20 hours weekly of guided excursions by car with your personal teacher, to castles and historical medieval towns in the Chianti wine area, Valdarno and Siena.
The program includes visits to farms and cellars with wine tasting.
It is 4 hours a day, usually in the morning, of guided excursions, from Monday to Friday.
In the afternoon, the guest will be free to rest in the house or in the garden, to walk in the country, or goingo to Florence or Arezzo by train.
During October and November you can visit the mill to follow the process of making olive oil.
You will visit Greve in Chianti, S. Gimignano and the magnific town of Siena.
Some itineraries
° Castles in the Chianti area 4 hours
An itinerary over the hills of the Chianti Classico wine area with visit to Montefioralle, where the circular main street and enticing alleyways have only a few electric cables to remind you you're still in the 21st century, the famous castle of Brolio that rises at the center of boundless vineyards, from which since 1141 the Ricasoli distilled their famous wines, place to grow old in the cellars inside the mighty walls of the fortress. Then to the medieval village of Vertine. The village is on the top of an hill and from there you can see the Meleto Castle and also Radda in Chianti.
° Romanesque churches and Renaissance art in the Valdarno area – 4 hours –
Starting from San Giovanni Valdarno, a small town with elegant shops, which is the birthplace of the artist Masaccio, with its museum reminding us of his life and works, we will visit the Romanesque church at Cascia where one of his most famous works can be seen. Then driving through the splendid context of the Valdarno area, we will reach Loro Ciuffenna, a pretty medieval village where there is the most beautiful Romanesque church in Tuscany: the parish church of San Pietro a Gropina. Then we will stop at the church of San Romolo a Gaville, a typical example of the Valdarno Romanesque of the twelfth-thirteenth centuries. Coming back to Rignano sull’Arno we will conclude our itinerary with a scenario of castles and farmhouses of great charm.
° Wine itinerary – 4 hours
We will visit the Chianti Rufina Museum of Grapes and Wine. The exhibition, hosted in the Renaissance Villa of Poggioreale, displays instruments and machinery for grape-growing and the production and preservation of wine in use from 1930 to 1960, as well as a fine collection of eighteenth-century blown glass. Completing the museum's facilities are a wine-shop and a notable historical library.
From here, we will follow the road through the magnificent vineyards of Marchesi de’ Frescobaldi, one of the most important producers of premium-quality wines in Italy, and we will reach the Castle of Nipozzano, built in year 1000 as a defensive fortress, became the centre of communal life for the village of the same name. Today the castle houses the wine cellar, where the estate red wines are produced and cask-aged.
° Olive oil itinerary – 4 hours
For people interested in the olive oil production, the excursions will be at the Bonsi castle, built in the 1400 as a turreted manor house, situated in the Valdarno area, on the which land, next to the mountains, on terraces built with dry stone walling, there are 18000 olive trees nurtured with care and dedication, producing an exquisite olive oil with an intense perfume and a fruity, slightly sharp flavour.
Here we can visit the magnificent cellars where there is the old oil jar room as well as the oil mill where the olive oil is still being produced with traditional methods such as the antique millstone and cold pressing.