A Tuscan Wine Tour

Spoiler alert: this gets messy.

Because I agreed to accompany Paul to San Siro Stadium, the home of both AC and FC Milan, he agreed to accompany me on a day trip through the wine making parts of Tuscany. Paul is not much of a wine drinker but I happen to be partial to a tipple or three of red. Despite their ubiquitousness with the region, tours of this sort don't come cheap. But we stumped up the roughly £70 each to take part and moved on with our lives. 

The next morning we arrived at the train station, our pickup point, promptly for an all-day festivus only to see no one else loitering. It took us another twenty minutes to twig that perhaps the three near-retirement age couples decked in running trainers (no signs of running qualities in the individuals) and loosely fitting jeans were our fellow participants. It just so transpires that the median age of a tourist in Tuscany over the Easter holidays is roughly 65. And American.

Our not-nearly-geriatric tour group consisted of two retired teachers, a doctor and his wife and a couple who were doing the tour circuit again and again--they'd been on this same wine tour twice already in the last month.  They hailed from Chicago, Oklahoma, Maryland and were charmed that we were young and traveling. In the first twenty minutes, we became everyone's adopted children. They wanted to know where we were from, how we met, when we were getting married.  They probed. We laughed. 

First Stop: Vinci 

As can probably be deduced from the name, Vinci is the home of the famous Leonardo da Vinci.  It was a small town tucked into the Tuscan foothills--verdant valleys lay in every direction and included the hill where da Vinci tried and failed at creating a flying contraption.

Today the town is an homage to all things Leonardo:

The church where little Leo was baptised 

Second Stop: Wine! 

From there, we made our way to a tiny winery even further into the windy roads of Tuscany.  We arrived at a nondescript farmhouse to be greeted by a woman who'd been in the business for quite some time.  

She showed us around the barrels, the process and the refinery itself before leading us to a large rectangular table that housed breads, meats, olives and oil.  

And then the drinking began. First wine. Then proprietors led us to a beautifully adorned table and fed us olive oil, bread and charcuterie. 

We got into an extensive conversation about where we were from and how we all came to be here in this moment. Dr Ralph's wife mentioned Oklahoma, I asked her about any fear of tornados--it's a common association. She burst into a fit of drunken crying. Her brother's house had been one of the many victims of the 2011 Joplin tornado that ripped through the community. As Paul looked at me like some kind of monster, someone passed her another glass of wine commented on the aftermath of kindness and goodness in people and the moment passed. 

And because Paul hates wine, he took to throwing back each bigger-than-a-tasting-size glass back with aplomb.  He treated them like shots--quadruple the regular size shots but shots nonetheless.  The volume in the room rose and we staggered out to be met with grappa which I can only describe as what it must taste like to swallow paint thinner.  My throat and stomach burned for an hour.  

As the wine flowed, our hostess decided to opportunise on the moment by bringing out the goods for sale. This involved lots of conversations on legal allowances, transporting wine in suitcases, brushes with TSA. Our friends bought generously and we opted for some beautiful, beautiful olive oil. 

Sales done, we all bundled into the mini bus for one final journey home. Paul was given more advice on his need to propose to me and to get the family started. And because it was all with good intention, we laughed along and tucked well-meaning advice to the back of our minds. At the end of the hour-long commute back, our tour guide gave a plug for the other tours their company ran. 

And thus, four hours later, eight adults piss drunk in a mini-bus outside of Lucca agreed on a reunion tour to Cinque Terre the next day.