Friday October 21, 2011

We walked this morning in Chianciano Terme, a resort town in Tuscany known for its spas and mineral waters. It was so different from walking in Venice as there the waterfront is lit up and full of people coming off boats to get to work early and, of course, joggers. Here, there are very few street lights and we only saw one person on our walk – a little tougher walking also because the hotel is on the top of a hill so you end up walking uphill at some point in the walk. After breakfast, we boarded the bus and drove through some beautiful country to reach a small hill town from medieval times, Radicofani. The village was lovely – small narrow streets (see photo), uphill to the church where we had spectacular views of the surrounding country. Back on the bus, we headed to our wine tour at Casate Prime Donne. This winery is unique in that the woman who owns it employs only women to make the wine. She thought that women were discriminated against in this field. Most wineries only employ women in the analysis of the wine and in the accounting department. Our guide grew up in both Britain and Italy. She explained how the winery was started and also about the differences of certain wines in the type of grape, how the wine is stored and how long and what type of oak it is stored in. We then went upstairs for our tasting. We were given plates of local meats and cheeses. The cheese is eaten with fruit preserves – we had peach and plum. We were given 3 different wines to taste (Dave and I shared ours with Lana and Kelly (see photo)): Chianti Superiore 2008, Rosso di Montalcino 2006, and Brunello di Montalcino 2004. We then got to taste 3 different extra virgin olive oils – one was a blend (my personal favorite) and the others were each made with just one type of olive. We drove back to the hotel and John, Lana, Kelly, Dave and I decided to do laundry. We finally found it, but it turned out to be a cry cleaners. Unfortunately, the walk was uphill – so we marched back down hauling our dirty laundry. We stopped several ATM’s (still hauling our dirty laundry) before we found one that worked with our cards, but we were eventually successful! Dave accused us of trying to replicate the Bataan Death March! We are headed down to our lecture: Italian with and without words and then we will walk a few blocks to get dinner. We are all a bit hungry, as the light fare at the winery was not intended to be a complete lunch.