We have been on the road for approximately 3 weeks for me, and 4 weeks for Greg and Leslie.  I know that I have some very stinky socks among other items.  Greg and Leslie are in a similar situation.  Our little villa has a washer.  We can do a load and let the Tuscan sun dry our clothes.  Good plan.  We put in our clothes, try to figure out the controls that are obviously in Italian.  We do a load and when the washer is finished we pull out our clean clothes.  They are dripping wet!  The spin cycle has not happened.  We try the “Centrifuge” setting, nothing happens.  The next day we ask our hostess.  Even she isn’t sure if the button that means “spin” should be pressed in or left out.  By that time we have used our muscles to wring out as much water as we can.  They are now drying in the sun.  We dare not leave to do anything as at any moment another thunder storm could pop up.  So we take a chill day.  Read, catch up on my blog, keep wringing the clothes.  Almost dry, we bring them in as we have a private pasta class followed by wine tasting and appies, with our hosts at 4pm.

Our class is very small.  Just the 3 of us.  Martina is the translator for her Mom Giuliana.  She is the teacher, she has the experience.  It is clear that she loves what she does.  We think she understands more English than she lets on, but is not comfortable speaking very much.  She does enjoy the oohs and aahs as she demonstrates how to prepare the pasta.  It seems that in very short order we have 3 plates of different pasta that we will take back to our villa to eat over the next few days.  In this class we did not use the magic pasta machine, just a rolling pin and our muscles.  😊

After the pasta is made we get a tour of the wine cellar.  Martina explains the process that they go through to make their wine.  After harvesting, the put the grapes into a concrete tank.  I have not heard of this method before.  After the grapes spend a couple weeks in the tank they are removed and pressed to remove the skins.  Here they sell the skins to a distiller who will make Grappa from them.  It is illegal for them to produce the Grappa themselves due to the high alcohol content.  They put the wine in French Oak and Slovenian Oak barrels to age.

After our tour of the cellar we return to the room where we made the pasta.  Here we will be tasting some of their wine and having some appies.  Oh my, we were not expecting such a feast!  We certainly don’t need dinner tonight.  This filled us up pretty well.  All in all a wonderful experience!!