Day two in Siena dawned a little too early for us. As I mentioned before, the days here
have been quite warm and the little air-conditioner we had was no match for the
latent heat built up during the day.
We did not sleep well and were a little grumpy to start the day. We had the Brunello tour to look
forward to in the afternoon but were unsure what to do with our morning. Our ticket for the Duomo the other day
also gave us entry to a related museum, so we thought we would do that, but
weren’t really looking forward to another few hours looking a hundred different
renditions of Madonna and Child.
We struck out anyway, on foot, and decided while walking
that we would add the church of San Domenico to the itinerary. We knew from our experience the day
before that the road would be hilly, but sheer number and steepness of steps up
to the church felt like penance being imposed for past sins. When we got to the church and found it
quite plain – with the exception of the display of the severed head of the
saint herself – you can imagine that this did nothing to improve the high level
of our grumpiness.
So it was with some reluctance that we entered the museum,
expectations set on low. The first
few floors were as we expected, although the obsession with the severed remains
of saints continued. There was an
entire room of reliquaries with thumbs, bones, jaws, teeth, hair, heads and
entire skeletons. It seemed the
first thing they did when a holy person died is haul out the big knives and
slice them up in to little bitty pieces.
Our day completely turned around when we got to the
panorama, though, It turns out
that at one point the Sienese thought they would expand their Duomo into the
largest cathedral in Italy. They
built one very impressive wall, several arches and hundreds of statues before
deciding the whole operation was probably a little beyond their means and
dropping it. The wall that they
did build, however, still stands and you can climb inside it, up to a height
almost equivalent of the dome. If
you climb all the way up and have nerves more steady than mine, you can get
fantastic views of the city and the Tuscan countryside beyond. It was marvelous. Even I enjoyed it, for a while, before
the old fear of heights returned with a vengeance. Fiona stuck it out, however, and got some great shots.
We had a quick lunch, knowing the bus would pick us up soon
at the hotel for the trip out to the wineries. Promptly at 2pm our chauffeur and host, Daniele, and his
assistant trainee, Guillermo, picked us up. We went a few hotels further up and picked up another
British couple before leaving the walls of the city and heading for Montalcino,
home of the famous Brunello wines.
Daniele tried his best to give us a condensed version of Sienese history
as we drove, but it was hard to listen as the scenery did a better job of
keeping our attention. The fields
were wonderful, and that’s without the sunflowers in bloom!
We reached our first winery and were joined by one more
couple, from Australia. This was
Abbadia Ardenga, a winery once owned by a pope but handed over to a charitable
cause on his death. It has been managed
by the same family for a very long time and the current head man, Mario, took
over from Daniele as our host.
Mario took an immediate shine to Fiona, grabbing her by the shoulder and
leading her away. He always made
sure he was looking and speaking in her direction. It was cute to see this little old man flirt so openly with
my wife.
We got a little tour through the wine making area where
there were some displays of old wine-making instruments and tools. But the thing we all came for was the
tasting and soon we were all seated in a small room with four glasses in front
of us. We started with a lesser
quality Rosso di Montalcino, which is a grade above table wine, but in this
case really quite drinkable. After
finishing that, they brought out the Brunellos and after teaching us how to
properly smell and swirl the wine, we got to drink. We started with a 2005 vintage which was fabulous. It got better with the 2006 and then
they brought out the big guns, the 2004, the vintage of the century, and it
would be absolutely impossible to describe the taste of this wine. There’s a radio programme in the UK
called Desert Island Discs where you have to choose ten songs to take with you
to a deserted island. If they had
Desert Island Wines, this wine would easily be my first choice.
Mario gave us a shot of grappa and some nibbles as well,
before signing the bottle of 2004 we bought and sending us on our way.
The next winery was actually inside Montalcino, where all
Brunellos need to be made to be called Brunellos. They also need to be 100% Sangiovese grapes, although there
was a scandal 5 years ago where some vintners brought in grapes from
Sicily. They need to be grown
within the municipality of Montalcino and held in the barrel at least 5
years. All this regulation means
the wine is superb. It also means
that it thrives as a small business.
There were over 200 wineries within the municipality.
The second winery concentrated more on the history of the
area and gave us a couple of Brunellos as well, although Fiona and I both
seemed to enjoy the Rosso more. We
bought a bottle of that and also took away a bottle of this winery’s prized
2004 Brunello Riserva – which we didn’t get to taste because they only had a
very limited number of bottles. We
can’t wait to find a quiet terrace somewhere, and some good pecorino cheese and
dive in.
The rest of the tour was much more lively, as we had all had
a bit to drink. The Australian
couple started a major controversy when they asked the vintners about the use
of screwcaps instead of corks. It
was all really good fun.
When we got back to our hotel we only had a few minutes to
change before making our dinner reservation in town. We had asked for a good place to sample Bistecca Fiorentina,
which is typical of the region and consists of a massive t-bone steak, at least
two to three inches thick (in our case 1.25 kg pre-cooked) and seasoned only
lightly. It’s carved up at the
table and ours was delicious. It
was so incredibly tender. It did
make the possibility of additional courses hard to imagine though.
So we went to bed that night with our bellies full of beef
and Brunello, hoping, but not expecting, a better night’s sleep than the day
before.
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