Wine Tasting in Cortona

On our way home from the Casentino yesterday, we stopped at Azienda Agricola Leuta Vineyard in Cortona to do a wine tasting with author and sommelier Jennifer Criswell.

This small organic winery produces just 30,000 bottles a year. To put that in context, the famous Tuscan winery “Antinori” produces 20,000,000 bottles a year.

We were both so grateful to have the chance to taste and learn yesterday, in exactly the fashion we prefer: High quality, presented in a casual, friendly way. It reminded me of our own on-stage efforts as musicians: A lot of folks won’t go to a classical music concert, for example, because they don’t know much about classical music, so they feel left out before the show even begins. We aim to change that dynamic, and have been doing so for the last 20 years.

Similarly, some people might not go to a wine tasting if they knew nothing about wine, but Jennifer’s manner is so warm and friendly, while also being extremely informative. I’m afraid we stayed much longer than we should have!

We also gained a completely new appreciation of vin santo. In general, the sweet dessert wine is not my favorite - I usually find it a little tinny and way too sweet. Leuta’s vin santo converted me: Darker and thicker than any I’ve seen before, it’s the difference between a plastic-wrapped yellow ball of bouncy mozzarella you get at the convenience store, and a real buffalo-milk never-been-refrigerated ball of mozzarella made that morning in caseificio in Campania. They share the same name, but that’s where the similarities end. I’ll be back up to Leuta to buy myself a bottle of that vin santo as a Christmas gift to myself.

Jennifer has a very funny and endearing book called “At Least You’re In Tuscany” - you should check it out. We don’t offer a ton of tours/guides with our Little Roads Europe itinerary planning, but we do have some special, curated experiences that we recommend to our clients, like a tour of a parmigiano-reggiano factory (in a factory that doesn’t normally offer tours; a friend just takes you in), or lunch in a garden on a cashmere goat farm, where you get to pet the goats and maybe even bottle-feed them after your meal.

Leuta’s wine tasting will be added to our short list of memorable and special experiences to recommend to our clients.