Progressive wine tasting at a women-owned winery on the estate of Donatella Cinelli Colombini

When you hear the words ‘progressive wine tasting’ combined with ‘estate’ and the name ‘Donatella Cinelli Colombini’ – you can’t help but say YES to this tour. The name alone drove up our curiosity, even though we are still on Monday and started this day at 6:30am with the trek with Carlo, then the farm tour with Luciano.

It was was about a 50 minute drive out to the estate on many ‘one-way’ roads that actually were roads for traffic in both directions. On this trip, I have become the official driver and Dana is the expert navigator. We make a great team and equally squeal when opposite facing cars are taking a turn too far into your lane. It does keep the blood pumping! Also, there is the fun event of when a car with a red flag is coming your way and within seconds a WIDE LOAD truck taking up the whole road is in front of you and you literally have to figure out or hope and pray there is a little area for you to pull over into so the truck can pass. Usually it means pulling into brush and hoping the rental car company won’t charge you for the scratches to the vehicle.

Behind those few harrowing experiences, we are learning how to navigate well and even know when GPS is trying to send us in the wrong direction. We are quite proud of our internal compass that tells us always to heads towards Pienza.

After the windy road drive to the estate, we arrived and were greeted by a small Italian woman in interesting ‘wrap pants’ – I have seen several women in these type of pants, that are sort of reminiscent of MC Hammer 1980’s Hammertime pants. I was half distracted by these pants as she gave us the tour of the estate that was once owned by the grand duke of Tuscany.

Ancient kitchen, the fireplace was basically the stove and kept running all day and evening for heat and for preparing meals.

Dining area adjacent to the stove. I asked if the Donatella still eats here. Like I couldn’t picture her eating cereal here in the morning, but they said, ‘Yes, she eats here.’ It is in the same room as the fireplace stove – directly in front of it. They don’t cook there anymore, it’s more of just something really cool to look at while you eat I guess?

We got to see inside the villa and rooms like the historic kitchen, billiard room, and the cellar where the barrels of wine are stored. They also gave us a selection of locally produced meats and cheeses to sample with the wine.

Cool wine display at villa. Pinterest worthy.

The all women-owned and run winery does things like marking their favorite wines with hearts and naming their best bottle ‘Cenerentola’ – Italian for Cinderella.

By now I am a meat and cheese machine and my ‘vegan’ stint of earlier this year is a distant memory that I can only hope I can return to when I get home as a massive reversal to the early on-set heart attack I may be promoting with all of these fatty meats and cheese tastings.