Private dinner with some of ours American friends

Last Friday, February 25, 2011, we welcomed two American friends to a proper Tuscan dinner: sober, familiar, and full of good wine.

Together with my dear friend Niccoli Massimiliano, his wife, and their daughter Novella, we organized the evening for Michael and Juan Guevara Insalago of M & G Jewelers, who had come straight from Hollywood to Tuscany for a relaxing holiday. It was a night of good food and fine Tuscan wine, with plenty of joy and fun along the way, and no shortage of talk about how differently our two cultures eat and drink.

On the table

What our guests tasted first

Juan, an excellent cook himself, loved the Ribollita — the classic Tuscan soup of vegetables and bread — and a plate of lasagna that our mother Graziella made especially for him. Michael fell for our Tuscan salami and cheeses.

Trays came out heaped with typical Tuscan salami: Cinta Senese, Tuscan salami, wild boar salami, cured ham from Tuscany, buristo, and soprassata. Then came the cheeses — Pecorino mixed with red wine, Pecorino with walnuts, aged Pecorino, and a mountain of Gorgonzola from a local farm, alongside cheese stuffed with ham and vegetables. We paired it all with figs, fig jam, red onion marmalade, acacia honey, and wildflower honey.

In the glass

The wines we opened

All that warm food was matched with wines from my own personal cellar, opened just for the occasion. We started with a toast of sparkling Chardonnay to welcome our Italian and American friends, then moved on to the new vintage of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano 2007, alongside snacks and antipasti.

Next came our new Brunello di Montalcino 2006. The bottles of this new vintage are still travelling to our warehouse in Lake Forest, Chicago, ahead of its release for sale in the United States in April, ready for delivery to our loyal American customers and admirers of Tenuta Torciano wine.

I then opened a special reserve, my Bartholomew 1997 vintage, which turned out to be the wine Juan and Michael preferred most. We closed the tasting with a wonderful glass of our Terrestre, 2001 vintage.

It was a beautiful evening, enhanced by the pleasure of good food and good wine — but above all, by the pleasure of friendship and a happy atmosphere. Those, in the end, are the essential ingredients of good living.