When people ask me where I'd like to live I say somewhere with good tomatoes and mountains in that order. Georgia happens to have both plus wine — something I'm slowly accepting as a third condition — but this isn't about Georgia. And nor, with 560 odd photos to edit, pages of memories and memory-memories to process, could it be. Not yet. We got back eyes red on the red eye Saturday morning and where I suppose a real writer would have already drafted something about anything, I cleaned jars to make room for the spices we carried in our suitcase next to all the wine and labelled the vinegar mother Ramaz gave me, 'VINEGAR!!'.
But it's also sorta about Georgia. For one, we only opened the bottle because I was too nostalgic to drink anything red. For another, in Georgia we'd asked if anyone was making an orange pet nat. The answer was no, but that someone in Italy was. And guess who.
The first time I drank "Vej" 2014 was the same week I discovered how much sense it makes to sit on a beach naked. We were camping and went to Ghent for pizza one night, drank a bottle, took two for the road: it was a pretty glorious week. The second time was at a small wine fair last October. We'd been picking grapes, stacking crates but mostly drinking with Ernesto (Costadila) and Denis Montanar, and went home by way of Venice and, Padua. There we met 'the guy that made that wine we drank at the Superette' and I remember wondering whether it was really true when he told us what he was pouring, what we were drinking, was the first or the only — I forgot — natural orange pet nat. True or not, it was another glorious week.
On Sunday we opened our last bottle after taking all day to cook Indonesian and clean jars. Not Georgia, raining and no tomatoes, but pretty glorious.
Tasting notes:
Colour of sun shining through a clouded-plastic cup of orange jello. Smells like sweet Christmas tangerines or mandarines, I never know the difference but here I think I mean tangerine, and heady summer night orange blossom, ripe to bursting pear and crumbly Amaretto cookies. Tastes like pineapple, raisons, apricots, dry thyme and pink HubbaBubba chewing gum. Boring label.
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"Vej" 2014
Podere Pradarolo
Malvasia di Candia Aromatica (270 days skin contact)
Varano de' Melegari, Emilia-Romagna
