Chianti Tour with Monika

Chianti Tour with Monika

Travelling with Monika Iris

Monika Iris (www.monikairis.com) is  specialised in the chauffeur driven car hire and private tours across Tuscany and the Chianti region. This is the story of our journey through the hills of Tuscany

Journey across Tuscany

Monika picked up us early in the morning at the Florence Hotel or at the chianti holydays farmhouse. She toured us on back roads, thought the Tuscan hills, stopping every 10 or 15 minutes for photo opportunities. She's pretty funny, you can tell she soaks up every second talking about her experience in this land.

She's almost mesmerized herself, when she's driving around... and she's lived there for 20 years. We stopped at a small village at the top of a mountain, and it is hard to explain the simple beauty she showed us.

Wine Tasting in Montefioralle

The highlight of the tour was when we went to her friends winery for a chianti wine tasting. This was the MOST AUTENTIC Italian wine tasting in a small piece of land that has been in their family for a long time. Fernando produces a modest 10000 bottles of wine each year, and some Vin Santo (strong sweet stuff) and olive oil.

We showed up, and it was like walking back into the early 1900's. He had a fire pit that had been burning with olive branches and oak just to cook the sausages and pork for our lunch. Bruschetta toast was on his stove, and the wine tasting of our lives began.

Fernando doesn't speak ANY english. Monika does all the translating, and he likes to talk! Passion about wines, the process, the land, the food, life, marketing, the universe, etc. Discussions you would pay to see on the Discovery Channels.

Wine poured freely, jokes were handed out like old friends. He liked the 4 of us so much, he cracked open a 1969 chianti for us at our Tuscany Villas Monika had set up for us in Greve... (he came to Greve just to drink this wine with us!) We bought some of his wine, 9,50 Euros per bottle.. can you believe that?

Montefioralle is a small chianti town 10 minutes from Greve. 3 times to Italy and nothing compared to that day in Montefioralle with Monika and Fernando.