One of the best reasons to visit Tuscany is definitely the wine!! We’ve been enjoying Italian wine from the grocery store (some even from Tuscany) but today (Sept. 20) we decided to try some truly local wine from the Tuscany wine region of Montecarlo. Montecarlo is known for having the best Tuscan white wines because they use semillon, sauvignon blanc and Pinot bianco grapes while most of the other Tuscan areas use trebbiano and malvasia grapes. Our wine tasting palettes are not that sensitive to tell the difference but we were certainly up for the challenge!
Our drive to Montecarlo took us back down the windy, steep road that brought us to Benabbio and for a Saturday, it was quite busy. It didn’t take us long before we were in the heart of the vineyards. We decided to go directly to the old town of Montecarlo to get a detailed map of the region. The tourist info agent was very helpful and he pointed out 5 good places to visit on a Saturday (not all vineyards are open of the weekend). Back at the car we came up with a good plan to visit all 5, ending with a vineyard that had a good restaurant.
First up on our wine tour was a little wine shop very close to our parking spot called Chicco D’uva. This shop wasn’t at a vineyard but it did offer wine and olive oil tastings from a vineyard called Agricola Stefanini Tronchetti. We tasted a white chardonnay and a rosé. Both were delicious so we bought one bottle of each! Off we went to vineyard recommendation # 2 which was called Fattoria La Torre (about 3 minutes from our first stop!!). Unfortunately no one answered the cellar door so that stop was a bust!
Our third vineyard was again just down the street from La Torre. This cellar door was very interesting – the actual door had shattered glass and a big piece of plywood covering the broken door. We rang the bell and were shown into a lovely tasting area! This vineyard, called Tenuta del Buonamico, had way more wines to taste but we stuck with whites and rosé. Margie tasted a sparkling moscato and liked it very much. The rest of us tasted a sparkling wine and a very yummy chardonnay blended with a crazy number of grapes! We bought 2 bottle of that wine and Margie bought a moscato.
The last vineyard stop, Fattoria del Teso, was the most picturesque of them all – it totally matched my imagined Tuscany vineyard!! Fattoria del Teso sits on about 70 hectares of beautiful Tuscan countryside, surrounded by pines and cypresses and the farm dates back to the mid 1200. The grape wines stretched out in all directions as we drove up the lovely driveway to the main tasting area. This vineyard usually requires guests to book in advance for a proper tasting but we didn’t know that so they accommodated us with a brief tasting (they were busy with a group of tasters!). We only tried 2 wines here (a white and an orange wine – not a rosé) and ended up buying one bottle of the white.
We finished our wine tasting adventure with lunch at Fattoria IL Poggio. This vineyard had a large restaurant that catered to bus tour groups. It was very busy so we had our lunch (which was very good) and then headed back to our home away from home. It was a great day of wine tasting and we were happy to head home with our haul of yummy wines!
Crimson Kathryn and her crew 