We woke up in our B & B and enjoyed a nice continental breakfast with both warm and cold milk (this confirmed that our conversation with our Italian B&B owner the day before went as poorly as we suspected).
Today we took a day trip from Siena to Chianti Classico country (aka, black rooster country), for a wine tour and stop in San Jimmy Johns (actually, San Gimignano).
After a very hot, hilly, and winding drive in an 8-person van, we arrived at small winery run by a chemist that is a consultant for other wineries. He gave us a tour of his small facilities and taught us how to evaluate a wine (look, sniff, and taste). The winery was called Poggio Amorello.
After five samples, we were feeling good to move on to San Gimignamo. This town is also in Tuscany, it is smaller than Siena, but is known for its towers (14 of 70 or so are still standing). They were built, basically, to show off. We didn't get much time in the city, unfortunately, but we did get to have delicious gelato from world champion gelato makers, which was nice. We also got a 'tour' of the main strip, but we're pretty sure the guide was making most of it up ("listen to the walls and doors, they speak to you").
We left and went to a second winery about 20 minutes away. It was a bigger winery, but family run for centuries. The head honcho was a very colorful, older guy. He was showing us again how to taste the wine, but with a much, much more relaxed attitude (e.g., to smell it, he told us to hold the glass below your nose, look down at you pee-pee area, and whiff). We were disappointed not to get the lasagna promised at the ticket sales office, but we got some sort of tasty carrot & potato Italian stew/soup instead.
We finally loaded up in the van for the trip home 7 hours after we started the tour. One thing about these tours, you can't pick the other tour members. The other 4 passengers were like, literally all 20 year old girls from NY and, like, literally, the tour changed their lives because the literally did not like red wine before, literally.
All in all, a fun day. The drives were long, but we got to do a few things on the tour that we otherwise wouldn't have done on our own.
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