So after all of the thrills of Alpyland and not getting back to the hotel until around 7:00pm, we decided to find the town grocery store and possibly just pick up ‘snacks’ to eat on our balcony and watch the sunset in the comfort of our room. The store closed at 7:30pm so we had to hustle.
Our main goal was getting ‘big waters’ for the room as we had been paying 2 Euro a pop for the little water bottles. We found the big liter water bottles thinking they were 1 euro per bottle, such a deal! Only to find out the next day, they were only actually .19 cents per bottle. What? How can we be in a country where great wine is 4 Euro a glass and a liter of water is about 20 cents? Italy is truly a marvel.
Anyway, we get to the store and Dana finds some ‘to go’ salads. We then try to roam around and find salami and cheese. I suggest we forgo the pressed salami meats in the cold section and buy some of the good stuff in the back. The only challenge is they won’t slice the salami for you. That was fun to try to slice back in the room with a table knife. I feel lucky to still have all of my fingers. I pick out a local salami and cheese to go and then Dana says, ‘Hey, should we grab a bottle of wine?’ Sure, why not? We peruse the wines and NOTHING looks familiar. We could go with a 5 Euro Chianti or a 22 Euro with all kinds of awards on it. We figured, we had a cheap dinner tonight so lets splurge on the wine. Happy with our selections we head back to the hotel to begin our picnic.
The sunset doesn’t set here until like 9pm or something. You can still see light in the sky at 10pm and the sun is up by 5am. It makes for long days and so much opportunity to see and do a lot in the daylight. It was fun to have this evening to relax in the room and eat our picnic.
I start unpacking more of my clothes and Dana opens the wine and goes out on the balcony to read a little bit and sip the wine. After 10 minutes, I ask her ‘how is the wine?’ She says, ‘Oh I don’t know, I’m hoping it grows on me.’ I decide to try it and pour a glass. And oh my! First it comes out like a brownish color – the same color the wine is when you save the bottle way too long and it may just be okay for a cooking wine, but probably not. I taste it and want to spit it out. I say, ‘Hey, it’s not you, I think this fancy bottle we got has been spoiled on the shelves of that hot grocery store.’ We bemoan that we spent so much and a spoiled bottle of wine.
Dana is not going to let the evening be ruined. She goes downstairs to get another bottle. She tells the sad story to the old bartender who she said was very empathetic, not making her feel bad – kind of like ‘hey, we have all been there, but don’t EVER buy wine at a grocery in Italy! The grocery is for grocery. Let me fix this for you and find you something worthy of sipping on tonight!’
He comes through…so now we are 44 Euro in with the wine and I am feeling more and more annoyed at the injustice of the grocery wine fail and wishing/hoping the grocery was like Trader Joe’s where you could just go back and say, ‘Hey, it’s no good.’ And with a smile, they refund your money. I tell Dana, ‘Tomorrow, I will go speak to the manager, we at least have to try.’ She said, ‘Good, good, I will not say a word but stand behind you for tall moral support.’
So the next day, we did go to that store and we found the ‘manager’s’ counter, which kind of looked like it doubled as a tourist office. I said, “Hi, we bought this wine and well, when we poured it, it was brown.” She replied, “Well, OF COURSE, it’s brown, it’s a (ees-a) Barrolo.” I said, thinking how can I say this delicately, ‘Well, it tastes like vinegar, please try it.’ NEVER dreaming she would try it. At Trader Joe’s, you basically just have to say ‘Hey, I actually decided I feel like Chardonnay tonight’ and they say, “Of course, here is your refund!” Not quite, but love me some TJs. So she goes and pulls a mini-Dixie cup and starts pouring the wine.
Our eyes get big and we both start internally doubting our wine tasting abilities for about 2 seconds. It only takes that long for her to taste and say ‘Oh, that’s TERRIBLE!’ While they don’t refund money, she says we can go pick out another bottle of the same wine. We say, um, we don’t trust that wine anymore. She then says, let me help you and personally walks us over to pick out another great wine of equal value. We both are so relieved and felt a small win – Dana and Lisa = 1, Grocery Store = 1 (giving them a point for being great and acknowledging it was a bad wine!) Giving us a big point for being almost 50 and not afraid to go right wrongs.
