Sept 21 -- Agrihotel elisabetta

Slept until 8:45 so I missed the 7:00 VBT meeting in the breakfast room. This must be common, I thought, jet-lagged vacationers sleeping in so I checked the schedule. Check-out at 10 and bus pick-up at noon.
Breakfast was espresso, prisciuto, crescents, eggs, and fruit. After checking out, I walked toward the walled city to find out that there was a convention of petroleum engineers and there are no tourist's allowed. Damn oil!

Christian and Luca were our handsome Italian guides. Six of nine couples that I spent the week with are doctors and their fifty-something year old wives from Michigan. The others are empty-nesters from New Jersey, Maryland, and Vermont.
A bus brought us through Tuscan countryside--vineyards, orchards, and fields of drying sunflowers, their heads bowed to the east like they had lost hope of the coming of a new day.
We spent the next two nights at an agrihotel. the air was thick with the smell of syrah grapes being crushed by the office door. I went up to my room directly above the grape crushing operation and looking out at a pool that mirrors the cloudless sky. There I changed into my black biking shorts and skimpy white bike shirt.

At 3:00, we met for orientation, bike, and helmet fitting, and to do a 12.5 km loop on cypress-lined roads through orchards and farms. The bike's momentum created just enough breeze to alleviate sweat. Someone should pinch me.

Christian and Luigi in wine cellar

By 5:30 I cool off by swimming a few laps in the pool then change for wine-tasting in an immaculate rock-walled cellar. Our host introduces us, in Italian, to his two white wines and one red. He explains the process of wine-making and aging. Christian, his elbow resting on Luigi's shoulder and his sneakered foot braced against his muscular calf,  translated every couple of sentences.
I could live in the wine cellar with it's cool tile floors and arched doorways.

Luigi (owner), Christian, and Luka (guides)

An appetizer table precedes dinner in an open-air dining room. Octopus, calamari, porcini, meatballs, onion pizza, and balsamic marinated cheese and greens were among the appetizers. Dinner was fresh pasta in a white bean sauce followed by wine-marinated beef and mashed potatoes. The dessert table was set with flan, a light cheesecake, fresh figs, a variety of sumptuous cheeses and tiramasu.
I will have to bike fifty miles tomorrow, I thought, after my third dessert. After dinner we heard the whirring of a motor and we looked up to see  the cedar-planked ceiling sliding from over our heads and the full moon and nearby Jupiter illuminated the sky.
We are invited to help pick grapes at 8:00 am.
 Our general route for the week, without the daily side trips, is marked on google maps:
http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&source=s_d&saddr=Agrihotel+Elisabetta,+Cecina,+Italy&daddr=Agritourismo+Montebelli+Tuscany++Italy&geocode=FUN3lQIdgaCgACHvlXCnElXxlykpohhyLvzVEjGuICXdxTkmyQ%3BFemHjgIdhL2mACG0hLfbYWCV6w&hl=en&mra=ltm&dirflg=w&sll=43.121034,10.741882&sspn=1.70404,1.862183&ie=UTF8&z=10