The Tuscan Countryside

10/19/2009

Today Claire headed back to Torino so Katherine and I had to move out of our three bed private room (because we would have had to pay for the empty bed if we wanted to stay, so we would have divided the room by two instead of three) and into an 8 bed mixed dorm. We all checked out in the morning and Katherine and I left our packs in the luggage room until we could check back in later on in the afternoon.

For our daily plans, Katherine and I had lined ourselves to go on a wine tour through the Tuscan countryside. It only cost 35 euro and included a wine tasting, tour of a vineyard, lunch, and ride accommodations. It ended up being quite the deal. We said goodbye to Claire, who was catching her train later on in the morning and got in line to go on the tour.

Our tour guide, Paul, also worked at the hostel as an information man. Katherine had a run in with him the day before and was originally not excited about going on this tour with him. We had to walk a ways to get to the bus, which was a little confusing, but once we were on the bus it was very obvious that Paul was an excellent tour guide. He was an Australian living in Florence studying food and wine (with those facts alone, I already had a major crush on him). He was charismatic and informative the entire tour. His parents were in town visiting him so they were also on the tour with us, which was precious. I learned quite a bit on this tour.

Our first stop was a wine tasting at a vineyard. There were long tables for everyone to sit at and we had this wonderful stout woman telling us about the wines we were tasting, how to taste the wine, etc. Katherine and I sat next to a couple that was essentially doing the same thing we were because they are in the some life position that we are in. They were fun to talk to. Being from Atlanta, they figured out that it was cheaper for them to take a 12-day cruise back to the states after their European travels than to fly back. What a way to end a backpacking trip! We tried four wines in addition to 30 year old balsamic vinegar, extra virgin olive oil, and truffle oil. I could probably eat truffle oil on everything. Originally a man was supposed to be doing what the woman was doing, but he was running late, so Paul and the woman took over until the man made an appearance at the end. They did a great job and once the man did get there he made a very touching speech. Paul told us that the first lesson he learned in his wine courses over here is that to truly understand a wine you need to go to the place where the wine was made, walk on the soil the grapes were grown, talk to the people who made the wine and really get a feeling for the place and how the wine was made because the wine will be extremely reflective of that. The man told us that in the Italian culture wine equals love. Italians love wine, they love making it, they love drinking it, they love sharing it, and when they speak about wine, they use their hearts. I really liked both of these ideas.

The next stop was at another vineyard where we got a tour of the wine making process and had a wonderful homemade Tuscan lunch, which the family of the vineyard prepared for us. We got to see how a mass production of wine works. I learned that technically all Italian wines are organic because they usually do not use insecticides, but they are not marketed organic because the vineyards to reserve the right to use insecticides if it is necessary. The way the Italians go about their wine making process is in a very delicate manner. They hand pick everything, using people who know wine and family members so that everyone is trusted to do a careful job. There is much attention to detail and pride in the whole process. Lunch was so good and it was outside on the vineyard, which was beautiful. Apparently fall just sprung itself on Italy, so it was a bit chilly and people were still a little shocked about it. Lunch consisted of different topped crustinis (like cheese and sausage, olive, olive oil, and another olive tomato paste), tomato pasta, salami, pecorino cheese with honey, and various tasty desserts. We also got to try more wine here. A woman on our tour was an opera singer and she sang for us. She was fantastic and so was lunch. My favorite was the honey and cheese.

Our last stop on the tour was the medieval town of San Gimignano. This town is up on a hill and over looks the Chianti region. It is a very beautiful town and famous for its towers, although there are only a handful of the many that used to be left. In this town is a gelateria that is a world champion of gelato. Even after our filling lunch, I still had to try this world famous gelato. I got raspberry/rosemary (I know a wild combination for ice cream) and peach gelato. It lived up to its famous name. At this point we were pretty tired so we just poked into shops and mosied our way back to the bus. I did observe that the town was pretty over priced compared to the cheap vendors in Florence.

The bus ride back to Florence was a little over an hour and our bus driver took a special route so that we passed the Piazza de Michelangelo because it was sunset on a gorgeous day and the view was beautiful. I will definitely be returning there at that time with my mother to enjoy a bottle of wine. The bus dropped us off at the hostel, which was nice that we didn’t have to do the random walk again, around 5. Katherine spent the next couple of hours relaxing after a day of eating and drinking. I was pretty surprised about how tiring it was. And by the way Australians are wild. I have run into so many of them that are on 6-month trips over here. One of them told us that they do it that way because it takes so long for them to fly anywhere out of Australia that what they do they make it count.

We went to find dinner around 8 and walked to a little place down the street from our hostel. We were sitting in the restaurant talking, obviously sounding American, and the table behind us was a couple that asked us where we were from. They were from Canada and we chatted with them for a while. Our food came and they still were chatting with us a pretty excessive amount, but we were pleasant. As they left they told us they really enjoyed talking talking to us, we reminded them of their daughters, that they paid for our meal, and to always remember the nice people for Canada. They really made our night and I hope that someday I will have funds to do things like that.

I tried knock on Scott’s door to say goodbye, but they weren’t in so I left a note. It was a low key night and I made the decision that if you are staying in a dorm in a hostel, it is best to stay in one without a bathroom in it, go for the ones that you have to go into the hall for (for obvious reasons).

The following things I learned from the tour. Truffles are aphrodisiacs. Fyi for all you wild people out there. They are no longer hunter by pigs, but dogs because the pigs wouldn’t stop eating the precious commodity. I would be really pissed if my pig came upon a great truffle patch and started gobbling them up. And that balsamic vinegar becomes thick and sweet when it ages and goes great with strawberries. Also learned a lot of random facts, but none were really that note worthy and I have just applied them to my cultural intelligence library. So maybe later on in conversation I will be able to enlighten you with them.