Wine Tasting and Italian Santa Claus!
The next day we left the hotel at 9am (after an awesome breakfast!) to take a bus into the Tuscan countryside. We had a charter bus, thank goodness, and the views were amazing. Such a beautiful place, I wouldn't mind a bit moving here just because the scenery is so incredible.
Our wine tasting, olive oil tasting, cooking lesson extravaganza was at this great winery called Castello del Trebbio. The castle on the property was built by the Lazzio family during the middle ages and is the only castle still inhabited in Tuscany. The Lazzios were a rival family to the Medici and plotted to kill Lorenzo the Magnificent and his brother in order to gain control of Florence. The room in which they planned these murders is still called the Conspiracy Room (our tour guide was married there!). They killed the brother but failed to kill Lorenzo so they were wiped out and the Medicis took control of the castle. The Lazzio crest, carved by Donatello, is still displayed in the courtyard. Such a cool story!
The family that owns the winery has an equally interesting story. The current owner is the daughter of an Austrian woman and Italian man who met on a train to Italy. He was significantly older than she was but they had five children and eventually moved to this castle in Tuscany. She is the one who started all of this by planting olive trees and vineyards on the property. He passed away from age and she unfortunately died young due to a car accident. Only one of their children, their 24 year old daughter, wanted to keep the castle and continue the business of wine and olive oil making. Twenty-two years later, she and her family still live in the castle and have become prominent wine and oil producers in the region. They specialize in Chianti wine, the red wine native to the Chianti region of Tuscany and pride themselves on using 100% Sangiovese grapes. The government allows wineries to call the wine they produce Chianti as long as it is made with 85% of the grapes but this winery goes above and beyond. We got to see their wine cellers with these huge wooden casks as tall as I am where they age their wine, along with smaller ones that they eventually sell to whiskey makers. Such a interesting place.
Along with our education on Chianti wine, our hilarious (he's seriously the funniest little Italian man ever) tour guide Alberto gave us a lesson on olive oil. Apparently most olive oil we buy is too acidic and technically bad for us. All of their oil is squeezed within 24 hours of it being picked so the acidity is very low. But they haven't been making any money off their oil because the lost a lot of their olive trees to a bad winter in 1985 and they just bought their own olive press. He also taught us what the "extra" and "virgin" mean in extra virgin olive oil. Extra means that it has under .8% acidity (still too high to be good for our health, should be under .3%) and virgin means that there are no preservatives. He had a great story about a tour he gave to these little old British ladies discussing these definitions. Apparently he asked if they knew what "virgin" might mean (in terms of olive oil) and one lady piped up "Sweetheart, none of us would know!" which lead to another adding "No, none of us remember!" We were all dying!
After the tour of part of the castle and the cellers, we had our oil tasting. He had us taste an oil that was made of three different olives, one olive, and then we just smelled oil that had gone bad. To taste olive oil you have to take a little sip and then mix it with your saliva by sucking air through your teeth. Strangest sound/expression ever. If its good oil you should feel a slight spicy sensation near the back of your throat and it should have a fresh smell. To clear our platte we drank sparkling water but apparently green apples work too. I've never paid too much attention to how olive oil tastes but it was really interesting.
Next we went across the courtyard to the kitchen for our pasta making lesson from Alberto's aunt, Adrianna. The winery is a family business to the max. She doesn't speak a lot of English so Alberto translated. She had the steps of making the pasta laid our for us so everyone got to help with a step. First she mixed the flour, eggs, and olive oil to make the dough. No bowls, just on a wooden board with the flour in a bowl shape to keep the eggs from running. Then she started kneading the dough and let a few of us take turns once it was pretty together. Next she started to roll out the dough with the largest rolling pin I've ever seen. Some more of us took a turn at that but she took over eventually to finish it off. Alberto told us that she takes it from a ball of dough to the paper thin consistency it needs to be within twenty minutes. Adrianna's got some guns. We also got to cut the pasta, but it was from a dough that she had rolled out earlier so that it would harden a little. I got to do that part, it was pretty fun but the pasta was tougher than I expected. She made everything seems so easy! After the pasta she also showed us how to make a meat sauce and a veggie cream sauce. We were going to eat all of this in just a few minutes with our wine tasting!
After our cooking lesson, Alberto led us to the winery's restaurant where we had our wine tasting. We had an antipasto of salami, bread, and olive and tomato bruschetta with a young Chianti. He told us what to look for in the color, smell, and taste. This one smelled like cherries and other berries. After that we had our pasta with a Reserve Chianti that smelled woodier because it had been aged in those big wooden casks. The pasta and the wine was SO GOOD. I'm definitely going to be making the veggie and cream sauce (we got the recipes!) next year. Maybe not the pasta but who knows. We also had a dessert wine with biscotti but it wasn't my favorite. It had a really strong liquor flavor. But I really enjoyed the Chiantis so, along with a lot of other girls to lower the cost, shipped some home. I'm looking at you, Ma!
Once everyone had purchased what they wanted from the gift shop, we wandered around the property until our bus arrived. The view was so breath taking. Apparently they have become a really popular wedding destination and people get married at the castle. I can see why, the pictures must be amazing.
Back in Florence, we dropped off our stuff and started to wander through a market right around the corner from our hotel. We put our haggling skills to the test as most of us bought gifts and mementos there. A couple of girls got leather jackets and most of us these little satchel purses. I got a little purse in light green and a few scarves. Hungry from our adventures in the market (oh it rained while we were wandering, fun times), we decided to go the McDonalds and Subway down the street. Don't judge, it was just for the experience and to say I ate at McDonalds in Italy (they're pretty fancy, fyi). Plus those french fries and burger tasted like heaven after all the pasta I've been eating. I love the food here, don't get me wrong, but it was a nice change of pace.
A few of the girls wanted cannolis so set out to find a cafe that would have some. In our search we stumble across the sweetest cafe owner ever. He had these miniature sweets, including cannolis, so we went in to buy some. Even though he didn't speak a lot of English, he was so nice to us and gave us so much stuff for so little. We asked if he was open the next day so we could come back but he said he was closed Sunday. I guess we looked really disappointed so he took out another bag and put a bunch of breakfast pastries in it for us in the morning. Through another lady in the shop that spoke better English, he told us to think of him in the morning when we eat them! He will forever be our Italian Santa Claus!
That night we all decided to go out on the town as a group and have fun. On our way to the bar we ran into JMU students doing the study abroad trip in Florence! They were going to the same bar and doing a bar crawl that started there. How crazy!?! We were literally just walking down the street and someone recognized one of us. So we joined them in the bar crawl and had a really great time. I got to see Melissa and Annie, two APhis in the Florence program and the bar crawl was a LOT more fun than our Rome one.
Its decided, Florence is by far one of my favorite places on earth. Coming back is not even a question. One more post and I will have caught up on this trip! So much to pack into just one weekend!
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