Italy Trip Day 7 - Poggio Antico Tour

We got up early and after breakfast headed to Poggio Antico winery outside Montalcino, a 45-minute drive. This was our first experience with Brunello of the trip, and it turns out we picked well, as Poggio Antico's brunellos are always highly rated. We took a tour with about 8 other people, and were shown their beautiful grounds and state of the art wine-making facilities. It did feel a little more modern and corporate here than Avignonesi, but we enjoyed the informative tour and the incredible wines we tried. We shipped home a case of mostly brunellos (and I was later very pleased to see that two of the bottles I bought had been written up in the latest Wine Spectator as highly recommended, at 96 points)! I have to wait a while before drinking it, but I'm sure it will be worth it!

I really wanted to have lunch at the winery's restaurant, but it was closed for remodeling, so the winery recommended we dine at a nearby restaurant called Boccon di Vino. They had made reservations for us, and it turns out that they had an arrangement with the restaurant to showcase certain dishes with Poggio Antico wines, I think as a way to make up for the fact that the winery's own restaurant was closed. The views from the restaurant were stunning, and I wished it had been warmer so that we could have sat outside. Still too windy and overcast to be pleasant. The food was as wonderful as the view. We had a bottle of Poggio Antico brunello riserva, 2003 (incredible), shared two antipasti (a delicious chicken liver crostini, shown on the top left above) and an amazing crispy bread shell with bacon and cheese), then I had the gnocchi with cheese and truffle sauce (shown to the right) and Steve had a luscious papardelle with chianina sauce. (Chianina showed up a lot on menus in Tuscany. We found out later it is a breed of cow that is huge and white. Very tasty.)

After lunch, we went back to Montepulciano and did some more "exploring". We'd brought our brand-new iPad on the trip, and we thought that wi-fi would be plentiful, but we were sorely mistaken! Wi-fi is something of a rare delicacy in Italy, as it turns out, thanks to some onerous anti-terrorism laws restricting public access to networks! And 3G (cellular data) works well, but once your iPad 3G account runs dry, you must have internet access via wi-fi in order to add more! Suffice it to say, we found wi-fi in a computer store, and persuaded them to let us use it! (THEN, of course, after walking all over town and setting up a new 3G account, we found out that Locanda di San Francesco DOES have wi-fi. But they don't advertise it, you have to ask...)

After our adventure, we had our now-traditional drink at the wine bar at sunset then got ready for dinner. We had heard a lot about the restaurant, Le Logge del Vignola, and it did not disappoint. This place was special, from the decor, to the service and food; I'd definitely recommend this place for a birthday, anniversary, or romantic date night. We had the tasting menu with wine pairings here, which consisted of a deliciously smooth liver pate that was almost too beautiful to cut into, paired with a late harvest white, a cannoli with wonderful rich cingiale sauce paired with a Rosso di Montalcino, a very tender and tasty lamb chop with zucchini tart paired with a Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, and a chocolate cigar filled with mousse, with a side of cotton candy and a glass of rum (picture above). This meal was probably one of the most expensive of our trip, but well worth it!

Italy Trip Day 6 - Avignonesi Winery Tour & Montepulciano

The rain was back again after our one-day sun visitation, but we were excited to get up and start our day, since after breakfast we were headed to our first winery tour. Breakfast at the Locanda was a lot like the breakfast at Capricci di Merion, cereal, fruit, pastries, etc. There was a good selection, and it filled us up until lunch. The winery we visited this day is called Avignonesi, a producer of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, on the way to Cortona. The grounds and caverns of the winery were beautiful, and the tour friendly and informative, but the best part of the day was lunch, served at a "Common Table" (a long table where everyone sits together).

I've posted a picture of the full menu above (which you can click on to make it bigger); our favorites were the pasta and the pork (picture of pasta at right). The wines they paired with each course (and which they kept on generously pouring, until we had to slow down our drinking!) were quite good as well. Much more than a token add-on after the tour, lunch was a high point of the day, a truly memorable meal!

