More wine you say?

As we venture into the second half of the trip, we also venture back into the countryside. We're off to stay just outside Montepulciano at a little olive grove hideaway called Lupaia.

On on way there we stopped at the oldest winery/vineyard in Italy! (One of the oldest in the world). It's Barone Risacoli at the Borlio Castle. We booked the everything included private tour because why not? We need all the details to bring back to our 100 vine vineyard.

Here we got to learn the history of the castle, where the wine making originally started, with the first vines and wines from 1141! The castle itself had to get be rebuilt a few times due to wars n such (protect the wine!), so the castle we toured was only from the 1400s - so young and new!

This is where the first Chianti wine was made and other interesting advancements including crop rotation experiments, grafting, and figuring out how the soil most affects the grape (even identical grapes can taste different between a limestone soil or a clay or sandy soil).

They have over 700 acres of vines 😱 and were just at the end of harvesting them all by hand. We got to see the wine making process, their state of the art setup, all through to the cellars filled with the final product.

Our tour ended with a nice wine flight and lunch-wine pairing! (Of course we had to have food).Read more