Chapter 14 - Wine Touring at Last - Tuscany Near Montepulciano

About Our Wine Touring

As you may know, we are a bit serious about wine touring. So we put forward this challenge to a wine tour arranger for our Italy trip: outstanding wine, not sold in US, wineries too small for tour vans. And he came through...

Siena Area

Here is a map of the area

On the map you will see several places covered in Chapter 13 - Casole d'Elsa (Elaine's cooking class), Montepulciano (our hotel location), San Gimignano (town of towers), Siena town.

On this first Tuscany wine touring day, we tasted wine to the southwest of Siena and had lunch in Pienza. The second day of touring was northwest of Siena, the Chianti region, with our lunch near Radda.

Morning Tastings

This was the sign that greeted us at our first stop, Ercolani. The "face" was intriguing - was it a weird Italian cookie?

The setting was quintessential Tuscany. This was the view off the back porch.

This was a lot more than just a winery, also gourmet Tuscan grocery store complete with pasta, olive oil and cheese.

 And just beyond that, a restaurant.

We were greeted by the daughter of the founder (at 9:45 AM) will welcome plates of meat, cheese, bread and salad. 

We had just had breakfast! This turned out to be a "problem" on most wine touring mornings. The Italians are just so welcoming...you just have to take a few nibbles to be polite. The wines here seemed good, but we did not have a lot to compare at this point. We bought our favorite one.

Then we were introduced to the 80+ founder who took us through a museum area and down into the cave underneath the building. There we saw an Etruscan face called Il Puccino that was discovered there when the winery was built.

He then told us about the collection of artifacts and fossils he had collected for many years.

As you can see, the "talking" was a lot about his hands!

The artifacts were quite interesting.

The many fossils were from the days when Tuscany was either under water or the waters were just receding. They were fascinating, including whole fish fossils and a black pearl. This stop would be a hard act to follow...

The next winery was very small and we were met by one of the owners. The winery, Podere Sanguineto, is run by two women. The name of the winery, Sanguineto, which means “soaked with blood”, comes from how people described the land after a big battle between the Romans and the Etruscans about 2000 years ago. This was more typical of what we had come to expect, although the woman spoke little English. The wines were quite good.

The next winery was right next to our hotel. Podere Dionora is a deluxe farm inn with a hard selling hotelier who is trying to fill his rooms and build up a wine business. The location is beautiful, but not particularly quaint.

The wine was good, but not very sophisticated. 

While 5 wineries a day, 3 before lunch sounds like a mad rush, the geographic area is relatively small, and we start before 10 and don't have lunch until at least 1 and was very doable.

Our planner allowed us generous times for lunch, so each wine touring day also included time to explore lovely small towns, this day it was Pienza.

Lunch and Pienza

Pienza is another small walled city. This is one entrance.

We had a great lunch in a small trattoria - cannelloni soup (tinted orange with tomato paste) 

and a plate of various pecorino cheeses for which this area is famous.

After lunch we walked around. The town is beautiful, charming, everything one would expect from a Tuscan village...

with the countryside around never more than a peek around a corner away.

The local church had a simple, but stunning courtyard.

And the ceramics in the local shop were a cut above the typical things we had seen.

There is such a fine balance between a charming village and a tourist trap. Pienza was definitely a charm winner, down to the little details, like this mailbox

and this sign.

The Afternoon Tastings

The first winery after lunch, Podere il Cocco, run by the three Bindi brothers was small and rustic with curious sculptures about.

This was a very personal tour starting at the vines, through the initial selection process to the aging .

The winemaker, a charming fellow about 40 had a very friendly dog that followed him everywhere. While we explored the wines he shared some of the fresh Fava beans he grew to serve in the adjacent restaurant and to help fertilize the soil organically   

He also has an artist friend hand paint some of his labels, quite unusual.

He also showed us how the sediment settled in the bottles for the different wines—rose, Brunello and white, truly fascinating. It made for an unusual "still life" photo.

We tasted an unusual Rose, a Brunello and a Brunello reserve. Then he showed us how to really taste if a Grappa (Tuscan desert wine) is good. You tip it on your hand between your thumb and first finger, then rub like perfume to warm and spread the scent and also to feel that it is dry and not sticky -  and then you taste it - just amazing.  

We bought the Rose and the Brunello because the wine was good and we wanted the hand painted label by his friend.  The passion for what he does was demonstrated in everything we saw. This was our kind of visit!

We thought that we had seen the best winery of the day, but then we went to Nostra Vita "our life")  This winery was truly amazing because it combined a passion for wine, a beautiful location and a passion for art. They have three vineyards - one for each daughter. 

And these chairs er wheelbarrows greet you in their yard.

This is a family winery-a father with three daughters perfectly combining wine and art.  The father and founder is a book maker (not gambling), painter and winemaker. These are some of his handmade books

and his workplace for making them.

Not only that, but he designs the bottle labels, using the same set of colors with slightly different images each year. 

For their limited-edition wines, he hand paints each bottle! The "V" represents a tree in front of the property that is special to the family.

One daughter runs a gallery and is also an artist who shows pieces at the winery. Here are some of her works.

Another daughter gives the vineyard and wine tours.  

The wines were the best of the day—a Rosso, a Brunello  and then a Brunello Reserve.  They served the wines with cheese and breadstick overlooking a beautiful valley with the sun shaded by clouds. It was wonderful. We could have stayed there all day. 

Then the most special treat - the patriarch arrived and joined us - yes, in front of that special tree.

This kind of experience is what makes wine touring special.  

Dinner was at a country inn just outside Montepulciano. For the first time, we did not have taxi problems - whew.  

Dinner was simple country fare—bruschetta followed by pasta with a mushroom Ragu and then a very rich beef brisket braised in vino Nobile de Montepulciano, shown here. 

We finished dinner with a hazelnut semifreddo and espresso. A truly Tuscan and wine touring excellence day.