It started with a cooking lesson in Lucca.
We'd come to learn a little more about Italian food, but somewhere between preparing the dishes and discussing all things Italian, our instructor gave us a recommendation.
“You should visit this wine shop.”
Now, when someone who knows the area recommends a place to discover Italian wine, we tend to listen.
Some people return from a cooking class with a recipe. We apparently needed a wine cellar as well.
So Karin and I went to investigate.
What appeared to be an ordinary wine shop turned out to have something rather extraordinary beneath it.
Enormous old cellars, vaulted brick ceilings and more wine bottles than we could possibly count.
And somewhere among them, a bottle that made us stop and look twice.
A Fontanafredda Barolo from 1971.
Yes, 1971.
Suddenly, our quick visit to a wine shop was looking less like shopping and more like archaeology.
Fontanafredda Barolo 1971 among the old cellar bottles.
Fifty-five years in a bottle
There's something fascinating about discovering a wine that's been around for more than half a century.
When those Nebbiolo grapes were harvested in 1971, Ireland was introducing decimal currency, and nobody was worrying about their phone battery lasting until dinner.
And there we were, standing in a wine cellar in Lucca, looking at a bottle from that very year.
Barolo comes from Piedmont in northern Italy and is made from Nebbiolo, a grape known for producing wines that can develop beautifully over time.
But there's an important distinction.
Just because a wine is old doesn't automatically mean it's wonderful.
A bottle's life depends on how it has been stored, the condition of its cork and the wine itself. Some mature beautifully. Others, rather like that mysterious container at the back of the fridge, are best approached with caution.
We didn't open this particular bottle, so we can't tell you how it tasted.
And at 55 years old, we certainly weren't going to start shaking it to find out.
But we thoroughly enjoyed discovering it.
Karin exploring the vaulted wine cellar in Lucca.
A cellar with a few stories to tell
The bottle was impressive, but the setting was every bit as memorable.
Beneath the shop, enormous cellars stretched out under old brick arches. Bottles filled shelves along the walls, while a long wooden table stood ready for wine tastings.
It was the sort of place where you could happily spend an hour looking around and still feel you'd barely scratched the surface.
We did briefly wonder whether we'd need a map to find our way back upstairs.
Karin and I have visited plenty of wine shops over the years, but this was something different.
There was a real sense of history beneath those ceilings. Some bottles looked as though they'd been waiting patiently for decades, with absolutely no intention of going anywhere.
A level of patience we tend to lose when the restaurant bread takes more than ten minutes.
And you couldn't help wondering about the stories behind them.
Who had made these wines? Who might eventually open them? And how many special occasions had come and gone while someone decided whether this was finally the right moment?
Imagine saving a bottle for fifty years, then discovering nobody can agree on what to have for dinner.
Even the wine has a royal connection
Fontanafredda has a fascinating history of its own.
Its roots go back to 1858, when Vittorio Emanuele II, who would become the first King of a united Italy, acquired the estate for Rosa Vercellana, the woman he loved.
The estate went on to become one of the historic names associated with Barolo.
So the bottle we discovered wasn't just an old Italian red. It came from a producer with a story reaching back to the nineteenth century.
Royal connections, a love story and a bottle of Barolo.
Some people send flowers. Apparently, Italian royalty had other ideas.
The best discoveries aren't always planned
One of the things we love about travelling in Italy is how easily one experience can lead to another.
We went to Lucca to enjoy the city, its food and its atmosphere.
A cookery workshop led to a recommendation. That recommendation led us into a wine shop. And the wine shop led us underground, surrounded by bottles with histories stretching back decades.
None of this had been on our itinerary.
Which is probably just as well. If we'd planned to see several thousand bottles of wine, someone might have suggested we needed a different kind of holiday.
It's a reminder that some of the most enjoyable moments of a trip aren't necessarily the famous sights or the carefully organised excursions.
Whether you're planning your next Italian holiday from Ireland or simply looking for somewhere interesting to explore, it's worth asking local people what they recommend.
Sometimes they'll point you towards a lovely restaurant, a quiet street or somewhere you'd never have discovered by yourself.
And occasionally, they'll send you into a cellar where a bottle of wine has been waiting since 1971.
We came away with another Italian memory worth keeping.
And a renewed appreciation for people who know exactly where to send curious visitors.
Especially curious visitors who happen to enjoy wine.
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