Tuscany Wine Tour

My favorite day in Tuscany was when we went on the Chianti Country Wine Tour. Most of the time we where in Florence it rained, but it was a beautiful sunny day as we boarded the bus for the tour. We had a small private guide named Todd who was originally from sunny California. We went to two wineries and also had a great lunch in between. I knew absolutely nothing about wine before this tour and Todd taught us so much that I'm now able to appreciate wine a lot more.


Some facts I learned from the tour...

- The first winery we visited produced about 350,000 bottles of  wine a year, relatively small compared to some wineries that produce 25 million bottles of wine a year.

- Corked wine can sometimes go bad so experiments are being done to see if wine can be stored for a long period of time with screw caps.

- You should swish the wine around in your glass and then swish it around in your mouth when your first taste it.

- Sometimes they plant roses with the plants so that if the harvest has gone bad, they will see it in the roses going bad and can fix the problem before it's too late.

- French oak is the best type of wood to use for the barrels wine is stored in because it affects the wine the least and does not give it a spicy quality. The French oak barrels could hold 350 bottles of wine, cost about 700 euros, and could last only 3 to 4 years.

- There were huge Slovakian oak barrels that held 1,000 bottles of wine, cost around 7,000 euros, and lasted 25 years. There was a little door at the bottom of these barrels so that people could climb inside and scrape the wood so that the barrels could be used for so long.

- Olive trees can live up to 1,000 years.


I learned so much information about wine and the way it is made, I only wish I could remember it all.

But the countryside was beautiful and definitely what I pictured when I thought of Tuscany. The sky was a cornflower blue and the hillside was a mixture of olive greens, blues, and sunflower yellows. The hills seemed  endless and I wish I could have spent more than a day there.

Old wine bottles that after so much time had a charcoal  gray coating of dust. 

Burgundy red wine and bread with olive oil. 

The landscape changed at every turn. 

The hills were a 100 different shades of green, from dull pea green to  shockingly bright emerald green. 

The budding plant.

Our tour guide Todd. 

French oak. 

This vine plant from North America saved the crops when  the  North Americans had contaminated the seeds and caused an epidemic, killing millions of vineyards a few years ago. The plants were a translucent pear green in the sun.

Slovakian oak barrels. People can really fit through those small doors at the bottom. 

Olive trees.