Ever wonder what roughly $600 of Italian wine looks like? Well, it's on my guestroom floor (still bottled, thankfully). That's the picture. Went up to Tuscany and set up headquarters in Montalcino, home of Brunello di Montalcino wine, which is pretty much considered the best in Italy. It is really good stuff, but unfortunately it's really expensive.






And I've always said, "yeah, I don't know enough about wine to tell a $20 bottle from a $100 dollar bottle." Turns out I was wrong. There's a wine shop in a castle in Montalcino (it's pretty cool, actually), and we paid 19 Euro each for a tasting of 5 wines. So when I was done, I asked about the two that I liked best. Yeah, they were the most expensive-- $107 and $62, respectively. I asked about the one that I like least, and, yup, it was "only" $24. (Prices converted from Euro to dollars for your reading convenience.) The next trip up, I'm going to have to go somewhere else and load up on the really cheap Chianti wines that I won't be afraid to actually serve to people or drink myself.







We did manage to visit two of the vineyards (most are closed on weekends) and bought a couple cases from each, and there were enough wine shops and outlets and direct vendors from the other vineyards that we had a really good selection in town. And it was all really, really good. The town itself was awesome, too--one of those old towns left over from the Middle Ages with walls and a castle and cobblestone streets that look like they probably did 500 years ago. It'd be a great place to take a date (so if anyone knows some cute girls who want to be treated to some really good wine, send them my way).

Also went to church this morning. In an abbey. The original building had been built around 800 AD. Unfortunately, it had burned down, so we had to attend mass in the reconstructed building--which was done in 1117. The draw for this particular one is that they do a Gregorian chant Mass on Sundays, and it was actually very good. So I bought a Gregorian chant CD from the Gregorians. (Well, they're actually Dominicans, but who's counting?)