We started off our day with a drive to Montechino, the city 40 min from Montepulciano that is known for their wine, Brunello. We first tried this wine on our night at Poggerino when our British friend busted out a bottle around 12:30 that was obviously quite expensive. It was love at first taste. In Montechino we first spent some time in the town seeing the sites, touring a castle, and seeing a very cool farming/ ww2 museum...very small but cool to see. From there, our goal was to randomly stop for some wine tasting and purchase some Brunello direct from a winery. We first stopped at a cute, but larger winery along the road. This winery had been there for 100s of years.....not unusual for the area. We had a taste but decided to move on....not the quaint winery we were looking for.
After a few turns we turned down the road of another winery, La Fornace, and were met by a lovely Italian woman who came out when we pulled in and started speaking to us in Italian. We could tell enough that she was saying she couldn't speak English and was going to get someone who did. The farm was so pretty, small, with a cute farmhouse, garden, and an amazing view. She yelled down to Fabio ( we like to refer to him as the Italian Dane S.) :) and then took us down a hill(we were following in blind faith at this point as there was nobody else around). She went to open a barn door and inside were tanks of wine fermenting.....yes! We had found the small, friendly winery we had been looking for! Fabio (no joke on the name) took us around their barn that had fermenting tanks, oak barrels, equipment used to prep the grapes after harvest, etc. This farm only has 9 hectares of grapes, average for the region. They had just finished harvest this past Saturday, in only one day. Take note Strubingers.......corn and beans are NOT the way to go! The farm uses labor provided by an outside agency - labor is from Pakistan. He said it's a similar process we use in the states when hiring seasonal workers from Mexico. We had a nice conversation with Fabio learning about growing grapes and making wine. They have made some interesting process improvements over the last couple of years, by hand sorting the grapes they are able to cut passes through the rows down from 3 to only 1. Hand sorting the grapes happens on a piece of machine with a shake table.....just like in our seed plants!
After our lesson in the barn we went into the farm house tasting room. There Fabio (Italian Dane) served us Brunello, Brunello Riserva, Rosso, and Grappa! We also had some bread from his mama for olive oil tasting. To get the bread he just had to yell out the door for mama......in an Italian accent.....LOVE it! We had a really great talk with Fabio and learned alot about growing grapes in the area. The wineries in the region use a coop for the crushing machine which can cost up to 3 million euros to purchase.....this fact would come to life at the next winery we would visit. With such great conversation and great wine, we felt compelled to stock up. With reasonable shipping prices, Fabio will be sending 6 bottles to Lewiston dr in the near future. With that, we were off. We had a drive back to Montepulciano and an appointment at another winery at 4:30. Ciao La Fornace!
Our second winery of the day came with an appointment for the tour. It is just outside of Montepulciano and only 5 min from where we are staying. We drove up and immediately saw it was different from Fabio's world. Again, beautiful scenery and rolling hills with grape vines, but this time with a very modern looking building and landscape. I Cario is the name of the winery and it is a much more commercial establishment. We walked in the front door to what looked like a museum. It was! They have a very fancy place above their wine cellar for at exhibitions. On display at the moment was a collection meant to look like Monet 's Water Lilys but with plastic bags in a river........OK said the non artsy people from St. Louis :). The accountant from the front office took us on a tour. We saw many big fancy tanks for fermenting, a bottling machine, labeling machine, fancy oak barrel room below the art gallery with a glass ceiling. All very fancy to our friends at La Fornace. highlight for the tour,.......after walking past the barrel room.....I walked out to see grapes being harvested!!! Ok.....harvest happens in one day out of the year....how lucky are we! I will post pictures.....so cool! The workers picked out a bunch for us to try....they were very sweet and tasty to my surprise! We watched the berries being pumped to the ferment tanks in awe......it was just the coolest thing to see for wine lovers and ag lovers.....wine being harvested! We moved onto tasting and bought a Montepulciano Noble.....the wine of the area. While it was very cool to see the other end of the spectrum.......our tour just wasn't as charming as out time spent with Fabio :). Interesting fact about this winery......it has only been making wine since 2000. The owners own it as a hobby and have other careers in Rome. People....this is a VERy expensive hobby.....they spared no expense and bought the absolute fanciest everything. The original farm house is still there but is rented out as a villa.....no Italian mama there with fresh baked bread!
We are rounding out our night with dinner at the place we ate at the first night here......such amazing food and service. We leave early to catch a flight at 11:30 from Rome. It's been an amazing trip and we are looking forward to one more night of the food and wine before we make our way home,....it feels complete and I'm ready to see my baby! (Russell)
Ciao,
Mandy
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Location:Montechino, Montepulciano
Beautiful update, Mandy. Safe travels to you and Bryce.
ReplyDeleteAmerica is awaiting your return....
Brenda.