TOSCANA, ITALIA
05/11/2021
There is little more enjoyable than an off-season weekend trip to a beautiful place like Tuscany. Better yet a Wine Trip to talk to locals, learn new things and, of course, acquire some wine for consumption at home.
After hours of chatting with Lorenzo, the owner of small winery “Poggio San Polo”, over homemade specialities (deer ham from a deer shot around the corner, the cheese from a neighbouring winery, wine & olive oil from grapes and olives of the very hill we were standing on, bread homemade in the stone furnace next to us), we decided to grab a bottle (or two, or maybe 36) of the Chianti. We then proceeded to our second stop.
Our second destination was Borgo San Felice, a rather large-scale enterprise with its literal own town on top of a hill. There we also tasted four wines and decided to take three bottles each. I must say that Il Quercione Campogiovanni is definitely among the top 5 wines I have ever had, although my brother Marlo surely would know how to describe the tastes and flavours better than I do.
What a view: the nicely prepared shelf of Borgo San Felice was the polar opposite of the hut at Poggio San Polo in which we had the tasting before . Although this was undoubtedly more visually pleasing, the estate with 800.000 bottles sold in 2020 of its famous “Il Grigio” (appeared in the 2001 movie Hannibal, amongst others) naturally did not have the authenticity of a small winery.
After the tasting we were given a brief tour of the cellar, which was a pleasure to see. The highlight naturally was the “Wine Museum”, where hundreds of old and priceless bottles are kept. According to the lady who gave the tour, these are opened every now and then only for two reasons: checking the quality of wines after longer amounts of time and for famous people.
