We all have our fantasies. These days mine lean a bit more towards getting more sleep than chance encounters with Salma Hayek. But one thing I’ve never given up on, no matter how unlikely, is the daydream of one day living in Italy.
Any wine lover who’s been to the small towns in any one of Italy’s wine regions knows what I’m talking about. There’s just something about Italy that’s truly magical if you’re someone who loves food and wine.
But I never knew quite how magical it could be, until this week, when the faucets of Marino, Italy started pouring out wine instead of water.
Even today, in some small Italian villages you can go buy wine from the guy down the street who makes it. Show up with your jug and open the tap, and pay for what you take. Which was why some folks in Marino wasted no time grabbing jugs and bottles and filling up when the taps started running with something a little tastier than usual.
What to wine lovers was as close to a miracle as we might ever experience was actually the work of bungling civic engineers, who accidentally routed a pipeline of wine (which was destined, as it is every year at this time, for the city’s public fountain in celebration of the harvest) into the domestic water pipeline instead.
I’m sure we’d all prefer our wine not to taste of ancient (probably lead) city pipes, but the concept is hard to beat. Just another reason to daydream.
