November 27 Pictures are few from here out until we get home. Upload speed here is... very slow.
We checked out of Castle Fonterutoli today. Never took a tour. Never tasted their wine. Got in too late last night, left too early today. It was to us a sort of high-falutin Days Inn. I’m sure that given more time it is a fantastic place to unwind; incredible views of Siena from the top of the Appenines, great accomodations, lots of reputable wines. We did really enjoy a little down time between last night and this morning.
We left Fonterutoli for Castello Brolio, probably the most famous of all the Tuscan Castles. Now I can see why. We missed our tour departure, so we did the winery tour and tasting first, then had lunch in the Osteria, then the Castle museum tour last. You can’t tour the inside of the castle, because the current Baron Ricasole lives there. He wasn’t there today. The castle is drafty. So he’s spending the winter months between a house a few kilometers away and an apartment in Florence.
Anyway, the Ricasoli family has been there at Castle Brolio since 1141 and making wine for just that long. It’s the oldest winery known in Europe, and the Baron Bestemio Ricasoli, friend to King Vittorio Emanuele II, is the inventor of the Chianti recipe; 80% Sangiovese and the other 20% whatever you want. the winery is massive, with an annual production to rival many of the biggest U.S. wineries. There’s a small, but incredible museum chock-a-block full of important artifacts central to the history of Chianti, Tuscany and Italy itself.
Castle Brolio’s property sits on about 5000 hectares (1200 acres) of land in the Chianti. Of that, about 25 are planted in Olive Trees, roughly 200 planted in grape vines for wine. The rest is wild. There was sharecropping on the land until the 1950s when a law was passed making it illegal. I had always thought it was readily available factory work that made all the contadini abandon their farms and move to the city, but I guess this had something to do with it too.
We had a winery tour with a man named Gianni, who lives within a kilometer of the Castle, raised there and familiar with the history of the Sienese and Florentines. Then lunch in the Osteria at Brolio and a museum tour in the afternoon. This museum houses some really amazing artefacts that are central to the story of the development of Italy, like Baron Betolio Ricasoli's armory collection, partly experimental, a room designed for King Emmanuele Vittorio, some grape leaves tainted with phyloxera, an original copy of the first edition of the newspaper "La Nazione" that instructed Italians on what it means to be italian.
We drove to Siena later and walked around the city for a couple of hours taking in the sights. The main commercial streets have become a massive shopping mall, clogged with people of all ages windowshopping. It’s really incredible how many people are out here on Saturday night. I have spoken with other tourists from other European countries both in Alba and here who share a sentiment of disappointment at what they express as untrammeled consumerism. The store fronts are dripping with meticulously constructed and impossibly sheek manequins sporting the newest hottest threads from Milan and from the United States. I have to say that I have been swept away in the window shopping as well.
Dinner here in Bagno a Vignoni. Rustic tuscan cuisine, no pasta. Lots of polenta. There’s about 30 people who actually live in this village. The rest commute in to work.
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