… to a winery …

… near Lucca. The concierge called early in the morning to ask if we wanted to go to a local wine tasting. Two other American couples had apparently signed on for a tasting and she thought perhaps we would be interested. Having nothing else planned, we ate a hasty breakfast and drove the hour to the winery, a lovely place in the countryside near Monte Carlo called Tenuta del Buonamico. It turned out to be the source of the wine we had the night before at the hotel restaurant. We arrived first and enjoyed a glass of rose spumante while we waited. We toured the wine making rooms with the vats, the enclosed sparkling wine room, the barrel rooms with racks that can be easily rotated by a single person, and the bottling area with pallets of wine ready for shipment.

  

  

We even saw the special cellar with the owner’s private historic wine collection. The winery is one of the oldest in the area, although it dates only to 1964. We tasted eight of the wines produced here, four whites and four reds, all made from the winery’s 40 acres of vines. The tasting room dispenser was a marvel of modern machinery, chilling each bottle to its best temperature, keeping pressure in the bottle to prevent degradation for up to a month, and dispensing precisely measured tasting quantities into each glass automatically. 

  

After the wine tasting we ate a simple buffet lunch of bruschetta, a hearty salad of tomatoes and spelt (an interesting and ancient grain which tastes a little bit like barley), several types of parmesan cheese, olives, and cherry tomatoes. And of course, glasses of whichever wine we liked the best from the tasting. The meal ended with a glass of grappa, strong enough to put hair on your chest!

From the winery, we drove to the nearby small town of Monte Carlo, and walked around in the chilly, wet weather, wandering into a lovely church, and looking at the old city gates. We found a café which served hot chocolate and warmed up. On the way back to the hotel we stopped at E.Leclerc, a Walmart-type store which sells everything - just to check it out. A few of the items we discovered were a sandwich toaster, and, of course, a pizza oven! This is Italy, after all…

  

Back at the hotel, we changed into our bathing suits at the spa and soaked in the warmly heated indoor pool. A lovely end to the day!