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For the past two week my wife and I have been in Italy. Before I left my intention was to blog from there about various wines and restaurants we came across during our trip. Two things prevented this from happening: 1) Italy rates near the bottom of the European Union in internet connectivity - and it showed. Finding an internet connection in either our hotel or internet cafes was a little tough. And when we did the prices were ridiculous. The most laughable was our hotel in Rome: 10 euros ($15) get you one hour of internet time. And 2) We were in Italy - the home of long meals and so much history it would literally take a lifetime to see it all, which makes blogging not much of a priority. Ok, excuses out of the way, on to the good stuff...

For dinner one night in Florence we went to an enoteca/ristorante called Enotria. The restaurant was a little out of the city center walls, about a ten minute walk from our hotel and the Santa Maria Novella train station, and the prices reflected this - as did the patrons. This was a great local place that took a lot of pride in matching great Italian wines with classic Tuscan fare. Isabell and I both ordered a pairing menu where we got an anitpasti, pasta, and main course all matched with selected wines. Each of our meals was excellent and the wines were great, too. One wine in particular stood out to me: the 2003 Monteraponi Chianti Classico. It embodied all that is great about chianti, but offered tastes that were complex and smooth. I had this wine pared with my pasta: rigatoni with a classic Florentine ragout sauce. Fantastic!

I ended up buying the 2003 Monteraponi Chianti Classico reserve to bring home, as well as another Classico that the manager highly recommended.