La Bougie

Tag: agriculture

  • photoessay: under the tuscan sun

    photoessay: under the tuscan sun

    We drive from the Siena train station for some 15 to 20 minutes along hilly roads that wind through miles of grapevines arrayed in perfect rows across the undulating landscape. Signs point towards the village of Vagliagli, but we turn and turn again down a graveled road with a sign reading Dievole Wine Resort. Olive trees are to our right, autumn-hued vines to our left, and a valley dotted with an occasional stone villa before us. This is the quintessence of Tuscany—a grand but quiet agrarian landscape that I can almost convince myself hasn’t changed too much since Dievole was founded in 1090.    

    a sign on a rock reading "Dievole" with an arrow

    the resort

    The resort is laid out as a cluster of buildings on a steep hillside. Working from the bottom up, the first level is occupied by a pool that overlooks the rolling Tuscan hills. It is too cool to swim in October, but not too cool to lounge in the sun when it finally emerges toward the end of the week.

    a pool surrounded by green hills under a cloudy sky streaked with sunset
    feet in a lounge chair beside a pool

    The next level up is the main area of the resort, containing a bar, a restaurant, a rose garden, and some guest rooms.

    Higher still, a beautiful stone cottage hung with ivy turned a brilliant shade of red in October houses the wine tasting room and more guest rooms. The cellar contains rows upon rows of casks where the wine is aged.  

    a brick tree-lined path leading down to a house with old tiles and ivy-covered walls
    red ivy covers a stone wall

    All the way up the hill are the last of the guest rooms, where I stayed. As I described in my previous post, these rooms boast the most dramatic views of the valley.

    The architecture throughout the resort is simple but lovely, with stone or stucco buildings, white walls, dark wooden beams and trim, and simple décor, like hand drawings of animals that evoke a 19th century country manor.

    the grounds

    The real magic of Dievole is not indoors, but the grounds. Yellowing grapevines and eucalyptus-green olive groves paint the hills in every direction, sloping upwards to the west, and downwards to the east. There, in the mornings, the sun rises over the mist-swathed valley, breathing warmth into the chill October dawn.

    sunrise over rolling hills
    morning mist clinging to hills under a rising sun
    red grape leaves foregrounded before a rising sun over hilltops
    sun rising over hills swathed in mist

    Guests are free to roam among the vines and groves. Wandering solo on the grounds is the highlight of my time in Italy. There’s a pastoral silence that’s only interrupted by a gentle breeze and chirping birds. I meander down rows of vines, taking photographs of the yellow and red leaves and the few bunches of grapes that remain, nearly rotting, after the harvest. The harvest of the olives is ongoing, and workers shake the trees, forcing them to drop their fruit into massive tarps.

    a path through vineyards leading to distant hills
    red grapes on a vine
    a large pile of green olives
    red and yellow grape leaves
    a blue tractor beside rows of yellow vines

    There’s also a farm. Actually, I lied, this is my favorite part of the trip. On the first afternoon, I go on a walk. As I round a bend in the road, I come upon a small stone building and am greeted by a rooster and chickens scurrying away from me, while a pair of geese angrily hold their ground. A farmhand napping in a white pickup truck parked by the building awakes to tell me something like, “go ahead, you can walk down the path.” (My Italian is basic, but I get the gist.) I gesture at the angry geese and try to reply something like, “I don’t think they want me to.” I find an alternative way around the geese and spend some happy time chasing the chickens around the farm. Later in the week, I return with my long lens for some tighter shots.

    a rooster and two chickens
    an old farmhouse on a hill
    rooster with a cocked head
    two geese seated side-by-side

    food and drink

    On our first full day in Dievole, we are welcomed with a wine tasting in the tasting room. We sample a white Trebbiano, a Chianti Classico, and the Novecento (my personal favorite, which I order exclusively for the rest of the week). We also tour the cellar where the wine is made.

    wine bottles placed on a grid-like shelf
    white wine pouring from a bottle into a line of glasses
    large wine casks

