to help harvest the grapes in the fall or just to drink the nectar of the gods any time of year. Take home a bottle or two or three to enjoy with friends or find it through a distributor in the U.S. and relive your experience from Casali.

A historian, Zeffiro Ciuffoletti, once wrote: "Tuscany, as regards wines, has no equal the world over, thanks to a most felicitous nature, and to a civilization of the grapevine and of wine that has been decanted and refined over the centuries."

In fact, wine-growing, grape vines and wine have been an integral part of Tuscan civilization for almost three millenniums, since 800 BC, when the Etruscans first settled in the territory. The grapevines of Etruria were strong and wild, they grew like trees producing so many grapes that Etruscans could sell them from the beginning on markets beyond the sea. The Etruscans planted the grapevines along the sea - so the lands of Maremma and the coastal regions south of Livorno were the first cradle of Tuscan wine. The Greeks called this region of central Italy Enotris, the "land of wine."

The Tuscan wine scene is a world to discover. And there is no better way than to experience the wines where they are actually made, encountering the people that have dedicated their whole lives to this magnificent drink.