The Spina di Rosa Bottle is Empty

Aw, this picture is sad:

Though drinking this lovely rose’ from Donini winery was delicious (and, as a model of restraint, I drank it slowly over a few days), it was our last bottle. We were lucky enough to ship a box of Donini wines back (thanks to Keith and Tasha for the assist), and while we still have a bottle of frizzante white Brigante, this is it for the Spina di Rosa. That empty bottle is almost a reason to go back all on its own.

*Note: We were on pre-tirement, and now we’re back. Want the full story? Start the pre-tirement journey here. Want to go backwards? Read the last pre-tired post here and scroll back. Or, just keep coming back for pretty Italy pictures.

TTITIM #4: Diego and Donini Wines

The last few hits (coming in the next few days) in my Top Ten Italian Things I’ll Miss list (you can see all TTITIM here, and catch up more on the reasons and explanation behind the list) are ones that I’ve mentioned a few times at least already on the blog (unlike a couple below that I missed posting up on earlier), and ones that were central to our pre-tirement in Italy. Starting with our now-friend Diego, the owner, vintner, and driving force behind Donini wines. I’ve talked a lot about both the wine-maker and the winery (read another Donini blog here, or read some on my cocktail blog), with good reason: the wine-maker has been incredibly welcoming to us, and the wines are delicious and have been a perfect liquid accompaniment to many meals and snacks. We’ve stopped at the winery, say, 20 times, and have taken most visitors there, too. Each time, Diego has taken us around the winery (different rooms every time it seems--it’s a good-sized place), and we’ve gotten to take many tastes straight off the casks (once even tasting a certain wine three times--once a version aged a year, then the same aged two years, and then bottled and aged longer), as you can see in this pic of Diego and Nat:

Diego, as you can tell if you take the time to talk a bit (he loves to talk, and has English skills that are much better than he thinks), loves making wine, and loves making wine that people can drink enjoyably (there’s no snootiness at Donini, unlike most wineries, and no hard sell, either, which is refreshing), daily. I just wish some importer on the west coast would start bringing in Donini wines for more people in the US to have--or just for us to have. One final Donini pic I don’t believe I’ve posted before, the room way in the back, the original room of the winery, where the big wood casks are:

Here’s a final toast, Diego, thanks for keeping us in good wine and being a good friend.

*All TTITIM

Watching Wine Making at Donini

We stopped by Donini the other day (Donini being the local winery I’ve mentioned at least once, and probably much more, and which I wrote about in more detail in this Donini post on Spiked Punch) to pick out some wines for sending home for the holidays (we’re not going home, but thought sending some wine home would balance out us missing spending the holidays with family and friends, especially cause we love the Donini selection). While there, we also picked up some of the other gift items for ourselves and the holidays (they have an amazing selection of other wines, chocolates, truffle products, rums, and more—the four things we got I just listed). Shopping and shipping was great, naturally. But even better was that Diego (the amazingly friendly vintner and owner of Donini) was there and took us back into the winery itself so we could see a bottling in progress. In the back room, there are huge vats and containers full of wine in various stages:

And across from them, there’s a giant machine that the Donini crew shepherd the wine through when it’s ready (this is Diego in the picture, too, by the way):

On one end of the machine, there are loads of bottles ready and waiting for wine (isn’t it interesting how melancholy empty bottles look?):

The bottles get cleaned, get instructions on how to hold their wine (all-right-y, I made that up), and then get filled—but not without a lot of corks in place:

The corks then come into play on the line, in a very cool corking and sealing area, which is an example of robots being used for good and which can be a little hot:

That day they were bottling the 2008 Sangiovese and we got to taste it right from the tap (no picture here—I was too busy sampling). It was delightful even without spending any time in the bottle, a full, dry-but-full-flavored, wine. We’d been drinking a lot of the bouncy vino nouvo called Bindolo, a fresh fruity number that is right off the vine (more-or-less), which we’ve loved for its naughty boy out of school nature. The Sangiovese is a dandy counterbalance, a more adult wine (and one ideal for the colder holiday season). I think we must have outwardly shown our appreciation of the wine, and of the care that the Donini folks put into their wine, because Diego sent us home with a bottle of the 2008 right off the line—it doesn’t even have a label yet (you’ll have to trust me that I didn’t just bottle it myself):