After struggling to find something to eat for lunch yesterday and enjoying our home aperitivo, we headed on the town to find something to eat for dinner. We ended up at Ristorante La Bricola next door to where we ate dinner the first night. To be honest, we were a bit underwhelmed by the food. Additionally, the bottle of wine we got was border line turned, but we waited too long before we both agreed it wasn’t good.
This morning we woke up and saw that a glimmer of hope that the rain would finally subside. Unfortunately, we were wrong.
Luckily for us, we had a fun day planned of wine tasting and eating Italian food so it didn’t matter what the weather was like. Our first stop was Montemecurio just outside of town. When we pulled up, a scruffy teenager with an eye patch wearing sweat pants answered the door and looked at us very confused. Concerned we had pulled up to somebody’s house and not a winery, we started to slowly backup. In broken English, the teenager told us to wait. After waiting outside the front door for two minutes, Irene came out and welcomed us into the house. While it looked like a house, it was indeed the correct place. The wine operation consists of 3 people. One for the field, one for the winery, and one for the office. Irene was an absolute pleasure to taste with. She was quite gregarious and loved talking with us about skiing. She stressed the importance of a bit of grappa before you hit the slopes. Here we tasted 6 bottles of wine include a white and rose which is very rare in this red dominated region. Everything was delicious and so affordable. We ended up walking away with a half case.
After our first tasting, we headed to our lunch reservation in Monticchiello at Osteria La Porta.
Apparently, most people come to this little hill top village just for this restaraunt. We were not disappointed. Between the bacalla appetizier or the Cacio Pepe Gnocchi, everything was so good. The atmosphere was also quite fun with a young temptress sitting behind us attempting to seduce the young waiter. This included passing notes and lots of giggling. Sara said she could have dressed cuter. The staff was also quite generous here, they even gave us our half liter of wine for free.
After lunch, we headed back to the apartment for a quick rest before our next tasting. Dave fell asleep during this time for a few minutes, because as you know, tasting wine is exhausting. Refreshed and ready to go, we headed up to Gattevechi which is located right in town.
We met Daniela who is the one of three siblings who run the winery. In addition to working in the family business, Daniela used to teach Italian to foreign students at a school in Montepulciano so she was very excited about speaking with Sara and complimented her quite a bit on her Italian. They also spoke about their shared interest in vintage Cinecitta films. Similar to other places in town, they had an extensive cellar that dates back to 300 BC.
After touring their small crypt, we tasted the wines. Again, everything was quite good. Daniella offered to help us ship all of our wine back including the bottles we purchased at other locations.
All in all, we ended up with two cases.
During our tasting, it finally stopped raining and the sun came out. We now sit in our apartment for one last night and are looking at a beautiful sunset. Tonight we are going to cook in.
Tomorrow we head to Assisi.