Athena Blogs

This weekend I visited the beautiful Chianti region of Tuscany, Italy. As the name implies, this region is known for it's Chianti Classico, a red wine made from Sangiovese grapes. Chianti is located about 45 minutes outside of Florence, by bus, so we decided to make the day trip out there in celebration of my boyfriend Zach's 21st Birthday. Zach was especially excited about the trip because he had gotten several vineyard recommendations from his wine teacher (yes, "Wines of Italy" is a real class).

We took the professors advice, and started at the first vineyard, a castle at the top of a switchback ridden hill. We were already out of breath after a few minutes of walking up the steep incline, and we noticed a car drive up the hill and stop very near to us. The woman rolled down her window and told us in perfect english that the vineyard was not open today. She explained that she lived there, and that it was off season so the vineyard was not yet open for wine tasting. We were disappointed to hear this, but then she kindly offered to drive us to the nearest vineyard, which was nearly 5 miles away, on top of a huge mountain.