We were driven to Castello di Poppiano to begin the day. If you click through to their site, there is a wonderful video of the castle and surrounding area.
Old and new tools for cold pressing olive oil:
Drying mats and room for grapes to be made into Vin Santo, an Italian dessert wine:
Vin Santo is aged in a tower in really old barrels. The fluctuation in the environmental temperature is necessary for the wine's aging process.
Atop the tower where the Vin Santo is aging:
From there, we learned the rules of the road and were assigned bikes for the 13 mile ride through the Tuscan countryside.
We stopped at a vineyard while the harvest was happening.
Lunch included a feast of 3 kinds of pasta, salad, bread, wine, coffee and panna cotta. And then we had to get back on our bikes for more riding!
Our experience with Tuscany Bike Tours was really enjoyable. The guides were professional and entertaining and the scenery along the ride were the sort featured in Tuscany calendars. Our fellow bikers were also fun to spend a day with even if those Australians were pushing the unlimited wine refills on us and the mother from Uruguay was a bit mischievous during the bathroom breaks! Our day in Chianti was a great way to spend our last day in Tuscany, giving us a taste of the more rural parts of the country that we were about to explore more.
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