A Little Chianti Goes a Long Way

Tonight I am drinking the 2006 Tractor Shed Red that I opened two days ago. I like it. Super fruity and jammy, lots of berries. An awful lot of berries for something made primarily of sangiovese, actually, but the sangio seems to give it that nice, blood orange tang just beneath its berry-ness. It's a nice, easy every day sort of wine. Not at all bad for something with a cutesy name from the marketing department.

So. There was a trip to Illinois. I'll start with Friday night, the day of my arrival back in my hometown of Lincoln.

I knew before I left Denver that I would be tagging along to a wine party in Springfield. I was to be the photographer. Or assistant. Or whatever. Dave had ordered the wine he would be serving, but it needed to be retrieved from Pekin and Peoria. I wasn't even in Lincoln an hour before we hit the road to pick it up.

After checking the party's order, we shopped for our own to drink for the weekend. There was a really nice chianti that I don't remember. A Palo Alto sauvignon blanc. A Guenoc claret. A Kenwood red table wine that I'd had before and liked in about the same vein as this Tractor Shed Red that I've got open tonight. At the second store we found a decent champagne on sale. I think there were a few others.

Then we drove back to Dave's place in Lincoln and took this picture of our loot:



We opened the chianti before heading to Guzzardo's Italian Villa for dinner. It didn't take much to get me tipsy that night. It's a good thing that Guzzardo's was only a block and a half away. Lincoln blocks. Which are about a third of the size of what you get in a city like Denver or Chicago.

At dinner, everything Dave said was hysterical, the food was just as fantastic as it's been my entire life, and I managed to not publicly embarrass myself. All in all, this outing was a success. After that, however, I was done. We wandered back to the apartment. I was just wiped out. I fell asleep on the sofa. At some point I made it to the air mattress my host had graciously provided for me.

Between the two of us, we only made it halfway through that chianti... but after my long day of getting up early, flying to Dallas and then to Bloomington, and then driving to Lincoln to Pekin to Peoria to Lincoln, it was more than enough.

Next post: Wine, Wine and More Wine in Springfield.

Edit: Dave tells me the chianti was Rocca delle Macie Chianti Classico 2005. And now I remember that it, too, came from the second store, though that's a very minor point. What's important is that it made me happy. I give it an A.

Coming Attractions: The Wine Noob Hits the Road

I haven't done anything wine-y this week, partly due to school and partly due to being half-sick the last two days, sorry about that!

HOWEVER!

One week from today I shall embark on a weekend of exotic travel, consorting with exciting characters and sampling a variety of fine grape-based libations! There will be pictures! There may even be VIDEO!

Where am I going, you ask? Is it Costa Rica? Paris? Bangkok?

NO! It's better than all of those places! It is... *drumroll please*...

LINCOLN, ILLINOIS!

I'll be hanging out with my wine industry buddy, Dave, in the land of our mutual childhoods, in the shadow of the courthouse dome. Drinking wine. Possibly LOTS of wine. Because frankly, there isn't much else to do in Lincoln.

However, this is exciting to me because I haven't spent more than 20 minutes in Lincoln since my family moved away while I was in college. I didn't go to the ten year high school reunion since there wasn't really anyone I was dying to see. I went to Italy instead. My family and I occasionally take a drive through to see landmarks like our old house, if family Christmas is nearby and we have some time to kill, but Lincoln is not a place I have ever experienced as an adult.

I am anticipating. Imagining what it will be like...

A Lincoln where I can drink without worrying about the cops busting the party for underage drinking.

A Lincoln that's much smaller than I remember since I'm twice the height that I was for so many of my years there and have grown accustomed to the size of an urban city block.

Lincoln as seen through the lens of my camera while rediscovering a place I hated passionately while growing up.

A Lincoln where I have friends who profess to be excited for the opportunity to hang out.

I expect it to be an intriguing, spooky, and deeply satisfying sort of trip. With copious amounts of wine. Yes. Indeed. Get ready for it, my darling wine loving readers. This is a bag full of wine stories waiting to happen!