Nick has read that the Laurentian library had very specific hours, so we had planned to try to visit prior to grabbing our car for our trip to Panzano for the day. We were there 

at 9:30 am

 when they were to open only to be told that they were closed as Monday for the Epiphany. I felt bad as this was the ONLY thing Nick had talked about wanting to see again in Florence. Bummed that yet another thing was closed, we made our way to collect our rental car over near S.M. Novella.

Prior to coming to Italy Rebecca has told me about a wine tour that they took which took them to two wineries and then lunch at Dario Cecchini‘s restaurant in Panzano. In my cheap fashion, I decided we could recreate the same experience on our own so we planned to rent a car and drive to Panzano. Well we succeeded at part of it. 

I had emailed a couple wineries prior to departing the US and didn’t hear back from a single one. There was one that I had my eye on, so I ask Giudi to call them on Saturday for me, when she did and they advised that they were closed for the holiday and would reopen on Tuesday. 

I then found two others on Trip Advisor and emailed them, to my surprise they both emailed back right away. They both had tastings at the same time, so I chose the ones with the better reviews.

We grabbed our car from Enterprise and set out for Panzano in Chianti, which was about an hour drive south of Florence.  We drove exactly where Google Maps told us to and unfortunately we were never able to find the winery.  We gave up after an hour of driving around, putting the directions in every time to find that it was directing us to a different location each time.  In the email she indicated that we would ring a bell at the gate, we never found a gate, a bell or a sign with any information. The second location that it took us to was an abandoned church that it looked like was under construction, we continued on the “road” around the church to find ourselves driving straight into a vineyard! 

Finally tired of driving around we just made our way into Panzano. Around the corner from where we were to have lunch we found a small Osteria that has a wine bar. The nice man spoke very good English and was very kind to us, we pulled two stools up the bar, made ourselves comfy and had a glass of wine.  Then he informed us that we could do a wine tasting, well why not.  We let him choose the wines, and he did a great job, we shared the flight and I am glad that we did because when the bill came we discovered that a flight is just half price for each glass, so it ended up being pretty pricey.  We however enjoyed two of the wines enough that we bought a bottle of each to bring back with us.Panzano is not a huge town by any means, they had a little main square that we walked around. With a little bit of time before our lunch reservation we walked down a little path behind the Osteria that had a beautiful view of the Tuscan hills.

Our reservation email for Dario Cecchini’s suggested that we come early to enjoy an apertivo before our reservation, we walked over to find the butcher shop full of people, and the apps that they had out very hard to get to.  In true Italian fashion, there was no order whatsoever, so we hung out by the door until the room cleared a little.  A man was walking around with small glasses and pouring Chianti.  We were able to grab a little bit to eat from the table, not 100% sure what we ate, but it was good.  We stuck close to the door and were chatting with each other when we looked up to notice the small area was now empty.  There was no sort of announcement that they would be moving anyone to the dining room.  I asked one of the people working, who then asked someone else where we needed to go. We were told to go upstairs where we entered to find huge dining room full of people already sitting down to eat.  Some appeared to be half way through their mails.  There were two seats left at the end of a dining table, so we joined two couples that we had bumped into downstairs.  Three of them were from Mexico, with two currently living in San Diego and one living in Florence with her husband who was Italian.  They had driving down for the day just to experience the lunch.  He informed me that they had watch the Netflix documentary the night prior.

The set up that they had was very nice, there was raw veggies with olive oil and Dario’s special salt on the table, bread, all the wine your heart desired, and meat with more meat, and then even more meat.  The servers would come around periodically and serve you with the various types of meat, all cooked Florentine style (barely cooked). For someone who likes their meat to be well done, I’ll admit it was very tasty.  We enjoyed our time and I think that Nick especially enjoyed it being the son of a butcher.  I am just glad that we chose the meal that we did, Dario is known for utilizing all parts of the animals when cooking and when I read that the other meal served “muzzle”, I’m pretty confident that I chose well.

Stuffed and sleepy and not feeling great, we both woke up with sore throats, we just headed back to Florence to return our car and make our way back to the apartment to pack up our bags as we had an early train to Roma in the morning to catch our flight back to the US.  I had big plans for our last day, and it didn’t play out how I anticipated but I think after a full week of being on the go we were both okay with relaxing on our final night.