VALDORCIA AND CRETE AREA 4 days
Orcia, Brunello & Vino Nobile wines
Some towns in Tuscany offer perfect Medieval views, towns of teh so-celld human size, where you don’t know why but you feel at home, and perfect landscapes that are imprinted in our imagination.
The more romantic one is here in Valdorcia, flawless like a fantastic painting. The Crete rolling fields, like slow moving waves, now with a uniform greeen colour, then shifting to yellow and brown, eventually grey, before the next green season. Cypress-lined windy roads, like brush strokes, rare farmhouses balanced on the ridges. You see little of anything here: villages, noises, neighbours. The place seems ideal for retreat and meditation, but on the sides the hills of Montalcino and Montepulciano, both Città del Vino, are busy pilgrimage points for wine lover from all over the world.
On most hilltops we see rocky castles, farms that look like forts, and beautiful noble villas. Vino Nobile has been around since perhaps 1300. It stands like the real original “super” tuscan, because it was made for the noble people.
Brunello, instead, was really reated in late 1800 It is a “new” boy, an austere varietal red, refined like a Burgundy, élitistic and patriotic like the Barolo. So, nothing less than the best in this area, nothing that you may want to hurry! So let’s take time to walk down a large underground cellar, to explore a dirt road to a secluded small vitner, to talk with him or her - many great wineries are managed by ladies, and belong to the Women of Wine association - let’s take time for pictures, or to discover and artistic treasure like the Renaisance frescoes of Monteoliveto abbey, or in St. Antimo a gothic abbey, landed apparently in the middle of nothing.
Pienza, is a miniature Renaissance city, known today for the high quality “pecorino”, sheep cheese, production, more than for its Renaissance buildings. Besides visiting tiny pienza, we might experience a vertical tasting of 4 or 5 pecorino cheeses, of course paired with the robust reds, that appropriately are made in this aread, Orcia, Nobile and Brunello.
CHIANTI CLASSICO HILLS 4 days
The Chianti Classico DOC zone is the larger of Italy, 7 towns, 500+ wineries, so we visit it in two days. The first day we stay in the Historical Chianti, where the wine and its name come from: Radda, Gaiole, Brolio and Castelnuovo, the other day we explore the northern Florentine hills, between Greve Panzano and Passignano. Visiting the Chianti Hills should be, for a wine lover, like a pilgrimage to springs of probably the most iconinc italian wine. The official Chianti being defined in 1700, but its story is likely older. The setting is picturesque and breathtaking at times: a patchwork of vineyards, woods, and olive groves, dotted by castles and villas of the Sienese and Florentine nobles, and a geography of miniature mountains. All conjures to create the more romantic scenery, that will charme you at each hill and each new valley.
The southern or Sienese Chianti, has still many forests, forgotten ancient castles with mysterious names - Spaltenna, Barbischio, Montegrossi, Meleto, Vertine, Cacchiano, and above all Brolio, where the Chianti formula was historically pinned own, that’s why this area between Radda and Castellina is the Chianti Storico. The views too, are historical castles and small hamlets, are almost the same as in the good old feudal times.
San Gimignano. To take a break from too much Sangiovese, we dedicate one day to one of the few Tuscan Whites, the Vernaccia. We visit San Gimignano , th emore famous medieval hilltop town, with its amazing 14 towers, and we go tasting this earthy, gently aromatic, partuicular white wine.
The Northern Chianti, is instead more cultivated and hence more populated, the vineyard expand between delightful stone homes, parich chucrhes and refurbished castles, often turned into a villa in the Renaissance, when Florence ruled. Panzano, Montefioralle, Passignano and Greve towns look like postcard pictures of the most ideal Tuscan scenery.
This unique scenery has been defined “the more moving of the human landscapes”, where human work designed the local nature gently, with elegance one would say, everything has a perfect human size: fileds, houses, olive trees, small vineyards, and the pencil-like cypresses, stand like guardians all around. It may appear so picture-perfect, just because it “has” been painted, so many times, and, more recently, filmed. It belongs to our imagination, because it is already in our eyes and our hearts.
The wines here are smoother that in the south, ready to drink sooner, a great starting point to get to love Chianti. Next you step up to try single vineyards and Riserve, and at that point, you may want to approach and really appreciate the fashionable Supertuscans, the first of which - Tignanello and Solaia - were created here by Antinori, opening the path to the Supertuscans, that started the so called Renaissance of the Tuscan wines.
Cities of art. Florence and Siena do not appear in this program, since many have seen them one or more times already. If, however, you want to visit the two main cities of Tuscany, and prhaps Lucca too, we suggest a 2-3 days extension to spend downtown, without car, immersed in art, history and shopping!
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