At the end, we paired up with a young couple next to us to try both types of the vin santo dessert wine. This is some serious wine. It ages for 10 years in small oak barrels after the grapes are dried on mats for about 6 months. The result is something that resembles thick maple syrup in viscosity, with a very sweet, port-like taste. Avignonesi is known for their vin santo, they make a white and a red variety, and they sell for about €200 (!), with the white being slightly cheaper than the red. Apparently, their vin santo is always rated one of the top three dessert wines in the world. A small pour costs 25 euro for the white, 30 euro for the red. Both were fantastic, and I'm glad we were able to have that experience.

After taking a nap (all that wine made us sleepy!) and watching the sunset from the wine bar again, we went to a very casual place in town that was recommended by Cinzia called Trattoria Cagnano. This is a very big, very cheap and very crowded restaurant, with good-but-not-great examples of all the Tuscan favorites. Tonight we were sharing the restaurant with what appeared to be an American college orchestra on tour, so drunk 20-year-olds bounded all over the place. Lively, and never dull, though perhaps not the most authentic Montepulciano experience! We again had cinghiale (wild boar), this time cooked in Vino Nobile sauce over polenta (good, but not great), and a pizza with prosciutto and mushrooms (also pretty good, both pictured above). We shared another bottle of local Vino Nobile with dinner, and had tiramisu for dessert.

Italy Trip Day 5 - Monticchiello & Montepulciano

After our last breakfast at I Capricci di Merion, the sun finally came out and we toured the grounds taking pictures. We then packed up and said goodbye to the great staff. We would definitely stay here in the future, and recommend it as a good base for exploring northern Umbria.

Our next stop was the very small hill town of Monticchiello, near Montepulciano. We had about 1/2 hour to kill before our lunch reservations at La Porta, so we spent it exploring the one-horse town. The view from this area is magnificent, and to us it probably seemed even more beautiful than normal as the sun was holding on, and it was a lovely warm day. Plus, since it had been raining for about two weeks by this point, all the rolling hills in the valley below were covered in bright green grasses. It was stunning (picture of the view above). We showed up at lunch, and before we got out the words "we have a reservation" (in Italian, since we had been studying Italian for 9 months before the trip, and we, well Steve really, was very keen on using his Italian whenever he could), the hostess/owner said, in English, "yes, you are from La Locanda di San Francesco". This was true, as the owner of the inn we were staying at next had made that reservation, but it was funny that they picked up on who we were (and where we were staying!) just on sight. We were immediately shown a very nice table on the terrace overlooking that great valley view. The menu was simple, but had so many delicious sounding dishes, it was difficult to chose. We ended up picking the cured meats and cheese platter, then I had the pici with wild hare sauce and Steve had a pasta with beef and almond sauce, which he loved. We washed this down with a 500ml carafe of house red, proud of ourselves that we actually drank less than a whole bottle for lunch!

Our home for the next 4 nights was the hill town of Montepulciano. One of the things that drew me to La Locanda di San Francesco was that it was actually inside the walled city, and that you could drive your car right up to the inn. This proved to be both a good and a bad thing. It was good that we were able to get so close to the inn with the car, as we had a lot of luggage, but it was bad (at first) since it was a little confusing figuring out how to enter the town and navigate the narrow crowded streets. But once we did it the first one or two times, it was pretty easy. Watch out for pedestrians!

As soon as we pulled up to the Piazza di San Francesco, Luca came running out to greet us and help carry our luggage up to our room. I really can't say enough about Luca and Cinzia, the owners of the locanda. They were so helpful both before we arrived with making at least 5 different reservations for lunches and dinners, and once we arrived with suggestions on things to do, maps, etc. Plus the inn itself and the wine bar they run in the same building were beautiful and in such an amazing location (picture above right). I would stay here again in a heartbeat. We were lucky enough to snag Room 4, with stunning views out the bathroom window facing west over the piazza and valley below (picture of our view above left), and to the east, with some rooftops and more green hills beyond. The room itself was designed perfectly, with a beautiful king bed, armchair, armoire and desk with an internet-connected all-in-one computer. A wooden spiral staircase led up to a tiny reading room with a daybed and a sitting chair by a window overlooking the eastern view. The highlight of the room, after our showerless bathroom in Tuoro, was the massively large bathroom here. The glass-walled shower sported a state-of-the-art rainshower head, and the counter was ten feet long with two huge sinks, with an ancient-looking brick arch overhead. I love that bathroom.

