Casetto Winery

This morning began as all Backroads mornings began, with a complete, filling breakfast, snack packing, bike preparation and route rap.  Licia’s route rap this morning was fun.  She made a model of the day’s ride and with her exuberant personality she went through the day and pointed out issues and interesting tidbits along the way while we all listened intently.

The first interesting event happened early in the ride when we faced a one way bridge.  We waited patiently to take our turn and cross the road.  On this ride we saw windmills and on other days we’ve seen solar farms and hydroelectric dams.  Italy works hard to be energy efficient.

The majority of the ride today was along the Adige River which is managed like an aqueduct.  As we rode on the path along the river we looked down on beautiful lush valleys and looked up to fortresses perched on hills above us.

As is typical in a Backroads trip, we came over a hill and had our first view of Lake Garda below us in the distance.  We continued a few more kilometers before arriving in the town of Bardolino and further to the Casetto Winery.  The white wine was quite tasty (and I don’t usually like white wine), I didn’t care for the rose and didn’t taste the red.  Lunch was a buffet of salads, vegetables, fruit and chicken.

The grounds of the winery were lush with vineyards, olive trees, pomegranate trees and roses.  The wine is made from three varieties of grapes and we had a tour of the vineyard.  Our guide explained how to tell the difference in the three varieties. The entire operation at Casetto is accomplished by hand.

Allan, Charlie and I rode on to our hotel, Hotel Villa del Quar.

While we were riding and tasting, Clay and Connie took the day off and went into Verona for  some relaxing shopping.  Clay was accosted by a warrior woman with a sword, but he managed to wrest the sword from her and lived to tell about it.

After a short rest, we met our new friends in the garden for a Proseco toast and hors d’oeuvres followed by a full course dinner and celebrated a successful week of bike riding in Northern Italy.  We said formal goodbyes, talked, laughed and ate too much.