37 Frames : Under the Tuscan Sun, 3 Gelatos & the Grappa (part Due)…

“Italy is a dream that keeps returning for the rest of your life.” ~ Anna Akhmatova

So after Part Uno we were on the road heading towards truffles, truffles, truffles in search of a man called Marco, but for today’s post first we’re hitting the rewind button (pausing the tartufo obsession just for a bit)  as we reminiscence on our days in The Van. With the gang. In the stunning hill towns sprinkled through Umbria and Tuscany. We are firmly under the Tuscan sun. And yes, there are more sunflowers (you’ve been warned), more Castle dreaming, vino, a colorful cast of characters, details, piazza’s and of course gelato. Lots of gelato.  At least 3. All the while producing another little installment of our Italian slice of life. For we are on the road to Pienza, Montalcino + Cortona. Andiamo!

Here we are waking up to another beautiful morning in our castle…Life is hard. Sigh.

And good morning to Max. Our fabulous tour guide and lover of all things I-talian. He’s ready to go and even let us steal the ipod for a while. Although his soulful playlists were infinitely more soothing than when our My Chemi hijack went down…

Hurtling along country roads, little lanes and windy cobble stone streets we continue being dedicated to the art of Drive by Shooting. Random shots out the car window catch glimpses of daily life…

And then it happened. You knew it would…A field of sunflowers suddenly materialized before us. Breathtaking. Astonishing. Much smaller in statue than those of Sismano. Everyone was out of the van before it had stopped. Cameras were flying… Indulge us…

Even the nuns stopped…it was glorious.

And then we arrive in Pienza! One of our new favorite places ever and we had no idea we’d be heading there. In 1996, UNESCO declared the town a World Heritage Site, and a little later in 2004 the entire valley, the Val d’Orcia, was included on the list of UNESCO’s World Cultural Landscapes. Understandably so. We wanted to stop at every turn in the road. This charming village is widely known as the “ideal” city of the Renaissance, the creation of the great humanist Enea Silvio Piccolomini who later became Pope Pius II. Piccolomini had the money and influence to transform his birthplace village, into what he considered a Utopian city should be, exemplifying the principles and philosophy of classical times and of the great Italian Renaissance. Thus, Pienza became the realization of a dream!

And just beautifully, we noticed that all the streets are named with words like “love”, “kiss” and “good luck”? So there we wandered around Via dell’Amore, Via del Bacio… and Via Della Fortuna. Just so us. Another of Max & Cris’s infamous soul places. And now one of ours, too. The details…the doors…the windows…the door knobs…the polka-dot bike…the Vespa… I went berserk. We were so enraptured we only had one gelato here…

The Duomo or Cattedrale dell’Assunta hosts very fine paintings by the most renowned artists of the period, while the octagonal bell tower standing over the ancient crypt with the same octagonal shape points to the sky. And it was around this time we were feeling like gelato o’clock.

The imposing Palazzo Piccolomini to the right of the Duomo has a fantastic Loggia with a sweet hanging garden from which you can enjoy unique and breathtaking panoramas of the Val d’Orcia Valley, from Montalcino to the Mount Amiata. Palazzo Piccolomini was even used by Franco Zeffirelli for filming some scenes of his famous and romantic movie Romeo and Juliet, the location of the first encounter between the two lovers at the Capulets’ home. Awesomma.

But Pienza is also the city of cacio: cheese! So you just know how happy Trace is right now… The Pecorino of Pienza is a tasty cheese made from sheep’s milk, renowned worldwide and delicious. The town streets are full of small charming shops selling a large quantity of various types of pecorino, from fresh to aged pecorico, that you can taste together with a number of other typical local products, such as fine wines, spices, pici (pasta) and so on.  And which you can smell a MILE AWAY!!! In September, don’t miss the famous Fiera del Cacio, a great festival dedicated to pecorino cheese and other traditional products, that you can taste freely. Ohhhh…a couple of months too early. Sigh. During the festival you can also enjoy a folkloristic and amusing game of ancient origins. It’s the Palio del Cacio Fuso, where the players of each town district have to pull and roll an entire round of pecorino cheese around the fuso, a wooden spindle located at the centre of the main square. No, Trace, we’re not doing it at the local park come September…assolutamente no. And so the first of many homages to Cacio…(just wait til Norcia and the salami…)

And finally pre-lunch gelato before we wander back through the quaint and timeless Pienza streets.

