Wine

Og and I have been known to enjoy a glass of red; in fact it was the third bottle one night a year or so ago that spawned this trip.

I've never been a great fan of the lighter reds we get in Oz, but was pleasantly surprised by the Italian reds we tried. Good colour, full flavoured, slightly lower alcohol content and less tannin. Very, very drinkable. From the villa we discovered one day a local drop, "Montipuciano", which was a snip at €7.78 a bottle, which is A$13.26 according to calculations.

Whilst this does not sound cheap, you need to consider how much you get. 750ml bottles are pretentious, and we first tried Montipuciano in 1.5 litre bottles. It was so good we had to buy the big bottles; that's FIVE LITRES for €7.78, Equivalent to almost 7 standard bottles at A$2 each! Waaaayyyy to go!!!

The 5 litre bottles are screw capped and refillable. We first encountered these in Firenze, where we had to buy one in a wine shop. This place had three stainless steel vats, each roughly a 200litre (44 gallon) drum on end size, with a dinky little tap on the bottom end. Select your bottle, select your variety (blanco, chianti, rosso) and watch it fill at €2.20 per litre. Adding the cost of the bottle, that made it an expensive €17 for 5 litres, for quite good wine, given the pretentious nature of the shop and the fact that we did buy in Firenze.

However, it would be a very good buy indeed to top the Montepuciano from the supermarket in Mercatale.