After unloading our luggage we went to explore the town. We were right next to Piazza Grande (see picture to right), where they filmed some scenes from the second Twilight movie, New Moon. I think that explained the increase in teenagers and young college kids we saw during our stay, not to mention the many t-shirts and baseball caps for sale, all bearing some kind of homemade Twilight-inspired artwork! We spent several hours walking through the town, then down the hill and back up, scouting out the restaurants we already had reservations for in the coming days, and looking at shops to start on gift ideas for the folks back home. Montepulciano is loaded with gift shops! By the time we got back to the inn, we were out on our feet, and very excited to relax at the wine bar. We were offered complimentary glasses of wine and snacks as a welcome gift from Cinzia and Luca, which we enjoyed while watching the sunset.

We then got ready for dinner, and drove the short distance down the hill to La Grotta, a true standout among our many restaurant experiences, and the first tasting menu of the trip. The menu consisted of an eggplant torte with bacon (delicious), liver crostini (the first of many, many liver crostini of the trip), tomato bread soup (amazing, picture to left), pigeon ravioli (also wonderful), beef filet (perfectly cooked, but by this time, we were perfectly stuffed!), and a trio of dessert (I honestly can't remember what they were, but I remember they were good). We also enjoyed our first bottle of Vino Nobile di Montepulciano.

Italy Trip Day 4 - Truffle Hunt & Assisi

This was a day we had been looking forward to for a long time. It was truffle hunt day! We had pre-arranged to meet our truffle hunting guides at 10am in Citerna, a small town about 45 minutes north or Tuoro. Two people showed up, the owner of the truffle company, and an English speaking guide. We followed them in our car to a nearby wooded area, where we met two truffle hunters and their dogs. As soon as the dogs were let off their leashes, they were off. The one found a truffle right away, with our party of 6 right behind her.

The truffle hunter endowed me with the bisaccia, the traditional truffle bag, so each time we found a truffle, it was my job to brush off the dirt and put it in the bag. Each time a truffle was found, the hunter pulled the dog back with one hand (they get VERY excited!), and after scraping some dirt and leaves away, gives us his long hoe-like tool, which we use to pry the truffle gently out of the ground. We did this to the tune of about 7 or 8 truffles, ranging in size from a large grape to a plum or golf ball, all black. It was a very cool experience, and I'm glad we had the English speaking guide, as no on else spoke English in that group (in fact, at one point, they asked in Italian if we were French!).

After we said goodbye to the hunters and dogs, we went back to Citerna for a very informational walking tour of the city, focusing on some newly-excavated Roman and Etruscan wells (the name Citerna means "cistern"). We all stopped for a leisurely cappuccino half way through our city tour, hanging out with our guide and her boss. The view from the cafe we stopped at is on the left.

After the tour, we went to the owner's truffle workshop, which was about 15 minutes away by car. We met the owner's wife, who was our cooking instructor for the day. We got samples of cheese with truffle honey and prosecco while we visited a little truffle museum adjacent to their workshop (who knew there were so many different kinds of truffles!), then we got down to the business of cooking. The owner's wife is a great cook, and we learned several new techniques that day. We made crostini with different truffles as topping (black, white, dried, fresh, etc.), along with a parmesan truffle flan on top of baby greens (shown below).

We also made frascarelli pasta by drizzling egg yolk over flour and sifting the flour through a sieve. The resultant lumps, dropped in boiling water, cooked in about a minute! We tossed this pasta with a sauce of truffles, butter and asparagus. This was served along side baked truffle polenta with a truffle cream sauce. For the main course we made chicken roulade, which was stuffed with cheese, truffles and prociutto. This was served with truffle mashed potatoes and a balsamic drizzle. We also made a very simple sweet cake (the only thing we made that didn't have truffles) which was also very tasty. We ate the whole meal with the owner, the owner's wife and the guide, and had a very pleasant meal. I had heard that if other people want to do this activity on the same day as you, they combine groups, but it was just my husband and me that day, so that was really a special experience. Steve and I agree that this was probably our favorite thing we did on the whole trip.

After we bought tons of the company's truffle products, we said our goodbyes and drove to Assisi. We went straight to the Basilica di San Francesco, and spent some serious time looking at the art and architecture. It was beautiful there. We left Assisi in the late afternoon and went to Cortona again for dinner. This time we went to Osteria il Teatro.

