Thursday, June 18, 2009

A walk in the sky - Tuscany

We slept in a bit and Kathy and Matt went to see David. I stayed and emptied my mailbox, checked my Face Book Page, and posted the blog while they were gone in the morning. I met them in the Piazza San Marco where I found them having coffee and coke at the little outdoor cafe. We caught a taxi to the train station (standard fee from our hotel to train station is 7-10 Euro)and then a tour through Chianti to Castellano and Greve, both small villages. The winery we visited was an old villa-estate from the 11th century which was fortified and survived the rivalry between Sienna and Firenze.

We reached the fortress at San Donato in Poggio which is now a restaurant where we had a typical Firenze meal. The bus was comfortable and the scenery was truly just as beautiful as it is in the paintings of Monet or Van Gogh. As we climbed out of Florence we crossed the Arno and could look toward the Ponto Vecchio Bridge then we began a winding ascent into the hills where we were surrounded by vineyards and olive orchards.

Perhaps the most strikingly beautiful vista for me was the neat rows of multiple shades of green from the shimmering silver olive to the deep almost terre vert of the cypress trees that tower skyward marching in lines to the horizons. The rows of grapes and dark earth make a beautiful pattern against the blue sky. It has been sunny and very warm, but as evening comes on the temperatures drop and the breeze picks up making it especially inviting to sit outside. In the little hill town of there are older Italian men sitting out talking animatedly around one of the look-out points where a thin haze was beginning to form over the distant hills. As we walked along the sidewalk toward the bus I glanced up and a really elderly man who looked to be in his 80s with no teeth was watching us make our way along the stones below. I wanted to take his picture in the worst way, but feared it would be an invasion of privacy so I restrained myself. We arrived back at the spot where we would catch our bus and sat on rocks looking over the valley. Wildflowers were everywhere poppies, blue bells, and several varieties that I do not recognize push their way up through the rich soil. The only sounds are the birds and the occasional scooter. There are not too many cars up here probably because the roads are so narrow. At the winery there was really only room for two very small cars or one bus on the road at a time. The bus driver honks his horn five or six times as he comes to places where he cannot clearly see ahead to warn oncoming traffic that a large vehicle is coming.
As soon as we left the bus the a wonderful fragrance overwhelmed our senses. It was a mixture of star jasmine, magnolia, broom and scents that seem herbal. I couldn't identify them clearly, but perhaps rosemary and lavender --since I could see these plants in evidence everywhere! Still there was something else--perhaps a pine of some kind --- maybe it is the cypress trees. Whatever it was I think this is how heaven will smell! The scent was present everywhere in the hills of Tuscany. Not so much in Firenze. Florence had its own scent. I remembered it from before as being very distinctive. If I were mixing it at a perfumery I think it might be a combination of tannery, hundreds of years of cobblestone, urine, internal combustion engine, wonderful expensive cologne, some old fashioned garlic, and body odor tossed in.

When we arrived at the winery which was also an ancient villa established in the 1400s when Firenze and Sienna were warring city states, we found a quiet and idyllic setting. The family had two chapels. One was within the villa itself and one sat some distance away in the vineyard. We walked through the central courtyard and saw some of the art that still resides there, but the original masterworks had long ago been donated by the family to national galleries. Then we went down into the cellar where the wine is housed. Chianti is chianti because of the location of the grapes not the kind of grade. The cellar was cool and filled with large barrels. These barrels could be used for up to 4 years. One of the largest was reserved to simply show us and was no longer in use anymore. The capacity of each barrel was posted on the exterior and the guide explained that some wines are utilized when they are young -- only 6 months old but the standard Chianti must age three years in the vat and one year average in the bottle.These barrels when they expire are used to make balsamic vinegar and ultimately sold as scrap.

Then we walked up to the garden for our wine tasting. We traveled past chickens, rabbits. A cat was lying still and allowing a chicken to peck at his head.. Next to the wall was a long planting of lavender in full bloom. The tables had linen on them and with each wine they brought something to accompany it. a peccarino cheese with the Chianti, a Bhusetta and cotto salami with the super Chianti and a pepper jelly, a fine desert wine with a biscuit -- which was very like our biscotti. This was dipped in the heavy desert wine which was rather like creme sherry. Our guide Sylvia is a native of Firenze. Kathy asked her how she surveys. She told Kathy and she and her boyfriend are hoping to purchase an apartment and the cheapest they can hope for is around 200,000 Euro! Sylvia also suggested that people who are native do not use taxis or eat sitting down EVER -- If you want to save money eating in Italy you must not sit outside a restaurant ever. AND you should look for a Trattoria or pizzeria and then eat inside only or carry out your food.

We next drove onto Grieve the main village in this part of Chianti. During the middle ages there were five villages that formed the alliance of the black roster of which Grieve was the main village. We walked along the square (which is actually a triangle in this case. Shops indicated a dependence on tourism. But the appeal to live in a place like this is clear. Peace and community were evident everywhere as we saw people cheerfully engaged in conversation in the pleasant evening!

We arrived at about 7:30 in the hill town where dinner was scheduled in an old medieval castle. The barrel-vaulted ceiling overhead magnified the conversation which grew more animated with with each additional glass of wine. AND since Kathy, Matt and I were not drinking we were very popular with our table mates since it mean that there was much more wine for each of them....Everyone was allotted 3 glasses with the meal. The dinner consisted of a first course of two different kinds of pasta. One a penne with a spicy meat sauce and one with another flat pasta with a cheesier sauce. There was the most wonderful Parmesan cheese to scatter over your pasta and of course the ever present bread and olive oil. The next course consisted of beans and sausages -- which Kathy couldn't eat because of her allergy to beans so they brought her a salad. They also had a pork of some kind that was served---it was roasted, and finally they served Tiramisu and coffee. By the time we left he sun had set and the lights across the valley were twinkling on. We returned to the train station in Firenze across the River Arno where the Ponto Vecchio Bridge mirrored itself in the water -- the kind of photograph that makes people want to come to the city in a travel brochure.

We caught a taxi to the hotel and retired for teh night at about midnight.

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