. I surmised that our neighbors might be stocking up before Fat Tuesday too. You don't see that kind of delivery truck careening around the hills where I come from in Colorado. I love the little surprises everyday life brings.
We don't have wine home delivery. We buy from a couple of different sources, one of our main ones being a local family winery just on the other side of Pinerolo,Dora Renato. We do wine tastings with them for our guests and also pair their wines with dishes that we prepare in our cooking classes also. That is always a popular class. We also buy wine from a cooperative not to far away from Pinerolo in a different direction and I had a good ole laugh the first time we went there to bring home wine for his parents. We pull up to the back of the warehouse and lo and behold, it's filler up Rosso! I could hardly believe that we were going to fill our demijohn with wine dispensed from what looked like for all practical purposes, a gas or petrol pump. That's exactly what we did. I have purchased wine from stores and cantinas with the large tanks and they have filled plastic containers from the spigot on the front of those, but I had never seen wine dispensed from a gas pump. I still smile when we go there. We go sometimes to pick up wine for his father as this is his fathers absolute favorite and usually the only wine that he will drink, even when we or guests bring over a nice bottle of something else, like Barbera, Dolcetto, or even Barolo, all considered local wines,mah, Papa prefers Bricherasio Cantina wine. I like it also, although I do find that it seems to vary in flavor depending on many factors it seems. Since it is a cooperative, all the local growers who are too small to really make a go of their produce bring it to the cooperative to let them make it into the nectar of the gods and get their fair share of the booty and let the cantina sell off the rest. Much easier for them I would think. It's a popular way for the small grower or dabble to make their years supply of table wine and have a few euros jingling around in their pocket. The cantina seems to be a popular place stop off for an occasional tour bus as well a few times when we have been by there.
Fill 'er up Rosso, per cortesia.
2 comments:
I could really get into this. With all oenological respect, and in light of the highway robbery that goes on at the gas stations, this is an alternative which merits a proper cin-cin! GREAT post!!
We need one of those here in the US!!
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