Guardar, Anusare, Gusto... Look, Smell, Taste

2011 10 febbraio

Guardar, Anusare, Gusto… Look, Smell, Taste…

            I will start the moment backwards. I will start the moment with the wine already in me, in my system, as to let it’s influence in me influence you. I will start from the moment Lorenza asked me if I learned anything from the evening’s wine tasting session…my reply to Lorenza was, as best as I could say in Italian, “meglio di prima.” I meant this to mean “better than before.” I meant to express to Lorenza, and to myself, that I now knew a lot more about the gift of wine than I did just two and a half hours ago.

            In my mind I had just wandered through a vineyard, picked juicy red grapes off of the most luscious green vines and bit into the red fruits that instead of being forbidden asked me to be bite into them. I let their juice be absorbed by taste buds, absorbed my entire body and even absorbed by my mind.

            But before their purifying poison penetrated in me I learned I must look at the wine. I must look to see how the light penetrates through the wine. Dark wines don’t allow for the light to cross through. So I held my glass up to the light, like the priest does with the precious blood of Jesus Christ, but instead of praying I scrutinized my wine. It was so dark it looked like blood.

            Next, the wine expertise Alessandrina directed us to smell our wine and tell her with words what the wine smelled like. I said aloud that my wine smelled like wine. I knew no other words that would suffice to capture this smell. It was simply a scent of wine. I was still an amateur at this I thought to myself…but Alessandrina did agree with me that it smelled like wine. Then she handed out a sheet stating about 100 different ways you can describe a wine. Yeah, I was still an amateur.

            Finally we were allowed to sip from our glass…of course moving our glass in a circular motion…and let the wine drip onto our tongues for a taste. Oh the excitement of not knowing what it is going to taste like!

            …There are numerous kinds of wine in the world, but really Alessandrina said there are only two types of wine in the world: the one’s you like and the one’s you don’t like. She is a wine expert.

            We tasted four treasures, four wines. But there are only two types of wine in the world.

The first wine was called Lambruschi Modensia, from Modena…and I was excited because I had walked the streets of Modena, and now Modena was swimming through me. This was the wine I said simply smelled like wine. Wine one, still an amateur. I said it tickled my tongue… it had an acidic absorption on my tongue. It was dry… that’s what the other students said and I nodded my head although I was still quite unsure what that meant. Lambruschi Modensia had no aftertaste; I couldn’t say I liked it very much. I like aftertastes; I like the wine to mingle around for a bit. Just because I’ve swallowed it I don’t want the taste to leave my mouth for my stomach. The stomach can be selfish that way sometimes.

            Wine two was called Il Gutturnio, “un vino dal carattere spicatto e deciso, espressione di una cultura e di un territorio.” From my own and new capability of the understanding of the Italian language I believe this means a wine with character and expression of a culture and a territory. I was tasting the hills from the Province of Piacenza. Il Gutturnio comes from this diverse territory, like its diverse smell. I say diverse because I did not want to simply say that this wine smelled like wine. And this time I really tried to smell this wine for something other than wine…and I did. I closed my eyes and let my nose take control. And because of my nose my mind pictured myself in a floral dress tied in the back with a big bow, standing on my tippy toes behind a wooden gate. Behind this wooden gate there were miles and miles of flowers, all different kinds of flowers. And my nose smelled all these different colored, different kinds of flowers in one glass of red wine.

            The third wine was called Sangiovese di Romana, and although it has a beautiful name, I could smell no beautiful odor. I looked at it, smelled it and tasted it…and then handed it over to Michael who not so delicately devoured it.

            The last of the wines left to taste was my favorite. It was called Negrettino Bolognese, a newly rediscovered wine of my newly discovered wine. This wine had been produced many years ago but do to some natural disasters it was lost and just rediscovered three years ago. When I smelled Negrettino Bolognese I smelled a robust Earthy odor. The earth sat on my tongue, and I let it sit there, and when I finally swallowed I felt whole. I didn’t want another wine. Negrettino Bolognese is the only red wine native to Bologna and the only wine taste I wanted to taste that evening.

            When Lorenza asked me if I learned anything from the evening I responded with a little bit of Modena, Piacenza, Rome and lastly and bestly Bologna in me. With every look, taste and smell I learned about how precious wine is and the places of which they came.  I walked the Bolognese streets dancing and skipping hand in hand with Kristin back to Collegio Alma Mater. My veins were a fertile ground, absorbing bits of Bologna and its nearby neighbors. Now they were all my neighbors and I knew them all a little more.