I finally got a chance to sit down, relax and write part two of my Tuscan adventure at Tenuta Lupinari in Valdambra, Tuscany. You can catch up on part one here if you haven’t read it yet. I left off at an appropriate point – cartoon characters in the town of Castelnuovo.
After taking silly pictures, we headed over to Villa a Sesta winery for a tour and tasting. Where they store the wine was pretty impressive, think modern steel vats alongside the more traditional wooden barrels. The wines themselves (we tried quite a few) were of the Chianti Classico variety. My favorite was the Chianti Classico DOCG “Riserva” . You just can’t go wrong with a red wine like that! Plus we discovered these amazing wine cookies that were honestly addictive. Not too sweet, this is something I could never keep at home because I would eat everything! 
Let’s chat about the amazing cooking adventure we bloggers got to embark on after the show cooking with Camilla. If you have seen an episode of Masterchef, our cooking contest was a bit like that. We were assigned groups out of a hat and each got a wooden crate with enough ingredients to make an antipasto and primo for everyone to try.
My team was appropriately called ‘Team boh’ ( boh is Tuscan slang for ‘I don’t know’) and we grabbed everything on the planet ended up creating a bunch of different appetizers including stuffed tomatoes, different kinds of bruschetta and my asparagus and eggs on toast. We also made a really lovely pasta dish with a tomato-based sauce and bread crumbs, I loved it! While we were cooking we had various people stopping in to check out the action while we blasted Edith Piaf and sipped white wine. I’m surprised we got anything done but somehow, someway we managed to finish in time with perhaps a few food stains.
We sat at the table above and shared everything. Obviously being a competition we did score everything, and while we didn’t win – we put up QUITE a fight. ;-). It was an absolutely awesome experience that I will never forget, I am definitely not going to the win the US {or Italian} Masterchef anytime soon but a girl can try, right?
If that wasn’t enough, we also got a chance to go to the Villa a Sesta polo club to ride some horses on Sunday morning and celebrate with polo players. I got a chance to chat with one of the guys who worked there who explained to me that all of the horses (and many of the players come from Argentina and they play/train seasonally in Tuscany. The horses themselves were absolutely gorgeous, you can tell these were the prettiest horses at the prom.
W ended up coming back after showering to take a glimpse at the end of a polo match and then awards show which was really fun. I felt a little bit like James Bond amongst the fancy cars and curated lawns. I even got a cool video of an example of how they celebrate a win.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QFECoUJHtZU]
Yeah you could say they know how to have a good time! Champage anyone? We ended off the spectacular day at the Polo club’s restaurant Relais La Martina for some Pinot Grigio wine and fresh pasta made in-house! I could not have imagined a better ending to a really unique weekend in this hidden gem in Valdambra.
My only question now is.. when are we going back?
Related articles
- Weekend in Tuscany: part 1 – show cooking and cartoon characters! (girlinflorence.com)
