I have to post something in honor of my enoteca.
I love my neighbourhood in Florence. I have my café, my pasta shop, my casalinga shop (where you buy all the possible house ware stuff from mosquito nets to parquet wax) and my enoteca. Signore Amadei is my wine seller and I appreciate him fondly. Already after my first wine purchase in the shop, he started greeting me in the street and welcomed me into his shop with such a cordiality that an unfamiliar Finn would feel suspicious.
Yesterday I went to buy red wine to go with French cheese. He remembered to ask how I had liked the last wine I had bought. A chianti classico, the famous Tuscan wine from the Chianti region. I had to admit that even if I'd love to like chianti classico, I just don't. He listened emphatically as if I was telling him that I'm anxious about wars and corrupted politics. "È molto tannico", he comforted me. Instead, he recommended a pinot nero from Alto Adige, Northern Italy, to go with the cheese aperitivo. "Anché Mozart è daccordo", he concluded referring to the classical music we were listening. As an unusual small talk he mentioned his love to classical music and thanked me for shopping in his enoteca. Where else would I go?
I'm more and more sceptical about the viability of the option of living in Finland. Am I strong enough to return to the land of state monopolised wine and clinic, brightly lit alcohol shops where shop assistants wear bordeaux red uniforms and try assure me that even the best wine companies don't use a real cork any more (they do in Italy and anywhere where wine is quasi-sacred!)? What will I do with my spare time if all the daily shopping can be done in one huge super market in the suburb of the city? When I can do my weekly sport activity by pushing the shopping cart filled with harmonised and standardized food hundreds and hundreds of metres in the cold corridors of the market? Why haven't the Finnish people already started a revolt against the cartel of two super market chains that makes grocery shopping faceless, expensive, annoying and inhuman? In Italy, most of the shopping is still done in individual little shops, or negozio, that value entrepreneurship and social and human contact in everyday life.
P.S. I forgot the bottle of pinot nero at home and had to buy a regular chianti from a night shop on the way to the cheese aperitivo. So that's it for my sophisticated wine shopping...
I love my neighbourhood in Florence. I have my café, my pasta shop, my casalinga shop (where you buy all the possible house ware stuff from mosquito nets to parquet wax) and my enoteca. Signore Amadei is my wine seller and I appreciate him fondly. Already after my first wine purchase in the shop, he started greeting me in the street and welcomed me into his shop with such a cordiality that an unfamiliar Finn would feel suspicious.
Yesterday I went to buy red wine to go with French cheese. He remembered to ask how I had liked the last wine I had bought. A chianti classico, the famous Tuscan wine from the Chianti region. I had to admit that even if I'd love to like chianti classico, I just don't. He listened emphatically as if I was telling him that I'm anxious about wars and corrupted politics. "È molto tannico", he comforted me. Instead, he recommended a pinot nero from Alto Adige, Northern Italy, to go with the cheese aperitivo. "Anché Mozart è daccordo", he concluded referring to the classical music we were listening. As an unusual small talk he mentioned his love to classical music and thanked me for shopping in his enoteca. Where else would I go?
I'm more and more sceptical about the viability of the option of living in Finland. Am I strong enough to return to the land of state monopolised wine and clinic, brightly lit alcohol shops where shop assistants wear bordeaux red uniforms and try assure me that even the best wine companies don't use a real cork any more (they do in Italy and anywhere where wine is quasi-sacred!)? What will I do with my spare time if all the daily shopping can be done in one huge super market in the suburb of the city? When I can do my weekly sport activity by pushing the shopping cart filled with harmonised and standardized food hundreds and hundreds of metres in the cold corridors of the market? Why haven't the Finnish people already started a revolt against the cartel of two super market chains that makes grocery shopping faceless, expensive, annoying and inhuman? In Italy, most of the shopping is still done in individual little shops, or negozio, that value entrepreneurship and social and human contact in everyday life.
P.S. I forgot the bottle of pinot nero at home and had to buy a regular chianti from a night shop on the way to the cheese aperitivo. So that's it for my sophisticated wine shopping...
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