Vino Rosso

We (by "we" I mean John Ralph) picked Michelle and James up from the airport Friday afternoon, and after a delicious dinner at one of our favorite places, Righetti, we hit the sack to rest up for a busy Saturday.  As I've mentioned many times before, the time difference when traveling can be a doozy.  We wanted to get them acclimated to our time as quickly as possible so they could get the most out of their trip.  I've found the easiest way to do so is by not taking any naps, waking up early the first day, and staying busy.  We planned a trip to a local winery, Verona, and an olive oil factory.  Enjoy these pictures from the winery!  Later I'll post a few from Verona, and the one single picture we have from the olive oil place. 

Beautiful, hand crafted oak barrels.

Tommasi is some of the best wine we've had here.  They make several different varieties, all using grapes from the Valpolicella region of Italy. 

They own the largest wine barrel in the world.  When standing by it, we would be a little taller than the pictures and plaques at the bottom. 

See how huge?

Guinness Book of World Records approved and all.

These are metal barrels that some of the wine making takes place in.  We learned all about the process, and this is just one of the many steps. 

Grape vines! 

One of the cellars with more barrels.  These were metal.

Some of the barrels are super old, but so beautiful. 

These are more huge barrels in the cellar where we did the wine tasting.  I love the look of this room with the bricks and the old wood.  Reminded me of a castle. 

John Ralph was cracking me up during the tasting.  He kept saying things like "I get a hint of fruit in this one", and I finally had to call him out on it.  I think he Googled "things to say at a wine tasting" before we left. 

Like father, like son. 

Shelly and me. 

The Tommasi family has been in the wine business for several generations now, and the tour was great.  I would love to take more visitors there!  (That is a hint for people to start making plans to visit me...seriously)  I would love to start going to more vineyards around our area.  Oddly enough, we just never think about it.  Maybe it will be on our "To Do" list before deployment. 

On a side note, thanks for being patient with my blogging.  Things have definitely been busy over the last few weeks.  I got terribly sick before block leave, and then those two weeks of leave were super busy.  We both went back to work this week, and have been burried in errands and such.  Also, we're leading up to deployment, so spending time together is very important to me, now more than ever.  I'll do my best to keep updating as much as possible, but honestly, it's not one of my top priorities.  Luckily, I still have plenty of pictures to post from leave, and we're going to be going on several weekend trips coming up.  So don't give up on me!  I promise I'll be doing my best to keep everyone in the loop with what's going on in our lives. 

Ciao for now!