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To recuperate from the long day yesterday, and because our little villa was colder than a meat locker, we slept late today. After breakfast, we prepared to take another day trip, this time to a little town called Pienza. As we walked out the door of the villa, Gennaro met us and said something to me I didn't understand. I did pick up a couple Italian words for "wine" and "bottle", so we retrieved the bottle MiMa had given us the previous night and, to be helpful, Kathy also gave him a magnum we had emptied earlier in the week. We thought he wanted to recycle the empties for future use, you know, like the milkman. Instead, he grabbed my arm and escorted me down the hill where a big wooden door revealed itself, leading to an underground wine cellar. He walked me through the whole process of crushing, pressing, and fermenting the wine, and showed me the various apparatus used to do it.
I, in turn told him about our day in Firenze with the bells, the Pope, and so forth. Neither of us understood much, but we had fun repeating the few words we did understand, making funny noises, and gesticulating. In the end, he showed me a huge stainless steel tank from which he refilled both the bottles I had brought. Now I know you're probably thinking we're drinking too much wine here in Italy, but.... I'm sorry, what was I saying?
If Montepulciano is the wine capitol of Tuscany, Pienza is the cheese capitol. As luck would have it, we had to drive right through the wine country to get to the cheese country. Damn life is good. Lunch was at the Ristorante in the Pulcino winery outside Montepulciano. And lunch was huge. We had bread in olive oil, toasted bruschetta with tomatoes and more olive oil, fat spaghetti noodles in tomato sauce, mushroom pizza cooked in a wood-fired oven, and finally for dessert, biscotti and panforte (a local fruitcake that's actually tasty) dipped in a little glass of Vin Santo, a golden, sweet Tuscan wine. All that was washed down with a couple diet cokes and water. Okay, I'm lying. We shared a bottle of Pulcino Nobile di Montepulciano, the premier vino of Tuscany. And water.
And then there was Pienza. Upon arrival, we slept in the station wagon for two hours before touring the town. Sure enough, there was much formaggio (cheese), along with a variety of other items, in the many shops that line the thoughtfully laid out Renaissance era streets. Amazingly, there was also an old church, but to my utter disappointment, it was being used for a funeral at the time. I suspect it was built in the form of a Latin cross, but that's just a guess.
We ended our tour of Pienza with even more to eat and drink inside a bar in the center of town. Now, "a bar" in Italy is way different from a bar in America. In this one we had to push our way through a crowd of school children buying gelato (Italian ice cream) to get in. In addition to gelato, you can buy coffee, sandwiches, soft drinks, beer, wine, and hard liquor, all in the space of a typical American walk-in closet. We drank cappuccino and shared a gelato cone sitting at a tiny table in the corner and watching the kids come and go and the locals make fun of the tourists.
Driving back to La Boncia on two-lane back roads, we learned yet another Italian driving tip. The white line in the center of the road is just there for decoration. When rounding a corner, you should always be prepared to see another machinna in your lane, perhaps going slow in the same direction, perhaps coming at you, or maybe just parked there while the driver ducks into a bar for a gelato or grappa. In any case, it's nice to be back at the farm again.
Return to beginning of the Italy tour
