Tuscany Wine Quotes

Maybe the only thing that matters is to make our lives last as long as we do. You know, to make a life last until it ends, to make all the parts come out even, like when you rub the last piece of bread in the last drop of oil on your plate and eat it with the last sip of wine in your glass.

More wine is poured. Voices overlap. Stars collect in the sky. The breeze carries the scent of grapes and lavender and smoke from the fire. I soak in the sweet scene, knowing this day . . . this moment . . . is one I shall re-create many times, both in memory and on paper.

- I have the impression that we are the last people on Earth. - It wouldn't be so bad. We would have all the wine of the world to ourselves.

When Gabriel returned, he eagerly opened the wine, smiling to himself wickedly. He was in for a treat, and he knew it. He knew how Julianne looked when she tasted wine, and now he would have a repeat of her erotic performance from the other night. He felt himself twitch more than once in anticipation and wished that he had a video camera secretly placed in his condo somewhere. It would probably be too obvious to pull his camera out and take snapshots of her. He showed her the bottle first, noting with approval the impressed expression that passed across her face when she read the label. He’d brought this special vintage back from Tuscany, and it would have pained him to waste it on an undiscerning palate. He poured a little into her glass and stood back, watching, and trying very hard not to grin. Just as before, Julia swirled the wine slowly. She examined it in the halogen light. She closed her eyes and sniffed. Then she wrapped her kissable lips around the rim of the goblet and tasted it slowly, holding the wine in her mouth for a moment or two before swallowing. Gabriel sighed, watching her as the wine traveled down her long and elegant throat.

Fresh tobacco. Black currants. God, it was so good. She kept it in her mouth for a count of ten before she swallowed. If there was any magic in this world that was not magic, it was wine. She smelled wet hay from a tumbledown field in Tuscany in the early morning, after the sky turned light, but before the sun burned off the dew.

He poured, properly this time, even a little heavy. The dark liquid looked black in the glass, and she had to restrain herself from gulping it. Fresh tobacco. Black currants. God, it was so good. She kept it in her mouth for a count of ten before she swallowed. If there was any magic in this world that was not magic, it was wine. She smelled wet hay from a tumbledown field in Tuscany in the early morning, after the sky turned light, but before the sun burned off the dew. It reminded her of somewhere else too, a place she’d never seen, let alone smelled—someplace green and unspoiled and far away, which she knew well even though she’d never been there, just as it knew her well. She felt its pull on her, as she always had. But for the moment she let its name escape her.

We would mull over the ills of Italy and the ills of the world, and conclude at the end that everyone's crazy so what's the use, let's go have some lunch and a little wine.

I have never before gathered eggs from under a hen. Fernando has never before seen a hen. We bend low into the shed where perch a dozen or so fat lady birds. There's no shrieking or fluttering at all. I approach one and ask if she has an egg or two. Nothing. I ask in Italian. Still nothing. I ask Fernando to pick her up but he's already outside the shed smoking and pacing, telling me he really doesn't like eggs at all and he especially doesn't like frittata. Both bold-faced lies. I start to move the hen and she plumps down from her perch quite voluntarily, uncovering the place where two lovely brown eggs sit. I take them, one at a time, bend down and nestle them in my sack. I want two more. I peruse the room. I choose the hen who sits next to the docile one. I pick her up and she pecks me so hard on my wrist that I drop her. I see there is nothing in her nest and apologise for my insensitivity, thinking her nastiness must have been caused by embarrassment. I move on to another hen and this time find a single, paler brown-shelled beauty, still warm and stuck all over with bits of straw. I take it and leave with an unfamiliar thrill. This is my first full day in Tuscany and I've robbed a henhouse before lunch. Back home in the kitchen I beat the eggs, the yolks of which are orange as pumpkin, with a few grindings of sea salt, a few more of pepper, adding a tablespoon or so of white wine and a handful of Parmigliano. I dig for my flat broad frying pan, twirl it to coat its floor with a few drops of my tourist oil, and let it warm over a quiet flame. I drop in the rinsed and dried blossoms whole, flatten them a bit so they stay put, and leave them for a minute or so while I tear a few basil leaves, give the eggs another stroke or two. I throw a few fennel seeds into the pan to scent the oil, where the blossoms are now beginning to take colour on their bottom sides. Time to liven up the flame and add the egg batter. I perform the lift-and-tilt motions necessary to cook the frittata without disturbing the blossoms, which are now ensnared in the creamy embrace of the eggs. Next, I run the lush little cake under a hot grill to form a gold blistery skin on top before sliding it onto a plate, strewing it with torn basil. The heat of the eggs warms the herbs so they give up a double-strength perfume. Now I drop a thread of find old balsamico over it. And finally, let it rest.

