Feeling the juice ooze through your toes while smelling the heavy must of fresh picked grapes is one of the most sensual experiences you can have. For the 3rd year in a row Il Chiostro- Workshops in Italy is providing an opportunity to live like a Tuscan during the grape harvest. September 22-29, 2011 at the restored monastery of San Fedele outside of Siena, you can partake in the celebration of the vendemmia including picking grapes and stomping them in a wooden barrel in the middle of a piazza.
Be Italian! (the name of the program) coincides with the Festa dellUva (Feast of the Grape) a local celebration in the small village of Vagliagli. This is an undiscovered hamlet in the Chianti hills between Siena and Florence. They organize a traditional fair to honor the harvest about to get underway. They decorate the piazza with wine barrels and Chianti casks, just like they did 100 years ago. Torches and flags line the road into town and there are booths for wine tasting and sampling local food. There is a lot of merrymaking it is the one time of year when everyone in the town comes together to bribe the gods to make a successful harvest.
On Saturday evening we are invited to a huge Tuscan feast right in the center of town. This is our opportunity to taste all the homemade products from the locals like salami, chestnut cakes and the personal dessert wine, vin santo or holy wine. Sunday is the parade in traditional dress featuring wagons from each area winery towed by oxen. There is music and dancing and all the Chianti you can drink!
Then on Monday the work begins. Early in the morning we go out to the fields with the other pickers to start gathering the grapes. By afternoon well have enough to start our own pressing but not with those modern machines. We prefer to press the grapes like our grandmothers did by stomping them in a big vat.
Once our work is done, well have other opportunities to experience life like the Tuscans. Well learn to make pasta, breakfast at a busy cappuccino bar, walk through the autumn countryside, shop in nearby hilltowns, visit friends in medieval Siena and just enjoy the food, wine, history, art and the fading rays of warm sun in this incredible area.
Being side-by-side with the Tuscans for a week gives you an opportunity to understand a little better their values, passions and love of life.
Be Italian! (the name of the program) coincides with the Festa dellUva (Feast of the Grape) a local celebration in the small village of Vagliagli. This is an undiscovered hamlet in the Chianti hills between Siena and Florence. They organize a traditional fair to honor the harvest about to get underway. They decorate the piazza with wine barrels and Chianti casks, just like they did 100 years ago. Torches and flags line the road into town and there are booths for wine tasting and sampling local food. There is a lot of merrymaking it is the one time of year when everyone in the town comes together to bribe the gods to make a successful harvest.
On Saturday evening we are invited to a huge Tuscan feast right in the center of town. This is our opportunity to taste all the homemade products from the locals like salami, chestnut cakes and the personal dessert wine, vin santo or holy wine. Sunday is the parade in traditional dress featuring wagons from each area winery towed by oxen. There is music and dancing and all the Chianti you can drink!
Then on Monday the work begins. Early in the morning we go out to the fields with the other pickers to start gathering the grapes. By afternoon well have enough to start our own pressing but not with those modern machines. We prefer to press the grapes like our grandmothers did by stomping them in a big vat.
Once our work is done, well have other opportunities to experience life like the Tuscans. Well learn to make pasta, breakfast at a busy cappuccino bar, walk through the autumn countryside, shop in nearby hilltowns, visit friends in medieval Siena and just enjoy the food, wine, history, art and the fading rays of warm sun in this incredible area.
Being side-by-side with the Tuscans for a week gives you an opportunity to understand a little better their values, passions and love of life.
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