Wine for Where We're At

Here's a bit of an update on where we're at:

The movers will be here on Monday.

We were unable to get an automatic rental car for the four months that we will be driving in Europe, so we have rented a Peugeot with a manual transmission, which means that Steve will wind up doing most of the driving. I have promised to try to learn, so we will see how that goes. Maybe Steve will take and post photos of me bursting into tears behind the wheel.

British Airways cabin crews are on strike, though at the moment it looks as though both our flight from San Francisco to London and our flight from London to Paris are departing as planned. Hopefully that will still be the case on June 8th.

Steve has gotten a fingerprinting appointment for his citizenship application on June 3rd. After that we will wait to see when he gets an interview.

We are both seriously stressing out, and I think we will feel a lot better once the move is over on Monday.

What makes me feel better is remembering the glorious wine we had at our anniversary dinner at Perbacco Restaurant in San Francisco last week. It was a 2004 Aglianico Del Vulture, "Nocte" from Terra dei Re in Basilicata in Italy. Aglianico is a red grape mostly found in the south of Italy.

Exploring wines made from these types of indigenous grapes found throughout French and Italian wine regions is one of the activities I am most looking forward to on this trip.

This particular Aglianico wine from Terra dei Re is an absolute beauty: it is rich and lush, bold and complex, with a gorgeous nose and palate of black and red fruits, balanced by an earthiness and minerality with layers of dried leaves, leather and anise. The tannins are very unobtrusive, so it drinks nicely on its own, but it also complemented the pasta trio we all shared for dinner (herbed gnocci, homemade tagliatelli with veal bolognese and ravioli with short rib filling-yum).

It doesn't even matter if you know nothing about wine; when the sommelier poured me a taste I forgot all of my vocabulary, and all I could say after I inhaled the aromas deeply was "My god, that smells good", and it tasted even better.

Really, that's all that matters.