Yes, Pienza seemed it had been caught in a time warp and we were loving it. The only way to get us moving and on our way??? Tempt us with culinary delights and a spot of wine-tasting. On the way we passed that dramatically stunning, iconic and one of the most beautiful and oft-photographed chapels in Tuscany, the Cappella of Vitaleta. We will be back one day for sunrise or sunset to catch this scene in the right light. Of that we are sure. Certamente.

Next stop… Montalcino. Which we all practiced a lot in the car.

The estate, run by Maddalena Cordella was established in 1998 when Maddalena’s father, Orlando (my new friend…), transferred part of the bigger family estate to her. Earnest, honest winemaking that’s done the old-school way, passed on from father to daughter. The farmhouse stands on a hill among green vineyards and surrounded by the Tuscan hills of Val D’Orcia.

The Cordella Estate is a modest one, with just under 15 acres of Sangiovese Grosso vineyards, a small cottage where both Rosso di Montalcino and Brunello di Montalcino is vinified and a renovated farmhouse where the wine is aged.

The grapes grown on the estate’s vineyards since 1998 had been sold, but in 2006 Maddalena, together with her father, decided to vinify a part of the grapes produced. About 2 hectares of the carefully maintained vineyards are now assigned to winemaking. The grapes undergo thorough testing and modern agronomic practices and benefit from Maddalena’s father experience. Just a little background… So with that said and done it was time to taste, eat and unwind…All before any mention of GRAPPA!!!

A welcoming toast with Orlando…

We head inside for lunch and listen to Maddalena speak with such affection, pride and passion about her family, her wines and the territory she lives in. It is her philosophic view of running the estate, that is to say, making strict and targeted choices whether in the vineyards or in the cellars, that enables her to produce such a high quality product, sought after by top Italian and foreign connoisseurs. And very interestingly enough she is also allergic to alcohol. That’s ok. More for us.

And in between the tasting and the eating there’s plenty of bonding and mucking about. And again this is all PRE-GRAPPA. Here Rochelle shows Anu the excitement of Angry Birds…

Both ROSSO DI MONTALCINO 2006 and 2007 have received five stars from the Consorzio del vino Brunello di Montalcino for its excellent quality! Yum.

The  estate cellars are located in two different areas – the old farmhouse and the cottage. Wine-making is done in the quaint cottage, while aging, refining and the packaging of the wine is done on the ground floor of the finely-restored old farmhouse. We all tried to listen but pop-up photo shoots were now firmly taking place. Let’s light the wine!

From a charming porch you enter the large room that shelters the bottled wine, further along is the ageing room with its oval oak 26-hl barrels, made of Slavonian, French and sweet mixed oak woods. And then you start posing…

After lunch and the tour of the wine making process finished Trace and I went for a walk down to see the actual vineyards and take in the country roads and gentle slopes of Montalcino. It was hot but the carefully cultivated rows and rows of vines were dazzling in the mid-day sun.

And there they were – the vineyards of the estate on the ridge of the hill in front of us. The big vineyards are an upside down C shape with two beautiful Tuscan cypresses on top appearing to be their guardians.

All the work in the vineyards is done by hand: the trimming, the pruning, the pinching out, the green pruning, the thinning and selecting the bunches before the grapes turn dark, and lastly the harvest. During the hand-picked harvesting, only the best bunches are chosen and are placed in small cases and promptly taken to the cellars. I was waiting for some stomping…seems times have changed…

Then time for some merry goodbyes. Because the GRAPPA had been sampled and by some of us it’s potency would become the stuff of some legendary dance moves in the Van on the way to Cortona. Bye bye to the Cordellas who so kindly showed us just how beautiful wines from here can, and should, be. Thank you Maddalena and Orlando. And with just a little bit of Grappa for courage you too can be sexy and YOU KNOW IT…(I’m actually not talking about myself – Hello Rochelle –  despite what the images below may imply…FYI it was just another Italian Goodbye which I had no control over…not my best angle but pure joy nonetheless)

