TALES FROM THE WINE SHOP – FROM TIMBANELLO TO WHITE BRUNELLO… PROPRIETORS RECOUNT STORIES OF NOVICE CONSUMERS WHO MAKE UP PART OF THE NEW WINE DRINKING TREND

It can get a bit difficult these days for those who run wine shops: since buying wine has become the latest trend and tastings are now the new national sport, wine shops have become mandatory destinations for all types of tourists.
This trend is a mixed blessing, however, because of two particular categories of clients: those who know nothing and are eager to learn, many times asking numerous and the most improbable questions, generating bewilderment among proprietors; and the pseudo-experts who offer judgment to all as if they were true pearls of wisdom, and make the most particular requests that it is almost impossible to satisfy them. And with these ever-growing crowds, wine shop owners had been overwhelmed, but are now abandoning themselves to the new wine tourists.

But wine shop owners can’t help but smile when clients arrive with an air of owning an important wine collection in their cellar and ask for a “Timbanello”, then, in a slightly confused tone, ask the proprietor what Antinori is. Then there are those who, having heard that wine should be aged, ask for a “Passato” (which means “past” in Italian) di Pantelleria. And those who instead exclaim that a wine has expired upon seeing one of the older dates of the vintages of some of the more important wines.

In a wine shop in Montalcino, the capital of Brunello, one tourist was dismayed to discover that no one could tell him which Brunello Saint Pio drank (a southern Italian priest who never lived anywhere near Montalcino). And in another wine shop in Montalcino an owner was actually asked whether red or white Brunello was better.
Still on the theme of Brunello, there seems to be a myth circling that if one buys a Rosso di Montalcino and ages it for five years, it will become Brunello. There was also a theory overheard that claimed Rosso di Montalcino and Brunello di Montalcino were the same except that the first one was made with the small grapes and the second one with the big grapes. And, finally, there are those who ask for a Brunello that is neither too sweet nor too bubbly.