The restaurant itself is very rustic and casual, but the service was fantastic and the food was even better than that. I started with the pici (traditional Tuscan handmade pasta noodles made with flour and water) with beef sauce, and moved on to lamb shank with a mushroom sauce, Steve had the stuffed gnocchi with cream sauce and chicken in a brown sauce, and we shared a chocolate Charlotte for dessert (picture to the left). With this feast, we drank a bottle of syrah from a local winery, La Braccesca.

Italy Trip Day 3 - Gubbio & Cortona

Woke up to another rainy day. It was getting a little depressing, but we didn't let that stop us from heading out early after breakfast to drive to Gubbio, the town of festivals. As luck would have it, there had been a festival in Gubbio just the day before, so the town was still decorated with hundreds of flags, and still had a festive air about it (and almost no Americans, as we discovered walking around, and hearing only Italian spoken by all). We strolled around town until we found ourselves at the funivia, a funicular, like a ski lift, that takes you up the side of a mountain to a pretty church and an amazing view of Gubbio and the valley below. It was scary, but fun, and the views were well worth the few white-knuckled moments in the air!

After getting back to solid ground, we found our stop for lunch, Taverna del Lupo. This place was more upscale than most of the other places we ate during the trip, but the service was attentive, not stuffy, and the food was excellent. We started with the aptly-named "delights of the house" (a huge selection of different antipasti), then I had the lasagne with ham, mushrooms and truffles, and Steve had a pasta with guinea fowl. We share another bottle of Sagrantino. I should take a minute here and explain that under normal circumstances, even while on vacation, we hardly ever drink an entire bottle of wine with lunch, and then yet another with dinner, but we loved the wine here (and we were indulging in two and three courses for every meal), so we couldn't help ourselves. At lunches, we keep saying that we'd order the bottle, but just not drink it all, but every time, we'd be near the end of lunch, and see the bottle empty. Oh well, I guess that's what vacations are for!

After lunch, while walking back to the car, we stopped at the 20 B.C. Roman amphitheater, which was covered in beautiful green grass. We took tons more pictures, then headed to the more famous hilltown of Cortona, famed from the book "Under the Tuscan Sun," which no doubt was also the inspiration for the sudden influx of dozens of American college girls running around, the first real American tourist presence we saw on the trip.

After some more exploring there, we were welcomed into the cheerful, pretty restaurant, La Bucaccia. The owner was quite the character, joking and laughing with the whole restaurant, and at one point used our camera to take unique portraits of each of us by pointing the lens through our wine glasses! The food here was every bit as memorable as the atmosphere. Steve had an antipasti of cured meats, then ravioli with meat sauce, followed by a vegetable flan alongside an enormous serving of pork liver (which he couldn't finish, even after a valiant effort), while I had tagliatelle with wild boar and a tender but unremarkable roasted pork with potatoes. This all paired very nicely with a bottle of Rosso from Avignonesi, a winery we'd soon be touring...

Italy Trip Day 2 - Montefalco & Deruta

We woke up jet-lag early, and were greeted with another grey wet Umbrian day. We enjoyed our first breakfast at the inn, which consisted of meats, cheese, pastry, fruit and cereal. It was included in the incredibly low price of our room, 180 euro a night, but did get boring after about the third day. After loading up our tourist gadgets (two still cameras, a video camera and a gps) we headed to our first hill town, Montefalco. The town is very small, but picturesque, even in the rain (the main piazza is shown above).

We explored the side streets for a while, taking a ton of pictures with our new SLR camera (which we were still learning how to work), and then took refuge from the rain in a tiny restaurant called L'Alchimista. We started with an antipasti of cured meats and cheese and a melted cheese and truffle concoction. We then moved on to pasta, ravioli with pea puree and rabbit sauce for me (picture below), and wild boar tagliatelle for Steve. We shared a bottle of Sagrantino di Montefalco, which was the first time Steve or I ever tried this type of wine. We fell in love!

