Greve in Chianti

So...as promised in my last blog I am going to write a little bit about the place and area we actually stayed....we arrived after San Marino at a beautiful place called Terre di Baccio.....we were met by the owner who showed us the property from the beautiful swimming pool to the vineyards and breakfast area, stunning....let me actually share some pics...

The main house

Swimming pool

Driveway

As you can see, pics talk for themselves, typical tusan style...i love these stone houses, which are actually farmhouses....the ones that are painted, they were nobel people's houses....interesting.

So....over the next 4 nights this is where Kim and I stayed and from where we did all our trips. Its a very central area for the places we wanted to see...Siena, Firenze and of course the Chianti area. One evening Ilaria, the owner, even organised a wine tasting of their wines for us.....I know i mentioedn this in my previous blog, but here is some more details, we were invited to their wine cellar which is over 500 years old, when we entered through the wooden doors, I was blown away, she had made it so beautiful, there were 4 couples, in the middle she had a cold meat and cheese platter, the typical Tuscan cheese, pecorino and the typical cold meats like cinghale (wild boar) salami and fennel salami....green olives and some round crackers type snack, looked like a ring. Of course I could not taste the wine, but i enjoyed the snacks and her stories about this property. She showed us pics of when they bought the farm, what it looked like etc, they had aquird it in 2001 and restored it until 2006, they really put all their heart into it, one can feel that. The whole tasting lasted almost 1.5hrs, it was really enjoyable....now let me share some pics....

Wine cellar with the Tuscan snacks

Wine cellar

Let me shar some info which we learnt....Chianti is of course the area where the wine is produced as well as the % of sangiovese grapes...a very interesting fact though.....if you peoduce Chianti in the Chianti area, which is the area between Florence and Siena and you use the correct %, they you are allowed to call it Chianto Classico, if you produce the wine outside the area but with the correct %, then it is a Chianti. So Chianti Classico comes from the area. Now you might ask...what is the correct %, one must use at least 80% Sangiovese grapes and the remainder can be a mix, of course you can also use 90 or even 100% Sangiovese grapes.....i thought that was very interesting, the remainder is made up of Merlot and Cabernet.

Chianti Classico also has a symbol...very famous...the Gallo Nero....the black cock.....let me show you.....

Chianti Classico symbol

The Chianti wine used to be a table wine and typically we all know it as coming in that round bottom bottle...then it was of inferior quality and it was a table wine, light and should be drunk with food....now a days Chianti more often comes in the normal glass bottle cause the rounded bottle is just too expensive and the quality is of much much higher standards....they are not all light wines anymore, or how they used to be called...table wines....Kim and I like the Chianti wine, light and easy drinking.....and yes, we even bought some of the traditional bottles for home....

Traditional Chianti bottle

I hope that was not too much info...as you can see we lige Chianti, in fact we live the whole of the Tuscany, we can go back over and over again, definitely NOT getting tired....its breath-taking.....so for now....Good-bye from me....next blog will be a short summary of the pizza places we have visited in Italy and who was the winner and looser......

 

 

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