    We eat like Grand Dukes of Tuscany for the entire week we are at Dievole. Breakfast is a typical European-style breakfast buffet, with platters of pecorino and prosciutto, heaps of breads and cakes, and some cooked eggs for us Americans. Each night, the chef prepares a three-course Tuscan meal—primi piatti, secondi piatti, and dolci—that are unfailingly scrumptious. Throughout the week, we sample all the various olive oils that Dievole produced—and all the wine of course!

    white bean soup
    a serving of pasta with mushrooms
    a pan slicing a ham
    foam and a chocolate leaf over a teacup

    coda

    My only regret about this trip was that we were so busy I didn’t feel like I had as much time to just bask in the wonders of the Tuscan countryside as I would have liked. It’s no surprise that the landscapes of Tuscany have inspired so many artists. While I was there for a photography class, others in our group were taking painting and cooking classes. But alas, time was short, and there was also so much to love and explore in the towns and villages of Tuscany—which will be the subject of my next post!

  • a tuscan dream

    a tuscan dream

    I awoke a little after sunrise to the sound of birds chirping. Blue sky with puffy clouds reflected in the pane of my open bedroom window, which was framed by white curtains.

    my bedroom window

    At the window, I reveled in the view. A fig tree and a cypress tree framed the two sides of the window, and from there, the ground sloped downwards, towards a vineyard, yellow with fall. Beyond that, rolling hills to which mist still clung.

    view of the sunrise from my bedroom

    I dressed, grabbed my camera, and walked down the little path outside my room, which ended at the start of a vineyard. I followed the paths through the vineyard, climbing to the top of the hill for the most panoramic view of the valley—superior to the view from my bedroom only due to the height.

    I photographed sweeping vistas and the tiny details of grape leaves in equal measure, then moved on to the freshly harvested olive groves. I actually spun around, my hands grazing the hanging olive branches as I went. This was the Tuscany that I had imagined when I booked this trip a year ago.

    I take photography classes back home in DC through the Capital Photography Center. Sometime in summer 2023, a week-long photo workshop in Tuscany had popped on their website for October 2024. Clicking through the photos from previous classes, a vivid dream took shape in my mind of cypress trees, vineyards, olive groves, and charming medieval and Renaissance villages. It would be a pricy trip, so I hesitated for a few days. But I found myself daydreaming, lost in the fantasy of Tuscany I had crafted in my mind. The dream would not be denied.

    The trip was worth every penny. The worst thing I can say about it is that the rain that dogged my first week in Italy (see posts on Bologna and Ravenna) continued well into my week in Tuscany. As we were driving through the Val D’Orcia on a dreary morning, we stopped for a photo opp. I was wearing waterproof boots with good treads, but the soil was so damp it had turned into the consistency of wet potter’s clay, wedging itself into every cranny of the boot. Effectively, I was walking on a slick sheet of clay on a surface of slick clay. Long story short:

    a woman disheveled with jeans and boots covered in mud
    I fell in the mud

    (Photo credit: Marie Joabar)

    I had to walk around sopping wet and muddy for the rest of the day while we toured Pienza.

    I share this story because a) it really was quite funny, and b) I wouldn’t want anyone to get the misimpression that my travels, bougie though they may be, are always so glamorous. Sometimes I end up covered in mud.

    (On the plus side, how great is that rain hat that I bought in Siena? Courtesy Cappelleria Bertacchi.)

    woman modeling a black rain hat
    new rain hat!

    Rain and mud aside, I have much to say about all of Tuscany’s delights… so much so that I’m going to break this up into a few different posts.

    Next week, look for a post on the Dievole Wine Resort, which was the site of the aforementioned twirling in the olive groves. I truly cannot imagine a more heavenly place to spend a week. I could go on and on about how much I loved this place… and I probably will.

    The following week, look for a post about the towns and villages that we visited on our daily photography excursions around Tuscany: Siena, San Gimignano, Radda, and Pienza. Each delightful in its own charming way!