Soggy Sal and Grand Passion

I took the handoff from last night.

Since I'd so enjoyed the Del Fosse Cuvee Laurent I'd been drinking, why not a leisurely drive to the source of it to taste the rest of Del Fosse's wines?

I took it as a sign when this morning's weather morphed from a light rain when I walked to sunshine an hour later.

A plan was hatched and a willing partner in crime found.

The trip to Lovingston to visit Del Fosse Winery was a study in naked mountains since the trees out there were leafless against the landscape.

We were the only visitors at the winery, although our pourer assured us that they'd been getting all kinds of day trippers since the weather turned warm this week.

I'd been especially excited when we'd arrived to see signs pointing to "Trails," only to learn that the trails are closed at the moment.

It's killing wild animals season, so I'll have to return after the first week in January to ensure an errant bullet doesn't harsh my wine mellow.

With no trails to walk, we did the full reserve tasting of fourteen wines.

Our pourer was knowledgeable but she had the squeaky voice of a seven-year old girl, making for an interesting contrast when discussing tannins and structure.

When all was said and done (or poured out), I still liked the Cuvee Laurent, but it was the Petit Verdot that came back to Richmond with us.

We'd lingered long enough that dusk was approaching when we left, so we hit the road for Charlottesville.

After wandering around the UVA area (no one on earth could mistake a UVA student for a VCU student, that's for sure), we made tracks for the downtown mall.

Not wanting to repeat ourselves, we ended up at Sal's Caffe Italia, the kind of place with old black and white photographs of (presumably) Sal's family covering an entire wall.

The music was a given: Sinatra, big band, Louie Armstrong.

We went just as conventional with the meal.

An Italian salad was overdressed, but had olives and anchovies to compensate.

A quattro gusti pizza promised artichokes, ham, anchovies and sliced tomatoes, a promise it didn't fulfill because the tomatoes were of the canned variety and the juices leaked out everywhere making a soggy mess of the flavorful crust.

Sal, you need to be paying more attention here, buddy.

Those people on the wall would not be happy with a plate full of soggy crust.

As long as we were right there, it seemed like a good idea to see a movie, too.

Walking into the theater, a woman standing outside talking loudly on her phone promised, "I can get you two or three hundred dollars," leaving us to wonder what that situation was all about.

I'll never know because I went to the ladies' room only to discover a scale that read, "Check your weight! Stand still on scale and deposit coin" in bold, red letters.

Weight, schmate.

With Milk Duds and tickets for "Anna Karenina" in hand, we joined a small group in theater #3.

Three were two teen-aged girls very busy texting, three middle-aged woman who discussed the movie  throughout and a 20-something guy behind us who made bored noises loudly throughout the film.

Which was kind of hard to understand given how the classic Tolstoy story played out onscreen.

Stuffy historical drama it was not.

The brilliance came from using playwright Tom Stoppard as the screenwriter.

I was reminded of Stoppard's play "Arcadia," with its time and location shifts because this one shifted from a crumbling theater where some of the action plays out on stage to the real world and back and forth throughout.

But even if the guy was bored or confused by that, I thought there was too much eye candy to look at to be as bored as he sounded.

The sets were sumptuous - opera boxes, grand ballrooms, elegant train compartments.

The costumes were exquisite - the face veils! the muffs! the hats!

Even the dancing was like nothing I'd ever seen, with elaborate hand and arm gestures occupying the ball goers as they waltzed around the floor.

And the cinematography was a work of art - long, continuous shots instead of quick cuts and 360-degree angles on the dance floor that made me feel I was being led around the floor by a dashing cavalry officer.

And, of course, because of their terrific sexual chemistry, there was the language of love.

When Count Vronsky is eager to see Anna, he goes to an art museum because he thinks she will be there.

"I didn't know you were an art lover," a friend says to him.

"I am prepared to be," he answers emphatically.

To the texting teens, that line probably didn't even get noticed.

With the three women, one of them probably said, "Yea, he says that now, but just wait, honey."

And the guy behind me, well, he just yawned.

Not me. After Tolstoy and Stoppard, I am prepared to be anything I need to be.

Well, anything except the doomed lover who throws herself in front of a train.

I am nothing if not practical.