Time Flies When You're Having Fun

It hardly seems possible, but tomorrow Amy and I will have been married for three weeks. All the evocative mental images of that day -- the tears, the sweat-soaked groom melting in late afternoon sun, Puba stealing the show and that speech -- are now but fading memories. [And, though we missed much, we did notice a few of you were enjoying yourselves - above.] Perhaps even hazier are our memories of the glorious week leading up to the wedding, during which pantegrulian quantities of beer and wine were quaffed by you wedding guests as you warmed up your drinking muscles and livers for the final onslaught on June 28th. So it is with great anticipation that we await the delivery of our wedding photographs which we hope will fill us in on some of what actually happened in that 6-8 hour period. Of course, that photographic story will be far from complete and because of that we'd love it if you could either send us or e-mail us a link to your best and worst pics of the week and the wedding.
We've uploaded our pictures of the wedding week to Snapfish so we invite you to check them out here
[Note: If you'd like to share you pictures with other wedding guests but don't have their e-mail address, please feel free to post links to your pics in the comments section of this post.]

We're sure most brides and grooms feel the discomfort of being so in focus with everyone snapping away, and while we did too -- particularly for the first dance, as we did our utmost to shuffle around without stacking-it on the uneven parquet while being blinded by the videographers' light -- we got used to it in the end, as the image to the right, i think, shows. [We thank Mrs. Louise Culshaw for capturing this beautiful, romantic nuptial scene.] Anyway, we encourage you to share your pictures with us and each other through whichever medium you prefer. We can't wait to see them!

Practically, though not actually, related...

Thankfully, we're putting the finishing touches to the wedding planning and you'll be pleased to learn that you can help us do this by answering two very simple questions.

1. Do you have any special dietary requirements? [vegetarian/vegan, kosher/halal, macrobiotic(?), food allergies etc.] Please let us know so we can have the caterers fix up something appropriate and delicious for you.


2. Will you be at Lupinari on the evening of Tuesday, June 26th? We are planning a short wine n'cheese welcome / get-together, so please let us know if you will be around.

Note: The consumption of wine and cheese is not mandatory at said welcome event, and definitely not for those with certain food allergies. However, those among who you believe they are lactose intolerant will be reassured to learn that not only are very few of us so afflicted with this condition that we cannot drink a daily tall glass of milk without ill effects, but cheese contains no lactose. Lactose is a sugar found in milk, 98% of which is drained off with the whey (cheese is made from the curds) and the other 2% is quickly consumed by lactic-acid bacteria in the act of fermentation.

So, in two weeks time, let's eat (cheese), drink (wine) and be merry!

P.S. - the interesting cheese factoid comes straight out of Jeffrey Steingarten's witty and informative book, The Man Who Ate Everything. We highly recommend it to everyone, but especially those who are fussy eaters.

To Reiterate, I'll Say This Only Once

There are always problems with new technologies. Indeed, the older ones amongst you will remember the days when a man with a red flag had to walk ahead of every car to warn pedestrians of the death-trap rushing their way at, well, walking speed. This was but a bump in the road compared to the problem we've identified with blog software, which causes the older posts slip off the foot of the page and then searched for manually. Can you imagine the inconvenience?

In order to counter this problem we're having to repeat the very first post our little fingers ever typed on our, then, barely conceived wedding blog, back in January. We don't like to repeat ourselves so we're saying this only once. Read and absorb the details below as if this website were about to self-destruct, a la Mission Impossible, in five, four, three...


General Information

As a helpful reminder, in case the oh-so humorous Save the Date card we sent you in the fall happened to fall off your fridge, here are the basic details of our wedding again.

Location - Tenuta di Lupinari, "I Lupinari," 52021 Bucine, Arezzo, Tuscany
T: 055/9912011 F: 055/9911870

Date - Thursday, June 28th, 2007, ceremony at 6:00 p.m.

Attire - Business/lounge suits for gentlemen and dresses for ladies(hats optional).

Here's how the "big day" is going to shake out.

Ceremony - The wedding ceremony will take place outdoors on the property at Lupinari, adjacent to where guests are staying.

Cocktail Hour - The ceremony will be followed immediately by a cocktail hour at which our guests are invited to slake their thirsts with a selection of chilled beverages and take the edge off their appetites with a variety of hors d'œuvres and local cheeses.

Reception - Guests will be invited to take their seats for the reception at around 8:00 p.m. Speeches will be made and several people will probably be embarrassed. Dancing will follow the dinner, and is compulsory. We expect everyone to embarrass themselves at this point.

End - since we're all staying on the property, there are no carriages at a certain hour. We intend to party until we can go no longer and hope that some of you will still be there with us at the end.

Gimme What the Guy on the Floor's Having...

Unsurprisingly, for a place so full of good things to eat and drink, Italy is also famous for several distilled spirits and liquors. Perhaps the best-known, and most feared, is grappa -- a burning, cough-inducing, firewater made from the macerated skins leftover from wine-making. Similar to the French eau-de-vie, grappa is reputed to settle the stomach and cure what ails you, assuming you can remember what was wrong after drinking it.

Sambuca is another liver-busting spirit you'll be familiar with. Made from anise seeds (aniseed) and typically drunk over ice with 3 toasted coffee beans, it can be very enjoyable after a large meal -- it's strong flavor and sticky sweetness cutting through the fullness you're experiencing. It's also sometimes, unadvisedly, drunk (in the UK) as a shot at the end of a boozy night, and is never, ever a good idea.

