Just looking at the label sent a familiar jolt through me. The classic dun-colored label. Same engraved scene of some royal dude accepting a goblet of wine from a servant.
Then I opened it and sniffed.
Pow!
And tasted.
Ka-blam-o!
Mid-swallow, I time-traveled back more than two decades, to when I was pretending to study while spending a semester abroad in Florence, Italy. Here in my glass was the same wine I'd drunk many nights (and let's face it, days). We're talking pure "blast from the past" in a bottle.
You know this feeling, too. How hearing a song can make old memories feel as freshly experienced as present day. Same with tastes. Maybe more so, according to scientists.
Earthy, meaty, yet regal, this bottle of 2006 Ruffino Riserva Ducale Chianti Classico (about $25 a bottle) is a lot like the royal clans who ruled and clashed over Renaissance Tuscany. It also tastes to me of all the craziness of being young and stupid and fancy free in a beautiful foreign land. Like all Chianti, so-named wines must be made according to strict traditions in a postage stamp-sized area within Tuscany. Of course, saying this wine is the same as what I was drinking way back then is silly. Every year's wines are different. Yet there's some unmistakable constant to these, as well many other, wines.
This article appears in Dec 16-22, 2010.