Chianti - Wine Tasting

I went on a wine tasting tour today in the Chianti region and it was amazing. we left at around 8am and took a bus from a hostel in florence (the hostel sponsors the program) and actually very funny story lauren kronenberger from LV was staying there and i saw her this morning so weird! it was good to see her and we were just laughing about how we see more people from home in florence than we do at home hahah but anyways so we took a bus and we had the best tour guide she was the cutest grl who knew so much about the area so learned alot of fun facts about florence and chianti. the first place we stopped was a farmhouse on this HUGE farm. they gave us bread, cheese (which was amazinggggg, the best cheese i ever had, and they put jam on their cheese which was a lil weird but so delicious and they make all the jams also there was strawberry peach and some weird green one idk wat it was haha), meats (proscutto, salami, etc.) and of course wine (red and white, both were pretty good but its our next stop taht i tried the best wine ever). The farmhouse was adorable and the grl running it was very welcoming and we sat at these picnic tables munching on delicious fresh food. it was me amanda alyse and alex (another bentley grl) and their new roomate who is a lil older that went on the trip, and also at our table we met this really interesting guy who was probably around 35ish works in amsterdam but is travelling around europe for a couple weeks and is originally from India and he just seemed like he had the coolest life ever haha so the farmhosue was our first stop and that was pretty cool than next we went to a giant vineyard. the vineyard was amaznig and we got a tour of the whole wine making process (its so intense! it takes forever to make). They produce different types of chianti. Chianti classico is the expensive delicious one and theres all these regulations and things in order to be able to call it chianti classico. If it has a black rooster symbol around the neck of the bottle that signifies its real chianti classico and it will also have a serial number type thing and if you wanted to check you could call the vineyard and they could tell you everything about tht specific wine even wat barrel they aged it in. the barrels were amazing they were these giantttt wooden barrels. they had some metal vats they make wine in but those are the cheaper wines, the wood gives the one a certain taste and has to be very specific if the barrel is too new the wine will taste too much like wood but if its too old it wont give the wine any flavor at all. the woman who gave us the tour lived in new york for about 40 yrs so wen she spoke english she had a bit of a NY accent hahah the vineyard itself was just beautiful, the views were incredible, huge rolling hills filled with grapes. we sat down and got to try all the wines, SO delicious wowww. it was so flavorful. after we were allowed to buy some and it was unbelievably cheap to get from there about 4 euro for a bottle so I got allison one bc she wanted some real italian wnie and this was about as real as it gets haha and i got a bottle for matt, and one to bring home to my family :) they taught us how to tell good wines from bad ones and that wen people swirl around their wine it actually does do something! if you dont let it sit for an hour open before drinking your supposed to do that to let the oxygen in and see how thick it is and all this stuff. it was pretty cool. Our last stop was a medieval village called monteriggerno, which was pretty cool it was the smalled town ever it was all gated in by huge walls and only 45 ppl live there! we got free gelato and it was very tasty. we walked around the town, we had the most perfect day ever couldnt of asked for nice weather which made it all the mroe enjjoyable. it was just a very relaxing fun day. we went back to florence by around 5. now its time for me to go to bed bc im exhausted and have to get up early for my trip tomorrow!