9/08/11 Fake Wine Snobs

Before our early afternoon departure for Aquila, we managed to fit in a walk through the city centre of Macerata and a visit to a winery in Pollenza.  While at the winery, we marvelled at the scale and grandeur of it all.  Everything was so calm and serene there; vines grew along rolling hills and the activity of the winery was largely confined to underground rooms for reasons related to maintaining the purity of the wine.  This calmness made the atmosphere pure as well.

With the exception of the wine offered at Maurizio’s house, the vini di casa (homemade wine) here was not to my liking.  The samples we enjoyed at the winery made the vini di casa seem even more substandard.  Many old school Italians complain that purchased wine is full of conservanti (preservatives), as if the natural compounds used to stabilize wine were carcinogens or petroleum products.  This is just as ludicrous as suggesting that prosciutto shouldn’t be eaten because it is also full of one particular conservanto…salt.

The bottom line on homemade wine is this: the well-known European tradition of adding Gasosa (Sprite/7-Up) to your wine is indicative of at least one thing…your wine is terrible; and of possibly a second…you wouldn’t know a decent glass of vino if it smacked you in the mouth.