After Montefalco, we moved on to Deruta to look at the town's famous hand-painted ceramics. We bought some wonderful pieces from one of the shops, and then, since we had a couple hours to kill before our dinner reservation, we stopped in Perugia to buy some chocolate. For dinner, we ate one of the best meals of the entire trip, at L'Antico Forziere, near Deruta. We had scrambled eggs with truffle, a bright green and amazingly flavorful broad bean risotto (shown below), and for secondi, pork and beef, each with roasted potatoes. We had another bottle of Sagrantino, and a chocolate and pear crepe for dessert. Start to finish, we now agree that this was probably our favorite meal, and given the delights awaiting us in other towns to come, that's really saying something!

Italy Trip Day 1 - Tuoro Sul Trasimeno

My husband and I recently got back from an amazing 2 1/2 week trip to Italy. The vast majority of our trip was spent visiting small towns and villages in northern Umbria and Southern Tuscany. The main focus of our trip was (not surprisingly) food and wine. Since we had so many wonderful meals and drank so much good wine, in addition to visiting many beautiful towns, I thought it would be best to do a day by day account, even though that means I need to do 16 separate posts. This may take a while!

We arrived at FCO (Rome's Airport) on Friday, May 14th, in the morning after an uneventful overnight flight from the US. Thanks to frequent flyer miles, we were able to fly business class, which was quite nice, and afforded us the opportunity to get a few hours sleep before our adventure began. Getting our bags, clearing customs and getting the rental car was a breeze, as was exiting the airport and getting on the A1, the main toll road going north and south through this area of Italy (this last part was made easy by this helpful article on Slow Travel Italy).

We were greeted with rainy overcast skies, and I was a little worried that the GPS we brought would not be able to find a satellite, but after a few minutes of turning it on, it found where we were, and we were on our way to our first destination, Tuoro sul Trasimeno, a small lake town in northern Umbria near Cortona (picture of the outside of the inn is above). We got there pretty quickly (probably about 2 1/2 hours), and found our home for the next 4 nights, I Capricci di Merion. This lovely inn is just actually in town (which was surprising, since from the photos on the website, it looked like it was in the country), but felt somewhat isolated because of the landscaping and views of the lake in the distance.

We checked in and were shown our room, the Puccini Room (shown at left), which was a very pretty suite on the second floor. It had a small sitting area/kitchen, a bedroom with a wood burning fireplace, and a bathroom with a big jacuzzi tub (but no shower, which was really the only negative about this room). After dropping off our bags, we went into town in search of a restaurant that was still serving lunch (it was about 2pm at this point).

We found a quaint place called il Teatro above an old theater. It was tiny, but cozy, maybe 8 tables, and it looked like the older woman who waited on us (and spoke no English) was also the one cooking the meals. We had a simple but delicious meal of pasta (ravioli with tomato cream sauce for my husband, and tortelloni with truffle sauce for me), and headed back to the inn to check out the "wellness area" before dinner.

The hotel has built a spa type facility which showcases a beautiful jacuzzi, sauna, and rain shower system. Couples can reserve the whole area to themselves for an hour at a time for no charge. We were able to snag a free hour and relaxed in the jacuzzi for a while (which made us even more tired). We reluctantly left when our hour was up, and got ready for dinner in the hotel's dining room.

The dining area of this inn is beautiful at night, colorful upholstered chairs, soft lights, and a harpist completes this romantic experience (though my husband expressed some uneasiness with the pop leanings of the harpist's repertoire)! And the food was wonderful. We shared a first course of melon and mozzarella with truffles, then I moved on one of my favorite dishes of the trip, strawberry risotto, shown at right (Steve had the gnocchi with duck sauce for his primo course). Our secondi were good but not great, a theme that unfortunately lasted most of our trip, where it seemed the most inspired flavors in Tuscany and Umbria are reserved for primi. This night we ate roast chicken with potatoes for me and beef tenderloin for Steve. All well-cooked and competent, but after the creative strawberry risotto, a bit of a letdown! We drink our first Umbrian wine of the trip, a Rosso di Montefalco, which was quite tasty as well.

After dinner, we enjoyed the fire in our beautiful fireplace and our mission was to stay awake until a reasonable time to avoid the jet lag. Staring up at the ceiling painted with an expansive glow-in-the-dark starfield with the crackling fire at the foot of the bed, we failed in our mission, and fell asleep early.