A tour of the Tuscany’s regional flavours – Florence Italy
Lower costs for accommodations in outlying areas combined with a desire to experience a more relaxed setting for vacation holidays have created a burgeoning cottage industry devoted to guiding groups of tourists not from monument to monument in Italy’s fabulous city centres, but from vineyard to vineyard all across the wine growing regions of Tuscany and Umbria.
While most visitors to this nation of city states are snapping photographs of the Trevi Fountain a select few are clinking glass after glass of Tuscany’s dark red robust Chianti. Expert sommaliers act as guide, chauffeur and interpreter to groups of primarily British and American Tourists who have chosen to eschew the normal travel velocity and replace it with a patient closer look at provincial Italian life. Small air conditioned buses trek up to hilltop villages where local people welcome both the company and commerce brought to their towns.
These are excursions for those who love wine and love life. Gregarious winery owners open a cask of Chianti reserved for only the closest family and friends as now you are among that comraderie. Fabulous vintages of Brunello di Montecino are uncorked and tasted in huge glasses that make one long desperately to lie beneath an olive tree with no agenda save to await sunset.
As is the style in small provincial Italian hotels, (especially in Florence and Tuscany) your guide and owner of the Tuscan Wine Tours identifies herself only by her first name, Rebbecca. She rouses you from what might easily have turned to lazy slumber as the tour continues on to yet another village and another vineyard.