A year in the life of a wine grower,I am convinced, is like pregnancy and giving birth to a baby. So many months leading up to the big event.

This year throughout Italy, it rained all of August. Not enough sun! So some of the grapes have some mold, and now that the sun is finally out, the mold is growing. The sun is needed to get the sugar content up so the alcohol level will be the right level when it starts to ferment in the cask. A lot of the grapes were pre-harvested and tossed to the ground because of the mold. Add to that the demand for workers to harvest and the crushing machine working sometimes, and the fact that all the bills have to be paid and the wine isn’t even in the bottle yet!

Our friend Anna Lisa Tempestini goes through this and more every year. She’s a wife and mother, yoga instructor, and cooking teacher and even a soon to be author. We stopped by to see her in action as the harvest was happening, at that precise moment!  

She dropped everything to be with us and make us feel welcome on our third time, over the years, to her home. We tried to be brief and take lots of photos of those lush bunches of grapes being picked but also noticing half as much on the ground that weren’t gonna make it into the barrel.

When you pop a cork on a good vintage, it is a joy and delight; you are a participant in the whole drama of the grape. When you have a not-so-good vintage, I saw through Anna Lisa,  the vintner still loves it for all it took to bring it to life.

The struggle makes it all the more dear.

And her wine, “Martin del Nero“, is excellent!