“So, Gary, what was your favorite wine of the night?”
It was about 11:15 and dinner had been over for about forty-five minutes, but no one had left the table.
Our guests had been drinking water and nibbling on three types of chocolate in a desperate attempt to get back in driving condition before heading home. It was at this point that I thought we should hear which of the nine wines we served were the favorites.
“I liked the Pigato and the Gattinara but the Sforzato kept getting better and better. Maybe that one.”
The dinner was in part my personal graduation exercise after completing a fairly intensive Italian wine class given by the North American Sommelier Association, which is the only United States Sommelier Association affiliated with Associazione Italiana Sommelier, Italy’s premier sommelier society. My wife, Peggy, had talked me into taking the course because of an ever growing interest in Italian wines that took hold after a trip to Tuscany about two years ago.