Inside, we met our host for the tour, and got our first look at the castle which houses the business.
A view from the castle's "front yard."
Looking down at the road which brought us here. We saw lots of this kind of tree -- all pruned within an inch of their lives. I don't know what kind of tree it is, or what it looks like at the end of the summer.
It's always windy, on the hill top.....
There's a courtyard in the middle of the castle, and a covered walkway to one side. We were told the artist who did the painting also has work in the Uffizi in Florence. Cool..... No one in the USA works or lives in a place with this kind of history......
Turning left from the same place I took the previous two shots -- here's the courtyard.
The well still works, and is used for watering the garden.
The date over the doorway to the garden says AD 15-something. Less than 1600, but I can't make out the character that comes after MD.
Looking the same way, up a bit higher. Love the way the arching vines echo the open spaces above them.
We have gone through the gate in the courtyard wall, and find ourselves on this pleasant terrace.
The company makes wine and olive oil. The owners have an apartment in the castle, but were not present when we were there.
I'm sure it would cost the earth to bury the wires. I find poles and wires jarring, in this otherwise relatively timeless landscape. (Timeless in the scope of written history.....)
Old pavement. Imagining the people who have walked here before me......
Looking back at those same arches between the courtyard and this side of the castle.
Looking down at another terrace, on the other side of the wall edging the terrace we're standing on. That well is no longer in use.
I wonder if these hills will be solid green, in summer.
April is not an ideal time to visit olive oil producers. Nothing is happening. The trees have already been pruned, they are not in bloom, there are no visible incipient olives.... Now there is only waiting. The olives are picked in the fall, and whisked offsite for pressing. We learned that it is often the case that producers of fine olive oils do not have their own press. The volume of their production doesn't make it cost-effective. So the olives are taken to someone else's mill for pressing, which means there is really nothing to see but the trees, and the bottled oil from last year's olives.
Another thing I learned is that the production of wine and olive oil go hand in hand, in Tuscany. The trees and the vines like slightly different microclimates. The one is happy where the other doesn't thrive. Growing both makes it possible to have two crops in one landscape. We also learned that the money is in wine; some producers are happy when they break even on the olive oil. They continue to produce olive oil because it is traditional, and because they are proud to produce a fine product, rather than because they make money doing so.
Wine is the money maker. It requires big vats and barrels and casks, which are present all the time, so there is always something to look at, even when there is no activity.
So we saw cellars, with a wide variety of different ways to keep wine.
Big barrels were the most common.
Back through the courtyard, to the tasting room.
One of the owners' family members is an artist. He designs wine labels. If I did abstract painting, I think I would paint with these techniques. I love all the layers and textures.....
As with the Parmigiano Reggiano, and the balsamico tradizionale, fine local wines and olive oils also have to be tasted and tested and certified as meeting the proper standards to be sold as ... Chianti Classico, for example. Only products produced properly, and ending with the proper result (as certified by expert tasters) can carry the marks or words that indicate they are the genuine article. We saw the black rooster which means true Chianti Classico on the bottles here.
The olive oil was tasty. I know so little about wine that all I can say is "It tastes like wine."
More interesting labels, on the sort of very big jar that used to be used for storing olive oil. Nowadays (thanks to various sanitation regulations) olive oil is in stainless steel, if it's not in glass. We were told the old timers say that oil which was stored in these ceramic jars tasted better than the ones stored in stainless steel.
Those are big bottles of wine; that's a big jar. I would have easily fit inside it.
In order to facilitate chronological traversal of these posts, here is a link to the next post.
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