rdewald's Journal: Tuscany: Lamole and Montalcino

Lamole: home sweet home away from home.

Lamole is the little village southwest and up in the hills from Greve-in-Chianti where we stayed during the visit to Tuscany. Lamole is "known" in the region for it's sweet dessert wines, but Lamole means "home" to me in Chianti, and for more reasons than this is where we statyed.

Truth be told, I would recommend to someone planning a visit like ours to the region that they not stay in Lamole. Partly that's because it is sort of at the end of a dead-end road. It is not on the way to anything. The last 20 minutes of coming home each night was the same twisty-turny drive up into the hills, often made when tired and ready to go to bed.

The other reason I would not recommend it is simple greed. I want it to remain the quiet little town it is with the amazing restaurants, unhurried pace and beautiful scenery. One of the charms of Lamole was it was not over-run with tourists. If you want to go to Tuscany to get some quiet time with the locals without sacrificing anything else, Lamole is your place. But, don't tell anyone, please.

Here are the pics.

Montalcino: the sweet taste of serendipity.

Montalcino is a hilltop town in Central Tuscany, west of Pienza, close to Crete Senesi. We went to Mantalcino because of Brunello di Montalcino wine, one of the (historically) most popular and expensive wines from Italy. What ended up impressing us this day was much sweeter and discovered completely by accident.

One of the up-sides to visiting a locale during tourist season is that there are a lot of events planned during tourist season. We just fell bass-ackwards into the 30th annual "Settimana del Miele," which means "Honey week." which is actually a public market and regional convention of honey makers in this region of Tuscany.

There were relatively few tourists at this event, and the collection of booths deployed in and around the city's 13th century fortress displayed everything from honey itself to beekeeping equipment to honey/bee-derived cosmetics, to booze, actually grappa (wine spritis), in a dizzying display of flavors, some of which, I assume, were flavored with honey.

Brunello di Montalcino is not among my favorite wines. I understand (but profess no personal knowledge of the fact that) it has changed in recent years. I'm told the the winemakers have been trying to bring the fruit forward in the wine to get higher scores by the wine critics. Some wine critics believe that this has ruined the balance and crisp acidity the wine is known for. However, I must also say that I do know that this is a slur thrown around a lot at the American wine palate and is meant to demean American wine critics like Robert Parker. It might just be sour grapes.

I don't know the real answer. My suspicion is that since Brunella di Montalcine enjoys such a high price I doubt the tastes I got from the town wine stores were the best stuff. I do know I didn't drink any Brunella di Montalcino that I liked during this visit to Montalcino. That wasn't a problem because I learned a lot about honey.

Here are the pics.