Moving To Florence

Friends,

As some of you know, we have been spending progressively more time in Italy in recent years and we have finally decided to go ahead and move lock, stock and (most) bottles to Florence, Italy for a few years while we are still young enough for this to be feasible. The first set of movers arrive on Friday to move some stuff into storage and the final move will occur the second week of September. All the wine here has to go into temperature controlled storage in the UK for a couple of months before it can be safely shipped to Italy. So we are going to drink over the next two weeks a disproportionate number of those bottles that one keeps for special occasions. If I have time, I will post some sort of tasting note.

All the best to all and wish us luck,

Robert

Robert,

All the best for your move to Florence, a wonderful city.

Will the wine transport also be temperature controlled? October can still be quite warm in Tuscany as I have discovered during some very good holidays.

Congratulations, you lucky guy! Maybe we'll meet there one day. If you go to Panzano, give my greetings to Dario, the butcher.
Cheers, Anders

[Jenise]

Robert,

What a fun, wise and timely thing to do. London's been a good home to you for a long long time, but if you only have one life why not try to do it all? We'll look forward to your tasting notes.

Jenise

[Robin Garr]

Best wishes on this move, Robert! I'm sure it'll be quite the experience! Do I recall that you've mastered at least a basic command of Italian?

Thanks for all your best wishes.

I am only moving a part of the cellar, perhaps 1000 bottles, and I am going to wait until late October or November to do it. First I have to be sure I have someplace decent to put it.

One of the real peculiarities about Italy is that there is not a single specialist, dedicated, temperature-controlled wine storage warehouse in Tuscany that serves the trade or collectors. The wineries have their own storage and individual stores, restaurants and collectors have storage but there is no Octavian, no London City Bond. So I have to work out where I can either put a temperature controlled unit or find some underground storage I can rent. There are a couple of possibilities but I won't be able to sort out a solution until I get there in September and can deal with it first-hand.

Robin, as you may remember, I speak French but my Italian was pretty rudimentary until we took the plunge. Once we made the decision to move, I started paying attention and I would classify my Italian now as basic; I can make myself understood in most situations but I have difficulty holding a conversation of any length. I would hope to have achieved a more reasonable level within another six months.

Regards,

Robert

while we are still young enough for this to be feasible.

Robert, may I be impolite and ask about your age? Just out of curiosity.

All the best to all and wish us luck,

Robert

And of course I wish you luck with your adventure!I am sure you will master Italian well pretty soon, but from my own experience, a decent knowledge of French can be a bit of a problem since in particular the French prepositions have quite a habit of getting into my Italian. It took me several years until my Italian started to dominate over my French. The main reason for this problem was certainly that I learned French in my lower teens and Italian in my mid forties (about 10 years ago). The things you learned in your youth tend to stick in a very different way than the stuff you (try to) learn at older age...
/Anders

Anders,

I am 62.

Like you, I learned my French as a child and I have had a lot of trouble with the fact that Italian, while having a similar grammatical structure to French, is quite different in prepositions and how things are agreed (les accords). It is going to take time. One advantage I have is that I have a good ear for the rhythm of a language so at least I sound right.

regards,

Robert