Archaeologists believe that wine-making began in Georgia and northern Persia some time between 6000 BC and 5000 BC.

CHIANTI The yellow sun lays low upon the fields that are covered in dry grass. Soft is the rain that falls in the distance yet does not dare to come near the places where summer lives and dies. The haze is the aftermath of the kiss summer shared with the land so gracefully. And now, I may kiss your wine-stained lips within September's pale delight.

Fontamara, Bread and Wine,

Federico hurries me on to the next glory. Under the ashes of last evening’s fire in a hearth wide and deep as a small room, he’d set fat white beans to braise in bulbous-bottomed wine bottles, most of them remnants from his grandfather’s winemaking days, he says. He’d mixed the beans with water, sage, garlic and rosemary, sea salt, just-cracked pepper and a dose of extra virgin oil. He’d stopped the bottles with pieces of wet flannel so the steam would hiss away without exploding the glass and left the beans to cook all night long. Fagioli al fiasco

- Mam wrażenie, że jesteśmy ostatnimi ludźmi na Ziemi. - To nie byłoby takie złe. Mielibyśmy dla siebie całe wino świata.

There is a wide variety of good meat available, often simply grilled or roasted on the spit, and the preference is for farmyard animals, such as rabbit, lamb, chicken, duck and wood pigeons. The famous bistecca alla fiorentina, a T-bone steak, is always cooked over charcoal, and rosticciana is grilled spare ribs. In Tuscany, meat dishes are often stewed slowly in a tomato sauce, called in umido (stracotto is beef cooked in this way or in red wine). In the Maremma, wild boar (cinghiale) is sometimes prepared alla cacciatora, marinated in red wine, with parsley, bay leaves, garlic, rosemary, onion, carrot, celery, sage and wild fennel. It is then cooked slowly at a low heat in a terracotta pot with oil, lard, hot spicy pepper, and a little tomato sauce.

luxury wines such as Gaja Barbaresco, Conterno Barolo, and Super Tuscans such as Sassicaia and Masseto, we revel in the challenge of finding the most interesting and tasty Piedirosso, Pigato, and Procanico to tempt our guests. To that end, when the restaurant was under construction and still uninhabitable, we found ourselves in a whirlwind of tasting appointments off site, often up to eight hours straight, auditioning hundreds of wines daily for several weeks. Each day, we asked our trusted wine sellers to bring only the wines of a particular region of Italy. Alto Adige day seems to always be a bit easier, as these northern wines tend to have a nice palate-cleansing and reviving acidity that certainly helps when there are so many wines to taste. On that day we taste wines like crisp, clean Sauvignon Blanc from Zemmer and the elegant Chardonnays of Elena Walch, both made from international grape varieties, and Hofstatter Pinot Bianco and Mayr-Nusser Lagrein made from homegrown grapes. On the other hand, Tuscany day can be a tough one, with all of the rich, high-octane reds that are typically presented, and for the tremendous number of high-quality wines that we just cannot bring ourselves to forgo swallowing. Tuscany provides us with glassfuls of the classic Sangiovese-based Chianti, Brunello di Montalcino, and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, and their more reasonably priced facsimilies: Sangiovese Toscana, Rosso di Montalcino, and Rosso di Montepulciano. The neoclassic Tuscan reds include the blends in which Sangiovese is married with grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, and Syrah. These are the Super Tuscan wines. We call these few weeks of intense wine tasting “The Gauntlet.” As much fun as it sounds, you realize that tasting can actually be very hard work. Thank goodness for the chef’s sandwiches: Sicilian Tuna to revive the palate after all of that Sicilian Nero d’Avola, Bresaola and Arugula on Lombardy day when we have been drinking Sforzato di Valtellina and its simpler cousin, Rosso di Valtellina, both made from Chiavennesca—all perfect vehicles for bringing our palates and ourselves back to life!