Wine Tasting and I'm a Viking

Florence is located in Tuscany, one of the most beautiful regions in the entire world, if I may say so myself.  Some people get confused and ask where Tuscany is and the best way I can think to describe it is like so: if Tallahassee is like Florence (not even close but let's pretend) then Leon County would be Tuscany.  Does that make sense? Tuscany is like Italy's definition of a county. Anyways, it's beautiful.  Seriously jaw dropping this place can't exist it's so perfect beautiful.  

I really wanted to do a wine tasting on this trip to Italy.  More specifically, I wanted to take pictures in a vineyard.  It was on my bucket list and vineyards are sort of magical to me.  Once again, they're just so pretty!  Erin, one of the other RA's, knows this adorable old man named Fernando who owns a vineyard in Montefiore, a teeny tiny little town in Chianti.  Six of us took the bus to a town called Greve and then walked up to Montefiore.  The views were mind-boggling.  I seriously didn't know a place like this could exist.

We made it to his vineyard where he produces 10,000 bottle of wine and olive oil a year.  He still had three people at the table from the wine tasting before ours so Erin graciously agreed to make my dreams come true and be my photographer as I did a photo shoot in the vineyard with the most stunning backdrop.  After taking roughly 75 pictures of me (haha) we sat down to taste.

  Fernando brought out plates of bread with salami and prosciutto and then cheese for me along with slices of bread drenched in his delicious olive oil.  We then ate while he chatted away to us in Italian and we drank 6 glass of red wine and tried the desert wine with biscotti.  I do not speak much Italian and everyone else at the table did so I only understand a little of what he was saying.  The most important thing I learned from this experience was that one of the guys who came with us was saying how his family is from Napoli and Fernando looked at me and said something along the lines of, "well, you shouldn't like her then because she's a Viking. She killed your people."  I am so glad to be tall, blonde, and apparently a Viking. 

After the wine tasting, he took us to his cellar where we saw where he makes and stores the wine.  Then we walked to the most precious little town ever to his shop and looked around.  It was a beautiful, perfect day in the most beautiful and perfect place.  Perhaps I will get married there one day to another Viking.