The Terricciola Wine Festival

We woke up relatively early so we could have time to eat a little breakfast before we headed out to the shuttle for the Tericciola Wine Festival Winery tour. We were told over and over again by the hotel that the bus would be showing up to the show store near by our hotel where there is a giant boot at 10am that morning. We gathered our things and drove over to the parking lot where the giant boot was. Literally this is a giant boot, it's at least 10 times bigger than the two of us put together if you can envision that. We waited a while and then when there was still no bus at about 10 minutes after 10am, we started to ask around as more people showed up to catch the shuttle. We chatted with a few people to see if they were also waiting for this shuttle and they were, so we waited for a while longer and then decided as a group that we would head to Terricciola and see if we could catch the bus there. We started driving through the city and the roads were very small and some were blocked off for the festival. At the first site of a parking area, we stopped and by some luck we drove by the bus as it was picking up part of the group that had been waiting at the boot. We decided to follow the bus to the first winery. Once we got there we decided to taste some wine quick and then planned on following the bus to the next winery as well. We got to the second winery and they had a tiny little tasting room that tons of people were squeezing into. The family that owned the winery was there serving beans with olive oil and wine. The beans with Olive oil was very good and I would have never thought to have Olive Oil with only beans. It was simple, yet tasty. We tried their wine and I wasn't really a fan, so we bought Olive oil and Chris bought a bottle of wine. We hopped back in the car and no more buses were running so we decided to meet up with Liz and Thomas and make a quick stop back at the hotel to drop off wine and then head out to lunch. I can't remember the name of the place they took us, but we decided to car pool. The restaurant was relatively close to where we were staying and Liz an Thomas had tried it before and said it was great! I got my first taste of true Italian pasta with bolognese sauce and it was amazingly good! Chris had his first taste of Chinguale which is Italian for Wild Boar. They said it was very good! I tried a bite, but felt that the meat was too chewy. Liz and Thomas very kindly paid for our lunch as a honeymoon present. It was very nice of them and probably one of the better meals that we had.

After lunch we headed back to the boot as there was supposed to be a bus leaving from there to go to the wine festival in Terricciola and take us around to more of the wine vineyards. When we arrived we did see a bus there, so we went and asked the driver where he was going and he did not speak any English, so he kept shaking his head. Then I heard him say "Terricciola?" and someone responded "Yes". So at that point we all assumed we were on the right bus. The bus sat there for another 10 minutes or so. We spent time chatting with Liz and Thomas during that time.

So, we thought we were on the right bus right? Wrong. This bus wasn't going to vineyards it was just a shuttle to take us into Terriciola for the wine festival. Once there we asked around to see if we could figure out where the bus that would take us to vineyards was, but no one was really giving us a good answer because we couldn't find anyone who knew anything that spoke English so we just started walking into town. Once there we saw several white tables being set up with men dressed in white shirts, bow ties, and vests that were getting ready to serve wine. We decided that there was plenty of wine to taste at the festival so we decided to stay instead of searching for the winery bus. We spoke to a man who was setting up to sell glasses and he said that we purchase glasses and a little shoulder bag for your glass and then chips for paying for tastings. We all bought glasses and about 20 chips each, which we were glad we did, because we found out later that some wines costed more than one chip to taste.

We started at the white tables to taste wine and there was a beautiful view of the Tuscan Hills from that area, so Liz grabbed us a table and we sat and chatted and sampled wine. It was really fun and then we met a few more people who spoke English who also chatted with us for a while. After a bit, we decided to keep walking into the area that was called "The Garden" It was an area that was surrounded by a fence, there were some restaurants in there as well as more lovely views and of course, more wines to taste. We all grabbed more wine and shortly after a drum line parade started coming through the gates with people dressed in medieval clothing. It was very cool! After the parade we decided to use up the rest of our chips and to find a place to have dinner. We talked to the restaurant owner in the garden to see if we could eat there, but then we found out hat they didn't have anything gluten free. So after we finished our wine, we started to head to where the shuttle was supposed to pick us back up and bring us back to the boot so we could pick up our car. As we walked back we saw a vendor selling clothing on the side of the road. So we stopped and Chris bought me a two sweaters and a pair of black pants. After our mini shopping excursion, we continued to where the shuttle was and it was there when we arrived. We double checked with the driver that he was going back to the boot, and he was so we all shouted out a hooray and got onto the bus.

This time it truly did take us where we wanted to go and where we expected to go. We invited Liz and Thomas over to our condo for dinner and wine and we had a great time with them chatting and talking a bit of politics. It was great to meet some good people in Italy!