Wine Tour to Montepulciano

We headed out to meet up with our guide, Vittorio, for an all-day wine tour to Montepulciano. Judy & I have been on a couple of wine tours in the past in Italy, but not to this town. Montepulciano produces a red wine that is made from Sangiovese grapes, but is not as dry or full bodied as its neighbor, Montalcino, which makes a very dry full-bodied wine from the same grape variety. Montepulciano wines are lighter, easier to drink and are "more elegant" in the words of our tour guide.

The meeting place was at the Biblioteca Nazionale in Firenze which is located right across from the bank of the Arno River. This seems to be a popular meeting place for tour guides as this is the 3rd wine tour we've taken with 3 different guides and we've always met at this location.

The drive to Montepulciano, complete with narrow roads and accompanying switchbacks, took about 90 minutes through some of the most scenic rolling Tuscan hills that one could imagine. Being late in the season, some of the fields had been plowed under & tilled to get ready for the next season. Our guide said that a lot of those fields would be planted with sunflowers, so I can only imagine the colors when those have come in.



We arrived at the first winery by the name of Villa S.Anna, a winery that had been in the family for over 300 years. We had a nice tour of the facilities and were treated to a wine tasting accompanied by some salumi & pecorino cheese. Anna, the owner's daughter, was a very interesting guide and quite simpatica. The estate was quite nice and the workers were busy transferring the grape skins that had been crushed to a cart to be taken to a grappa producer.



We bought a couple of bottles at this winery and then we all headed out to lunch a a little hill town called Monticchiello. The food was very typical of the Senesi (Siena) region and was quite tasty. After lunch we took some photos outside the restaurant that had quite a panaromic view of the vineyards of Montepulciano.





From there we went to our next stop, the Boscarelli winery, It was another similar tour of the facilities and a wine tasting afterwards. This winery was also harvesting their olive trees, so the aromas from the grape crush and the olives were something. After a short visit, it was back to Firenze.



We got back to the apartment and decided to have a quiet dinner at home. We are going to bed early as I have set the alarm for 1:30am to get up to watch Game 1 of the World Series! 

GO GIANTS!