The entertainment continued almost the whole afternoon by Rochelle’s aformentioned Grappa performance. There is video evidence which we will gladly use for blackmail purposes in about 5 years or so…

And now it’s on to Cortona in the heart of Tuscany. One of Italy’s oldest towns perched on a hilltop in the Tuscan Countryside. Cortona lies beyond a road of vineyards and olive groves. Steeped in history, this hilltop town largely stands as it stood over 400 years ago and what was once was a popular landmark for Italians has since gained notoriety amongst foreigners alike. Narrow, cobbled and often steep pavements wind their way through cafes, bars and pasticceries and occasionally branch out into smaller, darker, even more interesting alleyways or spill out onto one of town’s numerous historical landmarks. But…thankfully there is a very welcome mod-con in the form of open-air escalators from the car parks!! YAY!

After a gelato to start (is there any other way…) we head into Cortona’s heart to soak in the atmosphere. We end up at the infamous steps leading up to the clock tower of the Palazzo Comunale overlooking the uneven Piazza della Repubblica. Just around the corner is the Piazza Signorelli containing the arcaded Teatro Signorelli. Both honor Cortona’s foremost offspring, High Renaissance artist Luca Signorelli. And they all feature darling shops, characters and life in motion. Here’s a peek.

The little black dots in the sky, are the swallows flying madly overhead. Round and round in dizzying formations. The Tuscan version of The Birds.The locals all hanging about watching the world go by. I see the future.

Attracting artists since the 14th century, it is fitting that the Tuscan Sun Festival is now held here. One of the largest festivals in Europe, the hilltop town hosts world class concerts where fine art and film meets local culture and history. In 2009, Anthony Hopkins unveiled his own exhibition here. We had heard that Cortona had lost a little of it’s charm after Under the Tuscan Sun, Frances Mayes idealized picture of good life in Tuscany, had hoardes of Mayes devotees troop to the town to see paradise with their own eyes. But for us, who never knew it beforehand, nothing could obliterate the beauty and charm of this pretty place. And the lovely locals who opened their shops, restaurants and lives to us for a few moments.

And just under those amazing steps, we are introduced to Sebastian. Friend of Max and Cristiana and owner of the most fabulous jewelry store in Cortona – Del Brenna. This talented designer exudes such energy and life. It was hard to not be captivated. We shopped. We found some beautiful shirts. A few gourmet items of Tuscany. And we could have spent more. Much much more. Especially at Del Brenna. But we know we’ll be back. For sure.

Sebastian took us around to the other side of the steps and opened a little door promising to show us the smallest jewelry store in the world. It was like a little secret cavern of wonder. And with the wide angle it looks slightly larger than it really was…

Next as the sun was setting and the orange hues creating glowing contrasts through the little streets, we wriggle up through a sleepy warren of steep cobbled lanes in the eastern part of Cortona to the largely 19th-century Chiesa di Santa Margherita. The remains of St Margaret, the patron saint of Cortona, are on display in an ornate, 14th-century, glass-sided tomb above the main altar. BUT when we get there it looks like a lot of scaffolding and renovation is underway so we just take in the view from the top. The sunset just golden. We really were under the Tuscan sun. The literal version.

Oh, those Cortona doors…

And we make our way back in time for an amazing dinner above the Piazza. And between courses we ran off a few hdr’s and some twilight images. My favorite time of day.

And that was it. Our day. What a beautifully, poignant much-needed escape. A breath of fresh Italian air, which our souls so needed and our cameras adored. In fact it was our one day off during the workshop. Well, kind-of, we still searched for and chased the light the whole day. How could we not? Our last shot of the day featured the night light, starring the passing Cortona summer crowds in motion and our fabulous friends on the steps watching it all go by. With the post-dinner gelato of course and the promise of more deliciousness ahead.

Read Part 1 here: On Weddings, Workshops & Wine (part Uno…)