VINO!!!

6/24/08
Awoke with a mission today! 15 pieces due by noon. After having the breakfast of Italian champions (a banana and croissant) I headed to the studio, just before 9. I ended up starting a second set of 5 pieces last night, so of course I decided to finish this and disregarded the others, ha. But actually in the end it’s by far my favorite of the now twenty pieces I turned in. Needless to say, I did without too much stress completely the assignment and with penalty of time too. I was done by 11. I ended up not changing too much on most of my pieces. Just added a bit here and there and changed the order a bit. After hanging all the pieces up, as we do when we “turn in” an assignment for Dan, I had no idea what to do with myself. Ended up lying down for a bit…seemed like an ok thing to do…was dieing for lunch. And of course because I was so hungry for lunch it was the lightest lunch we’ve had. I mean it made since considering we were going to the winery two hours later, but still. Ha. After lunch we all run upstairs to put on our bathing suits and met in the lobby at 215 to walk to the winery. Dan claimed it was about a 2km walk, I don’t care how far it was in the 2pm heat of Italy we were all dieing by the time we got there. But after cooling in the shade we began out tour. Ricardo, our guide, showed us around his little winery where they make olive oil, Vino Rosa and Blanca, honey and jams. There main income is form the wine and they just make about 2000 bottles of oil a year for a little extra income. Learned how the wine was made, the differences that the soils, grooming and time of year make and some bout the mixes. Now how long all retain all this info will be interesting. Ha. Ricardo took us to the olive trees first, then the chardonnay and merlot areas then finally the best part, THE TASTING! Ha-ha. After being filled with all this incredible information we follow our leader (ha) into a quant little house with a long, beautifully set table. We all sat and anticipation grew! The first wine was a 100% pure chardonnay, fantastic! This was also paired with a tiny pizza croissant and cheese with jam. Then next wine was wine as well (don’t remember the mix) but it was great as well, a little dryer but still great! Hear we received Bruschetta to eat. For the third wine was a merlot. Now im not typically a fan of red but I really enjoyed this one! And we received a salami and bread course to boot! Then sadly they cleared our plates… but they then filled this tiny little shot looking glass with a desert wine (not grappa). They said its one to the slipped and either paired with a good cigar or biscotti- unfortunately they only gave us the biscotti (ha). We were sad to learn this was the end of the tasting, but honestly I don’t think I could have more. After they cleaver made purchasing the wine available at the time, we made our choice and then headed to the pool. I forgot to mention this place is also a bed and breakfast, with a pool! We all hopped in and relaxed till about 615 when we had to make our way back to Santa chiara for our pre-Florence mtg. It was so much fun to finally be in the water and just to be silly in the pool with everyone. Over all the groups a really off the wall kind of group. We make tons of stupid jokes and laugh at the dumbest things all the time and this just flowed into the pool. Everything from races, to dumb diving board tricks to water ballet, water hair doos…etc. Bottom line it was a great day.
We were all exhausted after dinner and had an early morning train to catch… so I think that qualifies my passing out at 1030pm! Ha, maybe.