Petersontravels

On our 6th day of “Discovering Tuscany” we visited the small town of Pienza, known for it’s relationship with Pecorino cheese. On the way there we visited a couple of sites right off the road. First was this artwork set amongst a group of cypress trees.

I’m not quite sure what to make of it. Maybe a fancy wine decanter?? An alien with weird appendages?

Our next stop was supposed to be a surprise by our driver, but I ruined it a few days prior while asking if he could stop here. This villa was seen in the movie “Gladiator” as the home of Maximus (Russel Crowe).

Here is a shot avoiding the gate. Multiple scenes for the movie were shot in Tuscany.

We then stopped in the medieval town of Pienza for a quick stroll. Here is the central square.

A view of the Pienza Cathedral. We walked inside but the exterior view seemed more photo worthy.

We then stopped at a local Pecorino producer, Caseificio Cigusi, for a “light picnic”.

Alessia and Max started pulling out cheeses and meats….and bread and wine….this was supposed to be a snack! We had lunch scheduled in about an hour. You will not go hungry on one of these trips!! I think Max was looking at the plastic cups and thinking “we’re serving wine with this?”.

The view from the picnic grounds is stunning. Every view in Tuscany seems to be stunning! In the background is the medieval town of Montepulciano. Yes, every town in Tuscany appears to be “medieval”.

The cheese place had these rocks set up as cute little sheep.

It’s almost like they are inviting some drunk idiot to get a photo here!

Maybe 10 minutes away was our second stop of the day, Salcheto winery.

During our tour of the fermentation area our guide advised that they were using these new tanks made by a company called Mythos. This system captures the CO2 gases from fermenting grapes and then uses it to control the process, even using the gas to push the wine up over the top of the “cap” (when wine ferments a cap is formed on top made of all the skins and seeds).

They even had one of these Mythos tanks in the aging area. I have two main hobbies, wine and high-end audio. I’m starting to look at some of these winery owners/winemakers the same as high-end audio geeks I know, spending ungodly sums on interconnect cables and crazy expensive amplifiers because they think it might sound one iota better. I’ll let you decide where I stand.

Here is the lineup of wines. I found it telling that their best wine (to our group) was their white, the Vernaccia on the right, a varietal which I have not tried previously. It was excellent!! The Riserva was good, but their flagship Salco was not for me. I will be keeping an eye open for Vernaccia in the future.

The “light lunch” after the Pienza “snack” was a bit much for me! The winery does command an awesome view of Montepulciano!

After our lunch we stopped in Montepulciano for a brief visit. This is the view looking east from the edge of the town. Lake Trasimeno can be seen in the far background.

Piazza Grande in the middle of town has several impressive buildings! This is the home of their City Council.

While directly adjacent is the Cathedral of Santa Maria. I loved the plain exterior of this church!

We walked for a ways along the narrow streets of the town until it started getting pretty steep. This is a main road that cars kept driving down!

This little town must have 20 churches!

There were little spots off the road with viewpoints. This is looking towards the west. A little hazy, but we have seen multiple fires burning among the vineyards and farms, so that makes sense.

Later that night at the hotel we saw another epic sunset!

It just kept getting better and better! What a gorgeous place!

Coming up, our final day of the wine tour, with a winery and a Michelin Star restaurant in Chianti.

We are now up to Day 5 of our Tuscan wine adventure with another day in the Montalcino region.  Shortly after getting up I went outside of our room at the castle and took this photo of the stunning landscape to the west.

After breakfast our driver and guide picked us up and we took a short drive to Le Potazzine winery, which is run by a mother and her two daughters.  Le Potazzine means “little chickadees” which is part of the winery logo.

The winery name was the grand-mothers nickname for her young grand-daughters, who are all grown up now and an integral part of the operation.  The younger daughter Sofia was our wine guide.

It was a good sign to see this painted on the wall of their cellar!  I couldn’t agree more!

This is the cute logo that adorns all of their bottles.

I immediately recognized that the chandelier in their tasting area was from Murano.  It had to cost a small fortune!

Here is the lineup of wines.  Again, good to very good, but nothing that said “You must buy me”.

One last look towards the vineyards and iconic cypress trees as we departed.  We have been so lucky with the excellent weather!

Up next we visited the bio-dynamic winery Podere Le Ripi, and rather than doing the winery tour first we dove straight into lunch and tasting.  We have been eating lunch way too late thus far and we haven’t been hungry enough for dinner!

Here is our group on their beautiful patio.  There were at least 2 cats that made an appearance.  I must admit I fed one of them.  I’m a sucker for a meowing cat!

This wine in particular really stood out to me!  This is a “must buy” upon returning home!  We were lucky enough to find it on the wine list of the restaurant later that night, so even the restaurant agrees!

This is the view from just below the patio.

Another shot of the view towards the east.  Just gorgeous!

In the above shot you can barely see a castle in the distance.  Here is a better look.  These castles are seemingly everywhere throughout Tuscany.

We took a tour through the vineyards and gardens after lunch.  This is the view towards the southwest over a very densely packed vineyard, as they are experimenting with density to get the vines to struggle in a wine they call “Bonsai”.  I’ve not run across anybody else trying this, and the Bonsai wine we tried wasn’t convincing me.  BTW, that’s our castle hotel in the background at the top of the hill.

The garden koi pond was filled with frogs.  They were hopping in the water left and right as we walked up!

We then entered their aging cellars, which are set up on a circular path going down into the ground on what they call a “golden ratio” around a central room.  It seemed like a lot of work for what appeared to be something more artistic than practical.  Their website goes into great detail on the values of this structure, but is it just smoke and mirrors??  I’ll give you one guess where I stand.

At the bottom you see the room that the aging area was circling around, a large domed cave.  I’ve gotta admit, I see the dome of a church and not a wine cellar.  The owner apparently has a lot of money?

This tank was used for one of their wines they called “Attenti al Lupo”, which means “Beware the Wolf”.  Cute label that would do well in American grocery stores.  The wine was good, but just good.

Our last visit of the day was the Abbey of Sant’ Antimo, a historic Benedictine monastery that has been here since at least 1118.  That’s a long fricking time!

The abbey sits along the pilgrim route on the way from Florence to Rome.  After many years of disuse it was reoccupied in 1992 by a religious community.  Today it hosts a community of Benedictine monks.

It was a Saturday so the place was quite crowded with what appears to be locals spending a day in the countryside.  It makes for excellent photos both inside…

As well as outside.  I was lucky to get a photo with barely anybody in it as it was more crowded than it appears.  The sky was perfect!

That evening our driver Max picked us up and brought us to the small town the region is named for, Montalcino.  Alessia was waiting for us and gave us some pointers of what to see, and we immediately went up into the Fortress of Montalcino to get some photos of the sunset.

If you visit it’s well worth the views to climb up!  Montalcino is really a small village!

One last shot from the fortress.

This clock tower was lit up with a purple light, which is apparently a “modern nighttime accent”.  Maybe it’s to get people to take more photos??  Regardless, this is called Torre del Palazzo dei Priori ( meaning “the town hall’s clock tower”).

Coming up next, we visit the town of Pienza for a massive cheese and meat picnic, and then have another huge lunch with wines at a winery.  Not losing any weight on this trip!