18 September, Friday.
Today might have been one of my favorite days of school EVER. Yes, I said it. It started normally enough, with me lugging my laptop, again, to Tiber. Brit Lit was in our old classroom again (we’ve been bouncing around) and we talked about Mary Seacole, whose piece I actually loved, for most of the time and Newman, whose piece was dry and tedious, only a little. Then, I had my lunch over my computer and worked on outlining my paper. Success! In the process, I ran into Katie and learned about Katrina and Thuy’s trip to Siena, which I decided to join. Mystics was cancelled again, so the next class was Italian. Since today was the make-up day for the Thanksgiving Thursday we have off, Stefania Maggini (our teacher) decided to do something fun. Instead of a normal class today, we met at Good Café for a wine tasting with a professional sommelier, an expert on wine.
His name was Christian, he was from Denmark, and he spoke beautiful Italian. We sat down at the table, the ND kids crowding one end (today just me, Katie, Caitlin G., Vince, and Sarah) and three girls from class (Jill, Kayla, and one whose name escapes me because my memory is terrible) next to us, with Stefania Maggini. We were provided with little sandwiches, bruschetta, and glasses for our first wine. Christian poured us a Sauvignon Blanc and taught us how to detect certain odors in the wine (in this, freshly baked bread and fresh-cut grass), how to look for clarity in the color, and how to swirl it to decant, though none of us could swirl it as expertly as he could without sloshing it all over.
The Sauvignon was a little sweet for my taste, but the next, a Chardonnay, was smoother and sharper, with scents of leather and hay and a good finish. Christian told us about the history of wine, its inception in Iraq, how different wines slide down the glass at different speeds depending on their body, how to pair wines with food, how to become a sommelier, how to choose a wine, and much more. We learned that 2003 was a hot year for Italian wines and most of those wines are cooked and undrinkable, and that if we desire drinking a Brunello from Tuscany, we must wait five years from the harvesting of the grapes for it to be ready. We learned that Zinfandel in America comes from primitive grapes in Puglia, that the American vines helped save the European sort from a wine insect, and that California wines are greasier to pair with spicy Mexican food.
With our new expertise, we finished off with a Barbera d’Alba, an Italian wine with a dry finish, a spicy flavor, and scents of leather. Vince, Caitlin, and I were the only ones who preferred it. With that, Christian took his leave and so did the three other girls. Stefania Maggini gave us the rest of her wine, and we had all the glasses left over from the other girls, so between the five of us, we finished off the rest of the selections–Vince and I mostly took care of the reds, and Sarah took three quarters of a bottle of Chardonnay with her. Finishing all that wine may not have been the brightest idea, since we were all a little giddy on the way home.
We all sat in the kitchen and talked while Genie prepared us a traditional Venezuelan meal of arepas, rice, beans, fried plantains, shredded steak, and ketchup (her family’s addition). Arepas are sort of biscuits made out of corn meal into which you shove all the other ingredients, and they were absolutely delicious. I gorged myself on Venezuelan food and had some more wine, which Vince had brought. After dinner, we cleared up and Cindy and I booked our Siena tickets. Genie’s friend from home, Sam, stopped over quickly before they all headed out to Gilda’s, the dance club. I had been planning on going, but was so tired at this point, and fearful of waking up so early, that I stayed in. Now, I’ll be going to bed soon, since it’s three in the morning and I probably could have gone to Gilda’s at that rate. Tomorrow, the beautiful town of Siena!
And for today, or yesterday, to be technical, a very special happy birthday to someone very dear to me.
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