Tuscany: Full-Bodied Italy
By Rick Steves
Filming a new TV show on Tuscany, we drop in on a family team of vintners just as the mother empties a last bucketful of purple grapes into the dump truck. The load tumbles from the truck into a grinder which munches through the bunches, spitting stems one way and juice with mangled grapes the other. Following pipes of this juice into their cellar, the son explains that wine-making is labor-intensive "but right now…the grapes are doing all the work."
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| Greve in Chianti — fly paper for Tuscan tourists. |
And as the new grapes ferment, we taste the finished product. A key word for your Tuscan travels is corposo — full bodied. Lifting the elegant glass to my lips, I sip while enjoying the pride in the eyes of the family. Satisfied, I say "corposo." They say, "Si, bello."
On the tip of every wine lover's tongue in Tuscany is Brunello di Montalcino. The Tuscan wine road leads through several well-known wine towns, but sun, soil, and tradition mingle on the slopes below the hill town of Montalcino to make the most prized wine of the region.
Greve, basking in Under the Tuscan Sun fame, is a big tourist draw. I had to stop at this façade of Tuscan clichés. As Tuscan Sun fans flood Greve to sample its famed prosciutto, entrepreneurs are ready. A huge prosciutto shop, newspaper clippings on its door and samples under glass, is primed — with enough parking and toilets to handle the steady flow of big tour groups.
I found a Tuscany of high contrast: either extremely touristy or seductively in the rough. The evocative landscape is dotted with fortified farms, reminders of battles fought between Florence and Siena centuries ago. Many of the once-elegant old manor houses are still inhabited by noble families who now rent rooms to travelers to help cover costs. Agriturismos, as these often grand farm estates are called, offer some of Italy's best accommodation values. Some come with swimming pools and truffles tours. Others are rustic working farms.
To avoid the tourist crush and show the simple elegance of Tuscan living, we stay at an old manor house… with no swimming pool, run by the aristocratic Gori family. Signora Gori takes us for a walk through her farm. As a horrendous chorus of pig squeals comes from the rustic slaughterhouse, she says, "This is our little Beirut." Without the audio track, the video footage is perfectly serene.
Entering a room dominated by a stainless steel table piled with red slabs of pork, we begin our tour of the making of prosciutto. Burly men in aprons squeeze the blood out of hunks of meat the size of dancing partners. Then they coat the hamhocks in salt to begin a curing process that will last several months. While the salt helps cure the meat, a coating of pepper seals it. In spooky yet fragrant rooms, racks of hamhocks age. A man, dressed and acting like a veterinarian, tests each ham by sticking it with a needle made of horse bone and giving the needle a sniff.
The lady of the house takes us past a sty dominated by a giant pig named Pasticcinetto ("the little pastry") and into the next barn, where fluffy white lambs jump to attention in their hay. Backlit, it's a dreamy almost Biblical scene. Cradling a baby lamb, she explains they use unpasteurized milk in making their pecorino cheese: "To follow Italy's strict health safeguards, we must really know our sheep."
This type of production — close to the land and animals — is part of Italy's Slow Food movement (www.slowfood.it). Proponents believe there's more to life than increasing its speed. Producing and serving food in the time-honored way may be more labor-intensive and expensive, but it makes tastier food. And just as important, consumers are more closely connected to their food. They know who made it and how.
That night at dinner we're joined by the rest of Signora Gori's family. Her two sons dress and act like princes home on break from some Italian Oxford. We sit down to a classic Tuscan table — a sense of harmony, nothing fancy and no hurry. With a glass of good red wine, we nod to each other, knowing we've found the real art of Tuscany. Dipping our bread in extra virgin olive oil and savoring each slice of prosciutto, it seems so right that great wine goes best with simple food.
Full and content, we sip port and enjoy a backgammon board that has provided after-dinner fun for 200 years in this very room. Surrounded by musty portraits putting faces on this family's long lineage, alongside a few guns used in Italy's 19th-century fight for independence, we drink to good living — Tuscan-style.
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Rick's Tuscany Show
Follow Signori Gori around her Tuscan farm, make some prosciutto, and stay for dinner (from Rick's PBS TV series). See our Airtimes page for local listings.
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