Cellar Slave - Blogabond

Many of you have been wondering what the hell I've been up too here in the wilds of Tuscany. Vino baby, god I love this stuff, rather surprisingly so considering my original antipathy for everything related to wine.

I've been cleaning out the Mariotties cellar, bottling previous vintages, all in preparation for this years harvest which is just around the corner.

It starts by cleaning out the bottles, anything can effect the taste of wine, and the smallest speck of god knows what can turn a whole demijohn of loveliness into vinegar before you could shout Baccus!

My project, clean vino bottles

I washed all the bottles, and stripped the labels off of many using industrial soda (recycle people!), before drying and crating them to be filled.

Next up you grab a big demijohn from the cellar floor and put it up an the stand. Then you un cork it and suck the oil off the top to see what you have underneath. You top off the wine with oil for preservation reasons. Providing the vino has survived the ageing process your then ready to bottle.

Demejion and bottles to be filled

Next you fill up various sizes of your sparkling bottles and then move them over to the 'corker'. Pop a cork in, slap a label on them and then stick them on the shelves.

Corker

In the end you wind up with something looking a lot like this.

Freshly bottled Vino from the Amalfi Coast

Things here at Trove are, well, rural. They do not sell any wine commercially, the vines and cellar merely support the Mariottie's yearly Vino needs. Yes. Tuscan families DO need their own vineyard and cellar to provide the years wine... God, can I have a villa in Tuscany, pleaaaaase?!?!?!?!

Don't worry, they dont have to hang out in the dark cellar for very long. The 2007 red is my particular favourite. In the states Id never touch reds, here id plug it into an IV if only my veins had taste buds.

Disclaimer for the Moms reading this:

Nope I'm not an alcoholic. In Italy, it is very shameful to be drunk. A mentality I quite agree with, I hate bring drunk and haven't been in a very very long time. Wine, is just....life... here.

Two weeks and counting until the harvest!! I plan to blog the whole process here at Trove so stay tuned ;)

Peace ya'll,
Amanda

written by

Slade's Elucidation on September 17, 2008 from Petroio, Italy

from the travel blog: Slade's Elucidation

tagged Italy, Trove, Petroio and WineCellar

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