Italy Part 2

9 days in Italy cannot be covered in 1 blog, so here is the second part.  This is a picture of our pool, and with temperatures hitting upwards of 34-degrees, believe me it was used!  I joke with people that I ate and drank my way through Italy, but it’s really not a joke.  The food was amazing.

 

 

And not only was the food amazing, the wine was spectacular.  Spectacular continued as we made our way to Banfi Winery, which by the way is a castle.

So not only are the grounds stunning, this is a pretty revolutionary winery for a couple of reasons.  One, Banfi was started in 1978 by American born Italian brothers, who as outsiders, went to Tuscany and purchased a lot of land.  The following picture is actually a picture on the wall of the production facility at Banfi, that shows workers working the land beneath the castle.

Another reason this winery is revolutionary is the way they ferment their high end wines.  Fermentation is the process that turns grape juice into wine.  The fermentation unit is a combination of oak and stainless steel, which was patented by Banfi, and holds 200,000 bottles of wine.  Banfi owns 24 of them.

Banfi sells its wine in 85 countries around the world and we were lucky enough to have our wine tasting done by Bernadette, who is very knowledgeable and knows a ton of languages.

And we met the owner’s wife, Pam.  Pam is married to one of the brothers, and introduced us to the winery’s balsamic vinegar.  It was amazing.

  

We had so many good wines that day, including the 2015 Poggio Alle Mura and the Chianti Classico Gran Selezione 2013 vintage.  In my opinion, the terroir is really represented well in all the wines we tasted.  Terroir is the characteristic taste and flavor imparted to a wine by the environment in which it is produced. In other words, you get a flavor of Italy through the wine, both from the soil and the wine-making process.

My all time favorite wine was this one

The Banfi Brunello di Montalcino, which we enjoyed from the 2012 vintage.  Made 100% from the Sangiovese grape, the grapes are put through a very meticulous hand selection, and then aged in several different size barrels.  Why would they do that?  Because the size of the barrel plays a role in how much ‘wood’ is imparted on the wine.  The bigger the barrel, the softer the tannins and more subtle the oak flavor.  This wine is available here in Nova Scotia at $60 a bottle.  What a treat.  (FYI, it was considerable less over there)

As I have mentioned, Banfi ages their fine red wines in several size of barrels.  There were barrels everywhere.  To the tune of 7000 barrels.  

But this was, by far, my favorite barrel

As you can see, it’s barrel #129 and this particular barrel holds 16,000 bottles of wine.  Who else wants one?

This picture is not the shelf of at a wine store, but was taken at our villa.  It’s a picture of the dish cabinet in the dining room.  Yes, there were only 4 of us, and yes we consumed some wine.

That’s it for me this for this week… thanks for taking this journey with me.

Till next week, Cheers

Darlene