Under the Tuscan Sun Day 2

Castello del Trebbio

We caught the bus (a nice tour bus, for once) outside of our hotel at 9am Saturday morning and drove through beautiful Tuscany to Castello del Trebbio (Tuscany is a region and Florence is in the region of Tuscany). We met our tour guide, Alberto, and he was hilarious. It was already one of the best days (maybe even the best) we'd had so far, but he just made it that much more great. He was the best tour guide I've ever had. Anyway he showed us all around the castle and gave us a little history about it. The castle has 40 rooms, which, believe it or not, is small for a castle. The woman who owns it has owned it since she was 24, after both her parents died and her siblings didn't want it, and she is now 46 and it is a family business. They grow Sangiovese grapes to make their wine. During the wine tasting, we tasted two kinds of Chianti (Chianti is the region where the grapes are from, not the name of the grape and there is no such thing as real Chianti in the US, so I feel special for getting to taste it in Florence :) ). Another fun fact is that they eat a lot of wild boar because if not, the boar would eat all the grapes and they wouldn't have any wine!


Alberto first took us in this "sacred" room where we weren't allowed to take pictures, but it was beautiful, and people have gotten married in that room, including Alberto himself! Then he took us in the dungeon where all the barrels of wine were- it was insane!

Barrique barrel: French/American oak. $1,000 for a barrel, $8,000 for a big barrel but the barrique barrels only last for three years because they absorb the wine and then they sell the barrels to whiskey makers

Then Alberto told us all about olive oil production. Oil production is in November and you have to pick and squeeze olives within 24 hours. Olive oil is different from wine in that olive oil doesn't age well like wine does; the younger the better, and you want to look at the harvest date. Then Alberto told us all about olive oil production. Oil production is in November and you have to pick and squeeze olives within 24 hours. Olive oil is different from wine in that olive oil doesn't age well like wine does; the younger the better, so you want to look at the harvest date. Alberto said that we should have two teaspoons of extra virgin olive oil a day. But there is a big difference between olive oil and extra virgin olive oil- olive oil has ten times more acid than extra virgin olive oil, and usually you don't know this because they don't have to write the acidity on the labels. Olive oil shouldn't have more than .3% acid. Extra means that it's under .08% acid and virgin means that the oil was made with pure olive trees- no additives. You want to look for thick, dark glasses of extra virgin olive oil, it's more expensive but it's the best. After he gave us all the background info about olive oil, it was time for our tasting! First we tasted moraiolo olive oil and then frantilo olive oil. There was also a third one but we didn't taste it, we just smelled it, to see the difference between good oils and bad oils. To do the tasting, we warmed the little cup of oil in our hands and then smelled it. When it came time to taste it, we literally took a shot of it- it was disgusting! I chowed down on bread and then drank sparkling water to cleanse my palette. 

After we tasted the olive oils, it was time to go into the kitchen and make homemade pasta!! Adriana, an old Italian woman, taught us how to make our very own noodles and two kinds of sauces! To make the pasta, you add eggs, flour, extra virgin olive oil, and salt and knead them together. Then you roll and roll and roll the dough out until it is paper thin. We could see the table cloth through the dough, that’s how thin it was! Then you fold it and cut off pieces, skinny or fat depending on what kind of pasta you want, and let the strips dry.

After we cut two different types of pasta, tagliatelle which is fat noodles, and tagliolini which is skinny pasta, we all crowded around the stove and watched as Adriana showed us how to make the sauces. We had a sausage sauce and a vegetarian sauce. To make the sausage sauce, you put onion, celery, carrots, thyme, bay leaf and rosemary in a pan with extra virgin olive oil, then add fresh sausage. When the meat is browned, add peeled tomatoes and boil for about an hour and a half. To make the vegetarian sauce, put shallot (a kind of onion) and celery in a pan with extra virgin olive oil, then add grated carrots and zucchini, some thyme and fresh basil, and add some fresh cream and chili if you want! Then BUON APPETITO!!

Sausage tagliatelle pasta

Vegetarian tagliolini pasta

Then we went into a dining room to have lunch and a wine tasting! Our first course was appetizers. We had bread and olive oil, salami, cheese, and a piece of spread with tomato spread and a piece of bread with black olive spread. All of it was delicious. I don’t really like black olives, but even I loved the fresh olive spread. With this first course, we tasted a 2010 Chianti, which is a red wine, and it was delicious. It was my favorite of the three wines we tasted. To taste wine properly, Alberto said to hold the glass by the stem so we don’t get finger prints on the glass because then we can’t see it as well, and the first step is to tilt the glass away from you and look at the wine. Then the next step is the smell it. And of course the third step is to taste it. Our main course for lunch was the pasta that we made! Oh my gosh I think it was the best pasta I’ve had on this trip. My favorite was the vegetable pasta. With the pasta, we tasted a Chianti Reserves. It was thicker and I didn’t like it as much as the first. Then we had biscotti for dessert and dipped it into dessert wine. I took a sip of the dessert wine but it was nasty. It’s not something you want to drink, only to dip sweets in it but I didn’t like it very much.

This castle olive oil tasting/cooking class/wine tasting in the beautiful countryside of Tuscany was the best day so far. It was such a cool experience and so fun and beautiful and I loved it.

All the girls with Alberto!

When we got back to our hotel, we all decided we wanted to check out the market. The market was full of vendors selling everything leather you can think of. Florence is famous for its leather. I bought a brown leather cross body purse and some other goodies :). On our way back from the market, we ran into a protest. It was all in Italian so of course we had no idea what was going on, but looking at the pictures and symbols on the posters, we saw communist symbols, rainbows and trains with x's through them....? It was like a collection of angry people protesting anything and everything. I wasn't sure whether to stand and watch or run and take cover haha. When we got through that mess we went on a hunt for canolies. We found a bakery down the street from our hotel and the man who worked there didn't speak any English but luckily there was a lady in there who did and she translated for us. He was so sweet, not only did he give us canolies, but he also gave us an assortment of other treats and we only paid 8 euro! There was five of us so he would be like buy four and get the fifth free and just kept adding things in there so we got all these goodies for like 2 euro each. And then we told him we'd be back in the morning for croissants but he said he was closed on Sundays, so he put like eight croissants into a bag and gave them to us for free and said to think of him when we ate them for breakfast haha it was so cute. We took all of our goodies back to the hotel and ate them and drank cappuccino....yummm.

That night we all decided to go out and find a bar or two or something fun to do. Florence is much smaller than Rome and easier to get around, so we just started walking until we found something that looked fun. JMU's Florence trip had just arrived in Florence a few days before and as we were walking, Kara saw a guy that looked like a guy in her GCOM class, so she called out "JMU?" and the group of guys turned around and everyone went crazy that two groups of JMU kids ended up together in Florence! They said they were doing a bar crawl, and we were all hesitant to join them at first because our first bar crawl experience, as fun as it was, was also sketchy, but we decided to go ahead and do the bar crawl with them. This time, the bar crawl was so legit! We were at this techno-ish bar at first and had lots of sangriaaaa! Then we went to two other bars and one of them had writing all over the walls of American college kids writing their colleges and fraternities/sororities. Lori and I found lots of Thetas on the walls! We didn't get a t-shirt at this bar crawl but it was really fun and so cool to be with all JMU kids!

JMU Crew