As the sun comes up on a Saturday morning, the week long intermission between our first and second Food and Wine tours this month is already coming to a close. But as we prepare for the arrival of six new guests, we must look forward and not back at our week in Tuscany, the region next door where we discovered our love of Italy and which for many Americans is synonymous with Italy.

We said goodbye to our first week’s tour group six days ago, after wrapping up the week with them in Perugia, first spending three hours learning the art of chocolate making at the Perguina Scuola di Cioccolato laboratorio along with our friends Ernesto and Simona (a more in depth report, hopefully, to follow) and then discovering the history and secrets of this Etruscan-Roman-Medieval powerhouse over a two hour walking tour. The following morning, after the previous evening’s farewell dinner at the villa, we said our goodbyes and prepared for our week exploring Tuscany. Some would call it a vacation. We were looking forward to it as research.

But before heading to Sinalunga, a small town just outside Siena and our first destination, we had one more appointment to keep, this one still in Umbria. North of us, in the small borgo of Citerna, near the town of Citta di Castello in Umbria’s Valtiburina or the Upper Tiber Valley, our friends the Bianconis, known to many of you as the region’s personification of truffles, had lent a hand organizing the tenth edition of la Bisaccia del Tartufiao, a festival dedicated to celebrating the region’s love affair with truffles. We had not only been invited to witness the celebration, Suzy had been asked to be one of the honored guests who would compete in the festival’s truffle hunt and participate in the featured “show cooking” competition. Without divulging too much info (we plan to feature the Bisaccia in next month’s Dolce Vita online magazine) it is fair to say that the truffle gods shone brightly on us, sparing Citerna and the assembled masses – which included the deputy minister for the Economy for all of Italy – from torrential rains that were inundating the area from Cannara to just south of Citerna. This respite allowed organizers to hold the truffle competition (which ended disappointingly for Team Suzy), the public awards ceremony and the Show Cooking competition (which ended much better). It was a truly memorable festival, for all attendees but particularly for Suzy and me.

Note: to view a special streaming broadcast of our day in Citerna, recorded live, click here to visit our Ustream broadcast channel – Bill and Suzy TV. 

And then it was off to Tuscany, the border of which is a mere several hundred meters from Citerna’s town walls. The late night drive along the winding backroads from Citerna to Sinalunga would have been more enjoyable had the sun been up to illuminate the picturesque Tuscan countryside, but then again it would have been truly strange to be driving at night with the sun up. Take your pick.

Our Tuscan itinerary was philosophically 180 degrees from our normal approach of plopping down and establishing a base and soaking in all there is to offer within a reasonable radius. Instead we spent the next six days darting from one place to another, slurping and shoveling rather than soaking up Tuscany’s offerings. Two days in Sinalunga at the famous Locanda dell’Amorosa, two days just outside of Gaiole in Chianti at the Castello di Spaltenna and finally two days back south of Siena at the ultra luxe Castiglion del Bosco near Montalcino in Brunello country.

Although it had been many (many) years since we had dedicated a trip to Tuscany, it was, in fact, a homecoming of sorts. For it was in Tuscany where we discovered our love of Italy, first as quasi-residents of Florence for a three month summer stay and then in the hills of Chianti, where we first rented a villa, a week long torrid affair with a country accompanied by my parents and our two oldest children, then both toddlers. The villa was situated just outside Gaiole where we returned last week, an area full of vague memories, of restaurants, wineries, local towns that we had first encountered two decades ago and that had formed the hazy impression of a place that, like the wine that is produced in this locale, had gotten infinitely better with age.

Our days were spent flitting from one appointment to another, winery visits, lunches, wandering the local towns, soaking in once again the sights, sounds, smells and tastes that had overwhelmed us and rendered us helpless on our earlier visits. In a sense we were seeking to “true up” the gauzy impressions and recollections of the past with the reality of the present. And while there were plenty of misimpressions and exaggerated memories – restaurants that weren’t so much located on a secluded country road as on a well travelled intersection – the revived reality more than lived up to the idealized version that had been aging and maturing in our minds.

Like a great bottle of wine, until we uncork it and drink it, all is anticipation. The great ones deliver not so much on that anticipation but in spite of it. Our week in Tuscany was such and we drunk deeply. More on all of that later. We have guests to greet back here in Umbria.

Ci vediamo!
Bill and Suzy