Mushy toe time....finally. :)

Alright, had quite an eventful day today. I'll try and keep it short and sweet though. Yesterday was a rest day so not much happened besides the fact that I cooked for Italians...and get this, I cooked spaghetti of all things! Think it was a success by the broken "congratulations!" at the end of the meal. Who knows though...

This morning they put me to work in the vegetable garden. Rows and rows of fennel, lettuce, peppers, etc and my job was to basically clean it up after what looks like years of over growth. It was pretty great to get my hands in the soil, but rather exhausting after a while because what looked like small manageable weeds ended up having incredibly tough deep roots that must have been growing there for quite some time.

I did however get a little break in the middle to FINALLY STOMP THE GRAPES!!

Apparently today was the first day the merlot would start fermenting, and the perfect time to begin stomping. 5 minutes for each container every morning for probably a week or so. I'm ecstatic. Not many wineries use the stomping method anymore because of the advances in technology, but apparently this method is much more conducive to good wine because it is more delicate and less intrusive on the grapes, capturing more of the flavor.

After the grape stomping and weed hacking, we were off to a restaurant with two of the owners of the winery, and the 5 of us farmers from the house. Apparently we were going to the heart of excellent Tuscan wine, I was thrilled. The lunch was outstanding and the wine, delicious. I also saw our wineries wine being sold at the restaurant which was kind of a thrill.

After that one of the owners, Stephan, drove me out to Volterra (where some of the new twilight film was shot, for all you vampire junkies). Unfortunately it was fairly overcast so I couldn't get a good picture of the incredible view Volterra has on the Tuscany region, but definitely somewhere I'm already planning on going back to. Stephan had been there several times so he walked me through the "must see's" and gave me some background on the city, it was pretty wonderful being able to have a drawn out conversation in English (it's been a while). Thats about it for now though! I'm pretty sure my day tomorrow will consist of more stomping and garden duty!

Ciao for now!