Sunday 18 June
Happy birthday to me!
Given how we’re struggling with not over-eating in Italy, the last thing we needed was the generous and tempting breakfast spread at Spedaletto. It seems to be run by a mother and her daughter; the former cooks breakfast and looks after our basil plant, the latter speaks English.
I bought the basil plant at the supermarket in Florence – it must survive until we reach Parma, where we’ll do some of our own cooking again.
Then we went out exploring. Bagni Vignoni is a pretty village, unique because instead of a village square the Medicis decided to build a huge hot spring pool in the middle. It also has the ruins of medieval mills that were built into the cliffs and ran on the thermal waters. San Quireco is a small town where they were holding an annual Barbarossa festival which involved lots of dressing up in costume and eating medieval food – we only really wanted a snack, so we just drifted through and stopped at a bar for a bite.
Our main stop was in Montalcino, the home of the Brunello wines we’ve been enjoying. This was a bit frustrating. Some info said that wine tasting is possible in the enotecas in the town, but that just means “buying a glass of wine and drinking it” which isn’t something I can do much of while driving! We found a wine maker in town, but you can’t taste their wines, you just have to lay out £40 on a bottle in the hope it’s any good?! Tourist info had a list of wine makers and phone numbers, but any mention of “wine tasting” when I phoned a couple of them seemed to be immediately translated into “£30 for a guided tasting of 4 wines along with a tour of the vineyard and cellar”. Finally we stopped in a wine shop where they had a coravin so we could buy small samples of a few Brunellos to try, and where the helpful lady explained that most wineries would allow you to taste their wines before buying, if you phone up and say you’re wanting to buy.
Of course, all this used up most of the day, so wine tasting will now have to be tomorrow! Montalcino is a handsome little town, and the views from the ruined fortress at the top of town are lovely. We had a gelato too.
That evening, after a relax in our mighty castle, we drove out to Pienza. This is a really pretty little medieval town (planned as such by a local pope) with absolutely stunning views of the Tuscan countryside from it’s south walls. The air was also filled with the scent of star jasmine (Trachelospermum Jasminoides) which has been filling our nostrils everywhere we’ve been in Italy so far – but was absolutely inescapable in Pienza!
Dinner was a little Agrotourismo restaurant outside the town called Poderuccio. The big fella who runs it is one of those genial-but-decisive Italians who apparently know what you want better than you do. We ordered one starter to share and two primi, and he told us not to order secondi. He was right. The starter was a massive bowl of baked local pecorino with nuts – gorgeous but gigantic – and then my bowl of ribollita was enormous and so was Maureen’s pasta. All very lovely, though, and following ancient Italian tradition we were given a delicious shot of licquorice liqueur at the end (but here’s the thing: we’ve not been given a free digestif anywhere else in Italy, so is this tradition dead? Or was it always fake?).
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