When we left the archaeological park in Pompeii, I realized that our time in Campania was drawing to a close. The next morning, we’d be departing for a week in Tuscany. Although I initially had misgivings about Sorrento, I’d become quite fond of the town, and after nine days at the Cesare Augusto, the hotel felt almost like home.
There wasn’t much time to feel nostalgic. Outside of Pompeii, we stopped for lunch at a lovely winery and restaurant in the countryside. Sorrentini Vini has been in the same family for three generations.
The vineyards are located between Mount Vesuvius and the sea. There are nine different layers of ash in the soil, making it very fertile. The vines get water through the ground. The grapes are grown organically and no sulfites are added to the wine. All of the harvesting is done by hand.
There were beautiful views in all directions.
Our hosts offered us several of their wines to taste as we ate our lunch.
We started with a light crisp golden Spumante to accompany our appetizer of grilled vegetables, salami, bruschetta.
Next, we tasted a golden wine similar to Pinot Grigio along with a simple dish of spaghetti and a sauce made from local piannelo tomatoes. I learned that this variety of tomatoes is planted between the rows of vines to stabilize the minerals in the soil.
The third wine we tried, a very smooth medium-bodied red, was an excellent complement to the dessert of marmalade cake.
With one more night in Sorrento, it was time to do some packing. In the evening, a group of us gathered for dinner at a wildly popular restaurant called Cantinaccia del Popolo.
We shared two big platters of grilled vegetables as a starter and dipped great bread into fragrant olive oil.
Each of us ordered a main course. Mine was a grilled calamaro (that’s the singular of calamari). As you can see, it was a big one - big enough to fill up a dinner plate - but extremely tender.
I also tasted some gnocchi alla Sorrentina, soft potato dumplings in a rich tomato sauce with lots of mozzarella cheese. It was the ultimate comfort food.
Then we shared three desserts eight ways. Everyone got a taste of the lemon delight, pistachio delight, and tiramisu. The food was delicious and it was great fun.
The next morning at breakfast, I said Arrivederci to the restaurant manager at our Sorrento hotel and set off for the town of Montecatini in Tuscany. (He always remembered that I wanted a decaf espresso at breakfast.)
As our bus pulled out of the parking lot, Lodo had the song Torna a Sorrento (Return to Sorrento) playing through the sound system. We knew it was going to be a long travel day. We weren’t expecting to reach Montecatini until 5 and 6pm. As we drove along the north coast of the peninsula, I snapped a few final photos.
North of Naples, the landscape quickly flattened out and my eyelids started to feel heavy. As we drove along the Autostrada, I listened as Lodo explained that this road, called the Highway of the Sun, goes all the way from Naples to Milan. It was built after World War 2 with money from the Marshall Plan. During the post-war period, there was a big migration of people coming from the South of Italy to the North. Most were Sicilians, Calabrians, and Puglians. In the winter they would usually return to the South for the holidays. The road still gets a lot of use.
Although Italy is approximately the size of Arizona, it is extremely varied in terms of geography, history, climate, economy, language, food, etc. Lodo stressed that the identity of most Italians has long been tied to their own area. One of the few unifiers is the sport of soccer, which makes people across Italy feel connected to the nation. Of course, people from all regions love food and are proud of their distinctive cuisine. It was no surprise to learn that Italians are the world’s biggest consumers of pasta. Italy is also the world’s biggest consumer of olive oil. If you ask Italians which region produces the best olive oil, you’ll get a different answer from everyone. Each person will say the olive oil from his own region is the best.
As far as beverages are concerned, Italians love to go out to drink coffee and they have many different coffee drinks. However, the total amount of coffee consumed in Italy is lower than in many countries. When it comes to wine, Italy is the world’s largest producer but not the largest consumer per person. That dubious honor goes to the Vatican City. It probably isn’t the clerics who are drinking so much. Since wine is tax free in the Vatican City, many Italians go there to buy wine. By the way, the legal drinking age is 18 but children even younger are often allowed to drink watered down wine at home and teenagers routinely are able to drink wine in restaurants. Since Italian kids grow up with wine, it’s not a tantalizing forbidden drink.
About three hours into our journey, we reached the Lazio region. Located in central Italy on Mediterranean coast, it includes Rome and Vatican City. For several centuries, Lazio was the core of the Papal States, a territory legally established by the Frankish king in 756. The Papal States expanded greatly beginning in 1500, and at one time, they covered a wide swathe of central Italy. Until the late 19th century, when Italy was unified, the Papal States were under direct rule of the Pope who had secular as well as religious authority.
As we drove through Lazio, Lodo called our attention to the Benedictine monastery of Montecassino up on a distant hilltop. The line that divided Italy in two during World War 2 went through the town of Montecassino (see map below). To the North were the Nazis and to the South were the Allies. In order to reach Rome, the Allies coming from the South needed to battle their way past this line. The fighting lasted several months and resulted in many casualties.
Lazio is famous for its Frascati white wine. When our bus exited the Autostrada, we looked out the windows at idyllic scenes of rolling green hills, vineyards, olive trees, and umbrella pines. Even the clouds in the sky looked picturesque.
