Pooja and I were traveling through Europe this April and spent a good part of our trip in Tuscany. We stayed close to Firenze/Florence at a B&B in the countryside. The stay itself remains one of the best vacations we have taken and I highly recommend it.
A good part of our stay was spent driving to different parts of Tuscany and picking up on the foods and wines of the region. Just as many books might tell you, Brunellos from Montelcino are fantastic. I happened to try the Banghi at a restaurant in Fiesole, with their pasta in wild boar sauce, and the wine and meal rank among the best I've ever had.
The interesting things about wines in Italy is that the governing bodies -- DOC/DOCG -- tightly control the vintages of wines. E.g., Brunellos that you can buy are already aged 5 years, and they age well for another 10. You can't even buy a Brunello in the market that hasn't been aged 5 years. Similarly, the Chiantis are aged at least 2 years.
The wine tour at Vignamaggio was great. Someone claimed that the estate was the birthplace of the da Vinci's "Mona Lisa". The wines were great too. We lucked out here -- we had reached Greve pretty late in the evening and the tourism office there was able to get us a wine tour reservation at a pretty short notice.
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