Italy Returns - Agriturismos, Ocean's Twelve, Casino Royale & The Hunt For Red Super Tuscan

          Welcome to the first official return trip blog in my series of blogs.  Yes we finally chose to go back to a place we once explored in our past, not surprising, we chose for it to be Italy (amusing since I have a business trip in Rome this November).  Thanks to the many holidays offered in the U.A.E we placed our time off on tail end of the second Eid holiday to maximize our time.

          This time we decided to lay low and stay outside the big cities on the countryside.  We avoided
the mass crowds from the city for the most part, but while there were not many people, there was no short supply of good wine.  After landing in Rome we rented a car from the airport and made our way to our first destination which about two and a half hours north just below Florence.  Sarah researched a series of agriturismo's (basically just a fancy Italian way of saying we lived among nature along a vineyard) and found one by the name of Fattoria Cinciano.  It was a smooth drive along a pay by the kilometer highway which changed to narrow one way roads leading up to the agriturismo where you would get to play chicken with the cars coming the other direction.  

View from our Villa window @ Cinciano

          Fattoria Cinciano was a beautiful property site on the top of a long stretch of rolling hills and valleys.  The historical records of the property dates back to 1126 (most likely of Roman origin) when they were donated to a Bishop by a widow in the region.  The age and retained beauty shows through out the establishment and is surrounded by vineyards as it drops into the valley.  We rented out a villa that was separated by three floors, the first floor had the kitchen and bathroom, the second had a small living room and the third was the main bedroom.  

Cinciano

          After we settled in we set out on what would be the most depressing part of the trip.  If you recall from our first Italy blog I came a across a life changing wine during our journey which was classified as a Super Tuscan.  This was located in the town of Greve near Florence.  Well we drove out there straight to the winery to get a not so nice welcome and were also informed they were sold out of my prized wine.  I will admit I was depressed for a while, however this let down began the new hunt for a good red full bodied wine and also led me to learn what the term Super Tuscan actually means and how some Italian wine makers feel about it.  

Cinciano at night

          We decided to have lunch in Greve and try out some wines in local wine stores before driving back to our place.  We found a nice under ground Enoteca (Italian for "wine repository") where they had a sophisticated wine sampling system.  For the Grand Rapids readers, its very much like the wine system at the Reserve wine bar downtown where they use nitrogen in the bottles to preserve the wine for much longer.  This allows for stores to permit tasting of much higher end wines knowing that after de-corking, instead of the standard week or so, the wine will last a month or two.  This minimizes the risk of taking a loss on a good wine by selling by the glass knowing that in a month it will probably get bought up.  It was really great that this system was spreading around Italy because I was able to try a few wines that sold for hundreds of dollars for just a few euros.  I think the challenge with buying an expensive premium wine is that the taste you get when buying is not necessarily what you are paying for, you're paying for what it will taste like after a number of years of aging.  After tasting a number of great wines from the high tech dispensing machines in the humble town of Greve, we drove back to Cinciano villa in the town of Poggibonsi to enjoy a quiet dinner at the restaurant in our agriturismo.

Bolgheri

Breakfast at Cinciano

           We woke up to a beautiful sunrise looking over the valleys of vinyards with the walled hill town of San Gimignano in the distance.  We had a standard European breakfast (or at least what I have run across in our bed & breakfast travels) in the morning at our place which included cured meats, assorted cheeses and fresh bread.  After breakfast we decided to explore a town near the west coast of Italy named Bolgheri.  The entrance to the town is actually through a narrow castle drive up to an area of shops and restaurants.  The history of the town was interesting to look into as it was destroyed and restored several times.  Bolgheri was put on the map back in 1974 when a tasting competition was held and a six year old local "Super Tuscan" known by the name of Sassicaia won out over an assortment of Bordeaux wines.  A 2012 bottle of this wine will run you about $170 and rises in value by about $30-40 each year.  We found a restaurant that was attached to a wine shop so we were able to do a nice series of wine tasting (this place also had a nice high tech sampling system), including the famous Sassicaia among others.  After tasting many of the wines over lunch, we ended up buying a box full of wines before heading out to the beach.  Since we were so close to the water, Sarah wanted to catch a glimpse of the Mediterranean before driving back to our place.

