Good Food and Views are Worth the Journey
The third visit of our April wine tour of Italy took us to Sicily where we dropped in on Cusumano's winery in Palermo and had a tour of the company's new vineyards on the slopes of Mt. Etna. The tasting introduced us to some fascinating new wines, including an extremely promising white wine, as well as some of Palermo's best "street" food. The vineyard visit gave us some amazing views on Etna.
Cusumano is a Palermo based company producing a variety of white and red wines, ranging...
There is a lot of good wine in Tuscany and I had a memorable visit to Carpineto winery this past April. The Montalcino and Montepulciano areas are home to the Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile Montepulciano, red wines that have gained prominence over the past decade. While a prior trip last year included visits to Brunello specialists Casanova di Neri and Poggio di Sotto, a visit to a large producer like Carpineto gave us a chance to try the winery's broader region products including a...
Southwestern Tuscany, namely the province of Grosseto in the Maremma area, is not as well visited as the rest of the region but I was out here in April to pay a visit to a winery and found some great food and views along the way. This was our fist stop in a wine tour of Italy, and the highlights here include a visit to the Mantellassi winery, the walled cities of Pitigliano and Magliano and the best tortello of our trip.
We stayed at the Borgo Magliano which I imagine would be filled...
This suggested itinerary accompanies my earlier blog, More Than a Oenophile's Dream. Read the blog for more detail and photos.
Access: Piedmont is within easy reach of Milan, Genoa as well as Nice and Monte Carlo but you will need a car to reach the towns and get around. The main city of Turin is well connected by train so you could opt to rent a car in Turin. However, if you are in Milan, I recommend picking up the car in Milan and...
Given Tuscany’s medieval and renaissance jewels, visitors often overlook Italy’s other wine region Piedmont. But with its delicious Barolo and Barbaresco wines, super restaurants and sculpted vine covered hillsides, Piedmont is a worthy culinary and scenic destination especially since it’s within easy reach of Milan. Best of all, you can get a great meal and a fantastic room at prices well below that of comparable establishments in Milan and much of Tuscany.
I discovered...