Smell is the greatest time machine, transporting us to a time and place, recreating the scenery, emotions, thoughts, and feelings of a moment long gone. For me, it’s the smell of my grandmother’s farm in California’s Central Valley in June. The hot, dusty, canal-and-citrus smell of California’s fertile crescent.

Here I am 25 years later in Tuscany, reminded of times past. The smell of the rolling vineyards trapped into a bottle of Chianti Classico, Riserva, or Gran Selezione is magic. If wine is a moment in time, Chianti is the mid-90s at Grandma’s.

Swimming from morning till night, building fires, swimming in the canals, rummaging through the barnhouse, setting up a roller rink (because street hockey was at its peak), and trying to figure out how to smoke a cigarette. The music was The Notorious B.I.G., “Tootsie Roll,” and Salt-N-Pepa.

Every day in Tuscany, the smell transports me 5,000 miles back home.

My grandma greeting us as we pulled into the dusty, always-open garage on the farm. The rice, yogurt, and beans she’d prepare that I’d happily eat three times a day. My grandfather would always chill a Budweiser in a can for my dad before dinner. I tried on many occasions to enjoy the same beverage, never understanding how anyone could possibly like beer.

I get it now. Slightly.

Chianti, which is Sangiovese, has a way—as many grapes do—of capturing the terroir, the soil. The rocky, clay-filled, dusty, ancient land of Tuscany reminds me so much of my youth.

I’ve opened many bottles, and some I did not drink because the taste did not quite match the nostalgia of the smell. Yet some were almost 100% on, with aromas so familiar that I was forced to stop and remember. To drink it in.

I shipped the bottles closest in smell back to the States.

Now I wonder out loud if this same smell, this same moment of being here, will be captured when I open those bottles back home. Or if, instead, they will transport me back to Tuscany.

Chianti is the smell of my youth

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