I left my home in Colorado in March, I returned a few weeks ago. My travels (all in a car I had hired/rented) took me more than 10,000km, from Aosta to Apulia; every major region except Sardegna and Sicilia, which I will visit during my next extended tour, coming up, too soon.

At this point, I have more than 3,000 tasting notes to catch up on, more than 5GB of audio recordings to sort through, and about 600+ pictures that need some type of editing. I’m buried, but I wanted to update and say I’m back online, for at least the next few months until I start over again.

The highlights of my trip were many. And the greatest highlights of all were all the fantastic, larger-than-life yet humble as can be personalities. I’m not one to name drop, so I’ll leave that for (future) individual posts.

I ended up visiting many important, multi-day fairs, including #TasteAltoPiemonte, #GrandiLanghe, #VinItaly2017, #ViniVeri2017, #VinNatur2017, etc. To the people that helped me to attend those fairs, you’re special, thank you, thank you a lot.

The stories that will be coming in the next weeks, while I’m stationary here in Colorado (recovering from health stuff, including restoring vision to my right eye – I’ve been blind in it since last September) are, I think, quite special. I hope I can put into words what I was able to feel in person, while visiting these winemakers, enologists, agronomists, etc., titles that are important, they’ve been earned, but ultimately these people were not about titles, they’re about their land, their heritage, and their passion.

(Marco de Grazia, at #OperaWine2017, in Verona)

Lots of good stuff to follow, I’ll try and keep it real, as real as the passion that these remarkable people have for what they do every day.

(header photo: every day that I’ve walked to VinItaly for the past decade+, I have to pass by this wall, with stones that were there before I was born, and will be there after I’m gone. I supposed they’re reminders of just how ancient this place is, how much rich history is here – and I love it, even these simple stones)