Greve- Chianti Region

In the Tuscan Region of Italy, the most commonly planted grape is called the Sangiovese. It is a red, thin-skinned grape that remains longer on the vine and takes time to mature. Popular wines produced from it are the Italian Chiantis and Chianti Classico. Both which I have been lucky enough to taste in my Wine class and in various restaurants in Florence.

One Sunday, a few weeks back, My friend Lauren and I were able to take one of the local buses out on the Old Chiantigana Road which is an old back route from Tuscany to Sienna. The route itself was beautiful. Many mountains, Italian Cypress trees, olive groves, and best of all... vineyards. Even though we knew since it was sunday, we wouldn't be able to visit any villas, we decided it would be fun to wander around some of the vineyards just to see how the grapes were planted. After meandering through little old villages and over millions of hills, we finally made it to a town called Greve. Not many shops were open, however we did make it up the hills to explore parts of a vineyard and take some nice pictures. A lot of harvesting was happening within that time period so what we were able to see was limited but still very beautiful. We stumbled upon what seemed to be a bottling factory at the top of the hill and met an older woman who spoke absolutely no english. After wandering a little through the plants, we went back to the bottom of the hill and stopped at a really nice wine bar. It had started to downpour and since we still had time to kill, why not check out the only building open?

While waiting for the bus, we had the older gentleman behind the counter pour us a few glasses of the Chianti, which happened to be from the vineyard directly behind his wine bar/ restaurant. We chatted for a little and watched TV with him. I'm not sure what exactly we were watching, it was all in Italian, but it seemed to be like something straight out of the Godfather. We found humor in that.

Later we arrived back in Florence, had a nice dinner at a restaurant called Oysteria Del Gatto e Il Volpe. I had an excellent tortellini with rose sauce.

Overall, it wasn't a extremely productive day so there's not too many details I can throw in here to make this post more exciting. However, it was certainly beautiful. Tuscany just has such amazing scenery, it truly is wonderful and Greve made me appreciate another part of Italy so close and so different to Florence.

I promise my Greece trip is more exciting!!

Deer print!!