Today we visited two small Italian towns famous for their wine and olive oil, though that is a claim made by many Italian towns. The first stop was Bevagna which Ton said was known as a relatively flat town to walk as it is located in the valley.
We spent about an hour giving Bevagna a pass thru. It was a nice town and worth a walk. We then moved on to our destination for the day Montefalco. It is known for a red wine that is only produced in a very small area between Montefalco and Bevagna. Sagratino grapes are not widely grown because it produces relatively little fruit.
We found the very nice municipal Sosta in Montefalco at the base of the town. It was a throwback to our early days traveling in Europe as it only cost €5.75 for a night including electricity. Towns often provide these facilities to attract tourists to stay in the town hoping they will spend some money. In our case they were right as we ended up spending well over €100 between lunch and our visit to a winery.
Ton had found a winery near town that offered tours in English with a light snack. We headed over there to see if they had any space, and luckily they did. We had a couple of hours to kill before the tour so we headed towards the town center to see if we could find a place for lunch. There was a nice cafe right on the main square so we ordered a lasagna and a cold plate of local meats with bread. We intended it to be a light lunch but we forgot about Italian portions.
After our light lunch we returned to François to rest before heading over for our winery tour. I almost fell asleep, but at 3:15 we set out for our tour.
Montioni winery is a new winery having gone into business in 1987. They started out as an olive oil producer in the late 1970’s. They produce mostly red wine, and of course specialize in Sagratino wines. The tour was pretty brief before we sat down for our wine and light snack.
The wine was very good. We were joined on the tour by an Australian couple and a young man from Germany. We were all on extended vacations and enjoyed talking about our experience in Italy. We asked where the German guy was staying and he said the name of a village. The Australians asked him if it was nice, and we all laughed at his answer, he said it was charming but after two weeks of charming Italian villages they were all starting to feel the same to him. The reason we all laughed is both the Australians and Ton and I had had the same thoughts in the last few days but didn’t want to say it because we were not Europeans. So it was good to hear it from a European.
After the visit we headed back to François for a relaxing evening in another charming Italian village.