So we called the hotel from a phone booth in Monforte around 2:30PM, and found they had managed to redeem themselves somewhat. I don’t know what favors they had to call in, but they’d secured a visit to Luciano Sandrone’s winery, which is admittedly quite an honor.

Signore Sandrone met us in person, and proceeded to guide us through his brand new winery for an hour and a half, speaking to us in Italian, which we both understand just fine, and Ivonne answering in a little Italian, and me cracking a few jokes in English with plenty of hand-waving (which gives all Italians an automatic +4 on rolls for their understand-foreigner ability).

In particular, on being admitted into the sanctum sanctorum where the bottle await shipment, I mentioned ‘Fort Knox’, and he snorted and replied it was the bank’s gold. People living off the land and banks… a long history.

Anyhoo, communication was all one-way until we sat down to try the wines, and we got to his Nebbiolo d’Alba. Partly it was the incredibly dense red fruit nose, partly it was my ex-sales-guy garrulousness which just couldn’t be denied any longer, but I gushed with praise for his wine, en francais dans le texte.

Seeing how close la France is, it should have come as no surprise that he understood me just fine. (Yes, I was still waving my hands around.) So we babbled away in Italian and French about how his wine reminded me of good Bourgogne Pinot Noir, and how he tended the vines on a steep natural theater facing south, and how, wow, that’s how they tend their rieslings in the Mosel valley in Germany where we were in October, and yes, yes, you get it exactly, let’s stop drinking the 1999 vintage, it’s too young anyway, gimme a minute and I’ll get the 1989.

This, my friends, is called unlocking a secret level.

We stayed another 45 minutes happily tasting his dolcetto, his barolo, his barbera from 17 years ago in a babble of three languages and in a total meeting of minds.