In (Lots of) Vino Veritas

One of our friends, Dave, had mentioned several specialty shops while he was showing us around the school a couple of weeks ago. Last Wednesday Amy followed up to try and pinpoint the location of the shop which specializes in all-things-pork and the local brew pub. As she was doing that Dave asked if we had found “the wine place”. Well, we hadn’t so off we went. No more than 300 meters from our house on the opposite side of the main street we arrived at Symposium Vini, an unpreposing little hole in the wall. It has a nice little selection of local bottled wines at quite reasonable prices, but what really sets it apart is the 20 or so 800 liter metal containers you notice immediately upon entering. They are full of a variety of local and regional wines. Pietro will help you pick out a wine, giving you samples of ones you are interested in until you arrive at your final selection. The wine is then placed in whatever container you want, old wine bottles, empty water bottles, etc. and away you go. We ended up with a 2 liter bottle of a nice, “biologic”, red wine from a reasonably well known local producer. Biologic meaning there are no preservatives or other things not naturally found in the winemaking process. The cost? A staggering euro 4.40. By Friday evening I was back refilling that bottle and picking up a 5 liter jug of Montepulciano d’Abruzzo, an excellent but less famous cousin of the Brunello d’Montepulciano. The whole thing, jug and all, was euro 9.00. When you convert the price to dollars and divide the jug into standard 750 ml bottles it translates to $1.87 per bottle for an amazing wine.  Any visitors who like wine should be prepared for a real treat in a visit to Symposium.