Il dolce far niente...: Volterra, San Gimignano, and Wine Tasting with the Barbatos!

Volterra

Me and the roomies

One of my favorite days in Florence was spent with Kate and Jess and their parents for an outing to the hill towns of Volterra and San Gimignano, and then a wine tasting at my favorite place in Tuscany. We had to first go to the town of Poggibonsi - if you remember from one of my first posts this is the town Courtney and I think Tigger is from :). From there we were picked up by our guide in a snazzy Mercedes van for our first stop in Volterra!

If you have ever seen the Tuscan landscape you know that it is very hilly and gorgeous. There are tons of beautiful views of the countryside and periodically you will see a hill town perched at the top of one of the many mountains.

View from Volterra

The one bad thing about all of these hills though is that winding up and over them in a car can make you realllllly nauseous. No one was immune to it and by the time we wound our way up to Volterra (about an hour ride) we were all gasping for air when we burst out of the van.

Ok so here is some history on Volterra - other than it being known as the home of the Volturi from Twilight (what, what Twihards?), it is an ancient Etruscan hill town that has most of it's original walls in tact. It houses one of the best collections of Etruscan artifacts in all of Italy. The city is also famous for it's alabaster. There are tons of stores with beautiful alabaster pieces and they even used alabaster instead of stained glass in their Duomo! While we were in Volterra we didn't have a chance to go to many museums, but we were able to see the Duomo, the Baptistry, and the Roman Amphitheater. The Duomo and the Baptistry were very stark on the outside, but the Roman Amphitheater was beautiful and is one of the best preserved in Italy.

Roman Amphitheater

This is a sign for a store made out of alabaster - so pretty!

Another thing Volterra is known for is their Porta dell'Arco, which is the original Etruscan archway leading into the city. It dates back from the 3rd-2nd century BC and there were 3 heads of deities carved on it, but after all the erosion they now just look like 3 stone balls.

Porta dell'Arco

Going back to the Volturi, once Jess and her mom told me that this was where they were from we went on a hunt to find the piazza where Bella runs through to save Edward. If you've seen it, there is a big fountain in the middle, but we could not find it. We were disappointed and when I got home that day I tried looking up the piazza and apparently they filmed the movie in another town, Montepulciano. But funnily enough the main piazza there didn't have a fountain either, they created one. Now why they didn't film in a fountainless Volterra I'll never know, but at least we didn't miss it!

One last cute thing we saw in Volterra were these little gifts on the doors:

Little bags of gifts with Santas in them

Since it was the day before the feast of the epiphany we assumed that these were little gifts from La Befana. It was really cute and it made the town seem very quaint and still relatively untouched by tourists (it is unbelievably tough to get to Volterra with strange bus times and no trains).

Wine Tasting

After a few hours in Volterra we went to Tenuta Torciano Winery in San Gimignano. I have been to this winery a couple times before, once in 2007 and once with Courtney in the fall. I absolutely adore this winery - the owner, the food, and the wine are all delicious! I recommended it for Jess and Kate and I was so happy that I could come along for this trip and go back myself!

We walked into the winery and we were the only people there since it is winter and this is the sight that greeted us:

Well, this is actually after the tasting, but these glasses were just for 3 of us, the rest of the table was just covered in glasses!

Our host, Pier Luigi, gave us a lively introduction to the food and wine we were going to drink and showed us the proper way to taste the wine. We were meant to have a taste of each food on our antipasti plate and sip each wine to see what we like paired together. It was almost hard to keep up with all of the wine and food - Jess was having no issue with it, but for some reason I couldn't keep up! We were then brought out a bowl of Mama's ribolita, a traditional tuscan vegetable soup.

all of my food and glasses

We were having so much fun listening to Pier Luigi, eating, and drinking and I think this was my favorite experience at the winery. Anytime you are with a big group who are excited and happy it's just infectious so we were laughing the whole time. Pier Luigi loved us and even uncorked his World Champion bottle of wine that costs a whopping 131 euros. It was amaaazzzzzing! I don't think I've ever tasted wine that expensive and from being here before I know he doesn't pop that for just anyone!

We were all so full after our antipasti and ribolita, but we had one more dish coming our way: the famous lasagna!! Now, this lasagna is amazing and both Kate and Jess have heard me declare that it is the best lasagna I have ever had. They were very skeptical until they tried it and couldn't believe how good it was. Apparently it's a combination of veal (I felt bad when I heard that), not using ricotta, and the big kicker, TRUFFLE oil sprinkled on top that makes it the best.

Mama's Lasagna

After all of the food and while I was trying to finish all of my wine, we were served his grappa, which is also not a normal thing. I think because both Jess and Kate's dads were really bonding with Pier Luigi that he wanted to share it with us. I absolutely despise grappa so with very little convincing I was able to pawn it off on Jess's dad :)

It was an absolutely amazing tasting and I would recommend it wholeheartedly to anyone who is looking for an authentic Tuscan wine tasting experience!

I'm an honorary Barbato :)

San Gimignano

Ok, so one thing we learned from this trip is that you should never go to a winery before going sightseeing. To give us credit, we didn't plan on that happening, but our driver convinced us that we needed more time than we allotted in each town so because our appointment at the winery was at 2 we had to push San Gimignano until after. I'm just happy I have been to this town once before since my second trip definitely went by in a blur!

We arrived in San Gimignano a little less than sober (ha) and I think we were all a little obvious with that fact - oh well, at least we had fun! I immediately went to a wine store to purchase a couple wines for later and the dads pulled out their Italian cigars. Kate was in charge of touring us, thank goodness, so she was able to get us to the main sights.

San Gimignano is another small hilltown in Tuscany. It is known for it's towers that you can see from miles outside of the town:

View of the towers from our drive

San Gimignano was actually a stop on the pilgrim route from Northern Europe to Rome so, because of this, it became a very prosperous town. The 14 towers left out of the original 76 were built in the 13th century and were built as both private fortresses and symbols of the owner's wealth. It's very impressive that they were able to keep 14 towers standing because most towers in the other towns of Tuscany were taken down, whether it be from wars, urban development or natural causes.

Our tour of San Gimignano took us to the Duomo, the main piazzas, and of course we did some shopping along the way. We actually spent most of our time watching the gorgeous sunset over the Tuscan countryside.