Montepulciano

We finally had a three-day weekend to travel, with previous opportunities here either taken away by Danielle’s work or a lack of transportation. We decided to do our first overnight trip to Montepulciano, a hill town in southern Tuscany. It’s only about a four-hour drive, which isn’t as close as Amalfi but still doesn’t make for a bad drive. We went with a few other friends, making six total on the trip (plus two dogs!).

The most stressful part of the trip was driving through the streets of Montepulciano. Italian road signs can be a little difficult to read.

On the way up, we stopped for a short time in Tivoli. It’s an eastern suburb of Rome, and we toured Hadrian’s Villa. It’s the former home of the Roman emperor Hadrian, who didn’t like the other imperial palace and wanted to live outside the city.

David standing in front of the pool and gardens with Roscoe Il Cane.

The ruins were pet friendly, too!

It was cool to visit, but the ruins are in bad shape. They’ve had a rough go of it between being pillaged around the time of the empire’s fall to having people plunder its treasures to put in museums or to decorate their own villas to having nature itself overtake the site for some time.

It’s nowhere near as well preserved as Pompeii is, but it also wasn’t the site of a volcano killing thousands either.

While we did the sight-seeing, Max rolled around in the grass and soaked up the sun.

After that we went up to Montepulciano. It has two main areas. One is the Piazza Grande, where the cathedral and a few other important historical buildings are. The other is the Centro Corso, a street with a lot of shops. The B&B we stayed at was just off the Piazza Grande, and it featured an amazing view out of the window.

The Osteria del Borgo Bed and Breakfast, right on the main part of town. (Can you spot the Prius?)

View from our room. This was the point where I (Danielle) declared I was never returning to work and would live here forever.

Having arrived in the later afternoon, we didn’t get out to doing a whole lot. We checked into our hotels, admired the setting sun and the scenery at an overlook, and then went to dinner.

I’m (Danielle) thoroughly impressed we managed to drive through these tight and windy streets without leaving blue paint on any of the buildings. Must have had a good driver…. 

Most of the group just did a fixed price deal where enjoyed a sampling of Tuscan foods including pici pasta and steak. Beef is a common element of Tuscan cuisine, unlike that of our home in Campania where there aren’t many cows.

An enthusiastic thumbs up for pici pasta!

Saturday was our day to explore the city.

It was built on a ridge made primarily out of tufa, which is a soft stone that’s easy to dig through. The Etruscans dug out tombs in it before the Romans took the area, and people dug into it long after the empire fell. As a result, the city has wine cellars all over the place. I’d guess more streets have at least one underground chamber for aging wine than don’t, and all of the cellars have shops above them to sell what’s been resting below.

We looked at a few different cellars through the day, and they all have different approaches to letting visitors in. They range from  letting people just wander through on their own to doing a guided tour complete with staged rooms and theatrics about sharing their most prized possessions (i.e. their products) with their new “friends” (i.e. the tourists).

Montepulciano is famous for its vino nobile, which must come from certain grapes, grown from and aged in the Montepulciano area. It’s downright mouth-watering delicious.

One thing they had in common was trying to claim to be the oldest something or other. One has the oldest cellar. Another has the oldest field of grapes. Another has the oldest Etruscan tomb inside. You get the idea. You have to be the oldest at something. You can find these places both off of Piazza Grande and Centro Corso, and we visited some near both places.

This wine glass is juuuuust perfect.

We wandered over to Centro Corso and did the tourist thing of looking through the shops. Some were overpriced knick-knack merchants like you’d find anywhere, but there were some gems. We discovered a shop that sells what is now the best balsamic vinegar we’ve ever tasted. We picked up some good olive oil and got some lunch there as well.

Late in the afternoon we made it up to the top of the Palazzo Comunale (a bell tower on top of the city government building), and it offered a spectacular view of the area. Montepulciano is already on a hill, so going to the top of the tallest building offered amazing sights.

We also went down a road that has craftsman shops for things like wood, mosaics, and gold. The shop that interested us was the coppersmith’s shop, but unfortunately everything was really expensive.

Dinner that night was at a place outside the old city and down in the area where the locals actually live. It was a place known for steak, and it didn’t disappoint. Four of us shared a nearly four-pound fiorentina steak, and we had the giant T-bone to take home for the dogs.

One quick note- we found Montepulciano to be incredibly dog friendly. They came with us everywhere. They were allowed in restaurants, all the wine cellars and tastings, the shops, they even came up the bell tower with us!

Finally on Sunday, we stopped at the Salcheto winery on the way out of town for a tour and some lunch. It has plenty of rows of grapes to look at, but what makes it unique it that it’s an environmentally friendly operation. It uses sunlight almost exclusively for lighting the cellars via mirror tubes, uses rocks and a vertical garden to keep the inside cool, and it reclaims and purifies all of its water. There was more things of interest as a result than just “so here are our large wooden barrels” for the fourth time. It also made excellent brunch and had good wines to boot.

Tuscan vineyards. Can you taste the wine?

Another view of the Tuscan vineyards with the old city of Montepulciano sitting on the hill top.

It was a relaxing weekend, and we definitely plan to go back to Montepulciano. Tuscany is gorgeous, and we’ll be exploring more of it than just that one city too. Danielle might just have a new favorite place on earth, and I can’t complain much about it either.