Today we drove around the roads close to "home" looking for more wineries, trying to find the best way to get some of this delicious stuff home. We had a bottle of Chiante bottled by Castello Badia Berardenga that is very tasty. After following a google map to where google thought it was, we stumbled upon a sign that pointed in the right direction. The winery is a former Monestary that looks a lot like a castle, complete with drawbridge and tower. There are no signs to tell you where to go to buy the wine, and we were about to give up when we saw a couple of men tending the grounds...neither spoke a word of English. I was able to muddle through a conversation where I understood only about every third word, but finally understood that he could not ship wine to the USA. So we just bought a couple of bottles and were on our way.
Courtyard of the "castle".
A small horse or a big man would muscle these stone wheels around to squeeze the oil out of the olives.
Hey, why not mail the wine ourselves, so we went to the post office in Castelnuovo Berendenga... again no English. Also she was a postal worker, so she really didn't seem to care...just like home. But eventually she told me that they would not sent wine to the USA.
Now I know wine gets from Italy to the USA, but how? So we looked for another winery. This time we sent to a place called Castell'in Villa. This place was really cool to explore. Someone there was a modern artist who welded junk together to create works of art.
Well, she said she could send the wine to the US, but the shipping was more than the cost of the already overpriced wine. So we went on.
Finally, we found a winery called Villa a Sesta who sells pretty good wine and can ship it reasonably, so he looks like the winner.
By the way, the car we rented is an Italian car called a Lancia (I think made by Fiat) and it is a diesel getting about 43 miles per gallon.
Of course you don't get gallons here, you get liters at about 1.66 euros per liter. That works out to about $8.00 per gallon. I don't think O'Bama can be blamed for that.
The Italian roadways are designed for these smaller cars. The lanes are narrower and the parking spots are smaller. There aren't many American cars here except for the very smallest compacts.
Goodbye from the Black Rooster in Castelnuovo Berardenga.
