Chianti Region of Italy: Three Wineries, a Butcher Shop, and One Very Good Reason for an Arbor

Some days don't need a reason beyond themselves. This was one of those. My wife and I booked a full-day Chianti wine tour, a group of us on a bus winding through hills that look almost too tidy to be real, vineyard rows combed into the landscape like they'd been drawn there. It was simply a wonderful day together, three wineries, a butcher shop that's been in business since before anyone thought to write the date down, and, as it turned out, a garden that later became the exact spot where Lance finally tells Olivia he loves her.

That last part came later, on the page. The day itself came first, and it didn't need to earn anything.

Tenuta di Riseccoli: The First Pour

We started at Tenuta di Riseccoli, a stone farmhouse property with vines rolling down the hillside behind it and cypress trees standing sentry along the drive. The tasting happened in a low stone room with a barrel cellar behind it, casks nearly as tall as I am, and an old wooden olive press sitting in the corner like a museum piece nobody bothered to retire. We sat at round tables under string-shaded lamps, a flight of Chianti Classico in front of each of us, bread and olive oil and little plates of pecorino between the glasses. We ended up filling out the estate's shipping form ourselves, six bottles minimum, boxed and ready to cross an ocean. That's the kind of morning it was, and it stuck: two years later, we still order a case from Riseccoli twice a year. We tried wine from all three stops that day, but Riseccoli is the one that made it into permanent rotation.

Walking the vine rows afterward, grape clusters just starting to form, roses planted at the end of each row the old way, to catch disease before it reaches the vines, it struck me how much of Chianti's beauty is actually function. Nothing here is decorative for its own sake. The roses are an early-warning system. The cypress windbreaks are practical. The hillside terracing exists because gravity insisted on it centuries ago. Somehow all of that utility adds up to some of the prettiest countryside in the world.

Greve in Chianti: A Piazza and a Wild Boar

From the vineyard, the bus dropped us in the town of Greve, a wide funnel-shaped piazza ringed by shuttered buildings in ochre and cream, an enoteca on one corner and a jeep parked like it owned the place. Greve is where I understood that Chianti isn't just wine country, it's a whole regional identity, and nowhere sold that harder than Falorni.

Falorni has been curing meat in Greve since the 1700s, and the shop announces itself accordingly: a taxidermy wild boar standing guard at the door, ropes of dried peppers and garlic hanging from the entrance, and inside, more prosciutto and salami than I've ever seen under one roof, whole legs strung from the ceiling in rows, a mosaic tile floor underfoot that's clearly seen a hundred years of foot traffic. A man in a red hat worked behind the counter while shoppers moved through picking out salumi to take home. It's the kind of shop that makes you understand why Tuscans take their cured meat as seriously as their wine.

Casa Emma: Lunch in the Vines

From Greve we headed to Casa Emma for our second tasting, and this stop came with lunch, a plate of lasagna that hit exactly right after a morning of wine and walking. We ate inside a bright, glass-walled room looking out over the estate's own vineyard rows, glasses of rosé and white lined up next to the plates, hills rolling off toward a hilltop village in the distance. It was the kind of unhurried midday meal that Tuscany seems built for, wine still going, nobody checking a watch.

Poggio Torselli: A Villa, a Garden, and the Line I Needed

The last stop of the day was Poggio Torselli, whose tasting-room motto, "Beautiful, Chiantiful," might be the single best pun I encountered on the entire trip. The tasting itself happened at a long table in a warm stone room, wine glasses catching the afternoon light, plates of salumi and bread going around while our host poured through the estate's lineup.

But it was the villa gardens that did it for me. Poggio Torselli's grounds are formal in a way Chianti mostly isn't, a proper Italian villa with a cypress-lined approach, boxwood parterres clipped into geometric knots, potted lemon trees standing in neat rows, and at the center, a round stone fountain with water arcing up into the light. One tree stopped me cold: a single trunk grafted so that one side grew lemons and the other oranges, two different fruits sharing one root system like nobody had told the tree it wasn't supposed to work that way. Roses climbed a wall of the villa itself, white blooms banked thick along the lawn. And tucked at one end of the garden, a vine-covered arbor, dense enough to filter the sun into green shade, framed just right so that if you stood inside it, you'd see the fountain playing beyond the leaves like the garden had been staged for exactly this purpose.

I stood there for longer than I probably needed to. Some places just hand you a scene fully formed, whether you're looking for one or not. This is where Lance says it. Not on the ship, not over dinner, not at the overlook everyone expects. Here, under the vines, with the fountain running behind him and Olivia close enough to hear him even though he says it quietly. Some places just tell you what belongs in them.

Where Heroes Rest

On the way back toward Florence, we passed by the American WWII Cemetery outside the city, acres of white markers and green lawn under a sky that had gone soft and overcast by then. It wasn't part of the wine tour officially, more of an add-on for those who wanted it, but it felt like the right way to close the day. Chianti gives you sunlight and abundance and roses climbing every wall you meet. It's worth remembering, on the way out, what that same soil has held onto in quieter ways.

Beneath Mediterranean Skies, Book 2 of the Uncharted Horizons series, releases October 1. This day in Chianti became one of its quietest and most important scenes.