Within minutes, we stopped at a winery located near the town of Frascati. The Tenuta di Pietra Porzia is only about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) southeast of Rome but looking at the countryside, you’d never know that you were mere minutes from the hustle and bustle of Italy’s capital city.
Our guide told us the estate has been producing wine since Roman times. The volcanic soil is particularly good for white wine because it’s rich in minerals. The estate’s white wine is made from native Malvasia and Trebbiano grapes. It takes a month to harvest the 120 acres of grapes by machine beginning in early September. Afterwards, the olives are harvested.
I noticed the beautiful roses growing at the end of each row of vines. They’re not planted there solely for aesthetic reasons. They are supposed to serve as an early warning system. A plant disease, especially fungus, would attack them first, allowing the farmer to take preventive measures to protect the grapevines.
We descended deep into a cellar that dated back to Roman times. Because it’s too damp, this cellar has been replaced by a modern cellar but it was used until 1945.
We tasted several different wines, both white and red, many of which had DOCG designation, Italy’s highest classification level for wine. I’m certainly not a connoisseur of wine but my favorite was the Frascati Superiore, which had a rich yellow gold color.
We enjoyed an al fresco buffet lunch, accompanied by spirited music from a local trio.
I discovered a new kind of cookie called torcetti al burro, sometimes called wine donuts in English because there’s a little red wine in the dough. They’re nothing like the donuts we have in U.S. Instead, they’re small, baked rings of slightly sweet dough that’s sprinkled with large grains of sugar. They have a satisfying crunch when you bite into them. Later in the day, I found a package of them when we stopped at a roadside AutoGrill.
It was great to see Lodo so relaxed!
After lunch, I took a walk around the estate.
The day was going extremely well, but we were only halfway to our final destination. At 2:30, we were back on the bus and I was ready for a nap. Two hours later, we made a rest stop in Umbria, a landlocked region in the center of Italy. It’s known as the country’s “green heart.” The thickly forested Apennine Mountains, covered with pines, cypresses, and poplars, give Umbria its year-round color. These mountains, which run north-south through the peninsula, form the spine of the country.
Historical religious figures associated with Umbria include Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Benedict, and Saint Valentine. And, most interesting to me, according to Lodo, Umbria is known for its good food, truffles, and chocolate. Maybe you’re familiar with Perugina Baci (baci means “kisses”), the delicious hazelnut and chocolate candy from the city of Perugia, capital of the Umbria region. Grazie mille, Lodo, for bringing us some to sample!
Shortly before 5pm, we officially crossed into Tuscany, but we were still a couple of hours from Montecatini, our final destination of the day. The right lane of the Autostrada seemed to be a solid line of mega-sized trucks heading north. It was obvious that we were behind schedule. Fortunately, we could listen to Lodo’s mini-lecture about Toscana, the Italian name for the region. The name comes from the Roman name for the Etruscans, who had been living in this area as early as the 8th century BCE. I remember learning a lot about the ancient Romans when I was in school but hardly anything about the Etruscans.
What I learned from Lodo was very enlightening. By the 5th or 6th century BCE, the Etruscans were actually more advanced than the Romans. They built 12 main cities in Tuscany before their population was absorbed by the Romans in the 1st century BCE. The Etruscans used a writing system that bears some similarities to the ancient Greek alphabet (although it was written right to left) but their language is still a mystery to linguists. While the Etruscan language disappeared as Latin took over, their influence lived on. It was the Etruscans who invented the arch with a keystone that became a crucial element in Roman architecture. Also, the shape of Roman temples echoes the shape of the Etruscan temples.
Given all of the Etruscans’ accomplishments, I wondered why we had learned so little about them. According to Lodo, ancient Roman sources wanted to claim their own superiority and therefore were not inclined to acknowledge the contributions of the Etruscans. The cultural differences between the Etruscans and the Romans may also be a factor. For example, in Etruscan society, women participated equally with their husbands at social events and played a much more important role in society than Roman women did.
It was nearly 7:30pm when we finally reached Montecatini Terme. “Terme” indicates that it was founded as a spa town and distinguishes it from Montecatini Alto, the small medieval village perched up on a nearby hilltop. Montecatini Terme became popular for its thermal waters in 1700s. People came here not to bathe in the water but to drink the waters, which contain various minerals. Located in proximity to the Tuscan cities of Lucca, Florence, and Pisa, it became one of several popular spa towns in Europe. It attracted affluent members of society who were looking for a place to rest and relax, and reached its golden age in the early 1900s.
We’d have a chance to visit the spa but tonight, we just wanted to get dinner at our hotel.
Lodo had told us that in contrast to the lighter cuisine of Campania, where pasta and vegetables predominated, the food in Tuscany was centered around meat, and hearty red wines were favored. At 8pm, we sat down to dinner in the very elegant dining room of our hotel. As anticipated, the meal included a substantial amount of protein. A large salad garnished with plenty of tuna was followed by big bowls of pasta with a meaty ragù. I still found room for dessert, a delicious chocolate truffle cake studded with cherries and layered with whipped cream – calories be damned.
It was already 9pm when we finished eating, and it had been a long, long day. Although we spent many hours on the bus, the drive from Campania to Tuscany had been quite interesting, thanks to the changing scenery, frequent stops, and the informative commentary about Italian history and culture provided by Lodo. Exploring Montecatini could wait until the next morning.
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