Winey / Vineyard (San Gimignano
in the distance)

             That night when we got back we decided to venture out and try a different restaurant than the one at our villa so we drove into Poggibonsi to a pizza place I found online.  I found Bocca d'Ersa which was clearly a place where mostly locals hung out, it was a great find and the pizza was amazing, the table wine served in a half liter bottle was also quite good.

San Gimignano at night

              On our third day we explore some neighboring towns that were a little closer than the drive to Bolgheri.  Our final destination was the hill town of San Gimignano (which we could see in the distance from the window in the villa we were staying in), but we decided to drop by a few wineries on the way.  It was this day when I learned a little more about the term "Super Tuscan" from some local wineries.  The term was born when many of the local Tuscan wine makers were suffering to adhere to the Italian DOC/G (must contain 70% Sangiovese grape and 10% of local wine grapes) Chianti wine status and thus implying a certain lack of quality (and also due to wines attempting the status that fell short) to the wines.  So a couple of wineries went rogue and started

Torre Grossa

making blends that intentionally fell short of the requirements.  It was not long before many of these "Super Tuscan" wines began to beat out the prices of some of the most well known DOC official Chianti wines.  This attempt was to create a wine brand people recognized on its own merit, this trend spread throughout the region forcing the regulations to be changed allowing more of these these wines to qualify for DOC status.  We tried some of the amazing grapes in the region on the way to San Gimignano that most likely produced some of our favorite Super Tuscans.  I mentioned this in the Cyprus blog, but I am so amazed at how many grape strains actually exist all over the world.

Top of Torre Grossa

San Gimignano at night

              After some great wine tasting (and education), we drove up
the hill to San Gimignano to start off exploring the stone castle city on the hill.  San Gimignano was absolutely beautiful on the inside, the lack of modern signs and store advertisements on the outside is one detail that truly impressed me.  As we walked through the narrow pathway we saw leather shops, hotels, restaurants and Gelato (Italian for ice cream) , but even though we had all these modern shops to our right and left, I still had the feeling of walking through an old medieval town as if I were back in that time.  Sarah and I walked in and out of a few shops all the way up to one of the towers (which of course we climbed, we always climb anything that needs climbing it seems) called Torre Grossa which gave us a great view of the city and surrounding landscape.  After descending the tower we walked back towards the entrance to have some pizza at a table on the cobble stone road before heading back to our villa for a nap before dinner at
another agriturismo named Casa Bandini.
           

Torre Grossa

 As per usual we did not have a solid plan for travel destinations when we chose to come back to Italy.  Like so many other vacations we just drift as we see fit.  On day four it was decided we would take a three hour road trip up to see Lake Como.  This lake was unknown to me until I saw the movie Oceans 12 (all scenes filed at George Clooney's Villa on Lake Como) and of course at that point

Lake Como after the weather calmed

became a must see movie film site destination for me.  Lake Como's stock also went up with it appeared in one of my most favorite movies, Casino Royale, which in my opinion spawned the beginning of the best James Bond series yet.  The drive up was a bit rough with weather and the further north we drove the colder it became.  It was a drastic change from Siena where the temperature was 70 to 80 degrees, by the time we reached Lake Como (through about 15 tunnels carved through mountains) it was around 50 or 60 out with heavy rain and wind.  Putting the weather aside, the scenery of the Lake Como was amazing.  As you come out of the last tunnel to reach the

The good weather day at Lake Como

Bellagio region where we stayed, you enter into this beautiful body of water cut into the surrounding snow cap mountains.  I have layed eyes on many amazing landscapes before in our travels, but this was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen.  It combined Sarah and I's most favorite natural combinations, she likes to be in the mountains while I like being near bodies of water.

