by: Bret Lott
Creative Writing Professor Bret Lott is leading the summer, 2017, study abroad program in Spoleto, Italy.
Salve!
Today is always one of the best days we spend in Umbria: our wine tour day. We start at Duccio Pompili’s very very very small vineyard and winery, Fontecolla, just outside Montefalco, a hilltop town famous for its Sagrantino wines. This is a one-man operation—literally. Everything on his four-hectare plot of land (a hectare is close to four acres) is done by hand, and because next week he starts stripping the shoots that have grown off the trunks of the vines, the students, with his permission, went ahead and started helping. His aging room, seen here with our guide, Cristiana, is small, cozy even, yet the wine he makes in this room the size of a three-car garage is superb. Then we go to Antonelli, an internationally known vintner three kilometers down the road, where the aging room, as you can see here, is, well, a whole lot bigger. Big as a hangar. Given that the land Antonelli works is ten times the size of Duccio’s, it’s no wonder. But the very good thing about this experience of big and small is that the wines are absolutely beautiful in both places. That’s because they’re all grown with love under the Umbrian sun in a place as beautiful as this last photo of the hillside sloping away from Montefalco toward Spoleto.
Ciao—
Bret
The volunteers at work.
Cristiana in the Fontecolla aging room, with Duccio looking for something in a bin of bottles. I couldn’t tell you what.
And Wendy, our guide at Antonelli, in their aging room. A little bit bigger.
Why it works.