There are, however, other strong waters that, when mixed together, while still likely to make you feel a mite tipsy, can be enjoyed without the physical symptoms caused by grappa or sambuca. The most famous of these cocktails is the Negroni. Invented in Florence in the 1920s, it was named for Count Camillo Negroni (1829-1913), who asked the bartender in his local to add gin to his favorite drink, the Americano. Negronis are made from equal measures of gin, sweet vermouth and Campari served over ice and with a twist of orange, and most frequently, consumed as an aperitif. In the US, negronis are often served with a splash or more of soda water. You can also buy ready made negronis, Negroni 1919, in the same way you can buy alco-pops, but we suspect that's more for the teenagers in the park than mature adults like ourselves. What? eh? oh...

Anyway, why not try a negroni at a Florentine cafe before dinner? Apparently, they are the perfect thing to relax with of a warm summer's evening, and work wonders in whetting the appetite.

And, just to round out this boozy post, an Americano is simply equal measures of sweet vermouth and campari, again sometimes diluted with a splash of club soda and served over ice. The drink was originally known as the "Milan-Torino" because of its ingredients - Campari from Milan, and Cinzano, the vermouth, from Turin - but in the early 1900s, the Italians noticed a surge in Americans enjoying it and renamed it for them. It seems only right then, that our wedding guests from the left side of the Atlantic do their bit for international traditions and order themselves an Americano, or two, just for kicks.

In Vino, Veritas

Got any grapes...?

The authors of this blog know only too well how it feels to be reminded the morning after that we ought to have eaten something to line our stomachs before our first drink the night before, and so it is with the health and well-being of our dear readers in mind that this post, tackling, as it does, the tasty subject of Tuscan wines, comes hard on the heels of one on Tuscan food.

We also know that pretending to know about wine is both the privilege of every drinker, and frequently the bane of the drinker’s companion. On the subject of wine, it is very much easier to sound simultaneously pretentious and ignorant, than it is to offer basic information, so this post does not pretend to discuss the merits of Tuscan wines, nor to speak from a position of any real knowledge about them, rather it attempts to give you the reader some food for thought and some things to look out for.

Everyone knows Chianti, or thinks they do — the often rough n’ready red wine that is sold at every Italian restaurant for $12-18 a bottle and, until recently, was rarely seen sans straw basket. But is that all there is to know? Indeed, if that is all there is to know, is that such a bad thing? Is there any point searching for complexity and depth when you can enjoy something at face value?

We leave you to make up your minds about the merits of Chianti, the region and its various wines, offering only the following links as pointers to greater enlightenment. We mention here that Lupinari makes, bottles and sells its own reasonably-priced wine on the estate, as this is the wine you’ll be drinking at the wedding reception. However, since we haven’t tried it yet, we can’t tell you any more about it, but we suspect that good or average, we’ll all be doing our best to put it through its paces with a rigorous testing in two months' time.


Gallo Nero (Black Rooster Consortium) - for much more information about the Chianti Classico terroir, classifications, DOCG’s, and producers than a casual boozer could want.

Map of the Chianti Region - Please note: in providing this map for those of you who want to explore the area, this blog is not condoning drunk driving.

Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano - because there is more to Chianti than just Chianti.

Super Tuscans - "super" is such a subjective word, but apparently, these are where it’s at in modern Tuscan wines.

Vin Santo - you can get red wine anywhere, but this stuff is only made in Tuscany, and goes down exceedingly well after a large meal.

Tuscan Wine Books - for those of you who want to know what you’re talking about, and think that you’ll remember any of the fascinating facts after half a bottle…


This blog reminds our readers to enjoy Tuscan wines responsibly.

Getting Your Groove On, Literally

Coming to a wedding near you...
So, with the day fast approaching and most of the other details figured out, we're starting to address the conundrum that is the event's aural pleasure. What music will work in the peaceful surroundings of Lupinari? (Slayer?) What tunes will our guests enjoy listening to the string quartet play as they wait, expectantly, for Amy to walz down the isle? (Hall & Oates' Maneater, perhaps?) And which dancefloor classics are going to get you all on your feet, cutting a rug, after dinner? Regular readers will know that dancing at the reception is compulsory, and rest assured that all dancefloor antics -- the best and worst moves, and the most "in to it" facial expressions -- will be faithfully captured on video for our subsequent entertainment. You might not know, though, that the music for the reception will be played on an iPod instead of by a DJ.

With these things in mind, we thought the least we could do was to request that guests suggest their favorite songs - i.e. ones they'll dance to - so that when they're caught, eyes closed, lips-pursed a la Mick Jagger, and body contorted like spaghetti in a wind-tunnel on celuloid, they'll have the excuse that they really love the song. So, please send us your ideas on music for the post-dinner reception and we'll do our best to accommodate as many tastes as possible. Do bear in mind though, that the international nature of the wedding might mean that at any time, half the people in the room might be throwing themselves around with reckless abandon, hands in the air, to a "classic" that the other half of the room has never heard of. This, i'm sure you'll agree, is infinitely preferable to taking a risk with a local, Tuscan DJ playing all manner of crazy-sexy-Euro-disco-dance-party tunes from the early 90s, not to stereotype our Italian cousins as having poor taste, of course...

Anyway, get all ideas to us asap so we can collect all the songs together in time. You now have no excuses for not dancing!