Our vacation began with what all lazy Friday mornings should start with: pancakes. After the pancakes we were able to get everyone’s luggage down and the car packed in about 1/3 the amount of time that I had allotted for it. Which meant we got to leave early! Probably a good thing because there was a little more traffic than I had anticipated and we arrived at Dulles around three hours before our flight. The Capital One lounge had just had its soft opening the day before se we decided that would be our first stop. Cecilia wasn’t too impressed with their sweets, and the gin and tonic needed to be made from gin and actual tonic, but other than that the lounge was great. After about an hour or so there we made our way to the British Airways lounge. They apparently had much better chocolate chip cookies. We loaded onto the plane… and then sat there for around three hours. Turns out there was a thunderstorm pretty much just right on top of the airport. This, of course, meant we missed our flight to Rome and had to be rebooked on the one that left a couple hours later. Heathrow continued to hold its status as my least favorite airport, but we were able to get some quick breakfast in the business class lounge. Afterwards we were able to board our flight to Rome without too much hassle. Unfortunately British Airways decided Adela’s bag needed to learn more about the Heathrow airport so it didn’t make the flight (and we wouldn’t see it again for four days!)
We finally arrived in Rome and left the airport a mere four hours after initially scheduled. Just in time for our drive up to Radda in Chianti. I think I was the only one who stayed awake the whole car ride, and I spent it just chatting with our guide – Anita. We got there in time to check in to the hotel and go grab some dinner at Giovanino’s. Apparently Giovanino used to rent her a room in Radda when she was a student in Florence… and he’s still working at the shop at 85 years old. A common theme we learned about was small cheese/meat shops slowly expanding into small restaurants and wine shops with delicious Italian food. We weren’t too hungry so we each only ordered one course – I got tagliolini with sliced black truffle, but I was very jealous of Adela who got pici all’algorno (similar to thicker and chewier spaghetti, with a delicious garlicy sauce).
The next morning we had plans to depart at around 10:30 so that some members of our traveling party could attend mass at 8:30. Turns out they rescheduled mass for 10 am, but they got basically a private organ concert because the organist was practicing. After our breakfast and cappuccinos we set off on a little walk around Radda in Chianti. Radda used to be a walled town, and its sits right in between Florence and Sienna. Many of the old watchtowers of the town have been shortened and converted in to residential buildings over the years, but if you pay attention you can still trace the wall pretty much the whole way around the town. The hilltop towns in the area were pretty much all walled since Florence and Sienna spent hundreds of years fighting over this territory. It wasn’t until the 1500’s when the Medicis conquered all of Tuscany that there was actually peace in the region.
Exercise complete, it was time for the important part of the day – wine. Anita drove us to Castello di Albola and gave us a little history lesson of the region as we went. The winery itself sits near a little castle and has an amazing view of the area. Our learning about wine was delayed by some latecomers (I was very concerned when I heard they were “only 8 km away” since in this area that could mean like a million km of driving up and down) but once everyone was there a nice little tour started. For some reason the winery was also having a modern art exhibit, so much of the estate had random pieces of art in it. Some of which we learned we not actually there for the exhibit, but were just the really random pieces of art the estate owner liked to display. After learning all about how they age their wine in oak barrels of various woods and sizes we sat down for a tasting menu and a wine tasting. With conspiratorial head bobs and nods, Anita and I decided to go for the premium tasting experience, and everyone put their order in for lunch. Turns out its just as hard to order when you legit only have two options per course. The wine and food were pretty good. Thinking back I don’t recall being told anything about the wine while we were having it, so perhaps I was a little too hard on the wineries in New York.
I snagged a bottle of red (in hindsight I should’ve gotten more, my reading comprehension failed and I didn’t realize this was our only actual wine tasting) and we hit the road for our next stop – a local cashmere goat farm. Now, I had no idea cashmere came from goats, but I certainly wasn’t going to say that at any point. We met with Anita’s friend Nora who runs the farm and learned a little bit about cashmere goats. We probably learned more about how hard it is to run a successful small scale low-margin business like cashmere goat farming than we were anticipating. Perhaps my favorite part about it was Estela thinking each goat produced 500 kg of cashmere. I’m still trying to imagine how fluffy that goat would be. After the goats we headed up to Volpaia for a different view of the local landscape and then made our way back to Radda to get ready for dinner. I did a fairly poor job of prepping the Magallaneses for how late dinner was in Italy… whoops.
Beautiful pictures Paul!