Two days in Tuscany

What is the antidote for a severe case of cultural overload? Red Wine. And during our first day in Tuscany we are inoculated for life in Montalcino, a picturesque walled town up on a hill overlooking a gorgeous Tuscan landscape of rolling hills.We’ve been driven here by John Bird who met us in Firenze on Monday morning.

Inside the gate of the fortress a football sized tent is erected in which some 150 producers of Brunello wine are busy introducing their newly released vintage to an eager and noisy crowd of distributors, buyers, importers, restaurant and enoteca owners, etc. from all over Italy and the world. . . and Steve and me. Like everyone else when we enter we are given a notebook in which to record our comments, a large glass and, best of all, a pouch to put around our necks that is perfectly sized to hold the wine glass and leave our hands unencumbered. I recognize instantly that this is the perfect accessory for sunsets in Maine on the dock.

For several hours, we wander up and down the aisles sampling Brunello from various producers, small and large. We quickly learn the ritual—swishing our glass with water to cleanse it of the previous taste, swirling the newly poured sample in the glass before drinking, inhaling the aroma and then, at last, having a swallow. Salute!

Late in the afternoon and after much Brunello we leave—with six of those handy wine glass pouches in my purse—for our hotel in the even smaller medieval village of San Quirico d’Orcia, our base for the next two days in Tuscany.

The village, like all the others we see, is absolutely charming, absolutely clean and populated by a people who look like they have been selected by central casting—wizened old men sitting out by the café on the main square drinking coffee or knocking back a shot of grappa; squat housewives doing their daily marketing; young mothers pushing baby carriages; workmen in overalls shouting to each other over the sound of their tools. I feel like I am in a movie set.

We spend the next day with John Bird driving the curving roads through the countryside, a magical landscape of gently undulating hills, vineyards and wheat fields. The hills are punctuated by lines of cypress and pine trees, often announcing the entrance to a villa or castle. We get out to walk through the walled towns that, miraculously, are empty of tourists and tour buses—the season doesn’t start for another month or so. We stop to share a prosecco in an entoteca, salivate over the locally produced pecorino cheese and, of course, enjoy a long lunch featuring a special pasta of the region and, what else? a bottle of Brunello wine.

Our last morning, we drive through the Val D’Orcia where John lives. On either side of us, wide open vistas open up in silence to the hills in the distance. The landscape is stunning in its simplicity and grandeur. I stand in front of a villa looking out at the view and it is as if I am staring out at the ocean with waves of yellow and green and brown instead of blue. I have the same sense of witnessing something timeless and constant and, above all, deeply satisfying.

Alla prossima volta.