Saturday, May 30, 2009

cantine aperte, montalcino, toscana 2009

At the end of may, i took off with some mates, to Montalcino to taste the 2004 brunellos. 
Every year in italy, usually the last sunday in may all of the wineries open their cellars to the public for free tasting and tours. it is called cantine aperte (open cellars) and is part of the movimento turismo del vino its quite a beautiful thing.


we left from rome early as shit, and after going the whole night without sleep, me and my mate piovanelli, were a shot pair. we were also unaware, there wouldnt be sleep this night either as the hotel we were shooting for was booked. we would have an epic time trying to sleep 4 people in jacopo's freezing, and quite miniature car later that night.

That morning, we cruised into montalcino with a couple bottles of wine to get the blood flowing. we first got to the caparzo estate followed by altesino, donatella cinelli colombini, and then tenute silvio nardi. it was pissing out like a mother fucker.  but still a good ass time in montalcino. we managed to get tours of all the estates, and after silvio nardi, we went to check out the center of montalcino. after an unsuccessful attempt to try and sleep we sat in a dark soggy car at 6am, and decided since we were up, we should check out siena before heading back to rome.  still raining harder than ever, we took a quick stroll and gunned it back to rome, and out of the fucking rain.
Here are the photo's from the trip...
 (above: starting the trip off with a stop at mario tornatora in rome, for cornetti and a textbook cappuccino. below: jeffery's Ford Fiesta that became our home for a couple of days.)
(above: photo's from caparzo, below: onto altesino)
 (below: the driver gets hungry and thirsty too! we feed jeffery on the way to donatella...)

(above: quite stoked on the bottle of 2001 silvio nardi brunello di montalcino, i picked up with jeffery... turned out to be a keeper. below: foggy and mythical palazzo in the center of montalcino. 2nd below: a shot from siena, at the end of the trip.)