After a busy summer and fall of painting, plein air events, and art shows, at last there is a window of time to write about some of it. In early November I took a long dreamed about trip to Cinque Terre and then the Chianti Region of Tuscany to paint the enticing scenery. This blog will cover the Chianti Region. I was accompanied by my daughter who did all the driving and I did the navigation, being well armed with blown up map segments previously researched on Google maps. Our rental house had wifi which allowed us to do added research on the spot. On a 2D map the roads are all flat, In the hilly countryside of the Chianti Region you are always either driving uphill or downhill on two lane twisted roads that have a lot more turns than can be illustrated on the maps. Typical speed limit is 50 kilometer (32 miles per hour) and much slower on the switchback curves.We were passed by every local driver that ever got behind us but this did not disturb us and there were never any near collision for them.
Our rental was in a remote hamlet called Fietri which housed 4 or 5 family residences and the office /tasting room for the Fietri Brand Chianti wines and olive oil. Fietri is about a mile up an unpaved road which is located 1/2 way down from another hamlet called Monteluco and a small town San Gusme'. We had all but one of our evening meals in one of two restaurants in San Gusme'. They were closed on Tuesday night so we went a longer distance to the main town in the area, Gaiole in Chianti.
San Gusme' is one of the region's most picturesque villages with the historic section on a hill by itself and the newer contruction off to one side across the road. The Chianti area is located southeast of Florence and was an hour and a half drive from where we were staying to the Florence airport.
To the left is a sketch of our Fietri house rental.
We were in the portion on the left of the sketch. There was a nice garden on the left and to the rear with several seating and patio areas, a wood shed for the indoor fireplace and great views of mountains.
Below is a 10 x 14 watercolor of a vineyard in it's fall colors which was a 100 yard walk past the other buildings in the hamlet.
Below is the street view past our rental house. It curves around the building to the right past more residences and squeezes down to about 12 feet between the buildings on each side. That section was lined with flowering potted plants. The local cat was shy at first but by the third day was greeting us by rubbing against our legs.
Back in the 1970s the Chianti area winegrowers set some standards for high quality Chianti wine now labeled Classico and Classico Riserva, specifying where the grapes were grown and the variety and percentage of grapes used. These wines are found in the standard shape wine bottles for anyone with memories of the less expensive chianti in bottles with the basket around them, and now have a black rooster seal around the neck of the bottle. The rooster is the symbol of the Chianti region and a sculpture of one can be found in many of the towns. The largest we saw was in Gaiole of Chianti. Photo below.
I painted several views of vineyards and olive groves. The closest one to Fietri was from a nice road side benched area at Castagnoli which has a winery, tasting room and tour. My daughter toured the winery and made the drive further down to Gaiole of Chianti to shop and scout out a place for Tuesday evening dinner while I painted. Below is a picture of me at the painting site and the painting created. More about the Tuscany area and painting in the next blog.
