Day Four - Chianti Country

Today we headed back towards Sienna to visit Chianti country. Chianti as a wine is grown in several areas of Tuscany - some as far North as Lucca (near Pisa), some further south than Cortona and some as far east as Arrezo, but the real Chianti is the Chianti Classico and that is grown in the Chianti region between Siena and Florence - and that is where we are visiting today. The names of most of the towns in the area end with the words 'in Chianti', such as Castelina in Chianti.

You know you are drinking a Chianti Classico wine becuase it has the symbol of the region, the Gallo Nero (the black cockerel) as part of it's labelling. Rumour has it that way back in time, Florence and Siena were constantly fighting for control of the Chianti region and its fertile soils. To settle the dispute, the two cities agreed that a rider would set off from each city on horse when the cock first crowed in the direction of the other city; where the two riders met would determine the split of territory.

Now the Florentines (people from Florence) being a crafty highly intellectual bunch, starved their black cock so that he crowed much earlier, so their rider set off much sooner, got much further and basically pulled a swifty on the simple folk from Siena.

For our day trip, we started off in Castellina in Chianti and completed a circuit that also took in Greve in Chianti and Rada in Chianti. We had a fabulous lunch in Greve - nothing flash, just fantastic fresh pasta, superbly cooked with fresh herbs and Garlic, topped off with half a bottle of the local wine. I've included some photos of the towns in the blog.

The weather has been a bit unsettled this week, so we are having some amazing electrical storms, followed by a great down pour. It hasn't slowed us down too much, as they generally occur in mid to late afternoon, but it can make driving with the roof down a bit nerve racking as the weather goes from beatiful and fine, to black skies and pouring in about 3 minutes. You have to time your run fairly well, as it isn't always possible to stop as soon as the skies open to put the roof up. So far we've only got slightly wet a couple of times. The outlook from tomorrow onwards is aparently much better.

Tomorrow the plan is to go back to Cortona, then visit Gubbio which is north east of here. Saturday is a fairly long day, as we check out of the villa and drive to Bellagio on Lake Como, which we expect to take about 5 hours.

I've added a link at the side of the blog, where you can view the pictures in a bigger size and in a slide show, so check it out if you're interested.