Tuscany - Italy

We arrived in Poggibonsi in the early afternoon on an exceptionally hot day and due to the fact that it is basically a random town in Tuscany rather than a big tourist destination, and the fact that it was Sunday afternoon, we were fronted with a lack of buses and taxis and ended up with a 2km walk in the heat with our bags to get to the Hotel Europa where we were staying.

Our main reason for heading to Tuscany was to see the countryside and do a wine tour and luckily for us the hotel we were staying at had some brochures regarding the type of tour we were after which they kindly booked for us for the following day. Being a Sunday we found that most of the restaurants and shops around the hotel were closed so we decided to trek to the shopping centre which is only open every second Sunday which luckily we had arrived on,  otherwise we would have been fairly hungry! Unfortunately the receptionist’s directions and approximate distances were way off and we ended up with a horrible half an hour walk each was with groceries in the heat once again.

One thing we found here was how cheap alcohol was! We bought a few Strongbow Gold bottles at the supermarket… yes the supermarkets sell alcohol over there, for about $1.20 per bottle. Coronas we about $6.50 per six pack and spirits even cheaper.

The following day we were collected by our tour guide at about 2pm for our afternoon tour and headed off to the Monteriggioni Castle in the Chianti Region and spent the good part of an hour walking around the town in the middle and along the battlements. Our tour consisted of the two of us, a couple from Sydney and two people from New York. The Castle was basically a walled town on top of a hill in the countryside, with excellent views over the vineyards and olive farms.

Our second stop on the trip was the first of the two wineries we were to visit. This one was called Azienda Agricola Casamonti which bottled their Chianti wine and also farmed an exclusive breed of pigs which were black with white bands on them, and cured their own meats. After the tour of their facility we tasted a number of wines and some of their meats, olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

From the first winery we headed through some scenic area of the regions and stopped for a few photos before arriving at our second winery which was more of a hobby farm really as they did not sell commercially. Here we got to wander around their facility and visited the room where they store their balsamic vinegar, some of it up to 30 years before bottling it. After the tour we got to try some more wines and food, including olive oil infused with truffles (which was amazing) and ended the tasting with ice cream with 30 year old balsamic vinegar on it. This vinegar was thick and syrup like and quite sweet and went exceptionally well with ice cream surprisingly!

We would have loved to by some of the oil and vinegar in particular but they were a little out of our budget unlike one of the ladies from New York who bout over $1000 worth of wine at the first stop and nearly as much at the second one for presents… sorry everyone, don’t expect $70 tiny bottles of balsamic vinegar for Christmas!

On our final day we headed off on the train once again, this time to Rome in the south where we would complete our trip of Italy.