For the weekend of the 10th and 11th of September a group of my friends and I all climbed onto a train and headed towards Florence. On the 10th we woke up after a very late night. We had some time to walk around the famous duomo, and the shops. We went to catch a local shuttle train to head out in the afternoon as we had tickets for a wine tasting in eastern Tuscany. The wine tour was amazing as we learned about the history, wine production process, and timeline of bottle productions, shipping, selling, and door to door bottle delivery through the different seasons. It can take up to 6months- a few years to create certain types of wine. The longer processes are usually the wines that are sweeter (Vino, Vin Santo, Special Premium Selections), or use a different type of grape, or processing steps. depending on the type of wine each one has a different shelf life. When opening wines if you use a vacuum closer top (removes oxygen from the bottle) it can help the wine to last as long as a week or 2. Also when tasting wines there are several things to keep in mind:

flavor hold the wine in your mouth and move it around like mouth wash as it can help you to pick up on hints of different flavors, and the acidity levels

how you are holding the glass: always hold by the stem of the glass, if you hold it by the upper part where the wine is it can change the temperature of the wine, which can also cause flavor changes

smell keep the glass a couple of centimeters from your nose and let your nose go onto the glass rim but don't move the glass closer

and color: tilt the glass slightly sideways and hold it up towards a light and you can sometimes see color changes which lets you know if the particular wine has a longer, or more complicated production process.