This Runner's World

June 7

This was one of my favorite days of our trip. It was the day of our wine tour.

We started the day early meeting up with Rebecca Christopherson, our guide, and Rebecca and Kyle from San Francisco, California at the National Library in Florence. Rebecca drove us to Siena where we picked up Stephan and Lydia from Mississippi. From there we drop to Montalcino; a little town in Tuscany, two hours south of Florence.

Our tasting was done at the San Polino vineyards and winery. This particular vineyard is organic and is currently working with the University of Florence to find new ways to control pests. Katia Fabro along with her husband Luigi own the vineyard and winery. Katia taught us all about organic farming and biodynamics, which is like organic but with more astrology. San Polino vineyards are only about 6 acres and they bottle about 10,000 bottles per year.

We tasted two wines, both D.O.C.G. reds. I enjoyed both. We also ate bread with olive oil. San Polino also has its own olive oil and it was exceptional; the best I have ever had. We were so impressed by the wine and olive oil that we bought two bottles of wine and a small container of olive oil to take home. And at the time, we had no idea how we would get them home.

Our next stop was lunch and it was at someone’s house. This gentleman made olive oil by cold press and also offered cooking lessons in his home. We were told we were to be having a light lunch. That couldn’t have been further from the truth. Our lunch turned out to be four courses. The first course was bread, bruchetta, zucchini, eggplant, and garlic. Then it was pasta and a meat with spinach. Finally for dessert we had cherries that had been soaked in wine for a year. Then we got a lesson about cold press olive oil. Did you know that not all extra virgin olive oils are extra virgin? In fact, most are not. But, all cold press olive oils are extra virgin. So the next time you go to the grocery store make sure you are buying cold press olive oil.

After lunch we went into the town of Montalcino to tour around for a half an hour. Dave and I took lots of pictures there. We thought about ice cream; we thought about more wine, but in the end decided to just take pictures. Finally it was two hours back to Florence.

We were still stuffed from lunch so we had some gelato for dinner and shopped around the Ponte de Vecchio. Finally we made our way up to a park and watched the sun set over Florence.