Only a few days left of our summer holidays and our wine supplies are looking decidedly low. The answer? Sfuso wine. This is the cheap house wine that you can find in 'Fiaschetterie' wine shops dotted around Florence and Tuscany, which is sold from large barrels or steel vats. You take along any sized container and they will fill it up and charge you by the litre! After trying different ones from wine estates at San Andrea and Ugo Bing and in Florence and at nearby Strada-in-Chianti, we decide to take a leaf out of author Frances Mayes' book and head to Montepulciano, a place we came to nearly two years ago and which definitely deserves more exploration... We pack up the picnic bag and throw in a few 5 litre demijohns and head south.
The idea is to visit a few farms, do some tasting and purchase our favourite.
We reach the outskirts nice and early and our first port of call is 'La Vecchia Cantina', one of the largest consortiums here. Theisr sfuso is £1.75 a litre and quite drinkable. We pop into the town of Montepulciano and pick up a map of the whole area and all the wine estates marked on it.
At the moment there is the local festival on, it's called 'Bravio delle botte' - a Tuscan version of 'roll out the barrel', where teams have to push wine barrels up and down the old, cobbled streets!
Our next stop is the estates of Valdipiatta, Tre Rosa and Ludola Nuovo all of which have no sfuso to try.
Then we hit the jackpot! Poliziano, probably the most well-known Vino Nobiles, and after tasting their sfuso, we agree it's the best! The estate, which is named after local poet, Agnolo Poliziano, has many different bottled wines, but their sfuso wine is sensational and surprisingly only £1.14 a litre! (which works out at 60p a bottle!!!)
We fill up our demijohns and head back to Montepulciano for a cappuccino and cake... at where else, but Cafe Poliziano! They have a few tables on an outside terrace with some spectacular views. I can't believe it's taken us this long to return!
We stop in one final enoteca, Pulcino's, for some cheese and wine tasting and then drive down to San Biagio, which is a beautiful honey coloured temple, built by Sangallo ,and the travertine stone is glowing in the early evening sun... beautiful! We enjoy a stroll before bidding farewell to this magical place.
The hunger pangs are too much and so we decide to stop off for dinner on the way home. About 10 km from Greve we find a nice restaurant called 'Osteria di Sugame'
in Dudda and they have an outside table free! The meal is traditional and very tasty and we stagger home, but with our prized 10 litres of Poliziano wine..
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