We drove from Florence to a little village called Volpaia. Only about 44 people live the village permanently. It has become a bit of a tourist attraction and has places to stay and some restaurants and bars. We stopped and had a cold drink at the Bar Ucci cafe. On the wall on the inside was a signed picture from Sting. He apparently has a house in Tuscany and spends much of his time there. We walked around the entire village in about 10 minutes.
Here are some pictures from Volpaia.
Our next stop was Cennatoio winery. We had a tour by the wine maker, in the 1970s he bought the farm and started making wine. He is very passionate about his wine. The farm is organic. They hand pick the grapes and only use the best 70% of the grapes for his premium wines. His wines win awards and are consistently rated 90+ by the wine journalists. He was fun to talk to and his wines were really good. So good that I bought some that will shipped home.
The house and grounds were beautiful and very old.
The winemaker with his wine varieties on the left.
Our next stop was our hotel for the next three night—the Villa le Barone. It is owned by a Count and Countess and we spent 45 minutes talking to the count before dinner. We have never met, much less spoke to, a count before. He went to university at Boston College and worked for GE medical imaging. The countess was an official at the UN. They bought the villa and it became a very nice hotel. We didn’t get any pictures, but will take some and post later.