VENDEMIA and allergies

Vendemia: the grape harvest
In chapter meeting on thursday, Matt informed us that we would be leaving for the vineyard around 9am, so we were all prepared for that. But friday night, we discovered that our train left at 8:30, so we had to leave the monastery at 7:45. Needless to say, there was disgruntlement surrounding this discovery. But by 7:50, our entire group was on its way to the Foniculare and by 9am we were at the vineyard.
The winery is owned by an older couple, probably in their early 70s, who are originally from Holland. They lived in other countries before moving to Italy, and the woman speaks 5 different languages--impressive. She and her husband showed us how to properly pick the grapes, weeding out the bad ones. We spent the morning picking (and tasting) the grapes, with a break around 11, and lunch at 1. The process of selecting the good grapes involves cutting out moldy, shriveled, or unripe grapes from the bunch, tasting one from each bunch to ensure it has a good taste, and putting them in a bucket. The bad ones get thrown on the ground. Or at people.
We had about an hour break for lunch, and then continued picking til about 4. Then we went through the process of destemming the grapes before they went into the vat to ferment. After that was done and the machine had been cleaned, it was time for the tasting. We had three types of wine (all red)-a lower end one, a medium, and premium wine. I disliked them all equally and had some fizzy grapefruit juice to wash them down. We took the train home around 7, went to dinner, and then retired for the night.
And that's when I discovered something:
HIVES.
I was allergic to either something I ate at dinner or the wine/grapes and I broke out in hives. I took some benadryl and went to sleep, and thought that would be the end of it. However, when I woke up this morning, it was worse. So my sunday went much like this: hives, benadryl, chaos, sleepy nonsense, hives, benadryl, sleep, hives....
It was interesting. Hopefully that will be done now, and just in case, I think I'll avoid eating that many grapes for a while.

I'll upload more pictures later--the internet is very slow today and won't allow me to upload them now.