Trip to the Maremma and visit to winery Sassotondo

We took a two-day trip to the Maremma region this past week. Our mission was to try out the renowned restaurant Caino, situated in the fairy-tale town of Montemerano. This restaurant has been rated two Michelin stars and as a former restaurateur and my partner being a chef it is natural that we have wanted to try it out for quite some time. Anyway, I will probably write a restaurant review later on.

Here you will find a short account of our first day and it might be helpful if you are planning on visiting that same region when you come to Tuscany.

Tuscany is a rather large region (at least for a European mindset). In fact, we seldomly leave it and if we do we are amazed of the regional differences (such as dialect, behaviour, landscape, food, etc.).
The South of Tuscany is several hours drive away from us. The region is named Maremma and is famous for its wonderful beaches, nature and hot springs, but it is also an upcoming wine region. In fact, Tuscany’s 7th DOCG wine is the Morellino di Scansano.
I had always wanted to visit the towns of Sorano, Sovana and Pitigliano having heard lots of good things about them. One negative thing about visiting these smaller towns in the winter is that a lot of the shop-keepers and restaurateurs close up in the “dead” season (so from November to March), but looking at the positive side these places are definitely not overrun by other tourists.
The position of the towns is South of the highest mountain (an extinct volcano) in this part of Tuscany, the Monte Amiata. It reaches some 5000 feet. The area around the 3 towns is dominated by the stone Tufo, a rock formed probably millions of years ago by lava from the volcano. The towns are subsequently built on Tufo and with Tufo stones. It is really quite peculiar to see how caves have been excavated into the rock under the town of Pitigliano – there seems to be a whole underground town of caves and tunnels!
Pitigliano was definitely my favourite to walk around, Sorano being also quite amazing but drastic to walk around as it is very steep, Sovana cute but tiny (we walked it all in less than 10 minutes). Pitigliano also is noteworthy for the Jewish quarter and even has Jewish gastronomic specialties that you can only find there.

The best thing about the day was our visit to the organic winery Sassotondo of which you can watch the video that I have posted here. The quality of the video is for obvious reasons very home-made, for which I’m sure I don’t have to excuse myself. But seriously, if you are interested in seeing a really cool and friendly winery in the area of Maremma you should visit it yourself.

The grape varietal in this area is called Ciliegiolo and is one of those really interesting native varietals that can even stand on its own. In fact, the flag-ship wine “San Lorenzo” is made with this varietal exclusively and is a fab wine! It will sell on http://www.tuscany-in-a-bottle.com/ for around 30 Euro a bottle.