We drove for a bit, thankfully at a slightly less frantic speed, curving into the heart of the countryside until Gino pulled up at a huge white villa swathed with pink bougainvillea.
‘OK,’ said Gino, turning into the driveway. ‘Here we are at our first vineyard: Tenuta Torciano. This is a high-class vineyard. They sell their wines to big restaurants all over the world. They have lots of staff and lots of land.’
‘This sounds like our sort of place, Rosamund,’ I heard Peter say in the back.
‘You have one hour and thirty minutes here,’ announced Gino, letting us out. ‘Not a minute more and not a minuteless, otherwise you will not properly enjoy the other vineyard. OK?’
‘Yep,’ I said, jumping out after Aidan.
I looked up at the sky, breathing in the floral scent in the air. Birds were chirruping but other than that, there were no sounds at all out here in the Chianti hills. No cars, no honking horns. Just silence and fields and an elderly woman working on the farm opposite, picking grapes from her vines.
‘Follow me,’ said Gino, leading us through a pretty garden and into a conservatory with purple wisteria draped all over the ceiling, and tables laid out with tablecloths and glasses. It was like a scene from a no-expense-spared wedding in a country hotel.
‘This is very nice,’ said Rosamund, touching her hair.
I felt like reassuring her that it hadn’t moved an inch since we’d left the hotel. It couldn’t possibly with that amount of hairspray on it.
We were introduced to our workshop leader, Carlotta, whose name I didn’t catch for ages because although she was very smiley and very nice, she spoke so fast and with such a strong Italian accent that I could only understand every other word she was saying. I wondered if it was just me.
‘She needs to slow down,’ said Peter, too loudly.
Fine. Not just me, then.
I was the last to sit and in my determination not to end up next to Aidan, I’d faffed around so much, trying to second-guess where he was headed that I’d messed up and was, of course, sitting right next to him. Great. Sophia was on the other side of him and Rosamund was opposite me, so it pretty much couldn’t get any worse.
I looked longingly at the bottle of wine Carlotta was brandishing and watched impatiently as she opened it,pouring quite a substantial amount of white wine into each of our glasses.
‘This is a Tenuta Torciano, number 32. Very nice wine. Take it in your left hand, right hand, swill. Like this.’
I watched as Carlotta flung the glass of wine effortlessly from one hand to the other and then swilled it wildly in her right hand so the pale yellow liquid spun around in the glass like the contents of a washing machine.
‘Impressive,’ I said under my breath.
‘Pretty sure I’m not going to be able to do that,’ commented Aidan.
I dared to look at him out of the corner of my eye. Had he been talking to me? He’d probably worked out that if we sat here in frosty silence the whole time, then the rest of our group was going to wonder what on earth was going on. And I didn’t think either of us wanted to draw attention to what had actually gone on.
I attempted to have a go at the swilling, worried about dropping the glass and then managing to slop wine over the top of the rim.
‘Ooops,’ I said. ‘How are you getting on, Rosamund?’
Rosamund was swirling smugly away like a pro. ‘Oh, it’s easy when you’ve done this as many times as we have. Look, hold the stem here. Not the glass, because that will warm up the wine and we want it nice and chilled.’
I followed her lead, holding the glass by the stem, which felt very unstable and all kinds of wrong. It worked though, and the swilling came much easier when I tried it again.
‘Good!’ said Rosamund, and I perked up, as I tended to when I’d inadvertently managed to please somebody.
‘Now, I want you to take a mouthful of wine and hold it for five seconds only,’ commanded Carlotta.
‘And then we swallow it?’ I asked, realising too late that it was probably a silly question.
Everyone except Carlotta and Aidan laughed.
‘You swallow it, yes, then if you like, you drink more, if you don’t like, you pour what is left of your glass into this bucket here, in the middle of the table.’
I nodded sheepishly, deciding there and then that I was going to drink the entire glass, come what may.
I took a sip, held it in my mouth as instructed and then nearly laughed out loud when I caught sight of Aidan; his nose was wrinkled in disgust and he closed his eyes as he made a meal of swallowing it. Aidan hated white wine, I’d forgotten that. My own mouthful, on the other hand, slipped effortlessly down my throat.