Backroads Day 1

Our walking, eating (culinary) and wine tasting with Backroads has begun! We were the first to arrive at the Arezzo train station to meet our fellow travelers. There are 16 of us and everyone is lovely, all married mostly retired couples except for Joy and me. We have two guides (Lorenzo and Sara) and a van driver who keeps us in snacks and water (Emmaline) and shuttles us if we’ve had enough walking for awhile.

We shuttled through beautiful Tuscan countryside up to Castellina in Chianti, established around 900BC as a mideval stronghold. Sara led us through a covered walkway with windows which in medieval times were used to “discourage” invaders (with arrows and/or hot oil). We had coffee and pastries and gathered our snacks in a small caffe before following navigation up and down gravel roads to our first stop, an olive oil tasting and lunch at Casalta, an agritourismo. Typically, an agriturismo is an independently-owned farm that the owners have decided to use partially — although usually only partially — for accommodation purposes. That means that, 90 percent of the time, you can expect that the owners of the “hotel” are, primarily, farmers. (Or people who have someone else farm for them). Guest rooms are in the farm’s house, or an annex built nearby.

At Casalta we tasted two Italian olive oils–one from Tuscany (#1) and one that may contain olives from Spain, Greece and Italy (#2). We tasted much the same way one tastes wine and #1 was better in all three ways(color–more green, smell–fresher, and taste–has a peppery taste which we felt in the back of our throats. We learned the process to create olive oil–pick the olives, separate the leaves (feed leaves to livestock) from the olives, wash the olives, separate the water from the olives, grind the olives (with pits) to make a paste, press the paste to create the olive oil. In Tuscany, there is only one press and that creates EVOO. If you want to purchase the best olive oil, look for the seal as in the photo below.

After the tasting, we had a wonderful fresh lunch from the farm–caprese salad with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, bruschetta, farro in pesto (my favorite), quiche squares, focaccia with thin sliced ham and pastries for dessert.

After lunch Sara told us a little more about how Backroads works and gave the route rap complete with a chalk drawing of the next hike.

Our afternoon hike was a bit more strenuous (more hills and longer) but equally beautiful. There are bright red poppies, strikingly yellow scotch broom and buttercups, small white asters and some flowers I don’t recognize along the paths we walked. We heard cuckoos, Eurasian blackbirds, Eurasian blackcaps and Great Tits as we walked and the overlooks were breathtaking.

As is typical for Backroads our stay for the next two nights, Borgo Vescine, was initially a fortified bastion of the Lombard era (between 568 and 774), then over the centuries became a sprawling peasant village (borgo), and was recently restored as a luxury hotel and restaurant (relais). We had a welcome reception where we shared champagne and got to know each other a little better. Dinner was in the garden and I ate amazing ravioli for my first course and steak for the second. We shared bottles of chianti with our meal.

Joy turned in early and I stayed up much too late for me enjoyed the camaraderie of the people at our table.

Buona sera,

Nancy