Bellagio - (Apertivo to my left)

Dock by Hotel Metropole

             We braved the weather after checking into the Hotel Metropole (I had to brag to my brothers that I was staying in legit Bellagio versus Las Vegas of course) and walked around the town to browse some stores and wine shops.  Our room was quite a steal considering we had the only terrace overlooking the lake and the town, although we did not enjoy it as much as we could considering the weather.  We had a small bite to eat on the port in a cute little restaurant before walking around.  It was also here where I found an amazing pair of Italian leather shoes that I instantly fell in love with (that does not happen often) and had to have.  After the shoe frenzy was over we found this amazing wine bar (called Aperitivo et al) set inside a wine cellar design where we spent the next few hours going on virtual wine tours.  The wine bar was set on a

Restaurant on the port

beautiful long stretch of stone stairs coming up from our hotel by the water.  Our host was superb in learning our taste and was spot on with our palate almost the entire night.  We had so much fun trying wines and appetizers that we made a habit out of visiting the place while we stayed there.  We made reservations with the restaurant next to Aperitivo et al early on in the day as we heard it was difficult to get a reservation.  We learned why it was so difficult in the evening as the food and wine were amazing.

Lenno

               Our second night we booked a hotel room at the Hotel du Lac a few buildings down from the Hotel Metropole.  Our second day on Lake Como was absolutely beautiful compared to the weather of the first day.  Our extremely helpful host at du Lac gave us some great ideas about ferry tours around the lake.  There are boats all over the lake that make regular stops to the surrounding small villages.  Like Bellagio, each town along the lake has just a small area of coverage with some nice restaurants, shops and hotels, but each one has its own unique charm and attraction.
 Following my pursuit of visiting all my favorite movie locations, we decided to take a ferry to the town of Lenno where travelers have the opportunity to visit the Villa del Balbianello where they filmed many parts of Casino Royale.  The tour if the villa was beautiful and it was very cool to stand

Casino Royale Scene

on all the locations where they filmed the Casino Royale scenes (as always I have provided

Balbianello

references for your enjoyment).  After touring the villa we walked back towards the boat dock to get some Gelato and lunch.  We had lunch at a nice restaurant / bar along the lake before getting back to our ferry ride.  We walked around Bellagio for the afternoon before dropping by Aperitivo et al again to try some more wines.  For dinner we shared a steak in the restaurant connected to our hotel before heading to bed.
              For our final day we started making our way south towards Rome for our flight.  We made a pit stop in Milan to do some daytime shopping.  It was crazy how much we were affected by large crowds in the big city after spending the entire week in the outskirts and quiet towns

Bellagio at night (Hote du Lac)

of Italy.  I was slightly amused at the fact that Milan had this very large canopy covered high end shopping center containing stores like Gucci & Prada, their original homes before branching out to the world.  The amusing fact was that it was called The Galleria, it wasn't until this trip that we realized that the shopping mall below my place of work in Abu Dhabi was an exact indoor replica of Milan's Galleria, same stores and everything.  We both found some interesting clothing items outside our normal chain of store brands which made the trip worth it.  After a few hours of shopping we took the train back to our parking garage and started the trip back to Rome to catch our flight the next morning.

Duomo di Milano

              From Milan we had about a three hour drive back to Rome.  I forgot to mention I left my hat at our original agriturismo which we had to make a detour to reclaim.  The main highways are interesting in Italy because you have to get a ticket to drive on them and when you exit, you pay a fee for distance traveled, we paid roughly 25 euro for a three hour drive.  After collecting my hat we made the final drive to Rome to stay at the Hilton before our flight.
              Our second visit to Italy was wonderful.  Surprisingly we had virtually no repeats from our first trip and I would say our small town visits and our trip to Lake Como is what really made the trip worth it.  Lake Como was definitely the highlight of the trip, we both fell in love with the scenery and the cozy small town charm, we would love to visit again soon.  I was also impressed at how much I learned about wine on the trip, I will admit I thought I had a good handle on my wine education, but I gathered a lot of insight from this visit about "Super Tuscans" in particular.  Italy is a place I think we will continue to visit (I actually have a business trip in Rome next month) as it is one of those countries that take a number of visits to cover all the desired subject areas.  Anyone could easily make a trip out of staying in agriturismo's or in Lake Como.