One of the things Elizabeth wanted to see while she was here, as well as something I've been thinking about, was a vineyard and winery! After a bit of looking around, we discovered a winery in Le Bolle, Chianti (close to Strada in Chianti and Greve in Chinati, both well known cities in the region) called Vicchiomaggio. I'm going to go ahead and link there website right here because they are a fairly well known vineyard in Tuscany and it's pretty cool to look through their site!
The day started off very rainy in Florence and we were hoping that during our hour bus ride to Le Bolle, the sky would clear up. With a bit of luck it did! By the time we reached our stop the sky was blue with only patches of cloud. I hate to say that when we hopped off the bus, we took a bit of a wrong turn and ended up traveling the highway for an hour or two in order to find this vineyard. Vicchiomaggio owns acres and acres of land! We were continuously seeing signs saying the land was owned by them and thought we were getting close... not so, unfortunately! We found our way eventually, the winery, of course, was just a two minute walk from the bus stop.
Nonetheless, the mountainous region of Chianti is beautiful! Chianti is a wine that you see all over Italy, usually suggesting it was made in this region of Tuscany. Le Bolle is high up in the mountains, giving us a wonderful view of all the vineyrards, grapes, olive trees, and even the buildings, cottages, and castles where they eventually make their wine.
The pictures don't nearly do the view justice. It was absolutely stunning to be up in the mountains with the rolling hills! I think Elizabeth and I made quite a few Middle Earth references throughout the day.
Vicchiomaggio has two main buildings aside from their vineyards: the winery and a castle! The winery is exactly what it sounds like, a building to taste wines and buy bottles while the castle has a lot to offer. There are rooms to rent, a tortoise garden (twenty-some live tortoises live here!), chapels for weddings, and most important, the wine cellars. We took a tour (The Gold Wine Tour for anyone interested!) and so we got to see the vineyards, we learned much about the land and what they grow, how they make their wines, what kinds they make, toured the wine cellars, got a bit of history on Chianti itself, and, last but not least, got to taste five different wines.
A few photos of the castle grounds!!
The barrels they age the wine in were huge!! The larger ones last for about forty years and after each batch of wine they go into the barrels to remove a layer of wood for the next wine they age. The smaller ones only last a few years as they cannot remove layers from them. They only make their red wines here but are well known for them! Their white wines are made elsewhere though I honestly think their white wine was the best despite the high standing of their reds... Perhaps I don't know enough about wine yet :) In any case, getting to try the different types was a lot of fun!! I'm starting to tell the difference between each which I think is a step in the right direction.
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