Tastes of Tuscany

I'm writing late at night after a surreal day of trudging through Siena in the rain and sailing through Tuscan vineyards in our little tour minivan. Getting soaked to the bone in the first half of the day turned out to be a surprisingly good prep for the rest of it. We appreciated the sights from a warm van all the more (the first car we've been in for over two months), and the chilling autumn wind on our damp clothes when we got out at our stops put us in a giggly overexerted slightly hysterical mood that fit nicely with the winetasting. I have a treat of a shot for you all of Mary Jane-after-seven-glasses-of-Tuscan-wine - a sight none of you has ever seen. The two Brazilian couples in our group were getting a kick out of her.
Our first tour stop was at the only (surprise) winery in the world that serenades its grapes with classical music. Carlos, the vineyard owner, believes that his grapes favor Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, and Scarlatti - "a favorite of the foliage season of the vine," to quote him verbatim. He has Bose stereos scattered all over his vineyards; we got to listen ourselves. I haven't tasted any pre-Mozart Brunello to compare with what we tasted, but Mozart isn't hurting the grapes. If it works for mice and babies, surely also for grapes?
The second winery we visited belongs to a 77-year-old out-of-a-movie Tuscan named Mario; his winery doubles as a museum of Tuscan winemaking history, complete with old winepresses and photos of the landowners from over 100 years ago. He seemed to relish educating our little group in Italian, which our gracious guide Paula translated for us, and he even took pictures of all of us to keep for himself. He and his wife served us a light meal at a long wooden table in the dining hall: cheese, prosciutto, the first extra virgin olive oil of the season, and several of their wines, including grappa.
I felt that we got a real slice of the Tuscan paradise that people fall in love with; here was a true taste of what I imagine was Italy in better days. Crucifixes and paintings of the Madonna hung above fireplaces and in hallways; warmth and a sense of family pervaded the scene. It's surprising how little it seems to take to change the mood of a place, but some things absolutely do. At any rate, the group was in high spirits by the time we headed out.
Cinque Terra was, to use an overused word, beautiful, too. Adding to the drama of the landscape was my near encounter with the death of my camera. At one point I went to explore a footpath off the main one, and while leaning across a barbed wire fence to get a shot of the coast, dropped it into the brambles of a mini-vineyard below. I slid under the barbed wire so that I was sitting on the dirt ledge, and reached as delicately as possible for the precariously balanced subject; when I finally reached it, though, it was only to send it plummeting to the ground. The only way to it was through a little wired-up fence, barring off someone's personal three-yard vineyard, so I unwired it as quickly as possible and retrieved the camera, half-expecting a ferocious watchdog to come bounding in to attack. After that, I decided to stick to the main path.
It's still hard to for me to say just how I feel about Italy. Much of it I like, but I can't get the right feel for the people yet. I'm having a hard time identifying the same characteristics in the present Italian population that have defined all the great figures of the past centuries; it probably seems a silly comparison to begin with, but it seems the same traits must still be there in some ways. I'll have to reserve judgment until our time in Italy is complete.