Wednesday morning was another early start. Actually not really that early at all now that I'm thinking about it. We had booked a day of Tuscan Wine and Villas and we were meeting our tour guide at the Ponte Amerigo Vespucci by 9:30 am. The tour was a smaller group than Cinque Terre with a max of 8 people (As it turned out all eight of us were from the NY/ NJ area). Our guide Rebekah (Dutch with an English Accent who lived in Tuscany for 25 years) led us to the eight passenger VW van and we were off explore some of Tuscany.
Rebekah's tour that day was taking us through her favorite region in Tuscany and in her opinion one of the finest wine making regions in Italy. We were headed to Carmignano which is one of Tuscany's oldest recorded wine names and dates back to the 14th Century. It was a favorite of the Medici's and it was their fondness for this wine that led to the development of legally defined/ protected wine production zones. Both vineyards we were about to visit were within the Barco Reale (old wall that protected Medici hunting grounds).
The drive to our first stop was slightly over an hour through the burbs and then the road suddenly opened up to farmlands and vineyards. Rebekah provided some background info about the places we were headed throughout the day and the group used the rest of our time to get acquainted.
Fattoria di Bacchereto, our first stop, was 100% the exact movie set a director must picture when trying to set the scene for a Tuscan movie. After five minutes headed up a switchback gravel driveway we came to a beautiful old hunting lodge where owner/ matron of the house Rosella waited on the front doorstep. The hills were lined with varieties of grapes, olives, pears, and figs while the house dog ran laps around his newly arrived guests. The home was built in the 1700s and Rosella's family had acquired the property in the 1920s. The house itself was of a Dijon mustard yellow and still retained all of the original features. Their were additions that had been made in the mid 1800s and then again when Rosella's family first acquired the land, but had for the most part gone untouched since that time... with the exception of maintenance for upkeep. Doors opened into rooms seemed set from the 1800s with wood burning stoves, stone floors, exposed beams and boards from the level above. The "basement", used for the wine making, smelled of must and old barrels... only the steel vats for white wine production served as a reminder of present day.
The fire had been lit sometime earlier and the embers continued to pop as we waited for our first glass to be poured. Enter Alberto... Alberto was an older man, perhaps in his late 70s, who seemed to do everything around the property. He entered without a word and set to work on our "snack" for the day. He began to lay slices of bread on what looked like the same contraption one would use to easily grill a fish and then set them over the popping embers. After about two minutes he flipped the contraption to ensure each side was toasted and then, after removing the bread, rubbed a fresh clove of garlic across every piece. It was then time for Alberto to apply his olive oil onto each slice, followed by a shake of salt. This process was repeated for the other side of each slice before Alberto placed two spoonfuls of his homemade bruschetta topping on each slice. The topping was made with fresh tomatoes, Alebrto's olive oil, salt, pepper, oregano and basil. To say the snack was delicious would be a true understatement. I can't tell you how many pieces we all had, but Alberto made sure nothing went to waste. It was a pleasure to watch someone take some much care as they put together something so simple. It was one of those moments that can make one regret the conveniences that we have in our lives (read frozen garlic bread in a plastic case).
During our snack we were given the white and the red, followed by the Vin Santo. All were delicious and then entire group made purchases to be sent home as the vineyards yield is so low they don't really export much of their product.
Sadly we eventually had to leave Fattoria di Bacchereto in order to get to our next stop, Capezzana.
Capezzana was another picture perfect spot. Much larger in size and production, the property is owned by a Countess and her family and it too was a former Medici home (I think the main hunting large?). The family has also owned their slice of heaven since the early 1900s and still live on premise.
Lunch, served on the terrace overlooking the hills, consisted of a salad (all greens direct from the garden below), a simple yet delicious pasta with spicy red sauce, followed by local meats and cheeses (plus an orange marmalade made by the Contessa herself) to finish it all off. Throughout the meal we sampled wines of the house that were fantastic (apologies that I lack the palette to describe what all of these wines were like).
As lunch came to a close, we headed off to get a tour of the grounds and more importantly the incredible cellars that were on the property. We were shown the family's private wine cellar where they had bottles from all the years of production, dating back to 1925. Must filled tunnels led to rooms of large vats that held the wine prior to being bottled. One of these rooms had even hid the Family Reserve when the house was occupied by the Germans in WWII. The history of the house was truly amazing and the tour finished with one last glass of wine, a rosé, before we hit the road for our final stop (we bought a bottle to drink later and it cost under €7... a little cheaper than back home).
The last stop was the former residence of the Medici and even served as a home for the first king of Italy. The place was large and everything a Medieval palace should be, but after the beauty we had already experienced, we didn't spend to much time on the property. An interesting piece of info is that the doors are open from 4:30-4:31. If you miss the one minute window, you must wait until the next day. It is free to visit, however too expensive for the state to keep open more than about an hour.
Rebekah provided some final notes of interest on the drive back to Florence prior to dropping us back off at the Ponte Vespucci.
Ashley found this tour on a whim and we couldn't be happier that she did. The experience, the places, the guide... all were perfect. This may have been my favorite experience so far.
Tuscany Tour - Carmignano Region - snaps from September 2nd, 2015 from Ashley Habeck on Vimeo.
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