Punte Mes, Beer Nuts and Black Wine...

Whew!!! Today was quite a day. A day filled with hill villages, wine, food...among other things. The main target today was a wine festival in the town of Scanzano, about 30 miles from Pitigilano. This was the festival of the local wine, Morello de Scanzano, known around here as the 'Black Wine'. It is called this because it is a really dark, dark red. And as it turns out, quite tasty.

On the way here we went to these very interesting Etruscan roads called la Via Cava. These are huge trenches dug into the tufa, as tall as 40 feet and about 10 feet or more wide. The Etruscans just dug these things out of the hill as a road...no one really knows wide. But they are really very interesting.



We finally made it to Scanzano and after finding a parking place at the top of the hill walked down to where they had the wine tasting. The tasting was really several different people serving glasses of the local wine along with tasty local dishes. We had a couple of glasses of the Morello de Sconzana before finding a place for lunch. Here, you have lunch with the other people at long tables. We were the only foreigners in town, I didn't here any other language but Italian the whole time we were there. Amy and I split a lunch of pasta cooked in wine, rabbit marinated in wine and a chocolate cake, along with the local wine.

From there we went to another hilltown, forgot the name already, and I had the biggest gelato yet. I dont think i have talked about gelato, but of course Italy has the best ice cream in the world. It is hard to explain if you have never had it, but just take the best Hagen Daas you have ever had and multiply it times 10. Today it was dark chocolate, mint chocolate and caffe. OHMYGAWD. And just sitting eating it on the town square of this little hill village, just us and the locals. None of these towns are in Rick Steves so there are no Americans here. But no Germans or french either. Just a lot of Romans, as Rome is less then 100k from here. Most of them have little yippy dogs with them and when they drive, they come right up on your ass within about 2 feet. What is with that???? Then when there is a long straight away they often just stay there like they like to be in your slip stream or something. Dont really know what that is all about, but what the hell, I am in their country and that is that.

Tonight is our last night in this, by far my favorite hill town, pitigliano. We had a nice cocktail at the Bar Centrale, just us and a bunch of nonas and bepos (grandmas and grandpas??) hanging out in the town square. We had my favorite italian aperitivo, Punte Mes. And they served it with all things, Beer Nuts!! It is a great combination, by the way.

We had dinner with crostinis of lardo (yes, more lardo), roast leg of pork and cingiale cacciattore. Cingiale is the wild pig and is my favorite food find here, maybe even above lardo. The other day we got a salami of cingiale and it was the best salami i have ever had.



With dinner we had more fantastic wine, the Morella de Sconzano we had earlier and also an alicante from here. Amazing, dark, rich and the alicante was a bit bubbly. I hope I can find these at home, but not sure if they are exported.