In our welcome packet at the villa there was, as you can imagine, plenty of information about wine tastings and local vineyards. There was also a very interesting piece of news about one of our neighbors. Apparently, the guy up the street makes his own wine and will sell it to you for 4 euro with his own label, and 2 euro if we dont care about it having his label. And that this was a very cheap way to drink a lot of local Italian wine. Which of course, we intended to do.
One day we drove past the house and saw this lovely woman leaning in the window. She was amazing and I couldn't stop taking her picture. Even made Geoff back up so we could drive by and I could take more. Well, she caught us taking pictures, so Geoff very quickly turned it into us being interested in the wine. The lady of the house (not her friend whose picture I couldn't stop taking) said that yes, this was indeed the place where we could buy wine but that they were all out, and only had enough for themselves. She asked how much we wanted and we said just a bottle to try and she told us to come back in 45 minutes when her partner would be in from the fields and she'd ask him. First of all...he had to come IN FROM THE FIELDS. Which was so rustic and Italian and old school and "Little House on the Prairie" only better, we could hardly stand it. So we headed home and came back at the appointed time.
When we arrived and walked up to the window, the family was sitting down at dinner in the kitchen. The lady recognized us and greeted us, explaining that she'd told her partner about us and apparently he'd said that if the wife or the girlfriend was really pretty, he'd give us the bottles for free, but he wanted to see me first. (Made me wish I'd done my hair and put on some makeup). So he came over to check me out. He was probably in his late 60s easly 70s, thin, white hair, suntanned face and wearing a thin white tshirt and cut off demin shorts. I loved the look of him instantly. He took one look at us and started talking very quickly in Italian to the woman. Apparently he said Geoff was so handsome that was enough to get us the wine for free. Whew! Thank God for my gorgeous husband! Really takes the pressure off a girl. They asked if we wanted red or white and we said we'd love to try one of each if they could spare them. They did and we thanked them profusely and told them we were on our luna de miele (honeymoon). At that, the woman shared the news with her partner and promptly pushed another huge bottle of red wine into our hands and with a very knowing look told us to really enjoy ourselves.
It was by far one of the most memorable and just....really Italian-feeling moments of our trip. That and when another couple in the neighboorhood stopped us on our way back from the bakery one morning. They just stopped us to chat, even though they barely spoke any English at all. We had about a five minute conversation with them, even though neither of us really spoke the other's language. I think we talked about the weather and we told them we were on our honeymoon and they (we think) asked where we were from. It was completely lovely even though I mostly have no idea what they said. Another favorite Italian moment was when the guy at the gas station asked if we were on vacation, and we said, "si - la luna de miele" and he got very excited for us and wished us "multi figlio"- many sons. Please. Does it get better than that?
Anyway, back to the neighbors wine. We promptly went home and cooked ourselves some dinner at the villa. Geoff made a very impressive Caprese salad.
Geoff's reaction to just how good it was...
We had pasta bolognese and tried the neighbor's wine. This is my reaction.
We think maybe it had gone bad. We tried all three bottles, just in case it was a fluke thing. But all three were pretty bad. The only bad wine in all of Italy, I believe. But a great story.
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