“Now I know what it’s like to retire with you!” I laughed and thought about it too. At many points across the day, and many more days after that. Tuscany was a place I’ve dreamt for years of seeing. But I’ve put off visiting it. It was not a place to go alone. Too romantic to be savored solo, Tuscany is meant for two. But never would I have guessed who my company would be. Lately, life has been surprising me with its impulsiveness. And I have been heeding its every whim.
Our tour bus left punctually, unlike the trains to and from Milan, and we rolled away from the Tuscan capital of Florence. The hilltop towns here, many of which bear the prefix Mont- in their names, have a history long before the Roman Empire. The Etruscan people, or Tusci, as the Romans called them, were clever metalworkers. From the heights of their hills, they watched over the undulating dales and the streams that dyed them green and fertile.
The cypress groves which Tuscany became known for came only later. Imported two thousand years ago from the Middle East, they were used to mark the roads and shield them from wind and rain. As they bowed to the billows, you said they reminded you of Galilee. One day, when things are calmer, you will take me there.
We crossed the Etruscan lands, swimming between states of inebriation. In Montalcino, gateway of the Val d’Orcia and home of the ruby Brunello, we tasted the king of the reds. In humanist Pienza, borne out of Renaissance thinking, we witnessed the end of the vintage. From one of the trucks brimming with bunches of Sangiovese, I plucked a grape. It was fleshy and sweet, with a lot of bitter peel.
The clouds, which had blessed us with shade and clemency for the entire day, finally burst in the early evening, draping the land in a gentle autumn drizzle. Inside a wine grotto in Montepulciano, we sipped under the shelter of vaulted ceilings encrusted with scallop and sundial shells. Prior to the Italians, the Romans and the Etruscans, they were the first natives: five million years ago, all of Tuscany was part of a shallow sea. We swiveled our glasses and Tuscany swiveled us, two dregs drunk in the harmony of civilization and nature.
Gregory Gioro 